At present, NATO has no clue as to which direction it is moving. Trying to bring together NATO maritime forces to patrol and conduct maritime searches is not high their list.
FM
Maritime terrorism has emerged as a formidable threat in the world,
targeting both civilian and naval vessels in NATO’s area of operations. The
threat is compounded by the use of maritime vessels and shipping lanes by
criminals who are often in league with terrorists. With the possibility that
weapons of mass destruction could be used as a terrorist weapon, efforts to
pre-empt such attacks which could cause mass civilian casualties has become
a top NATO priority, making it necessary for the alliance to expand its
maritime frontier. As the stakes are raised, NATO must innovate in order to
counter the new maritime threats.
Memories of the hijacking of the Italian-flagged cruise ship P/V Achille
Lauro in 1985 off Port Said, Egypt, were revived this year when the
mastermind of the hijacking, Muhammad Abbas, died in Iraq. Members of the
Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) had held the ship with 180 passengers and
331 crewmembers on board, hostage, demanding the release of 50 Palestinian
prisoners in Israeli jails. They killed an invalid Jewish American
passenger, before negotiating the release of the rest of the hostages
against their safe passage. Europe did not witness acts of such maritime
terrorism for the next ten years, but today illegal acts directed against
ships, their passengers, cargo or crew, or against sea ports with the intent
of directly or indirectly influencing a government or group of individuals,
are a formidable threat.
The similarities between the methods used in attacking the USS Cole, a navy
destroyer, and the M/V Limburg, a French supertanker, both "rammed"1 while
in Yemeni waters, illustrate that the terrorists do not discriminate between
military and civilian maritime targets. The poorly protected, relatively
slow and massive ocean-going vessels such as the Limburg present much softer
targets to terrorists than better-protected U.S. Navy ships. In 2003, 22
percent of the vessels attacked worldwide were tankers.2 In addition to
being terrorist targets themselves, civilian vessels face another threat.
The September 11 attacks have demonstrated that commercial aircraft, usually
targeted for hijacking or bombing attacks, can also be successfully used as
devastating weapons. Oil, natural gas and other hazardous cargo laden ocean
going vessels could also be used as such weapons by terrorists against port
facilities. A Phalanx battery can defend against a TNT-laden Zodiac boat,
but would be useless against a terrorist commandeered LNG tanker heading
full steam towards its target.
The October 2002 capture of the organizer of the Limburg attack, a Saudi man
with Yemeni roots, by the name of Abd al Rahman al Nashiri, who is also
believed to have been responsible for the attack on the USS Cole, led to the
discovery that Al Qaeda had undertaken preparations to attack ships in the
Mediterranean. Nicknamed the "Prince of the Sea"3, Nashiri had developed a
four-pronged strategy to attack Western targets. These were ramming, blowing
up medium-sized ships near other vessels or at ports, attacking large
vessels such as supertankers from the air by using explosive-laden small
aircraft, and attacking vessels with underwater demolition teams using
limpet mines or with suicide bombers.4 During interrogation, Nashiri
revealed that if warships became too difficult to approach, tourist ships
could be targeted.5 The cruise ship industry, which in the U.S. alone
carries nearly seven million passengers every year, is facing this new
threat.6 A dossier captured with Nashiri, which listed cruise liners sailing
from Western ports among "targets of opportunity", indicates that mega
cruise ships exceeding 140,000 gross tons, carrying over 5,000 passengers
are desirable targets for terrorists.7
Before he was caught, Nashiri had also planned an operation to bomb American
and British warships in the Strait of Gibraltar, off the northern coast of
Morocco. In response to this intelligence, NATO allies coordinated efforts
to improve security in the western Mediterranean, particularly around the
Straits of Gibraltar. The alliance launched a preemptive policy of stopping
and boarding suspicious ships. Another measure involved escorting tankers
through the Straits of Gibraltar by German naval vessels. In the aftermath
of the Madrid bombings, blamed on Moroccan terrorists, there is growing
concern about al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist infiltration across the
Strait of Gibraltar into Europe. Spain's weakest border is its southern
coast separated from Northern Africa by only the narrow Strait of
Gibraltar.8
Criminals at Sea
The smuggling and trafficking of human beings has increased throughout the
world, owing to the globalization process and other factors. The problem is
exacerbated in size and seriousness by the growing involvement of organized
crime groups. The smuggling of migrants by these organized crime groups
disrupts established immigration policies of destination countries and often
involves human rights abuses. Containers are rarely inspected on their
journey, and provide easy cover for smugglers to transport drugs, weapons
and people, especially to European ports, which attract tens of thousands of
illegal migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia each year. Dozens of
stowaways have suffocated in containers. Stowaways smuggled onboard
commercial vessels by human traffickers can cause unforeseeable problems,
too. Turkey was a prime transit route for human traffickers for many years.
Law enforcement efforts, however, seem to have started to pay off recently,
as southern European authorities report that the traffickers now prefer
Tunisian and Libyan routes to transit their human cargo instead of Turkey.
On November 21, 2001, the U.S. Navy stated that it could extend the
anti-terrorism campaign to counter piracy, gunrunning, drug and human
trafficking. Not only the Al Qaeda network, but also terrorist groups
elsewhere such as the Sri Lankan LTTE and the Kurdish PKK, have been engaged
in "commercial" activities such as trafficking in narcotics, arms and human
beings. The LTTE, for example, not only owned and operated a fleet of ten
ocean-going freighters flying Panamanian, Honduran and Liberian flags, but
also hijacked commercial vessels carrying cargo valuable to the Tamil
Tigers, such as the 1997 hijacking of the freighter "Stillus Limassul",
loaded with more than 30,000 81mm mortar rounds, worth over three million
dollars.9 In 1994, the LTTE shipped 50 metric tons of TNT and ten metric
tons of RDX explosives on board one of their own freighters, operated by a
front company called Carlton Trading, from a Ukrainian Black Sea port via
the Turkish Straits to Sri Lanka.10
A developing trend in international terrorism in the last decade is called
narco-terrorism. Turkish authorities are aware that most of the human
smuggling, which takes place in Turkish waters is connected with the
terrorist organization PKK. Turkey has historically remained a key
transshipment point for drug trafficking because of its desirable
geographical location connecting Europe to Asia. From the late 1970s, a new
trend toward bigger and more efficient criminal organizations was observed.
Especially from the mid-1980s terrorist organizations with quasi-political
agendas started to become involved in narcotics trafficking. In the
beginning these terrorist groups entered the business mainly to finance
their arms supplies. It has been documented in many instances that these
Turkish terrorist groups either dealt or partnered with certain Eastern Bloc
criminals and intelligence services in drugs-for-arms deals.
Weapons trafficking is apparently still rampant in the Mediterranean waters.
In April 2004, the Italian police searched a container destined for the port
of New York onboard a Turkish ship at the port of Tauro during a routine
customs inspection, sparked by discrepancies between the various customs
declarations. Inside the container more than 8,000 AK47 assault rifles, 11
submachine guns, and magazines worth over seven million dollars were
discovered. Also in April 2004, in Istanbul, the Turkish Customs found 500
undeclared Bulgarian AK47s inside a container, which had just been taken off
a vessel from Bulgaria, destined for Paraguay, according to the manifests.
Turkish authorities seized the weapons, which they believed the traffickers
were attempting to smuggle into Turkey for their terrorist clients.11 In
June 2003, the Greek Coast Guard impounded a vessel called "the Baltic Sky"
which was carrying an undeclared cargo of 750 tons of industrial-grade
explosives and 8,000 detonators from Tunis to Sudan. However, instead of
heading for the Suez Canal, the ship had sailed to Turkey and then back into
the Mediterranean, raising the authorities’ suspicion that it could be a
terrorist shipment.12
Emerging Trends
The exposure in 2004 of an extensive and long-running nuclear black market
based in Pakistan, which peddled weapons technology to Libya, Iran, North
Korea and perhaps other places, has amplified fears that countries or
criminal organizations will pass Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) related
materials to terrorists, who may use them to attack the U.S., its allies or
friendly countries. North Korea and Iran are primary sources of
proliferation concern. Hence, the u.s. and several of its NATO allies
combined forces in the Mediterranean Sea to track and board ships suspected
of carrying WMD. Dubbed "Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI)", this
initiative aims to disrupt and deter the illicit trade in WMD by searching
ships and planes suspected of carrying nuclear, chemical or biological
weapons, or materials that could be used to make them. International law
allows interdiction and boarding of suspect vessels on the high seas only
with the permission of the country under whose flag the ship is sailing, if
the vessel is stateless, or if the ship is a pirate vessel, transporting
slaves or illegal drugs, or being used for unauthorized broadcasting. Other
than in these circumstances, there could be international legal problems
with interdictions on the high seas. To do away with the legal obstacles,
the u.s. and other maritime powers are pressing countries to ratify the 1988
Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of
Maritime Navigation, to add to it additional offenses, including
transporting weapons of mass destruction or substances useful therein, and
to facilitate boarding suspect ships on the high seas. The convention,
developed in large part to combat terrorism, extends the rights of maritime
security forces to pursue terrorists, pirates and maritime criminals into
foreign territorial waters. An important PSI seizure was made in October
2003, when German and Italian authorities intercepted the "BBC China", a
German-owned ship, after it passed through the Suez Canal carrying uranium
enrichment equipment bound for Libya. The confiscated equipment from the
ship helped investigators to unravel and shut down the Pakistan-based
nuclear black market.13 The July 2003 seizure by Spanish forces of a ship
carrying South Korean Daewoo arms to Senegal was another manifestation of
the PSI at work. Turkey is a PSI member, and actively participates in PSI
training exercises in the Mediterranean at present.
According to the Lloyds List, the U.S. and Norwegian intelligence agencies
have identified some 15 to 23 freighters, flying the flags of Yemen,
Somalia, and the Pacific island of Tonga, believed to sail in the
Mediterranean Sea, and in the Indian and Pacific oceans, as owned or
controlled by the Al Qaeda network.14 These ships could carry weapons of
mass destruction and also could be used to help Usama Bin Laden and his
followers escape from pursuit. In February 2003, eight Pakistani men jumped
ship at the Italian port of Trieste after a trip from Cairo. U.S. officials
determined that the men were Al Qaeda operatives. In August 2003, again in
Italy, 15 Pakistani men who had boarded another freighter in Casablanca,
Morocco, were arrested in possession of tens of thousands of dollars, false
documents, maps of Italian cities and evidence tying them to known Al Qaeda
members in Europe. The 15 were charged in Italy with conspiracy to engage in
terrorist acts.15
In March 2004, deadly bombing attacks in Spain and in Israel underscored the
vulnerability of the transportation industry to terrorism, despite stringent
security measures. In Madrid, command detonated explosives hidden on
commuter trains killed 200 passengers and injured thousands, while in
Ashdod, one of Israel’s busiest seaports, two Palestinian suicide bombers of
the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and Hamas, blew themselves up, killing ten
Israelis and wounding 18. The two Palestinian suicide bombers had been
apparently smuggled into the port inside a cargo container four hours before
the attack, thus avoiding stringent security procedures. This method of
attack indicated that Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and Hamas had borrowed an Al
Qaeda tactic of building a secret compartment inside a shipping container.
The Ashdod container had transited another port before arriving in Israel,
raising the possibility that Al Qaeda had carried out the conversion before
it reached the Gaza Strip.
Terrorists affiliated with the Kurdish Hizbullah, who launched suicide truck
bomb attacks against two Turkish synagogues, and British targets in Istanbul
in November 2003, killing over 60 people, had originally cased a southern
Turkish port where they had expected an Israeli cruise ship to dock. The
terrorists had packed a pickup truck with nearly 1.5 tons of explosives, and
sent it from Istanbul to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Antalya, some 500
miles away, in November 2003, where the driver waited for eight days for an
Israeli cruise ship to dock. When the Israeli cruise ship failed to call at
the port of Antalya due to inclement weather, the truck and its suicide
driver returned to Istanbul where he attacked the British Consulate General
with his lethal cargo, killing the British Consul General and 17 others,
injuring hundreds, and demolishing part of the consulate building.16
NATO’s Response
Given this high level threat environment created by terrorist and criminal
elements, NATO is resolved to help deter, defend, disrupt and protect
through maritime operations in the area of operations of Operation Active
Endeavor (OAE) and to demonstrate Alliance resolve and presence in the
campaign against terrorism. Under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty,
underpinning the NATO military concept for defense against terrorism through
specific actions, OAE was launched in the Eastern Mediterranean shortly
after the September 11 attacks, and was expanded in March 2003 to include
the Strait of Gibraltar. The operation, in which up to eight navy vessels
keep tabs on cargo flows in strategic locations, will include the entire
Mediterranean basin and could be extended to include the Black Sea.17 More
than 41,000 vessels have been hailed since the beginning of the operation,
and 47 compliant boardings have taken place in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Additionally, more than 414 allied non-combatant ships have been escorted
successfully through the Strait of Gibraltar. NATO commanders are aware of
the holes in the defense of Europe against terrorism, particularly in
maritime security, which they view as the "weak link". While OAE has helped
cut illegal immigration and smuggling, and enabled NATO to build a unique
picture of Mediterranean ship traffic, which could eventually become part of
a global database, current inability of NATO members to effectively screen
cargo container traffic is worrisome.18
International Measures
New regulations enacted after the September 11 attacks, requiring
governments, port authorities and ships to implement security measures at
their own level, are taking almost three years to come into force. The
International Code for the Security of Ships and Port Facilities (ISPS) and
Amendments to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea
(SOLAS) came into effect on July 1, 2004. The SOLAS amendments and the ISPS
Code, adopted by the 162-member International Maritime Organization (IMO),
make it mandatory for companies operating ships of more than 500 tons on
international voyages to designate security officers, prepare new plans and
be fitted with new security alert systems, as well as for seaports to
undertake security assessments and to prepare security plans. Any port
failing to implement the code will be tagged as "risky" and will, therefore,
find it hard to woo ships from abroad. It also risks being surcharged by
foreign vessel operators. Non-compliant ships would also meet the same fate,
as they have to anchor at any way-port first to wait for further scrutiny
before being allowed to carry goods to the designated port. Implementation
of the ISPS Code will cost vessel operators 1.28 billion dollars in the
first year and 730 million dollars a year thereafter, according to estimates
from the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).19
Recognizing that some developing countries will not be able to cope with the
new maritime security threats, the United States and NATO countries are
taking steps to render assistance. The U.S. is looking to relaunch what was
formerly called the African Coastal Security Program aimed at improving the
coastal navies and coastguards of participating countries, such as Morocco,
Algeria, and Tunisia, so they can conduct better maritime surveillance.20
Although Germany has also deployed naval vessels and maritime surveillance
aircraft in Djibouti and in Kenya, it is not clear whether NATO has also
shifted its view on Africa, and is extending its mission southward.
Meanwhile, the U.S. European Command believe that NATO must "get out, go
forward and do some prevention,"21 especially as North African-based
terrorist groups have become a major focus since the March 11 train bombings
in Madrid. The Spanish investigation into those attacks has focused on the
Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), which allegedly has links to Al
Qaeda.22
Continuing Threats
Shortly after the U.S. Department of State issued a public announcement
warning of the continuing threat of violence against U.S. interests and
transportation, including maritime interests, in North Africa, Arabian
Peninsula, Red Sea and Persian Gulf, an Al Qaeda attack took place in April
2004, against an oil terminal near Basra, Iraq. The attack killed two U.S.
Navy sailors and one U.S. Coast Guardsman, injured five, and damaged the
terminal, shutting it down for two days, costing nearly 40 million dollars
in lost revenues, highlighting the maritime strike capability of Al Qaeda in
the Persian Gulf. Claiming responsibility for the attack, a top Al Qaeda
terrorist, Abu Mussab al Zarqawi, boasted of using three rubber dinghies
packed with explosives driven by suicide bombers, reminiscent of the attacks
against the USS Cole and M/V Limburg. The mining of the Georgian Black Sea
port of Batumi, which handles 60% of the Caspian oil exports, during a May
2004 crisis between the autonomous Ajarian government and Tbilisi,
highlighted the volatile political environment around the Black Sea and how
easily it could hurt maritime shipping.
The Bosphorus
A chokepoint in Black Sea security is the Bosphorus Strait, a 17-mile long
waterway, which divides Asia from Europe and connects the Black Sea with the
Mediterranean Sea, providing the sole sea outlet for Bulgaria, Romania,
Georgia, Ukraine and southern Russia. The end of the Cold War has shaken the
military balance of the region, and with the appearance of new states, has
transformed the Black Sea from a "landlocked" to an "open" sea.24 Only half
a mile wide at its narrowest point, the Bosphorus is one of the world's
busiest and most difficult-to-navigate waterways. In January 1996, nine
pro-Chechen gunmen (six Turks of Abhkaz origin, two Chechens, and an ethnic
Abkhaz from Georgia) hijacked a Turkish ferry in the Black Sea and kept 255
passengers and crew hostage for three days. The hijackers threatened to blow
up the vessel and their hostages, but the ordeal ended quietly off Istanbul
following protracted negotiations between the hijackers and Turkish
authorities. Turkish intelligence sources believe that in order to bring
attention to the Chechen cause, the hijackers had earlier considered
sabotaging one of the two suspension bridges over the Bosphorus with
explosives, to bring down the bridge, and close the Strait to traffic.
Thousands of tankers cross the Bosphorus every year, carrying hazardous
cargo such as crude oil, liquefied petroleum gas, and industrial chemicals.
In 2001, the Russian Duma passed a bill to transport 20,000 tons of nuclear
waste originating in Europe over a ten year period through the Turkish
Straits, despite the Russian opposition parties’ concern about possible
terrorist attacks against the vessels carrying the radioactive waste. Six
accidents occur on the Bosphorus every one million-transit miles (nine and a
half per kilometer), twice the accident rate of the Suez Canal. Unlike the
Suez Canal, which largely cuts through desert, the Bosphorus flows through a
city of 12 million, dramatically increasing the danger if a ship, especially
an oil tanker, crashes. Given predictions that the a number of tankers
crossing the Bosphorus will increase by at least 50 percent before 2010,
Turkey is introducing new controls on tankers, including an electronic
Vessel Traffic Management and Information System (VTMIS). One can easily
imagine that a deliberate terrorist attack against a vessel would cause mass
casualties in the crowded metropolis of Istanbul.
Conclusion
According to the UN Charter, regional organizations, such as NATO, are
permitted to take measures to secure their regions. U.S. Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that "the u.s. would mount a maritime
interdiction effort anywhere the benefits outweighed the costs."25 But the
NATO navies are still mostly configured for the Cold War, which means that
they have a maritime surveillance capability that was designed to keep track
of a few hundred big Soviet warships, hardly suited to gather intelligence
on terrorists using rubber dinghies.26 In order to overcome this deficiency,
NATO and friendly nations need to create an intelligence network to monitor
the world's main shipping lanes, providing a more coherent, fused
intelligence position, so that NATO efforts in the maritime dimension are
intelligence-led, instead of searching for a "needle in a haystack."27
Ali M. Köknar is an associate fellow at the Institute for the Analysis of
Global Security (IAGS)
1 "Ramming" involves loading a boat up with explosives and steering it into
a target. "Expert says Islamic militants trained for sea attacks", Reuters,
21 January 2003.
2 "Hi-Tech Pirates Wage Terror on the High Seas", 17 February 2004
3 Possibly a resonation of the Arabic term "ameer al bahr" (commander of the
sea) from which the term "admiral" originated.
4 "Al Qaeda has multi faceted marine strategy", Agence France Press, 20
January 2003.
5 Christopher Dickey, "High-seas terrorism", Newsweek, 27 January 2003, p4.
6 Yonah Alexander, Tyler Richardson, "Maritime terrorism phase next?", The
Washington Times, 20 October 2002, pB3.
7 Ben English, Ian Gallagher and Jeff Sommerfield, "Al Qaeda blueprint
exposed", The Courier-Mail, 29 December 2003
8 "Policing Spain’s southern coast", BBC, 2 March 2004.
9 Mark Winchester, "Ship of Fools: Tamil Tigers’ heist of the century",
Soldier of Fortune, Vol.23, No.8, 1998, p.40.
10 A. Davis, "Tamil Tiger International", Jane’s Intelligence Review, Vol.8,
No.10, 1996, pp.472-473.
11 "Silahlar bulundu ama sorularin cevabi yok" [Weapons have been found, but
the questions remain unanswered], Aksiyon (Turkish weekly magazine), 16 May
2004, No.492.
12 "Greeks seize ship packed with explosives", The Star, 23 June 2003.
13 Michael Richardson, "To disrupt and deter", Defense Technology Asia, 30
April 2004.
14 "What Al Qaeda could do with a terror navy", World Net Daily, 20 October
2003.
15 "Terror ship history examined", Dawn Online, 19 May 2003.
16 Fuat Akyol, "Kamyonet garajda patlayacak, HSBC çökertilecekti" [The
pickup truck was to explode in the parking garage, demolishing HSBC],
Aksiyon (Turkish weekly magazine), No. 475, 18 January 2004.
17 Brian Whitmore "NATO faces challenges as it retools for the war on
terror", Boston Globe, 28 March 2004.
18 Crispian Balmer "NATO commander says maritime security is weak link",
Reuters, 8 March 2004.
19 David Osler, "The cost of ISPS", Lloyds List, 22 April 2004.
20 Andrew Koch, "US Is Now Set To Turn The Focus On African Security",
Jane's Defence Weekly, 21 April 2004, p.6.
21 Charles Cobb Jr., "General Sees Expanding Strategic Role for US European
Command In Africa", allAfrica.com, 15 April 2004.
22 Brian Whitmore, "US pushes antiterror alliance for North African
nations", Boston Globe, 11 April 2004.
23 "The role of NATO in the security of the Black Sea region", Black Sea
Trend Review, Vol.2, No.5, (Autumn 2003), p.46.
24 Mark J. Valencia, "Pressing for sea change", The Washington Times, 24
August 2003.
25 "Terror lurks on high seas", The New York Daily News, 21 September 2003.
26 Balmer (2004).