Somali piracy raises the spectre of maritime terrorism.
The Sirius Star (pictured), a huge tanker carrying around US$100 million (S$152.8 million) worth of crude oil was hijacked in a mere 16 minutes by Somali pirates on Nov 15. -- PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARIS - THE spate of piracy attacks off the Somali coast, such as the hijacking of the Sirius Star supertanker last weekend, raises the spectre of maritime terrorism, according to experts.
The ease by which pirates have seized control of large tankers is giving shipowners, insurance companies and maritime security companies cause for deep concern.
One such case is the Sirius Star, a huge tanker carrying around US$100 million (S$152.8 million) worth of crude oil and owned by Saudi oil company Aramco. It was hijacked in a mere 16 minutes by Somali pirates on Nov 15.
Pirates have since anchored it off their base in Harardhere, north of Mogadishu, and demanded that a ransom be paid by Nov 30.
'The Sirius Star affair is worrying,' said Professor Laurent Galy at the School of Merchant Shipping in Nantes, on France's Atlantic Coast. 'It can show others that it is relatively easy to carry out similar operation.'
The Djibouti government has likened the acts of piracy in neighbouring Somalia to 'a new form of terrorism', while Saudi Arabia calls piracy an 'evil that must be erased'. Terrorism on the high seas may be rare, but a number of incidents have left a deep impression.
They include the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 causing one death; the suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen's southern port in 2000 that killed 17 sailors; the blast on the French Limburg oil tanker in 2002 that killed one crew member; and the 2004 bombing of the Superferry 14 that left over 100 people dead in Manila Bay.
It has proved a popular subject with authors and screenwriters, going back to British author Frederick Forsyth's 1979 thriller The Devil's Alternative which tells of a hijacking of an oil tanker in the North Sea.
'The real world has caught up with fiction when Somali pirates captured the Saudi-owned supertanker MV Sirius Star,' author John Chadwell blogged this week on www.huntoftheseawolves.net.
His novel, which is being adapted into a film, tells the story of terrorists hijacking a ship loaded with natural gas to use it as a massive bomb.
A report by the Rand Corporation think tank on 'The Maritime Dimension of International Security, Terrorism, Piracy and Challenges for the United States' warned that it may not be long before fiction becomes reality.
'There have been persistent reports of political extremists boarding vessels in South-east Asia in an apparent effort to learn how to pilot them for a rerun of Sept 11 at sea,' it said.
Meanwhile, Prof Galy said terrorists have the ability to severely disrupt the maritime sector and the global economic community.
'Ships sailing around the world have five gateways they almost certainly have to pass through - Gibraltar, Suez, Panama, the Malacca Straits and the Strait of Hormuz where basic oil tankers transit through,' Prof Galy said.
'Attacking one of these gateways would seriously disturb the maritime industry which is responsible for delivering 80 per cent of the world's goods.' Prof Galy also pointed out that pirates and terrorists have different goals when they decide to seize a ship. Pirates usually consider the tankers as a tangible asset, while terrorists simply want to destroy them. -- AFP
