Posted on 06/03/2004 9:42:09 AM PDT by hedgetrimmer
Singapore has recently warned of the need to tighten security along the busy Malacca Strait as it fears terrorists may seek to hijack a tanker and turn it into a floating bomb.
About a third of the world's trade and 80 percent of Japan's crude oil is transported through the Strait, a narrow shipping lane that runs between Malaysia and Indonesia to Singapore.
** It appears the US is concerned about the security of the Strait of Malacca
PING
BANGALORE - The proposed India-United States joint patrolling of the sea lanes along the Straits of Malacca represents not only a new high in cooperation between the two countries, but also signals India's emergence as a key player in the region.
The navies of India and the United States will discuss means to counter terrorist threats from sea and ways to ensure safety of sea-lanes in the region during their executive steering group meeting that began in Chennai on Tuesday.
Are these straits international waters?
Cognitive dissonance alert.
Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. Wasn't this the responsibility of the British until the Japanese scuttled their fleet at no charge? France was in there, too. The EU should bear some of the responsibility. If Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore want the US to patrol for pirates, should they pay on a flat rate monthly basis or on a per head basis?
Indonesia claims Malacca strait as a territorial sea.
"It is one of the busiest ocean highways in the world. An estimated more than 41,000 ships pass through the South China Sea each year - more than double the number that crosses the Suez Canal and nearly treble the number of ships that use the Panama Canal.
Its closure could generate a massive increase in freight rates worldwide and hit bulk shipments hardest."
In short, global economic disaster could ocurr if the strait was closed.
Malaysia doesn't want a US presence. The Al-Queda, pirates and renegades of Malaysia would rather not have us hanging about.
This hunt for Alqaida is not cheap. How much does it cost per head? $100 million? If the local shipping interests would be will to pay part of the cost it would help.
Comment from a Malasyian blog on the topic:
***
What to do, now that Malaysia is becoming an arms exporter to US (containers seized in Hong Kong). Wonder how come our press took so long to report it? Waiting for somebody to come back from leave and clear it for publication?
Posted by: Kok Choong Seng at May 5, 2004 01:12 PM
This programme is very different from the one having USN ships conduct joint patrols with the littoral States in the Straits. I believe what would be involved would be USCG officers at Malaysian ports (on shore) assessing security procedures and processes, and possibly conducting random inspections of loaded goods. There are 2 benefits in this scheme.
1st-ly, it’s a combination of an assurance process offshore (at port of loading) with a control process at destination – combined together the security benefits will be very extremely good (assuming nothing untoward happens along the way in mid-sea – that’ll be the domain and responsibility of the US agency handling satellite intelligence and the USN).
2nd-ly would be the obvious – it’s always better to detect and intercept the enemy or any weapon at distance, for example, like a low grade dirty N-bomb. Worst case scenario, better to have this explode in Port Klang than New York Harbour or Frisco, at least for the Americans.
I don’t think there is anything demeaning in Malaysia participating in this USCG programme, especially if we want to continue trade with the US. If we have nothing to hide, why not have someone like the USCG support our port security, particularly the loading procedures and processes.
I would not be entirely surprised as more major importing countries like Europe, Japan, India and China require such a programme at loading point for any country to export to their ports.
Posted by: jacky at May 5, 2004 01:28 PM
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SINGAPORE (AP) - Fears are growing of terrorism in the Malacca Straits, the pirate-ridden Southeast Asian waterway that is a conduit for half the world's oil supply.
Despite those concerns, the Muslim nations of Indonesia and Malaysia have rebuffed U.S. offers to help police the strategic route. Part of the agenda when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld meets Asian officials Friday and Saturday will be Pentagon proposals to help provide intelligence, conduct joint patrols and send U.S. Marines into the straits.
The United States and Singapore believe the 50,000 commercial vessels - from cruise ships to supertankers - that travel through the straits each year are vulnerable targets for al-Qaida and its South Asian affiliates.
The narrow, 550-mile-long waterway straddling Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore has been a pirates' paradise since the 1800s. Piracy worldwide has tripled in the past decade, rising by 20 percent last year alone, said the U.N. International Maritime Bureau. It counted 189 incidents in Southeast Asia, more than 40 percent of the 2003 total.
"There is a fear that terrorists could resort to pirate-style tactics, or even work in concert with pirates," the maritime bureau's Secretary-General Efthimios Mitropoulos said.
"An uptrend in crew abductions could signal a move by terrorists to train themselves in operating and navigating large commercial vessels," he added during a late-May visit to Singapore.
In one incident last year, 10 armed pirates stormed an Indonesian chemical tanker from their speedboat in the Malacca Straits, escaping with $13,000 in electronic equipment and cash.
The United States and Singapore believe Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and its regional affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah are targeting the straits, where chemical and oil tankers mingle with small craft that could carry suicide attackers.
Al-Qaida is blamed for the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 American servicemen, and the bombing of the French tanker Limburg, which killed one and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil off the Yemeni coast.
"Al-Qaida's attacks on commercial shipping in Yemen and the Arabian Sea and planned or attempted attacks in several straits ... should be ample demonstration that our concerns are not merely theoretical," said Matthew Daley, a deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state.
Adm. Thomas Fargo, head of U.S. Forces in the Pacific, told a congressional panel in March that the Pentagon's approach to secure the straits would likely include providing satellite and radar-tracking equipment to Indonesia. Fargo also hinted it might involve U.S. elite troops who could "take action when the decision has been made to do so."
Just after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, U.S.-led forces found a videotape in an Afghanistan safehouse showing plans to attack U.S. Navy warships heading through the straits to the Middle East. The warships would be targeted by suicide speedboats in a narrow "kill zone" in the straits, Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said.
Malacca Straits are about one nautical mile wide at their narrowest point and many ships barely skim above the shallowest point at 82 feet, putting them at risk from a bomb planted on the sea bottom.
A major attack would disrupt global trade for months. One quarter of the world's commerce passes through the straits, including 10 million barrels of crude oil heading daily from the Gulf toward boom economies of China, South Korea and Japan.
It is not immediately clear what maritime assets extremists groups have in the region. But Al-Qaida is believed to operate 15 to 25 vessels transporting people and weapons in the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian and Atlantic oceans, said Kweilen Kimmelman, an analyst with the Maritime Intelligence Group, a respected Washington-based think-tank.
Malaysia, on one side of the straits, has only 18 Marine Police boats in the water at a time. Indonesia, on the other side, has about 20 coast guard boats and several navy ships in the area, but not all at the same time.
On a recent day, an Indonesian Coast Guard crew of 14 patrolled aboard a ship a few miles south of Singapore, home to the world's busiest port.
"Indonesia can handle the terrorists at sea. We don't like them, and we have a duty to wipe them out," said Tri Yuswoyo, a 20-year veteran of the Indonesian Coast Guard. "We may need a thousand ships, but not the Americans. ... These are our straits,"
Although Indonesia refuses American help in the straits, it takes advantage of American expertise. Yuswoyo just returned from a three-month course at the U.S. Coast Guard training center in Yorktown, Va., where teachers focused on combatting terror.
Malaysian officials also reject U.S. help.
"I think we can look after our own area," Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi told the Far Eastern Economic Review last month.
Rumsfeld is expected to outline the Pentagon's proposal to secure the straits in greater detail at the security conference in Singapore on Friday and Saturday with officials from 20 of the region's nations.
Singapore has welcomed American involvement.
The city-state escorts high-value vessels in and out of its waters, while helicopters and jets buzz overhead at designated safe zones. The government spent $1.5 million for a global satellite ship-tracking system.
Singapore fears a ship packed with explosives, or chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons could be hijacked and sailed into one of its three ports.
Extremists also could block the straits by sinking a big vessel in a narrow waterway, disrupting commerce for months and forcing ships to travel another 1,000 miles from the Middle East to Asian destinations.
Another fear is that lower-level crewmen - mostly from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe - could be recruited as terrorists.
"It is very easy for terrorists to become sailors," said Andrew Tan, a security analyst with Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies. "Documents can be forged. ... The size, the scope of the maritime industry and the amount of seaborne trade is immense."
Requirements to work on a ship are much less stringent than to fly a plane, he said, which al-Qaida managed to do in the Sept. 11 hijack attacks.
Those bleeding hearts liberals keep blaming others e.g. our southern neighbour. They are a sovereign nation and have every right to speak out by merely asking for outside helps if Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore can't do it.
We have the responsible to the world to make sure that the Strait of Malacca is safe for about 5,00- cargoes ships that ply that route.
If a ship laden with explosives hit any of the 5,000 ships, then all ships will avoid and use southern Indonesia route. The world trade will be hit so do the countries surrounding the strait.
So, bring on the USA. They are good guys. Look at their bebnefitors, Kuwait enjoys freedom after US help, Japan enjoys 50 years of prosperity after being built-up from ashes and defended by US, South Korea defended from invasion by communist North and enjoy prosperity since then (instead of communist Korea like their relatives in the North), Germany, rebuilt and defended from communist Soviet Union, and the rest of Europe too. Now they are enjoying the fruits of Americans protection. Ditto Saudi Arabia from Iran/Iraq, Jordan from Saddam's Iraq, Qatar where US has a command post and so on. They saved Bosnia muslims from Serbia too.
In general, America, the land of immigrants are the savior of the world.
I say, welcome USA. The great Savior, the great force of Good.
Posted by: Segeran at May 5, 2004 04:30 PM
Wow! Posting in the future.
That's something even we FR geeks can't do.
I like the Pentagon's Core-Gap idea. Those countries that are well off--the Core, have a responsibility that comes with being well-off to provide security to the less well-off countries--the Gap. Maybe the US is the most well-off and so has the most responsibility. The EU is also well-off, and also has responsibility. Japan is Core and has responsibility too, although their history of doing a poor job in the past of providing security will haunt them for a long time. China is emerging from Gap to Core, but is still not in a position to provide security to even the South China Sea, even though China is increasingly dependent on imported oil.
You can read the weekly piracy reports at cargolaw.com . It seems like 1-2 out of three reported incidents occurs in the Malacca strait area.
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