Murphy Martin. Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money. Piracy & Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World
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177
contemporary piracy: irritation or menace?
achieved is secondary. In fact the relationship between the political and the
commercial can become so close that, as Jayant Abhyankar pointed out, the
cargo stolen from the MV Harpers that was hijacked in 1993 was stored
under armed guard at an army camp in Guangxi province while in 1994 a
car carrier, the Tequila, was tracked on radar as it was accompanied by two
small speed-boats into an area off limits to all but official Chinese vessels.
209
Nor does it mean that as one market closes others do not open, even if they
lack the scale of the one they replace: at the same time that Chinese ports
were open to illegal cargoes others were being disposed of in the northern
philippines, and it appears that pirate goods are now making their way to
India and Iran.
210
Organised piracy, in other words, is one manifestation of
organised crime which, when linked to corruption and weak governance, is
a far more insidious threat.
Contemporary piracy: irritation or menace?
e discussion began with an assertion that contemporary piracy is a global
phenomenon but not a global problem. In fact this can be narrowed down
still further. piracy is a potential threat to all seafarers in the areas where
it occurs. While piracy attacks do occur in many places around the globe,
contemporary piracy is concentrated in a only a few areas that to some ex-
tent shift over time: in the early years of this century these areas have been
found in an arc that runs from the philippines through Indonesia and the
southern South China Sea, up the Malacca Straits, then jumps to the Bay
of Bengal with a special focus off Bangladesh. It has been particularly vigor-
ous along the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia and has continued without
interruption in the Gulf of Aden and southern Red Sea. Scattered attacks
have occurred around the Gulf of Guinea from the Congo to Guinea but
concentrated mainly off Nigeria. Sporadic piracy has taken place around
209 Abhyankar, ‘Maritime fraud and piracy’, p. 180. Also Abhyankar. ‘phantom
ships’ in Ellen, Shipping at Risk, p. 64. Investigators showed that the MV Harp-
ers had changed its name five time in six months. ICC-IMB, ‘phantom ships’,
paragraph 2.2. On the Tequila see Greg Torode. ‘hijacked ship might be at
Chinese base’, SCMP, 22 March 1994.
210 On the northern philippines see Tan, ‘In Asian waters, sea pirates eschew eye
patches, steal ships via Internet’; also Burnett. Dangerous Waters, pp. 216-17
on the Inabukwa discovered in ‘Salumagi, a remote town in Ilocus Sur known
to be a favourite place for smugglers to land with motorcycles and electronic
goods’. On Iran and India see Warren, ‘A tale of two centuries’, p. 23 and his
quoted remarks in Osler, ‘Global piracy bill hits $25bn’. e Alondra Rainbow
was close to India when it was intercepted.
178
small boats, weak states, dirty money
the coast of South America, the main concentrations being between Suri-
name and Colombia, off peru, and the port of Santos in Brazil. A large ship
passing through any piracy-prone area runs a low risk of being attacked,
especially if it takes precautions, although the fear of attack takes its toll
on crews. e communities that have been affected most are local seafarers
such as fishermen, and villages and small ports in pirate areas.
e factors that cause or sustain piracy are common but the deck is shuf-
fled differently in each area. e overriding factor, however, is opportunity.
Of the other factors one—geography—is immutable. Another—cultural
acceptance—is deeply rooted in parts of Southeast Asia but probably less
so in others such as Nigeria. poverty is only important where it coincides
with propitious geography. e legal framework, while not immutable,
changes only slowly particularly if international law is involved. When it
is and changes are necessary then a semblance of urgency can be injected
into the process through the involvement of a powerful state exercising its
interest through bilateral agreements.
e other factors are more changeable. e most important is a permis-
sive political environment. If the political will to suppress or control piracy is
missing for whatever reason, then piracy will continue. It will persist so long
as the benefits outweigh the risks. e most common reason for the lack of
political will is state weakness. piracy and weak states go together. Organised
crime more generally can destabilise weak states through the corruption and
violence it engenders, as has already been demonstrated in the cases of El Sal-
vador and Guatemala beginning in the early 1990s, and can unsettle stronger
ones, as happened in Italy in the early 1990s and which appears to have hap-
pened in Mexico and peru.
211
e Inter-American Development Bank esti-
211 For an account of the Italian experience see Alexander Stille, Excellent Cadav-
ers: Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, New York: Vintage Books,
1996. On the American experience see Max G. Manwaring, Street Gangs: e
New Urban Insurgency, Carlisle, pA: uS Army War College, Strategic Studies In-
stitute, March 2005, pp. 7 & 12-15. For background on the Central American
gangs see Max G. Manwaring, A Contemporary Challenge to State Sovereignty:
Gangs and Other Illicit Transnational Criminal Organizations in Central Amer-
ica, El Salvador, Mexico, Jamaica and Brazil, uS Army War College, Strategic
Studies Institute, Dec. 2007, pp. 12-23; Clare M. Ribano, ‘Gangs in Central
America’, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, RL34112, 2 Aug.
2007; and Federico Brevé, ‘e Maras: A Menace to the Americas’, Military
Review, July-Aug. 2007, pp. 88-95. For the situation in Mexico see Manwaring,
A Contemporary Challenge to State Sovereignty, pp. 23-33; George W. Grayson,
‘Mexico and the Drug Cartels’, Foreign policy Research Institute E-Notes, Aug.
2007; Martha Lauer, ‘Mexican Drug policy: Internal Corruption in an Exter-
nalized War’, Council on hemispheric Relations Press Release, 26 June 2007;
179
contemporary piracy: irritation or menace?
mates that crime costs Central American countries 14.2 per cent of GDp
including law enforcement, healthcare, expenditure on social programmes
and lost foreign investment.
212
Iduvina hernandez, a Guatemalan politi-
cal analyst, has explained that the goal of organised crime is to control the
political system: “If they can control a small town, they can build a landing
strip there and use it as a base. If they have someone in Congress, all the
better.”
213
Similar problems exist in India. In rural states such as Bihar and
uttar pradesh, “sensas”, which for the most part are caste-based private
armies of gangsters, have largely taken over the political system.
214
In Bra-
zil the prison based criminal organisation primeiro Comando da Capital
Sarah Miller Llana, ‘With Calderón in, a new war on Mexico’s mighty drug
cartels’, Christian Science Monitor, 22 Jan. 2007; ‘Calderon changes Mexico’s
drug war strategy’, AP, 14 May 2007; Matt Levitch, ‘Cartels lash out at Mexi-
can crackdown on drug trafficking’, Christian Science Monitor, 16 May 2007;
Mark Stevenson, ‘Mexico: Drug gangs using terror tactics’, AP, 18 May 2007;
Sarah Miller Llana, ‘Escalating drug war grips Mexico’, Christian Science Moni-
tor, 23 May 2007; howard LaFranchi, ‘Mexico seeks anti-drug aid from uS’,
Christian Science Monitor, 8 Aug. 2007; Manuel Roig-Franzia, ‘Mexican drug
cartels threaten elections’, Washington Post, 5 Jan. 2008; Ioan Grillo, ‘Mexico’s
narco-insurgency’, TIME, 25 Jan. 2008; ‘Marching as to war’, e Economist,
31 Jan. 2008; Daniel Borunda, ‘Drug cartels possess more firepower, technol-
ogy’. El Paso Times, 2 June 2008; “Mexico drug traffickers make car bomb’,
Reuters AlertNet, 16 July 2008 and Adam ompson, ‘Drug cartels “threaten”
Mexican Democracy’, Financial Times, 13 July 2008; e violence and turmoil
in parts of Mexico have also been felt in the uS: ‘Mexican drug commandos
expand ops in 6 uS states’, WorldNetDaily, 21 June 2005. Jerry Seper, ‘Mexican
mercenaries expand base into uS’, e Washington Times, 1 Aug. 2005; Robert
J. Lopez, et al., ‘Gang uses deportation to its advantage to flourish in uS’, LA
Times, 30 Oct. 2005; Richard A. Serrano, ‘Border violence pushes north’, LA
Times, 19 Aug. 2007; Samuel Logan and M. Casey McCarty, ‘Violence on the
uS-Mexico Border’, ISN Security Watch, 29 Jan. 2008; Manuel Roig-Franzia ,
‘From Mexico, drug violence spills into uS’, Washington Post, 20 April 2008;
and on the wider political ramifications both north and south of the border see
David Francis, ‘As violence grows along border, Congress debates funding for
fighting Mexican drug cartels’, World Politics Review, 7 March 2008. On peru
see Sarah Miller Llana, ‘Violent cartel culture now threatens peru’, Christian
Science Monitor, 3 April 2007.
212 Anna Gilmore, ‘Gang Warfare’, Jane’s IR, vol. 19, no. 7, July 2007, p. 50.
213 Marc Lacey, ‘Drug gangs use violence to sway Guatemala vote’, New York
Times, 4 Aug. 2007. Also Samuel Logan, ‘Governance in Guatemala increas-
ingly threatened by organized crime’, PINR, 19 Oct. 2007.
214 John p. Sullivan, ‘Terrorism, crime and private armies’ in Robert J. Bunker
(ed.), Networks, Terrorism and Global Insurgency, Abingdon and New York:
Routledge, 2005, p. 77; ‘private caste armies in Bihar’, South Asia Terrorism
portal; peter Foster, ‘Burgeoning lawlessness in India’s Wild East’, Daily Tel-
egraph, 20 March 2007.
180
small boats, weak states, dirty money
(pCC), which has its primary power base in São paulo, has organised large
civil disturbances and is paying for the education of future politicians, law-
yers and security officials.
215
e four days of violence that it unleashed
on São paulo in 2006 was described in one report as looking more like a
“guerrilla offensive with multiple fronts”.
216
Where piracy is an element it
too can, as peter Chalk has observed, “play a…role in undermining and
weakening political stability by encouraging corruption among elected
government officials”.
217
While the act of piracy takes place at sea (or on the water), its effects on
land are more insidious. piracy is a group activity and groups require organi-
sation. More organised groups are able to mount larger and more profitable
operations. e more sophisticated the attacks, the more sophisticated the
scams. Greater sophistication entails a wider network of contacts to provide
documents, dispose of the goods, provide political protection, and transfer
the profits to be used in other markets for possibly other criminal purposes
or to be invested in legitimate businesses. England, Ireland, France, North
America, North Africa and China are amongst the places that historically
have played host to the markets for pirate goods and the shadowy networks
that financed, supported and benefited from them. More recently similar
major markets have reappeared in China. Smaller, almost local markets
have continued to survive across Southeast Asia and appear to operate in
Nigeria and Bangladesh. e networks that feed them appear to have no
difficulty in operating. Without official connivance and the corruption that
goes with it these markets and networks would find it hard to survive and
the problem of piracy would be an irritation rather than a menace. So long,
however, as organised crime and political corruption coexist to hamper
effective law enforcement on land, as they have been able to do in states
such as Indonesia, the philippines and Nigeria, so long as pirates benefit
from the jurisdictional jealousy of states that often hinders cross-border
cooperation and “hot pursuit”, and so long as they are able to exploit the
jurisdictional and law enforcement ambiguities of the high seas, then the
215 Samuel Logan. ‘Brazil’s p.C.C.: e true power behind the violence’, PINR, 24
May 2006 and Manwaring, A Contemporary Challenge to State Sovereignty, pp.
40-6. ‘Brazil’s mighty prison gangs’, BBC News, 15 May 2006 reports that the
group learnt to use revolutionary language and organisational methods from
left-wing guerrillas that its members met in prison.
216 Marcelo Soares and patrick J. McDonnell, ‘Inmates unleash a torrent of vio-
lence on Brazilian city’, LA Times, 16 May 2006.
217 Chalk, ‘Maritime piracy: A global overview’, p. 50.
181
contemporary piracy: irritation or menace?
problem of piracy will continue, and where it has links to organised crime
its effects will extend well beyond the area or even the state where the at-
tacks take place to other states where the proceeds can be used to fund
other crimes and subvert other polities through corruption. In interna-
tional security terms, in terms of the number of attacks compared with the
number of ship movements and the threat they pose to the free movement
of goods, piracy attacks at sea might be an irritation, but they are usually
terrifying for the victims, are often violent, and are linked to events on land
by a half-hidden chain of menace that can have consequences for regional
and international security.
183
4
MARITIME TERRORISM
e leap from the criminal to the political is usually—as one would
hope—one of some magnitude. however, as this book has suggested, pi-
racy throughout history has had a political connection. e transition from
organised criminal piracy to politically driven piracy is the third of Gosse’s
pirate cycles. In his terms, of course, it is the transition to pirate states or
republics, but in our age, when political power can be more diffuse and po-
litical violence is often characterised by irregularity, then the most obvious
parallel is with insurgent or terrorist use of the sea. perhaps unjustifiably, it
is maritime terrorism that has given rise to the greatest concern.
What is terrorism?
Terrorism is a tactic. It is used by a wide variety of groups, including in-
surgents, front organisations for legitimate states and even criminals who
believe it will advance their interests. For some groups terrorism is the only
tactic they use; for others it is just one amongst several, including assassina-
tion, guerrilla war, information warfare, propaganda, political agitation,
representative politics and welfare provision. is distinction is important
and it is only for the sake of brevity that the term “terrorist” is used here
rather than “a group that uses terrorism”.
Terrorism in the broadest sense is a form of violent coercion.
1
What
makes it special—and especially terrifying—is that the violence used vio-
1 omas Schelling articulated this view; see Martha Crenshaw, ‘eories of ter-
rorism: Instrumental and organisational approaches’ in David C. Rapoport
(ed.), Inside Terrorist Organisations (2
nd
edn.), London and portland, OR: Frank
Cass, 2001, p. 13. For a similar interpretation see Richard K. Betts, ‘e soft
underbelly of American primacy: Tactical advantages of terror’, Political Science
Quarterly, vol. 117, no. 1, 2002, p. 20.
184
small boats, weak states, dirty money
lates social taboos, either through its ferocity or by its indiscriminate na-
ture.
2
Terrorism is the public and systematic use of this “extranormal” or
“extramoral” violence against combatants and non-combatants in situa-
tions short of conventional war to provoke fear and impose unacceptable
costs through the loss of life, property or prestige, mainly and ostensibly
for political purposes; and to gain the publicity that will amplify these acts,
such that they appear more consequential than they often are.
3
To be suc-
cessful terrorists must inflict or threaten to inflict intolerable damage, ide-
ally but not necessarily on targets that symbolise their opponents’ power,
in order to highlight the limits or fragility of that power.
4
eir opponents’
armed forces, intelligence services and police, for example, each one of
which represent and protect their opponents’ power, are obvious targets.
Classic guerrilla theory maintains they should be attacked to provoke a dis-
proportionate reaction that alienates them from the people they ostensibly
protect, but attacks also deter recruits from joining these services, and can
make them appear ineffective if their response is slow and cumbersome.
e threat to inflict intolerable damage can often be effective on its own.
propaganda is a weapon in all wars but of disproportionate significance in
irregular war. It is in the mind that the terrorist achieves his effect: the es-
sence of terrorism is the breaking of the enemy’s will through the exploita-
tion of fear.
5
e reason for this is simple: no terrorist group has sufficient
material resources to wear down and defeat a strong government through
the application of conventional force. Al Qaeda and the groups that share
its ideology, and others such as Aum Shinrikyo, which together can be la-
belled “annihilation terrorists”, are very interested in killing large numbers
of people. For them mass murder is as important, and as satisfying, as the
psychological result. For other groups the number of people they kill or the
material damage they inflict can be almost incidental, providing the way
they die or the response to their deaths generates sufficient psychological
2 Martha Crenshaw, ‘e strategic development of terrorism’, paper delivered at
the annual meeting of the American political Science Association, New Orle-
ans, Aug./Sept. 1985, p. 4.
3 David Rapoport uses the terms ‘extranormal’ and ‘extramoral’ to describe vio-
lence that ‘goes beyond the convention or boundaries particular societies estab-
lish to regulate coercion’: David C. Rapoport, ‘Messianic sanctions for terror’,
Comparative Politics, vol. 20, no. 2, 1988, p. 196.
4 ‘Intolerable’ is relative. What may be an unsustainable level of death and de-
struction in one conflict might be bearable in another.
5 John Gearson, ‘e nature of modern terrorism’ in Lawrence Freedman (ed.),
Superterrorism: Policy Responses, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002, p. 8.
185
maritime terrorism
effect. e object is to encourage the people, institutions and allies that
their opponent needs or values to withdraw their support and by so doing
undermine the opponent’s will to resist. Terrorists can win by making their
opponents defeat themselves or by making the cost of defeating them so
high politically that the opponent is forced to seek an accommodation.
6
Consequently, terrorism needs targets the loss or destruction of which
will resonate psychologically with the target audience (but are not so valu-
able as to provoke overwhelming retaliation), and the means to communi-
cate their destruction to that audience preferably in the most direct way. In
this sense television and terrorism were made for each other. ese condi-
tions can be fulfilled at sea or on waterways but only with difficulty. e
reason why they have not been exploited at sea to any great extent, to date
at least, is that they can be exploited more easily on land. For the majority
of terrorist groups operating today, maritime activity is unnecessary; there
are only a few groups for whom maritime operations are driven by a strate-
gic or operational imperative.
What is maritime terrorism?
Maritime terrorism is terrorism that takes place at sea, on inland water, or
against places that are touched by water such as ports and coastal infrastruc-
ture.
7
In terms of its aims, objectives and strategic design it is no different
from the terrorism that takes place on land or in the air.
Terrorist attacks at sea – the story so far
e number of terrorist attacks at sea has been extremely small as a propor-
tion of the number of terrorist attacks overall.
8
According to the RAND
Terrorism Chronology Database and the RAND-MIpT Terrorism Inci-
dent Database, incidents of maritime terrorism have amounted to only two
6 See N.O. Berry, ‘eories on the efficacy of terrorism’ in paul Wilkinson and
Alasdair M. Stewart (eds), Contemporary Research on Terrorism, Aberdeen up,
1987, pp. 293-306. For similar views see also Colin S. Gray, ‘inking asym-
metrically in times of terror’, Parameters, Spring 2002, pp. 7-9 and Gearson,
‘e nature of modern terrorism’, p. 23.
7 e working group of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia pacific
(CSCAp) offers a similar definition: Sophia Quentin, ‘Shipping activities: Tar-
gets of maritime terrorism’, MIRMAL, Issue no. 2, 20 Jan. 2003.
8 Since the 1960s there have been less than 200 maritime terrorist incidents com-
pared with over 10,000 terrorist incidents in total: Anthony Davis, ‘piracy and
terrorism should not be conflated’, Jane’s IR, vol. 16, no. 8, Aug. 2004, p. 57.
186
small boats, weak states, dirty money
per cent of all the terrorism incidents recorded over the past thirty years.
9
10
e first recognised incident was the hijacking in 1961 of the cruise ship
the Santa Maria, seized while sailing from Curaçao to Miami, by a small
group whose purpose was to inspire a revolt against the portuguese dicta-
tor, Salazar, by capturing the Spanish island of Fernando pó and using it as
a base to attack the Angolan capital of Luanda.
11
Led by henrique Galvão,
who had a long history of opposition to Salazar and the portuguese colonial
presence in Africa, the group proclaimed they were insurgents, which in
an era still largely unexposed to international terrorism caused confusion.
If they were insurgents they were not pirates and therefore could not be
treated as such.
12
uS warships that had been ordered to intercept the ship
actually turned away when told the hijacking was “political”.
13
e Santa
Maria hijacking resulted in one death.
In a long forgotten incident another cruise liner, the Sanya, was sunk in
Beirut harbour in 1973 by the Fatah unit Black September. e ship was
carrying 250 American tourists to haifa in Israel. ere were no casualties.
Interestingly, a limpet mine was used for the attack.
14
9 Chalk, ‘Maritime terrorism in the contemporary era’, p. 21.
10 Looking further back, the maritime analyst Charles Dragonette suggests there
were 500 incidents of maritime ‘terrorism’, which he defines very broadly as
‘politically-motivated violence at sea’, between 1945 and 1996: Charles h.
Dragonette, ‘Maritime terrorism: underway as before?’ in omas C. Fitzhugh,
III (ed.), International Perspectives on Maritime Security, Charlotte, NC: Mari-
time Security Council, 1996, p. 160.
11 G.O.W. Mueller and Freda Adler, Outlaws of the Ocean, New York: heart Ma-
rine Books, 1985, pp. 162-4; John p. Cann. Brown Waters of Africa: Portuguese
Riverine Warfare, 1961-1974, St. petersburg, Fl: hailer publishing, 2007, pp. 5
& 14-15.
12 For further details see Menefee, TMV, pp. 90-4; B.A.h. parritt,
Security at Sea:
A Practical Guide, London: e Nautical Institute, 1991, pp. 15-17; Gottschalk
and Flanagan, Jolly Roger with an Uzi, pp. 35-6; Brittin, ‘e law of piracy’,,
pp. 159-63 and Dragonette, ‘Maritime terrorism: underway as before?’, pp.
160 & 163-4, where he describes the incident as the first ‘planned’ attack on
a passenger ship, to differentiate it from the Achille Lauro and the unfortunate
case of the Dara, a British ship blown up close to Dubai in April 1961, prob-
ably because it was being used by Omani separatists to transport a bomb to its
eventual target; 236 people lost their lives: Ibid., p. 161.
13 Brittin, ‘e law of piracy’, pp. 159-60 and Samuel pyeatt Menefee, ‘piracy,
terrorism, and the insurgent passenger: A historical and legal perspective’ in
Natalino Ronzitti (ed.), Maritime Terrorism and International Law, Dordrecht,
Boston and London: Martinus Nijhoff publishers, 1990, pp. 56-8.
14 Mueller and Adler, Outlaws of the Ocean, p. 165; ‘Islamic terrorism timeline’,
Entry for 4 March 1973; MIpT Incident profile: Black September attacked