COUNTER-TERRORISM: The Mysterious al Qaeda Navy

May 19, 2004: Something is going on with the mysterious Al Qaeda navy, and no one involved is saying much. In June, 2003, the 2,000 ton coastal freighter “The Baltic Sky” was seized off Greece by Greek commandos. The ship was found to be carrying 750 tons of TNT and 8,000 detonators. The ships paperwork said it was carrying fertilizer, not TNT and detonators. The seven man crew (five Ukrainians and two Azeris) said they were just following instructions from their owner. But the instructions made no sense. The ship had picked up the explosives in Tunisia, and was supposed to deliver the stuff to Sudan. But instead the ship had gone through the Turkish Straits and into the Black Sea, then came back through the Straits again into the Aegean Sea, and into the Ionian Sea, where the Greeks caught up with the ship. The Greeks acted because the Tunisian company that had hired the ship to deliver the explosives discovered the ship had gone to the Black Sea and was now off the coast of Greece. The Tunisians alerted the Greek government that something odd was going on.

When the Greeks investigated the matter further, everything became even more confusing. The Sudanese company that bought the explosives from the Tunisians (for “mining operations”) turned out to be a false front, whose only address was actually a Post Office box in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Someone later contacted the Greeks saying they represented the Khartoum company, that they had paid for the explosives, and could they please have them. The Greeks are holding on to the ship, its cargo and its crew.

The “Baltic Sky” was built in 1966 and had recently been bought, at auction, for $37,000, by an unidentified buyer who acted through a series of dummy corporations (to hide his identity.) No one knows who really owns the ship. The owner of record is a dummy corporation registered in the Marshall Islands. The ship was flying under a flag of convenience, from the Comoros Islands. But the Comoros Maritime Administration said it had not registered the “Baltic Sky” and the registration papers the ship was carrying were forged.

The Greeks aren’t saying anything. Nor is the United States, or anyone else, about a ship full of explosives wandering around the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The Turks were particularly concerned, because if the Baltic Sky had detonated it’s explosives under the Bosphorous bridge, the bridge would have come down and blocked the busiest shipping channel in the world (with 30 percent more ship traffic than the Straights of Malacca.) It would have taken up to a year to clear the blockage, and that would have done hundreds of billions of dollars in economic damage. A similar attack on the Suez canal would do have had a similar result. Same with the Panama canal. Or the ship could have gone into any number of major ports and blown itself up near oil storage facilities and caused great loss of life and billions in damage. Attacking the Bosphorous bridge, or the Suez canal would be unlikely for al Qaeda, as the chief victims would be Islamic countries and populations. Then again, al Qaeda has never shown much restraint when it comes to attacking Islamic governments it does not agree with (those of Turkey and Egypt being high on the list.)

It’s long been rumored that al Qaeda had secretly purchased a number of small, elderly and cheap ships like the “Baltic Sky,” and was planning on using them for spectacular terrorist missions. But there have been few reports in the media about success, or failure, in finding this terrorist fleet.

The “Baltic Sky” may just have been involved in another scam by Russian gangsters, who do a lot of bank fraud and other document forgery via compliant government officials in places like the Marshall Islands. But if that were the case, it would probably have been announced that authorities had aborted a scheme by gangsters to steal a cargo of explosives. But when you hear nothing, it usually indicates that more serious issues are being investigated. Perhaps the “Baltic Sky” was one of al Qaeda’s ships, and perhaps the seizure of the ship provided enough information to lead to other parts of the fleet, and plans for its use. Intelligence and police agencies don’t like to discuss “ongoing investigations,” lest they give anything away, or alert the people they are trying to track down. Right now, all the general public knows about the cast of the “Baltic Sky” is that it’s a mystery.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3561856&thesection=news&thesubsection=world

Ships of terror

18.04.2004
Terrorists are turning their attention to the seas, a vital and vulnerable area of world trade. MICHAEL RICHARDSON reports.

New Zealand is wise to be taking its port and shipping security seriously, even though it has not been publicly targeted, as Australia has been, for attack by the al Qaeda terrorist network or its Southeast Asian ally, Jemaah Islamiyah.

Since the early 1990s, the pattern of al Qaeda terrorist bombings has been to hit vulnerable places.

An al Qaeda cargo ship delivered the explosives that its agents used to bomb two US embassies in East Africa in August 1998, killing 224 people and injuring more than 5000. US investigators say they have evidence that al Qaeda was buying ships as early as 1994.

One sign of New Zealand's vigilance against a strike from the sea was the decision by Auckland port authorities last month not to permit a ship carrying ammonium nitrate fertiliser to dock at short notice. Instead, the Tasman Independence was sent on to its next scheduled port of call at Tauranga to unload the fertiliser at a berth well away from residential areas.

Ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertiliser, is widely and legally available but is also of special interest to terrorists because it can be be made into a powerful explosive.

It was used to bomb the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998 and in the van bombing outside the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last August. The Irish Republican Army often used ammonium nitrate when turning vehicles into bombs and it was the main explosive in the truck bombing by US extremists in Oklahoma City in 1995, as well as in al Qaeda's first attempt to attack the World Trade Centre in New York in 1993.

Turkish police say that ammonium nitrate explosives were used in four suicide truck bombings in Istanbul last November that killed 61 people and British police late last month seized more than half a tonne of ammonium nitrate in London in anti-terrorist raids. Meanwhile, Australia's federal government has called for tighter controls over ammonium nitrate in Australia to ensure it is not bought by terrorists.

Vessels, or the cargo they carry, can be used in several ways by terrorists: to raise money, through legal or illegal trade; to covertly transport operatives, equipment and weapons; or to commandeer ships carrying explosive, inflammable or toxic substances to use as weapons in much the same way that al Qaeda used hijacked airliners to strike New York and Washington.

The terrorist network linked to al Qaeda understands the vital role of sea transport and has exploited it for years.

Last December US and allied forces on patrol in the Persian Gulf tracked and boarded several dhows, confiscating drug shipments worth more than US$15 million ($22.8 million). US officials said that seven of the 45 crewmen detained had links to al Qaeda and the organisation was using drug smuggling to help to finance its operations.

US officials blame al Qaeda for the suicide attack in Yemen in October 2000 against the American destroyer USS Cole when it was refuelling in Aden harbour. The two terrorists used a modified dinghy packed with explosives, nearly sinking one of the most sophisticated US warships. Seventeen American sailors were killed and 40 wounded. It took more than 14 months and cost US$250 million ($380 million) to repair the ship.

The French-registered oil tanker Limburg, carrying crude oil off the coast of Yemen, was crippled and set ablaze in October 2002 in another terrorist attack using an explosive-laden small boat, for which al Qaeda claimed responsibility.

The blast ripped through the double-steel hull of the tanker. It stayed afloat and the fire was eventually put out. But one sailor drowned when the crew abandoned the flaming ship. Some 90,000 barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Aden.

Al Qaeda's former chief of naval operations, Abdul Rahim Mohammed Hussein Abda Al-Nasheri, captured in Yemen in November, 2002, gave CIA investigators information that reinforced concerns about plans for terrorist attacks against shipping, civilian and military.

Al Qaeda has also used cargo containers on ships to ferry agents and probably terrorist-related material around the world. Documents seized from one of Osama bin Laden's senior aides six years ago show how the group intended to use containers packed with sesame seeds to smuggle highly radioactive material to the US.

Shortly before his capture in Pakistan in March last year, al Qaeda's director of global operations, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, offered to invest US$200,000 ($304,000) in an export firm in exchange for access to the containers used by the firm to ship garments to Port Newark in the New York-New Jersey harbour complex. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

The fear that terrorists could exploit the container transport system was confirmed barely a month after the al Qaeda attacks of September 11. In October 2001, authorities in the southern Italian port of Gioia Tauro discovered an unusually well-equipped and neatly dressed stowaway locked inside a shipping container. It was furnished with a bed, water, supplies for a long journey and a bucket for a toilet. Italian police named the stowaway as Rizik Amid Farid, 43, and said he was born in Egypt but carried a Canadian passport.

Farid was smartly dressed, clean-shaven and rested as he emerged. He had two mobile phones, a satellite phone, a laptop computer, several cameras, batteries and, ominously, airport security passes and an airline mechanic's certificate valid for four major American airports.

Gioia Tauro is a leading trans-shipment hub for cargo in the Mediterranean. The container fitted out as a makeshift home had been loaded in Port Said, Egypt.

Had the stowaway not been trying to widen ventilation holes when workers in Gioia Tauro were nearby, the box might well have passed unhindered to its final destination in Canada via Rotterdam.

Farid was charged with illegal entry into Italy and detained. But a court released him on bail and he disappeared before further information could be gathered.

The nature as well as the scale of the globalised trading system make it vulnerable to terrorist attack. Seaborne trade and its land connections in the international supply chain have become increasingly open.

In recent decades, the Asia-Pacific region has followed its main trade partners in North America and Europe in deregulating and encouraging freer trade. After the terrorist plots and bombings in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, the region and its leading trade partners must tighten security at sea, in ports and in other parts of the logistic supply chain that delivers goods on a just-in-time, just-enough basis. This supply chain has become critical to modern manufacturing around the world.

Concerns about terrorists using ships as weapons was heightened last June when Greek commandos boarded a cargo ship that had been zig-zagging around the Mediterranean Sea for nearly six weeks. The Baltic Sky was found to be packed with 680 tonnes of ammonium nitrate-based explosive and 8000 detonators.

The ship's manifest said that the cargo was loaded in Tunisia bound for a company in Sudan. But Greek Shipping Minister Giorgos Anomeritis said the company, identified as Integrated Chemicals and Development, was just a post office box in Khartoum that did not exist.

The Tunisian firm that manufactured the explosives filed a complaint against the Baltic Sky, alleging that it had failed to fulfil a contract to deliver the cargo, intended for civilian use, to Sudan. It accused the captain and crew of diverting from their original route and threatening not to deliver the cargo to its rightful destination. The freighter apparently never headed towards the Suez Canal, the direction that would bring it to Sudan.

Greek officials said the Baltic Sky flew the flag of the Comoros Islands, a small Indian Ocean country, used by shipping companies to avoid taxes and regulation and guarantee anonymity and freedom from prosecution for the owner. The Comoros shipping register opened for business in late 2000 or early 2001 and branded itself as the world's first Islamic flag of convenience. Its office in Greece, known as the Shipping Activities Bureau, also marketed the North Korean flag.

The Baltic Sky was previously called the Sea Runner and flew a Cambodian flag. Its 37-year life in the shipping industry was marked by frequent changes of owner and flag, and frequent brushes with the law. After it was forced to dock, for safety reasons, in a remote Greek harbour the captain and crew were charged with illegal possession and transport of explosives.

The Greek merchant marine ministry said the Baltic Sky's cargo was the biggest quantity of explosives ever seized in the world from a ship sailing illegally. The Shipping Minister described the ship's potential explosive power as akin to an atomic bomb.

This was an exaggeration but it certainly would have wreaked havoc had it been detonated near a port city. In 1947 the port of Texas City on the Gulf of Mexico was devastated after two ships containing about 3300 tonnes of ammonium nitrate caught fire and exploded.

The death toll was 568 with another 3500 people injured . The port and its industrial zone were devastated. Property damage amounted to well over US$1 billion in today's dollars.

But the most dangerous possibility in maritime terrorism, which haunts many Western and Asian officials, is that terrorists might use a powerful radiological bomb, in which conventional explosives disperse deadly radioactive poison, or even a nuclear weapon, perhaps concealed in the one of more than 230 million containers that move through the world's ports each year.

Officials and counter-terrorism experts in the US, Europe and Asia have warned that the next step in mega-terrorism may be an attack using chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological weapons. A ship or container is regarded as one of the most likely delivery devices for a nuclear or radiological bomb.

The exposure in February of an extensive and long-running nuclear black market that funnelled weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea from Pakistan has heightened these fears.

There is no evidence that al Qaeda or any other terrorist group has nuclear weapons. However, in the mid-1990s, al Qaeda agents tried repeatedly, though without success, to buy bomb-grade highly enriched uranium in Africa, Europe and Russia. In November 2001, Osama bin Laden announced that he had obtained a nuclear weapon, but US intelligence officials dismissed his claims.

Documents recovered from Afghanistan after the fall of the Taleban regime also described al Qaeda's nuclear ambitions.

No radiological attacks have been recorded. But in January last year, the BBC said it had evidence from British intelligence that al Qaeda had tried to assemble radioactive material to construct a dirty bomb in the Afghan city of Herat before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. No dirty bomb was found, but officials were convinced that al Qaeda had the expertise to build one.

In June 2002, the US Government said it had arrested Jose Padilla, an American citizen and suspected al Qaeda operative, on his return to the US, disrupting a plan to attack the United States by exploding a radiological bomb.

Last December US prosecutors said a British arms dealer, held in the US on charges of trying to sell shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down airliners, would face additional charges of plotting to procure a dirty bomb. Hemant Lakhani, 68, who was born in India but holds a British passport, was arrested last August in an sting operation involving intelligence agencies from the US, Britain and Russia.

AL QAEDA AND MARITIME TERRORISM, PART I
Volume 1, Issue 6
(Nov 20, 2003)

http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=391&&issue_id=2873

Fears of atomic smuggling in ships date back to the very dawn of the atomic age. On August 2, 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt informing him that work by his colleagues Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi indicated that uranium could shortly be an important source of power that should be developed with caution. Noting that uranium could "also lead to the construction of bombs," Einstein speculated chillingly that "a single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory." Roosevelt received the missive on October 11 and passed the letter to an aide with the annotation, "This requires action." Ten days later, on order of the President, the first meeting of the Advisory Committee on Uranium (the "Briggs Uranium Committee") was held in Washington. Six years and US$2 billion later, the world entered the atomic age.

Einstein's prophecy is now a security nightmare for the modern world. Maritime authorities worldwide are worried about ensuring the safety of their ports and ships from terrorist attack. Recent press reports have discussed a number of merchantmen under al Qaeda control, but hard evidence is difficult to come by. Even estimates of al Qaeda's "fleet" vary widely, from a low of fifteen to a high of 300 vessels. The unhappy fact is that al Qaeda has already struck twice at sea against both warships and merchantmen. For overworked maritime security officials, it is no longer a question of "if," but rather "when" and "where." The grim reality is that, with a global maritime fleet of 120,000 vessels, any solution for inspection and search is going to be haphazard at best.

Al-Nasheri

Fortunately, al Qaeda's top maritime specialist is in custody. Al Qaeda's chief of naval operations was "Prince of the Sea," Abdulrahim Mohammed Abda al-Nasheri (also know as Mulla Ahmad Belal). Western intelligence believes that al-Nasheri masterminded the October 12, 2000, USS Cole attack while the ship was refueling in Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed and at least forty others injured in al Qaeda's first successful naval attack, which blew a forty-foot hole in the port side of the ship. Repairs eventually cost US$287 million. U.S. officials concluded that al-Nasheri telephoned orders to the USS Cole bombers from the United Arab Emirates. According to U.S. intelligence, al-Nasheri subsequently fled to Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence believes that, after the 9-11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and al-Nasheri were "promoted" within al Qaeda, taking over operational planning for future attacks.

On May 15, 2003, the Department of Justice identified al-Nasheri as a veteran and instructor in the al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, and named him as an unindicted co-conspirator in the USS Cole attack. The indictment also charged that al-Nasheri was involved in an earlier failed attack against the USS The Sullivans while the ship was refueling in Aden on January 3, 1999. In June of 2002, Zuhair Helal al Tabaiti, one of three Saudis arrested in Morocco, admitted meeting Osama bin Laden and undergoing military training in Afghanistan. While al Tabaiti denied having been asked to carry out any military attacks, he admitted that he was gathering intelligence about the movements of NATO ships in Gibraltar for al-Nasheri, whom he had met while in Afghanistan.

Al-Nasheri was suspected of involvement in a number of other al Qaeda plots as well, including the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. One of the suicide bombers in the attack on the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, known only as Azzam, was believed to have been his cousin. Al-Nasheri traveled under a number of false identities, including Umar Mohammed al-Harazi and Abu Bilal al-Makki. U.S. intelligence believes that al-Nasheri was in Ghazni, Afghanistan, when the U.S. campaign against the Taliban began in October, 2001. Al-Nasheri is believed to have fled to Pakistan when the Taliban fell and in recent months might have gone to Yemen. Some tribesmen in Yemen, however, said he had gone to Malaysia.

U.S. authorities also suspect al-Nasheri of being behind plans to bomb the Fifth Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain, a plot disclosed in January of 2002 by another top al Qaeda guerrilla, who was captured by Pakistan after fleeing Afghanistan. The Fifth Fleet has responsibility for the Persian Gulf and provides ships for the operations of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). Among the Fifth Fleet's responsibilities is monitoring sea traffic from the Arabian Sea to the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.

In Western custody since he was captured in an undisclosed country in November of 2002, al-Nasheri has allegedly confessed to planning additional attacks on U.S. and British warships in the Straits of Gibraltar and in the Mediterranean. At the time of his arrest al-Nasheri was the highest-ranking al Qaeda operative apprehended since the CIA, FBI and Pakistani authorities captured bin Laden's operations chief, Abu Zubaydah, in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in March of 2002. Al-Nasheri is reputedly a Saudi of Yemeni ancestry who served as a founding member of al Qaeda in 1989.

The threat of al-Nasheri's operatives was taken sufficiently seriously by Western maritime powers that in the early spring of 2003 a preemptive policy was adopted of stopping and boarding suspicious ships and also of escorting tankers through the Straits of Gibraltar. NATO, which has been monitoring merchantmen in the Mediterranean since the September 11 attacks, is currently tracking fifty ships suspected of terrorist ties.

Al Qaeda not only attacked the USS Cole, but scored a grim success seventeen months later against a tanker as well. On the morning of October 6, 2002, a French tanker, the 299,364 DWT-ton Limburg, was rammed by an explosives-laden boat off the port of Ash Shihr at Mukallah, 353 miles (570 km) east of Aden. A crewman was killed and the double-hulled tanker was breached. The impact on the Yemeni economy was immediate, as maritime insurers tripled their rates.

Piracy

Despite the romantic image of pirates, the violent seizure of merchantmen on the high seas is a growing problem; in 2001, 335 incidents occurred, a figure that rose the following year to 370. In the first six months of 2003, 234 attacks against merchantmen were recorded, with the waters of the Indonesian archipelago being regarded as the most dangerous. The sixty-four attacks that have occurred there account for nearly a quarter of the global total. Because nuclear devices smuggled on ships are the ultimate nightmare, security specialists lose sleep over the possibility of terrorists making common cause with pirates. It is a worrying fact, therefore, that three of the worst piracy zones are the Muslim nations of Indonesia, Bangladesh and Somalia.

The problems of security are exacerbated by the nature of international shipping. Ironically, while maritime law was first codified in the seventeenth century, the sea remains a largely lawless frontier, where narrowly constrained national interests move with glacial slowness to develop international legislation. The International Maritime Organization, the UN's 162 nation maritime counterpart, is notorious for the plodding nature of its legislative process. Under current IMO regulations, merchantmen are forbidden to carry firearms for self-protection, a charmingly archaic bit of legislation that singly fails to address the realities of the post 9-11 world. The UN estimates that maritime traffic now accounts for 80 per cent of the world's commerce--5.8 billion tons in 2001. Cutthroat competition that reduces profits, flags of convenience, miserable wages--all are problems bedeviling the maritime community, creating a statistical nightmare for security specialists.

Volume 1 Issue 5 (Nov 07, 2003)

AL QAEDA AND MARITIME TERRORISM, PART II

http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=391&issue_id=2872&article_id=23400

The potential problems posed by sea-borne terrorism are most severe in the 600-mile (1,000-km) long Straits of Malacca, transited by 50,000 ships a year, where a combination of traditional piracy and indigenous Muslim extremist movements combine to make maritime passage of the long, narrow waterway especially unsettling. Among the Islamic terrorist groups active in the area are the Free Aceh Movement [Gerakin Aceh Merdeka (GAM)], Jemmah Islamiyah (JI), Lashkar Jihad, Laskar Jundullah (LJ) and Rabitatul Mujahideen(RM). Maritime authorities have belatedly acknowledged the Straits' hazards. On September 2, 2003, the International Maritime Bureau issued warnings to shippers that attacks against small oil tankers there were increasing and "follow a pattern set by Indonesian Aceh rebels."

The IMB alerts were simply acknowledging reality, as several years ago the Straits of Malacca had been the site of a potential piratical disaster with ominous implications for the future. On January 16, 1999, the Chaumont, a 131,654 DWT-ton French-flagged tanker, was attacked by pirates while in the Phillip Channel in Indonesian waters near Singapore. The attackers threatened the watch officer with a machete and bound his hands. The fully loaded tanker sailed at full speed through one of the world's busiest shipping lanes for seventy minutes without anyone at the helm while under the attackers control.

Maritime problems will not go away in the short term. Aside from the nuclear and tanker risks, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) usage is projected to fulfill ten percent of U.S. energy needs by the end of the decade. With docking facilities costing more than US$1 billion, a terrorist attack would be crippling in the extreme. While the United States currently has only four LNG port facilities, a number of proposals have been submitted to build more. As a report on the vulnerability of Tractabel's Everett Boston facility dryly noted, "The magnitude of the resulting liquid cargo pool fires are unprecedented in scale, both from LNG and oil tankers. There is no possibility of ameliorating the fires' effects, much less extinguishing them." The report further noted, "The fire that would ensue from a boat bomb attack on a tanker would be of unprecedented size and intensity."

(see:http://www.borderpowerplants.org/pdf_docs/boston_LNG_tanker_fire_impact.pdf)

Authorities closed Boston to LNG imports immediately following 9-11, and LNG tankers bound for the Massachusetts port still require U.S. Coast Guard escort vessels while 200 miles at sea.

Even more unsettling, Lusby, Maryland's Cove Point LNG facility is but three miles from the Constellation Energy Group's Calvert Cliff nuclear electrical plant. Critics have speculated that a terrorist attack would unleash an LNG equivalent to a small nuclear explosion. Lusby is only fifty-four miles from Washington, DC.

The United States remains the epicenter of international maritime trade, with more than six million containers--forty percent of the world's maritime cargo--entering the United States annually. Five days after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Boston harbor was closed as a prophylactic measure because authorities feared that terrorists might strike again. Shipping companies have scrambled since 9-11 to cooperate with Washington, with more than 1,700 involved in maritime trade voluntarily adhering to the U.S. Customs "trusted shipper program," certifying that their security procedures are compatible with U.S. regulations. Unfortunately, Washington has yet to follow up on these commitments. A recent General Accounting Office (GAO) report noted that only half of the companies had submitted security profiles. Specific cargo manifests are now submitted at ports of origin and transmitted electronically to U.S. Customs offices in the United States twenty-four hours before a ship is loaded. U.S. Customs agents at twenty-four foreign ports now have the authority to issue a "Do Not Load Order" on suspicious cargoes.

Since 9-11, U.S. ports have been scrambling to devise new security procedures. In New York City, the Port Authority has introduced a number of stricter measures. Vessels entering the harbor now must alert authorities of their arrival ninety-six hours in advance, while inspections of cargo have increased. In San Francisco, Coast Guard Sea Marshals board incoming ships two days before they enter the harbor. Once Stateside, U.S. Customs scans "100 per cent" of suspicious cargoes with a truck-based X-ray VACIS machine that inspects containers with Cesium radiation to find unusual, bulky items. Hand held radiological devices are used to complete the sweeps.

Some international progress is being made as well. The UN's International Maritime Organization (IMO) has passed legislation requiring most merchantmen to have security plans by July 2004. The new regulations will apply to 60,000 ships and 20,000 global port facilities. Skeptics point out that with 232,000,000 containers shipped annually, any regulations will barely address the problems of security. Even the Saudis have awakened to the terrorist threat; on September 24 Riyadh handed over to Yemeni authorities nine Yemenis, among them people involved in the Limburg bombing.

There is reason for cautious optimism. Besides national initiatives, international maritime cooperation at sea since 9-11 has seen multi-national naval task forces operating in not only the Mediterranean, but the Arabian Sea as well. Leaders of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) pledged on October 8 to strengthen ties to counter terrorism, maritime piracy and other transnational crimes through the creation of a "security community" in the region.

President Bush first proposed his Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) last May and expanded on the topic during his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 24. Bush remarked, "Through our Proliferation Security Initiative, eleven nations are preparing to search planes and ships, trains and trucks carrying suspect cargo, and to seize weapons or missile shipments that raise proliferation concerns. These nations have agreed on a set of interdiction principles, consistent with current legal authorities. And we are working to expand the Proliferation Security Initiative to other countries." Later in October, the United States met with ten allies in London to discuss the American PSI. While the initial attendees were Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland, U.S. officials say that fifty additional nations have expressed interest in the proposal.

Last month an interception exercise involving the U.S. and Australian navies was carried out. "Pacific Protector" was the first of ten more such operations planned for the near future. Critics say that the U.S. initiative will risk contravening international law. On October 5, the United States and India began a five day exercise, called Malabar-2003, with more than 2,000 naval personnel. According to Indian naval Commander Manobar Nambiar, the exercise was designed to enhance joint naval capabilities, and will include operations to board, search and seize a suspect ship. There are also private business efforts: Lloyds of London is reportedly working in conjunction with Britain's MI6 and the CIA to track suspicious activities.

Striking the balance between maritime security and profitability will prove one of globalism's most challenging tasks. Such efforts cannot be avoided if the civilized world is to avoid the fulfillment of Einstein's chilling prophecy of sixty-four years ago (see Terrorism Monitor, October 24, 2003).

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