Murphy Martin. Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money. Piracy & Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World
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297
maritime terrorists
positioned a booby-trapped life raft such that it drifted into an area pa-
trolled by Israeli naval vessels. It exploded when fired on without causing
any injury.
91
Raids were also attempted. In August 2002, Jordanian security services
disrupted a plan before it could be put into effect to use swimmers in an
attack that mirrored the 1992 attack on Coral Beach.
92
In a plan uncovered
in October 2002, hamas intended to smuggle a bomb aboard an Eilat-
based tourist ship.
93
In 2003 Israeli security forces arrested a fisherman
who had been asked to help palestinian Islamic Jihad prepare maritime
assaults: it was reported that he had been given $500,000 to buy the neces-
sary equipment.
94
Swimmers have been used frequently to transport arms
from Egypt into Gaza and to infiltrate coastal areas.
95
ree attempts were
made to infiltrate the Dugit settlement between 2002 and 2004,
96
and ha-
mas mounted a substantial raid at Tel Fatifa in March 2004 to avenge
the assassination of its founder and spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin,
earlier in the month.
97
playing a variation on a theme, the Israeli port of
Ashdod was attacked from the landward side in March 2004 by terrorists
who were infiltrated hidden inside a container.
98
ades Gaza coast after encounter with terror fishing boat’, Israel Insider, 24 Nov.
2002; Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 18 suggests the life
raft was steered by a suicide swimmer.
91 ‘Seizing of the Abu hasan, May 22, 2003’, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Press Release, 22 May 2003; Jonathan howland
, ‘Israel’s navy steps up to se-
curity challenge in wake of Gaza pull-out’, JINSA Online, 31 May 2006. Also
howland correspondence with the author.
92 Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 22.
93 Ibid.
94 Arieh O’Sullivan, ‘Security forces uncover Islamic Jihad maritime unit’, Israel
Ministry of Foreign Affairs report, 5 Feb. 2004.
95 Arieh O’Sullivan, ‘On guard off Gaza’s coast’, Jerusalem Post, 5 July 2002; how-
land, ‘Israel’s navy steps up to security challenge in wake of Gaza pull-out’.
96 ‘Seizing of the Abu hasan, May 22, 2003’; ‘Israeli soldiers kill two palestinian
frogmen’, AP, 27 March 2004; ‘Attempted terror attack via the sea thwarted’,
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Release, 10 Nov. 2004.
97 ‘hamas attack on Israeli beach settlement repelled’, Irish Examiner, 27 March
2004; ‘Israeli soldiers kill two palestinian frogmen’; Lorenz, ‘e threat of mari-
time terrorism to Israel’, p. 18.
98 See ‘10 killed in Ashdod port ‘suicide attack’’, Jerusalem Newswire, 15 March
2004; Christopher Slaney, ‘how they bombed Ashdod’, Fairplay, 8 April 2004,
pp. 20-1. It is also worth noting that the Ashdod bombers evaded port security
measures that were much stricter than those required under the International
Ship and port Facility Security (ISpS) code. See Bill Watson, ‘In search of the
298
small boats, weak states, dirty money
Among the institutions authorised under the Oslo Accords was a pal-
estinian Coast Guard, based in Gaza, with a mandate to prevent drug and
arms smuggling from Egypt.
99
Fatah naval units amounting to about 1,500
men were absorbed into the new service. Arms smuggling, however, did
not stop. It appears to have been undertaken by all the groups operating
in the Gaza Strip, including Fatah. hamas won power in the palestinian
legislative elections of 2006. Although it had not previously demonstrated
a serious interest in the maritime dimension, in 2007 it announced the
creation of its own coast guard unit to protect Gaza’s fishermen and pre-
vent drug smuggling.
100
e extent to which anti-Israeli groups have used the sea for arms smug-
gling has been suggested by a number of significant interceptions. In May
2001 IDF/Navy forces intercepted a ship named the Santorini in the Medi-
terranean. It had sailed from Tripoli in Lebanon and was stopped 150
miles (240km) off Tyre. e pFLp-GC and hizbollah had arranged the
arms shipment found on board with Syrian help.
101
e arms were loaded
into large barrels and the intention was to drop them off the Gaza coast
where they would have been collected by unspecified palestinian groups.
102
e munitions included Strela man-portable anti-aircraft missiles (MAN-
pADS), Katyusha rockets and mortars. During their interrogation the
crew declared that theirs was the fourth shipment—that three previous
shipments, which also involved a second vessel, the Calypso-2, had slipped
through.
103
e pFLp-GC leader, Ahmed Jibril, also asserted that this ship-
Trojan horse’, Fairplay, 8 April 2004, pp. 17-19; ‘palestinians and al-Qaeda
bond through ship container’, DEBKAfile, 17 March 2004; Lorenz, ‘e threat
of maritime terrorism to Israel’, pp. 22-3.
99 See, for example, Council of Foreign Relations, Backgrounder, ‘Reorganizing
the palestinian security forces’, 4 Oct. 2005; Gal Luft, ‘e palestinian Security
Services–Between police and army’, e Institute for Counter Terrorism, 19
July 1999.
100 ‘hamas announces formation of its new coast guard unit’, AP, 11 Aug. 2007;
Ali Waked, ‘hamas confirms establishment of ‘navy’’, YnetNews.com, 11 Aug.
2007; hanan Greenberg, ‘IDF says ready to battle hamas at sea’, YnetNews.
com, 9 Aug. 2007.
101 ‘Iran and Syria as strategic support for palestinian terrorism’, Israel Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, 30 Sept. 2002, paragraphs 67-71.
102 Ellis Shuman, ‘Gaza-bound weapons arsenal seized by Israeli Navy’, Israel In-
sider, 9 May 2001.
103 ‘hezbollah’, Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre at the Centre for
Special Studies Special Bulletin, June 2003.
299
maritime terrorists
ment had not been the first and would not be the last.
104
e pFLp-GC
received substantial support from Iran and it is likely that the Santorini was
operated in cooperation with hizbollah, a conclusion reinforced by the
presence of hizbollah guards who closed nearby roads during the loading
operation prior to the vessel’s third run.
105
In 2002 Israeli forces seized the Karine A in the Red Sea 300 miles (550
km) off Eilat before it could enter the Suez Canal. e operation, which
was organised from Lebanon, almost certainly by hizbollah, but was fi-
nanced and directed by Iran, involved the transfer of 50 tons of weapons
including Katyusha rockets, anti-tank missiles, and anti-tank and anti-
personnel mines from Iran to Fatah, Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and,
quite possibly, hamas and palestinian Islamic Jihad as well.
106
On board
the ship, which was loaded at the Iranian island of Kish in the persian Gulf,
were around 80 Iranian-manufactured submersible containers with com-
pressed air ballast tanks that would have allowed them to float just below
the surface.
107
e apparent intention was to load the munitions into three
smaller boats off the Egyptian coast. e smaller boats would then have
moved closer to Gaza where they would have dropped the containers into
the sea. Sympathetic fishermen would then have collected them as they
drifted towards the shore.
108
In May 2003, Israeli commandos seized the trawler Abu Hassan off Rosh
hanikra, close to haifa. It was loaded with a sophisticated cargo of fuses,
timers and training materials. e Egyptian owner had been recruited and
trained by hizbollah to carry out maritime support missions and might
well have had a role in recruiting crew members for the Karine-A opera-
104 Shuman, ‘Gaza-bound weapons arsenal seized by Israeli Navy’.
105 ‘Iran as a state sponsoring and operating terror’, Intelligence and Terrorism In-
formation Centre at the Centre for Special Studies Special Bulletin, April 2003,
p. 34; ‘Iran and Syria as strategic support for palestinian terrorism’, particularly
paragraphs 70(c) and 71. Confidential information, Sept. 2006.
106 ‘hezbollah’; ‘Iran and Syria as strategic support for palestinian terrorism’, para-
graphs 63-66.
107 Graham usher and Julian Borger, ‘Israel halts palestinian arms ship’, e Guard-
ian, 5 Jan. 2002; Yoni Talmer, ‘IDF naval commandoes seize pA-bound weap-
ons ship’, Israel Insider, 6 Jan. 2002. For more details on the Karine A and the
Santorini see ‘Weapons found on the ‘Karine-A’ and ‘Santorini’, WarOnLine,
20 July 2002.
108 howland, ‘Israel’s navy steps up to security challenge in wake of Gaza pull-
out’.
300
small boats, weak states, dirty money
tion. Most importantly Abu Amra, an explosives expert, was on board.
109
e ship had sailed from Egypt to a rendezvous off the Lebanese coast
where it had picked up Abu Amra and another hizbollah operative. It had
then turned south, the intention being to land the men on the Egyptian
coast close to Gaza, where they would then have been smuggled across the
border. One of the likely organisers of the mission was Fathi Razam, the
deputy chief of the pA’s coast guard.
110
Whilst these might have been the largest hauls, numerous other attempts
have been made to bring in smaller quantities of arms.
111
e assumption
is that many of these have been successful. Even though Israel surrendered
control of the Gaza-Egypt border in September 2005, the sea apparently
retained its importance as a smuggling route for some time because the
land crossings were unreliable and the tunnels that riddle the border area
had limited capacity. Kalashnikov rifles could be passed through without
difficulty but boats were able to transport much larger quantities of arms
and bulkier items such as explosives more easily.
112
According to the IDF/
Navy, the smugglers received large sums of money and worked closely with
the terrorist organisations. A single vessel carrying half a ton of explosives,
for example, could be missed among the 400-600 palestinian fishing boats
that operate off the Gaza Strip on most nights.
113
From the time hamas
109 Greg Myre, ‘Israel says explosives expert on fishing boat it seized’, New York
Times, 23 May 2003; ‘Navy seizes hizbollah bomb expert and explosives-mak-
ing materials on boat’, Israel Insider, 23 May 2003.
110 herbert-Burns, ‘Terrorism in the early 21st century maritime domain’, pp.
165-7; ‘IDF seizes bomb making supply ship heading for Gaza’, JINSA Online,
26 May 2003; ‘Seizing of the Abu hasan, May 22, 2003’.
111 Ellis Shuman, ‘IDF operates against palestinian arms smuggling attempt on
Gaza coast’, Israel Insider, 28 Aug. 2002; Yaakov Katz, ‘Lebanese nab terrorists
heading for Gaza’, e Jerusalem Post, 12
Jan. 2006; hanan Greenberg, ‘Navy
seizes explosives off Gaza shore’, YnetNews.com, 14 May 2006; ‘IDF Naval
craft seized several hundred kg of explosives’, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Press Release, 14 May 2006; ‘Navy foils arms-smuggling attempt’, Arutz Sheva–
IsrealNationalNews.com, 22 June 2006; ‘Israeli navy fires on palestinian boats
suspected of smuggling’, Israel Insider, 11 March 2007.
112 hanan Greenberg. ‘Navy: easier for terrorists to smuggle arms by sea’, Ynet-
News.com, 15 May 2006; Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p.
19. Jonathan howland, private correspondence with the author, 2006. On the
small arms influx when Israel surrended control of the border strip see ‘Dealers
smuggle weapons into Gaza from Egypt’. Associated Press, 15 September 2005.
113 howland, ‘Israel’s navy steps up to security challenge in wake of Gaza pull-out’.
On the numbers of boats involved see also Alan Johnston, ‘Gaza fishermen risk
Israeli fire’, BBC News, 13 Oct. 2006 and Shuman, ‘IDF operates against pal-
301
maritime terrorists
gained control Gaza, and certainly since January 2008 when hamas pulled
down the border fence, most arms have moved across the land frontier.
114
Since 2000 a new element has entered the conflict: the close connection
between hizbollah and Iran.
115
hizbollah has at least four faces: politi-
cal, including an elected representative presence in Lebanon’s parliament;
humanitarian, through the provision of educational, medical and welfare
services; military, which is made up of a well-equipped, irregular armed
force known as the Islamic Resistance that is targeted at Israel but also has
the resources to defend itself against any attempt by Lebanon’s indigenous
army to disarm it; and terrorist, through its External Security Organisation
(ESO) which conducts international terrorist attacks, of which the two in
Buenos Aires, the first on the Israeli embassy in 1992 and the second on a
Jewish centre in 1994, are examples.
116
Although it is capable of mounting some operations on its own initia-
tive, in many respects hizbollah appears to be an arm of Iranian foreign
policy and a proxy for its armed forces.
117
Reports suggested that two senior
figures within the ESO, both named as its “head”, had senior roles within
the Iranian apparatus: the first, Imad Mugniyah, who was one of the hi-
jackers of TWA Flight 847, during which the uS Navy diver Robert Ste-
tem was murdered, was reported to have been chosen by the Iranian presi-
dent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to oversee Iranian retaliation in the case of
a Western or Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear programme; the other senior
figure was Qassem Suleimani, whose membership of Iran’s Revolutionary
Guard Corps reinforced the suspicion that all ESO attacks required Iranian
estinian arms smuggling attempt on Gaza coast’ where he quotes Israeli naval
sources suggesting that the total fleet is around 1,000 boats.
114 ‘Arms smuggling through the Gaza-Egypt border – Background’. Israel Minis-
try of Foreign Affairs, 20 February 2008.
115 hizbollah is an abbreviation of the group’s full name in Arabic, which is ‘hizb
Allah-Al-thawra Al-Islamiya fi Lubnan’. hezbollah is the normal American
spelling.
116 ‘Buenos Aires bomber ‘identified’’, BBC News, 10 Nov. 2005.
117 ‘hezbollah is a strategic arm of Iran’, Intelligence and Terrorism Information Cen-
tre at the Centre for Special Studies, 8 Sept. 2006. See also ‘hizballah / hizbollah
/ hizbullah / hezbollah’, GlobalSecurity.org, ND; Matthew Levitt, ‘hezbollah
finances: Funding the party of God’, e Washington Institute for Near East Poli-
cy, Feb. 2005; and Lara Deeb, ‘hizbollah: A primer’, Middle East Report Online,
31 July 2006. om Shanker. ‘A new enemy gains on the uS’. New York Times,
30th July 2006.
302
small boats, weak states, dirty money
authorisation.
118
e ESO is also known as the Islamic Jihad Organisation
(IJO—not to be confused with palestinian Islamic Jihad
119
), which perhaps
coincidentally is also a designation that has been used by Iran’s Revolution-
ary Guard Corps as a cover name for state-sanctioned overseas operations.
120
In 2007, uS forces in Iraq captured a Lebanese member of hizbollah, Ali
Mussa Dardouk. he had been a member of the group that had mounted
the Karbala attack in which five uS servicemen died. According to Brigadier
General Kevin J. Bergner, Dardouk worked with the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard Corps’ Quds Force and had the task of organising special groups
“in ways that mirrored how hezbollah was organised in Lebanon”, and al-
though there was no indication that hizbollah had an organisation in Iraq,
Dakdouk, who had received training in Iran, was judged to be a “proxy…to
do things (the Iranians) didn’t want to have to do themselves.
121
In 2007 the
uS government moved to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps
a “specially designated global terrorist” body, the first branch of a national
military organisation to be so listed, as reports also emerged of the Corps’
involvement in smuggling and other corrupt activity.
122
In the maritime domain Iran has developed a significant irregular war-
fare capability. is first came to prominence during the Iran-Iraq “Tanker
War”, during which “swarms” of three or four Swedish-built Boghammer
fast boats or Boston Whaler-type craft were used to attack tankers and other
targets. Each boat was equipped with a mix that included 107mm rockets,
118 ‘Ahmadinejad recruits hezbollah terror chief’, WorldNetDaily, 23 April 2006;
‘hezbollah is a strategic arm of Iran’, p. 10. For an account of the Iranian link
to the Buenos Aires bombing see Ze’ev Schiff, ‘how Iran planned the Buenos
Aires blast’, Haaretz, ND. Also ‘hezbollah (part Two)’, Intelligence and Terror-
ism Information Centre at the Centre for Special Studies, June 2003: Appendix 5,
‘e bombing of the Jewish community centre in Argentina (1994)–an exam-
ple of the modus operandi of hezbollah’s overseas terrorist apparatus’.
119 ‘Who are Islamic jihad?’ BBC News, 9 Aug. 2001; ‘palestinian Islamic jihad’,
Institute for Counter-Terrorism; MIpT Terrorism Knowledge Base, Group
profile: ‘palestinian Islamic jihad’.
120 ‘Islamic jihad’ was the name of the organisation that claimed responsibility for
the 1984-85 Red Sea mining operation. In Aug. 1984 the organisation was
praised on Tehran Radio, although this praise was followed quickly by a denun-
ciation: Truver, ‘Mines of Aug.’, p. 110.
121 Lee Keath, ‘uS: Iranian force carried out attack’, AP, 2 July 2007 and Lee Keath,
‘General: Iran was behind deadly Karbala attack’, AP, 2 July 2007.
122 Robin Wright, ‘Iranian unit to be labelled ‘terrorist’, e Washington Post, 15
Aug. 2007; philip Sherwell, ‘Iranian Guards amass secret fortunes’, Sunday Tel-
egraph, 19 Aug. 2007; Toby harnden, ‘Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a ‘terror
group’’, Daily Telegraph, 20 Aug. 2007.
303
maritime terrorists
RpGs and machine guns that were used to rake a ship’s superstructure with
fire.
123
e expectation amongst naval experts now is they would mount
similar attacks only this time in “swarms” of between 30 and 50 boats at a
time. Attacks of this magnitude could quite possibly overwhelm the defences
even of ships that can put up helicopters. While most of these Iranian craft
are still armed with light automatic weapons, rockets and RpGs it is known
that Iranian engineers, probably with Chinese or North Korean assistance,
have managed to stabilise heavier stand-off weapons. Such “swarm” attacks
might also be used to distract attention from the approach of more heavily
armed missile or torpedo boats or semi-submersibles, or an aerial attack us-
ing explosive-laden uAVs or light aircraft, or land-based anti-ship missiles
of the type used against the Israeli corvette patrolling off Lebanon.
124
ere is evidence that, from late 2000, Iran began to reinforce hizbol-
lah’s existing maritime area denial capability. While it is difficult to deter-
mine whether these maritime elements fall under the command of Islamic
Resistance or the ESO (or whether each wing maintains its own maritime
capability), it is understood that the main operating base is located south
of Beirut, but that elements are also present in the many small ports and
harbours along the Lebanese coast.
125
It appears that the primary roles for
this force are, first, to prevent the IAF/Navy from operating close enough
to the Lebanese coast to interfere with supply operations and, secondly, to
facilitate coastal raids. is suspicion has been reinforced by the comments
of an Iranian officer that hizbollah has a submarine unit and a “naval com-
mando unit that operates Chinese-manufactured speed boats, capable of
targeting the Israeli navy.”
126
Reports also suggest that the group has ac-
quired a Soviet-era patrol boat, although for what reason is unclear.
127
e
belief is that most of this equipment reaches hizbollah from Iran overland
through Syria but that some comes by sea. In the latter case shipments
123 Crist, ‘Joint special operations in support of Earnest Will’, p. 16.
124 Since the attack Israel has expressed concern that a more advanced Russian-
built sea-skimming missile, the SSN-X-26 Yakhont, which Iran has acquired,
might be transferred to Syria and thus to hizbollah. With a range of over 160
miles (300 km) and a warhead in excess of 440 lbs (200 kg) this weapon repre-
sents an even more potent threat than the C-802. Yaakov Katz, ‘J’lem worried
by Iranian owned anti-ship missile’, e Jerusalem Post, 28 Aug. 2007.
125 Ali M. Koknar, ‘Corsairs at starboard: Jihad at sea’, Journal of International
Security Affairs, no. 7, Summer 2004, p. 63. private information, Sept. 2006.
126 Ali Nouri Zadeh, ‘Iranian officer: hizbollah has commando naval unit’, Asharq
Alawsat, 29 July 2006.
127 Chalk, ‘Maritime terrorism in the contemporary era’, p. 29, note 42.
304
small boats, weak states, dirty money
might move up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal following a route
similar to that of the Karine A, and then onward to Lebanon. Alternatively,
they could be transshipped to fishing boats off the Gaza coast before they
are moved northwards using, in reverse, some of the same smuggling net-
works that supply hamas and the other palestinian groups.
128
Equipment, however, is not enough. Training is essential. Small boat
combat demands experience and practice; lack of either leads to losses.
129
Swarm tactics in particular require intense practice, high standards of sea-
manship, and close command and control if collisions between fast moving
craft are to be avoided and attacks pressed successfully. Against a sophisti-
cated enemy such as a Western navy, rather than slow moving merchant-
man as in the “Tanker War”, attackers would need to limit electro-mag-
netic emissions and be able to operate at night in order to optimise the
inherent “stealthiness” of small boats.
130
Iranian experience and training
could enable hizbollah to quickly minimise these limitations. Although
Iranian naval tactics have been developed to exploit the particular geog-
raphy of the persian Gulf, nonetheless a number of IRGCN attack meth-
odologies and equipment developments – particularly the use of dispersed
swarming whereby fast attack craft deploy from separate locations and only
concentrate briefly to attack a target thus maximising surprise and denying
the defender the opportunity to counter-attack a mass formation, the use
of mini-submarines for reconnaissance purposes, low-observable and low-
signature technologies, and the integrated use of land-based weapons such
as anti-ship cruise missiles and coastal-based torpedoes – are capable of be-
ing transferred to hizbollah.
131
Furthermore it is likely that hizbollah units
have trained alongside IRGCN units because the sophistication of modern
technical intelligence gathering methods makes it difficult to develop and
practice small boat tactics unobserved.
132
Given its access to this capabil-
ity, given that it has considered maritime attacks in the past, and given its
128 ‘Shin Bet chief accuses Egypt of closing its eyes to palestinian arms smuggling
to Gaza. But DEBKAfile reports its volume is dwarfed by hizballah’s illegal
imports’, DEBKAfile, 2 Oct. 2006.
129 Benjamin S. Yates, ‘David vs. Goliath: Small boat challenges to naval opera-
tions in coastal warfare’, esis, united States Marine Corps, Command and
Staff College, Marine Corps university, 1998, p. 25.
130 Ibid., p. 24.
131 For a useful description of Iran’s asymmetric naval capability see Fariborz hagh-
shenass, ‘Iran’s doctrine of asymmetric naval warfare’, e Washington Institute
for Near East policy Policy Watch no. 1179, 21 Dec. 2006.
132 Confidential information, June 2008.
305
maritime terrorists
demonstrable global reach, hizbollah is possibly in a position to become a
more formidable maritime adversary than the Sea Tigers, Al Qaeda or any
other group.
133
e question that remains, however, is why is Iran reinforcing hizbol-
lah’s maritime capability? e answer is not immediately clear. None of it
has been deployed. What is does do, however, is add another element to the
strategic mix and further complicate the tactical picture that Western navies
and the Israeli navy must confront when operating off the Levantine coast.
is aim accords with Iran’s objective in supporting hizbollah generally.
134
Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM). Aceh is the Indonesian province located at
the northernmost tip of Sumatra. It came to wide public attention because
the epicentre of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was in the seabed off its
western coast and, consequently, the area suffered widespread devastation.
e province has a long history of resistance to external rule dating back
at least to the colonial period. GAM, or the Free Aceh Movement, began
fighting for independence from Indonesia in 1976. however, on 15 August
2005, in a move almost certainly influenced by the effects of the tsunami, it
signed a peace agreement with the Indonesian government that fell short of
its stated aim of full independence.
135
e Indonesian armed forces had often
used brutal methods to suppress the insurgency.
136
As part of the agreement
the Indonesian government agreed to withdraw all non-indigenous units. In
return the movement announced in December 2005 that it had disbanded
133 Matthew Levitt, ‘hizbollah: A case study of global reach’, e Washington In-
stitute for Near East policy Policy Watch; remarks to a conference on ‘post-mod-
ern terrorism: Trends, scenarios, and future trends’, International Institute for
Counter-Terrorism, herzliya, Israel, 8 Sept. 2003; Barak Ben-Zur and Christo-
pher hamilton, ‘hizbollah’s global terror option’,e Washington Institute for
Near East policy, Policy Watch no. 1129, 21 July 2006.
134 See Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism, Cam-
bridge up, 2005, pp. 94-6; Kathryn haahr-Escolano, ‘Iran’s changing relation-
ship with hizbollah’, e Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor, vol. II, no.
19, 7 Oct. 2004, pp. 6-8.
135 For a history of GAM until 2003 see Kirsten E. Schulz, ‘e Free Aceh move-
ment (GAM): Anatomy of a separatist organization’, Washington, DC: East-
West Centre, 2004. On the peace agreement see ‘Indonesia agrees Aceh peace
deal’, BBC News, 17 July 2005.
136 Erich Marquardt, ‘Examining the threats to Indonesia’s national tnterests’,
PINR, 2 March 2005.
306
small boats, weak states, dirty money
its military wing.
137
e belief, however, is that it retained at least some of
its maritime capability.
138
GAM has been referred to as an Islamist group.
139
e population of
Aceh are Muslim and GAM did appear to have established links with Is-
lamist insurgent groups across Southeast Asia.
140
Suggestions were made
that the group had established relations with Al Qaeda. ere are grounds
for believing that two of bin Laden’s lieutenants, Ayman al-Zawahiri and
Mohammed Atef, visited Aceh in 2000 in the hope they could establish a
base area and training facilities but that, because the rebellion was always
more ethno-nationalist than Islamist in character, GAM rejected their sug-
gestion.
141
Although GAM recruits trained at MILF camps in the philip-
pines, the group was not generally regarded as part of the post-Afghan
terrorist “brotherhood” that coalesced around Al Qaeda.
142
GAM does,
however, have other international connections including, possibly, with
the Tamil Tigers. It reportedly received arms from Iran and Libya, and sent
large numbers of fighters to Libya for training.
143
137 Gareth Evans, ‘Aceh is building peace from its ruins’, International Herald Trib-
une, 23 Dec. 2005. however, as with all such accords, difficulties emerged. See
International Crisis Group, ‘Aceh: Now for the hard part’, Asia Briefing no. 48,
29 March 2006.
138 Confidential information, Sept. 2006.
139 For example John C.K. Daly
, ‘Al Qaeda and maritime terrorism (part II)’, e
Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor, vol. 1, no. 5, 7 Nov. 2003.
140 Yang Razali Kassim, ‘GAM, Islam and the future of Aceh’, IDSS Commentar-
ies, 8 Feb. 2005; GlobalSecurity.org suggest GAM have links with separatist
groups in southern ailand such as the pattani united Liberation Organiza-
tion (puLO), Bersatu and Gerakan Mujahideen Islam pattani (GMIp), and
the Malaysian Islamist group Kumpulan Mujahiden Malaysia (KMM) that has
known links with JI: ‘ailand Islamic insurgency’, GlobalSecurity.org, ND.
141 Abuza
, Militant Islam in Southeast Asia, p. 176; Koknar, ‘Corsairs at Starboard:
Jihad at Sea’, p. 58; Andrew Tan, ‘e threat of terrorism in Southeast Asia:
reats and responses’, paper delivered to the Council of Asian Liberals and
Democrats, 10th Anniversary Conference, 9-10 Dec. 2003. Tan makes it clear
that GAM distanced itself from Al Qaeda. Also Dillon
, ‘Southeast Asia and the
brotherhood of terrorism’.
142 On GAM’s use of MILF camps see Dillon, ‘Southeast Asia and the brotherhood
of terrorism’; Anthony Davis, ‘MILF links to external terrorist groups’, Jane’s
IR, 1 April 2002, pp. 22-3; Amitav Acharya, ‘Terrorism and security in Asia:
Redefining regional order?’ Murdoch university Asia Research Centre Working
Paper no. 113, Oct. 2004, p. 5.
143 Schulze, ‘e Free Aceh movement’, pp. 30-1; MIpT Terrorism Knowledge
Base, Group profile: ‘Free Aceh movement’; Dillon, ‘Southeast Asia and the
brotherhood of terrorism’; Abuza
, Militant Islam in Southeast Asia, p. 176.