Murphy Martin. Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money. Piracy & Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
157
contemporary piracy: irritation or menace?
ever, once the criminal operators were made aware that the bodies were on
board they might have been left with no option but to dispose of the ship
as rapidly as possible. One of the few facts known for certain about the case
is that the company that sold the Hai Sin never existed.
108
Other acts of violence, such as those suffered by Captain John Swain of
the Stolt Eagle who lost three fingers fighting off pirates, Captain Donny
Montiero of the Valiant Carrier whose infant daughter was knifed by pi-
rates during the attack on his ship, and Captain John Bashforth murdered
by pirates on board his ship the Baltimar Zephyr have been noted by offic-
ers and crews alike.
109
eir resulting apprehension when traversing pirate-
prone sea areas was reflected in the Nautilus survey mentioned above.
Access to markets
pirates need trustworthy intermediaries to dispose of stolen goods and con-
vert foreign currency. In those parts of the world where pirates are regarded
as Robin hood-style benefactors of the poor, such as coastal villages in
Indonesia and the philippines, perhaps simple barter suffices. Robbers who
steal marine equipment and sundries and valuables from crews’ quarters
can probably sell them in local maritime yards and directly into local com-
munities without many questions being asked.
It is the gangs that steal whole cargoes, or ships, or ships and cargoes
together that need larger markets, which in many cases are located well
away from where the hijackings take place. e speed with which goods
are disposed of would suggest that buyers are in place before the cargo is
hijacked; in fact, that the cargoes are almost certainly stolen to order. e
cases of the Anna Sierra, the Tenyu, and the Alondra Rainbow all demon-
strate this. In the case of the Petro Ranger, which has also been touched on
already, the tanker met two others at sea to which much of the cargo was
transferred and was waiting to discharge the remainder when the Chinese
maritime police intervened.
110
It is likely that piracy on this scale will fluc-
tuate according to market demand and will continue, or resume, when
108 Stewart, e Brutal Seas, p. 296.
109 On John Swain see Burnett, Dangerous Waters, pp. 106-7. On the knife at-
tack on Donny Montiero’s child see Burnett, Dangerous Waters, p. 65. On John
Bashforth see Stewart, e Brutal Seas, p. 8.
110 Blyth, Petro Pirates, pp. 54-5; hitt, ‘Bandits in the global shipping lanes’; Eklöf,
Pirates in Paradise, p. 74.
158
small boats, weak states, dirty money
buyers can obtain what they want from pirates more cheaply than they can
from legitimate suppliers.
Risk is the deciding factor. Legal and illegal markets are not the same.
pino Arlacchi, a senior official of the uN Office for Drug Control and
Crime prevention, has made the point that “…some of the dynamics of
criminal markets are substantially different from those that drive legal mar-
kets. Illegal enterprises can resort to the use of violence and intimidation
(and can) also corrupt those who uphold the law and those who are in a
position to manipulate public institutions.”
111
is point resonates with two
made by the IMB: first, that the “phantom ship” syndicates were “extremely
dangerous” and prepared to use violence; second, that the problem was at-
tributable to the opening of China in the early 1980s, which caused a surge
in demand for goods. When all this was coupled with both the mainland
regime’s lack of experience in dealing with the outside world, and its refusal
to admit Taiwan to international bodies—which effectively created a safe
haven for fraudsters—the risks criminals faced were reduced substantially.
112
On the other hand the Chinese experience from mid-1998 onwards, when
the government decided to crack down on smuggling and piracy-related
maritime crime, suggests that, providing there is sufficient political will,
governments and law enforcement organisations can increase the risk to
buyers of pirate goods more effectively than they can increase the risk to the
pirate themselves. providing this is true, it is likely that this type of piracy
can be controlled or ended more readily when the groups and organisations
that buy from pirates are disrupted or their operations are discouraged by
land-based police activity, political pressure, sentencing policy and interna-
tional cooperation. As David pearl, Maritime Armed Crime Analyst at the
Office of Naval Intelligence has written, “the reality is that combating piracy
on the high seas is the least desireable and least cost-effective tactic”.
113
It
was perhaps nervousness on the part of the buyer in the Steadfast incident,
induced by just this sort of pressure, that brought it to a close. e pirate
gang involved unloaded the cargo into a warehouse but it was never collect-
ed.
114
Dragonette made the point that pirates were “failing to find a market
111 pino Arlacchi, ‘e dynamics of illegal markets’ in phil Williams; and Dimitri
Vlassis, (eds), Combating Transnational Crime: Concepts, Activities and Response,
Abingdon and New York: Frank Cass, 2001, pp. 7-8.
112 ICC-IMB, ‘phantom ships’, paragraphs 1.8 & 1.9; Flynn. ‘China promises
crackdown as it strives to escape image of a safe haven for pirates’.
113 David pearl. ‘ONI and Combating piracy’. ONI Quarterly, April 2008, p. 4.
114 hand, ‘Joint alert forces pirates to flee hijacked tanker’.
159
contemporary piracy: irritation or menace?
for stolen goods” and were being denied the “peace and quiet in which
to process their spoils.”
115
A point echoed by Joe Corless, of the investiga-
tors Gray page when he commented that: “Without China, the phantom-
ship problem would die out”.
116
It is therefore at least arguable that the
sharp decline in attacks on large ships in the Malacca Straits and elsewhere
in Southeast Asia since about 2002 owed more to the anti-smuggling and
counter-corruption drives in China than to more vigorous patrolling and
aerial surveillance in the Straits themselves.
Links to insurgent or terrorist groups
ere is no clear evidence that any pirate group has cooperated with or
has links to any insurgent or terrorist organisation. pirates’ skills are not
unique; they are shared by other groups such as fishermen and former naval
personnel who might be more prepared to work with terrorists.
117
is lack
of evidence has not, however, dampened continuing speculation.
118
It has
not put an end to “uncritically repeated myths, half truths, and unsupport-
able assertions of an alleged nexus of piracy and terrorism.”
119
One report, for example, that came in for particular criticism was carried
by e Economist, and amplified subsequently by Gal Luft and Anne Korin
in their article for Foreign Affairs: that the pirates who had attacked the
chemical tanker Dewi Madrim, off Sumatra in March 2003, had behaved
unlike other pirates and in fact had acted more like terrorists.
120
ey had
taken control of the ship for about an hour and during that time altered
course and altered speed, as if they were learning to control it or to under-
stand its handling characteristics; treating it, in other words, as if it were a
“flight training school for terrorists”.
121
“pirates” do not need to know these
115 Charles h. Dragonette, ‘Maritime legends’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol.
62, no. 5, Sept./Oct., 2006, p. 17.
116 Christopher Donville. ‘Yo-ho-ho and an M16’. Bloomberg, December 1997, p.
41. Interview with Joe Corless, July 2008.
117 Sam Bateman, ‘Assessing the threat of maritime terrorism: Issues for the Asia-
pacific region’, Security Challenges, vol. 2, no. 3, Oct. 2006, p. 81.
118 Chalk, ‘Maritime terrorism in the contemporary era’, pp. 23-4.
119 Dragonette, ‘Lost at Sea’, p. 174.
120 ‘peril on the sea’, e Economist, 4 Oct. 2003, pp. 67-8; Luft and Korin, ‘Terror-
ism goes to sea’, p. 67; also ‘Terror threat swells at sea’, WorldNetDaily.com, 8 June
2004; and patrick Goodenough
, ‘Maritime security takes centre stage in SE Asia’,
CNSNews.com, 29 June 2004. ONI, WWTTS, 2 April 2003, paragraph K.1.
121 Glass, ‘e new piracy’.
160
small boats, weak states, dirty money
things. Nor do they generally leave with little of value if they have had the
time and opportunity to find and take what they want. e conclusion
that was drawn was that they were learning to control a ship in the same
way that the 9/11 hijackers had learned to fly aircraft and, quite possibly,
with a similar suicidal purpose in mind. is account of what happened
originated with the London-based defence and security consultancy, Aegis
Defence Services, that suggested “something altogether more sinister” than
a pirate attack had taken place.
122
e problem was that the ship owner
contradicted this report. he denied that the captain had been kidnapped,
said that little of value had been taken and expressed his view that the at-
tack was unquestionably the work of pirates. Extensive inquiries by the
IMB and other interested agencies could find no evidence to support the
contention that terrorists had been involved.
123
What happened was that
pirates boarded the ship and proceeded to take what they could. is took
time. In order to avoid hitting other ships or running aground the pirates
manoeuvred the ship. ey then left.
124
For their part Aegis Defence Serv-
ices subsequently issued a second report, which warned that terrorists could
either adopt pirates’ tactics or “piggyback” on pirates’ raids. ey went on
to write that “the threat is not from traditional commercial pirates, but
from a new breed of maritime terrorist, whose skills evolve from a con-
ventional piracy base”.
125
To date there are no grounds for believing this
is true.
Nonetheless, while it would seem the theories that pirates might use their
expertise to teach terrorists how to hijack vessels for the purposes of attack-
ing ports or undermining trade are currently without foundation, changes
to the financing of many terrorist groups over the past twenty years has
brought about some cooperation and even convergence between insurgent
122 Aegis has consistently refused to publish the report or even the section dealing
with this incident. Interested agencies appear to have obtained copies and this
quote is from Dragonette, ‘Maritime legends’, p. 18.
123 p. Mukundan, interview with author, 2004; Dragonette, ‘Lost at sea’, p. 175. Do-
minick Donald, Senior Analyst at Aegis, in his interview with the author in 2004,
claimed that e Economist had quoted the report with much of the qualifying
material removed. e point Aegis wanted to emphasise was that, in their view,
the behaviour of the ‘pirates’ was hard to explain without taking into account a
terrorist motive. See also Keith Bradsher, ‘Attacks on chemical ships in Southeast
Asia seem to be piracy, not terror’, New York Times, 27 March 2003.
124 Dragonette, ‘Maritime legends’, p. 18. NGA ASAM 2003-97, 26 March
2003..
125 Quoted in Goodenough, ‘Maritime security takes centre stage in SE Asia’.
161
contemporary piracy: irritation or menace?
and terrorist groups and organised crime networks, creating a potential
indirect link between terrorism and organised piracy. Also, the presence of
pirate activity in a locality can confuse police and intelligence efforts aimed
at tracing terrorists, and distract investigators from their proper targets.
e fact that some insurgent groups that have engaged in terrorism—such
as the LTTE in Sri Lanka, GAM in Indonesia, MNLF and ASG in the
philippines, MEND in Nigeria—have also used piratical methods to raise
money contributes to this opacity.
Level of official support and corruption
Common piracy flourishes in weak and “failed” states. Common piracy can
be suppressed, or at least contained, by on-shore police work supported by
vigorous maritime patrolling. Weak states often can afford neither. Where
they can, the forces nominally responsible for suppressing piracy might
nonetheless be in league with the pirates or, in some cases, actually are the
pirates, which appears to have been the case, on occasion, in Indonesia.
126
Various factors can bring this corruption about, such as cultural acceptabil-
ity, inadequate pay, lack of supervision, or clan or ethnic differences which
prompt local officials to support members of their own community rather
than the central government.
Organised pirates can benefit from the support of those in power. Major
hijackings and “phantom ship” frauds can make men rich, reason enough
for corrupt officials and politicians to offer criminals their help. e sub-
ject’s sensitivity means the evidence is naturally scarce but analysts of mari-
time crime, and others who are concerned about maritime security, believe
that organised pirates in most pirate-prone areas have benefited from the
protection of senior provincial officials, police officers, or even nationally
known politicians.
127
e Corruption perceptions Index calculated annually by the Internet
Centre of Corruption Research scores countries between 10 (highly clean)
and 0 (highly corrupt). All of the countries highlighted as having a piracy
problem or providing a market for pirated goods scored low on the 2006
Index: China 3.3, philippines 2.5, Indonesia 2.4, Nigeria 2.2, Bangladesh
126 Mark huband. ‘WMRC report blames Indonesian corruption for rise in piracy
in Southeast Asian waters’, Financial Times, 14 Feb. 2004.
127 ICC IMB, ‘Organised maritime crime in the Far East’, p. 37: ‘One factor in-
hibiting the availability of information is the high-level patronage, both politi-
cal and personal, which some syndicates enjoy, giving them a high degree of
protection’.
162
small boats, weak states, dirty money
2.0 (Somalia no data but 2.1 in 2005). By way of comparison, two coun-
tries that suffer from the effects of piracy but are taking action against it
score more highly: Malaysia 5.5 and Singapore 9.4.
128
Even in cases of the most basic common piracy, people other than the
pirates will know about their activities, will benefit from them or be forced
to tolerate them.
129
e more money a gang makes the more sophisticated
its methods need to become in order to manage and protect its operations;
inevitably more people will come under its influence, many of them will-
ingly, forming the modern equivalent of peter Earl’s “unscrupulous men”
prepared to bend the rules for a profit. ese men are to be found not only
in the states bordering pirate seas but in developed countries because, as
Louise Shelley points out, much of the profit of transnational crime flows
overseas to states where criminals could not operate without the expertise
of local bankers, lawyers and accountants who either serve, or fail to exer-
cise due diligence over, their client’s activities.
130
Links to organised crime
piracy is as much a land-based activity as it is a marine activity. In fact,
so long as states persist in seeing piracy as largely sea-based, rather than
a land-based problem with a maritime dimension, then it will continue
to flourish. Experience throughout history has shown that pirates cannot
survive without land-based support. e crucial difference between com-
mon and organised piracy is not to be found at sea but in the scale and
sophistication of the networks that sustain them from the land, the social
and political effects these networks have there and, consequently, the na-
ture of the political environment that tolerates or even supports piracy and
other criminal activity. Corruption becomes more important to piracy the
more connections a gang has to wider criminal networks: corruption and
organised crime are rarely separable.
Defining organised crime is a difficult as defining piracy or terrorism.
e Global Action plan against Organised Crime, adopted at the World
Ministerial Conference held in November 1994, did not define it but did
list what it regarded as its six principal characteristics: a group organised to
commit crime; links that enable leaders to control it; the use of violence,
128 e Index is available at http://www.icgg.org/corruption.cpi_2006_data.html
129 Vagg, ‘Rough seas’, pp. 65 & 68-9.
130 Louise I. Shelley, ‘unraveling the new criminal nexus’, Georgetown JIA, Winter/
Spring 2005, p. 6.
163
contemporary piracy: irritation or menace?
intimidation and corruption to earn profits or control territories or mar-
kets; the ability of a group to launder its proceeds of illicit activities and use
these to infiltrate the legitimate economy; its ability to expand into new
activities and beyond its own national borders; and, finally, its ability to
cooperate with other organised crime groups. e more elements of this
description a group displays, the more it could be said to be an organised
crime group.
131
e skills and assets of organised piracy gangs are likely to be of inter-
est to diversified transnational criminal organisations (TCOs) or, to give
them their alternative name, transnational organised crime (TOC) groups.
Given their inherent mobility and flexibility, ships and boats can perform
a multiple of roles. A fishing boat can serve legal and illegal fishermen just
as well;
132
it can also be used as an attack boat or be used to smuggle drugs,
arms or migrants. With care it can do any of these things without changing
its appearance or its operating pattern enough to arouse suspicion.
Colombian drug smugglers have demonstrated the level of sophistica-
tion that criminals have already attained in their use of the sea. In order to
reach the united States, narcotics smugglers appear to use two methods.
e first employs a combination of commercial-sized vessels and “go-fast”
speedboats. Commercially-sized vessels sail west of the Galapagos Islands
to points as far as 2,000nm (3700km) from the Colombian or Ecuadorian
coasts where they transfer the cocaine to go-fast boats, typically about
50 feet (15m) in length with closed hulls and powered by three or four
inboard or outboard engines, which then run for the coasts of Mexico
and Central America guided by GpS and refuelled on the way from pre-
positioned, makeshift tankers.
133
Alternatively the drugs are taken to inlets
along the Colombian coast where they are loaded aboard go-fast boats that
then run directly to destinations in Central America and Mexico. ese
131 Schmid, ‘e links between transnational organized crime and terrorist crime’,
pp. 43-4. Also Louise Shelley, John picarelli and Chris Corpora. ‘Global crime
inc’ in Maryann Cusimano Love, Beyong Sovereignty: Issues for a Global Agenda
(2
nd
edn.), Belmont: Wadsworth publishing, 2003, pp. 145-7.
132 Illegal fishing is a serious problem in northern Australian waters, for example.
e Australian fisheries minister, Eric Abetz, ‘says the boats were purchased by
organised crime gangs and staffed by Indonesian villagers’:
‘Australia detains
more Indonesian boats’, ABC Radio Australia, 17 July 2006 and ‘Australia links
organized crime to illegal fishing’. Reuters, 26 May 2008.
133 Chris Kraul, ‘Ecuador’s divided loyalties’, LA Times, 15 Jan. 2007; Jeffrey J.
hathaway and Terry R. McGee, ‘MDA support to the drug war’, Coast Guard
Proceedings, Fall 2006, pp. 17 & 18.
164
small boats, weak states, dirty money
go-fasts, which are usually painted blue to blend with the sea and sit low
in the water to minimise radar contact, also need to be refuelled from
pre-positioned boats in order to complete their journey.
134
To facilitate
the boats’ landfall Mexican cartels are reported to have bought coastal
farms, in Nicaragua for example, to provide themselves with secure sites
in the knowledge that the Nicaraguan navy has few assets with which to
interdict their operations.
135
e Mexican navy is similarly ill-equipped
and ill-trained to deal with this organised criminal onslaught.
136
While weak or “failed” states can provide pirates with useful sanctuary
and secure operating bases, they are very unlikely to be the headquarters
of the “organising minds”. ese will be elsewhere. Even if the pirates, the
“dumb infantry” in these operations, are caught, and even if the trail of sus-
picion leads back to the “organising mind” the complexity of international
extradition, coupled with the fact that the act of piracy itself would have
been perpetrated in international waters, means these “organising minds”
are effectively immune from prosecution. In addition, they may well have
some form of political influence, and can therefore count on benign indif-
ference or even either open or tactic political protection.
137
e journalist
Abby Tan quotes Freddie Clemo, a British marine insurance agent based
in Manila, speaking about the problem in 1996: “Everyone’s in it. Gov-
ernments are openly against piracy. But so many rice bowls are involved.
[Governments] don’t want to break them.”
138
Little of what is known about the organised crime groups involved in pi-
racy has entered the public domain. e “organising minds” behind some
pirate groups or, at least, some pirate activity appear to be individuals or
syndicates that almost certainly engage in legitimate business as well. In
other cases the “organising mind” appears to be a TOC group. In Asia sus-
picion has been directed at both Chinese Triads and Japanese yakuza, but
the prime movers behind piracy might well be local and less well-known
“mafias” based in several states. In every case, piracy appears to be one of
a number of criminal activities alongside, or subordinate to, others such
134 Andrew Selsky, ‘Cocaine smugglers using high-tec boats’, AP, 7 Nov. 2005.
135 héctor Tobar, ‘Drug smugglers reroute shipments via Central America’, LA
Times, 4 March 2007.
136 ‘Mexican navy reorganized for fighting drug trafficking’, Contralinea, 1-15 Jan.
2008.
137 Anderson, ‘piracy and world history’, p. 84
138 Abby Tan, ‘In Asian waters, sea pirates eschew eye patches, steal ships via Inter-
net’, Christian Science Monitor, 13 June 1996.
165
contemporary piracy: irritation or menace?
as human smuggling, arms running and drug trafficking. In 1989, for ex-
ample, Eric Ellen claimed that ships could be stolen “to order” in Manila
harbour and that if an “extra” fee was paid the necessary documents could
be obtained without difficulty from a “flag-of-convenience” state. he sug-
gested that the gangs involved in ship stealing were also involved in drug
running, rackets exploiting the “boat people” and, quite possibly, “phan-
tom ship” frauds.
139
One of the men involved was “Captain” Emilio Changco. he is sus-
pected of organising every major ship hijacking and “phantom ship” fraud
in philippines waters between 1980, when the MV Comicon and her 25
crew disappeared, until 1992, when he was arrested and the hijackings
stopped.
140
In the years in between he could be contacted in a hotel over-
looking Manila Bay from where he organised ship hijackings, including the
disposal of the crews, for which he charged around $300,000.
141
It was said
that clients could stand at his hotel window and choose which ship they
wanted.
142
Amongst the ships, numbering at least nine and very probably
more, that Changco, who worked with his brother Cecilio,
143
was known
to have hijacked were the Isla Luzon, taken off Mindanao in 1989 and
identified by chance a year later in puzan, South Korea renamed the Nigel;
the Silver Med, seized in 1988, which went through four names changes be-
tween its capture in September and its recovery by philippines Customs in
January 1989; and the Tabangoa, captured in 1991, which was sold later in
Singapore as the Galilee. Changco died while trying to escape from prison.
he apparently climbed over a wall and was observed running away, an ac-
count which aroused suspicion because he suffered from bone cancer and
walked with a cane. Following his death questions were obviously raised
about what he might have been prepared to reveal.
144
139 McDaniel, ‘Modern high seas piracy’, p. 12.
140 Abhyankar, ‘Maritime fraud and piracy’, p. 179. On the Comicon see ICC-
IMB, ‘Organised maritime crime in the Far East’, p. 20.
141 Abhyankar, ‘Maritime fraud and piracy’, p. 179; Menefee, TMV, p. 84; al-
though he does not mention Changco by name he describes his modus operandi
clearly.
142 ICC-IMB, ‘Organised maritime crime in the Far East’, p. 19.
143 For further details on the Changco brothers’ operations see the court testi-
mony at Republic of the philippines Supreme Court, GR no. 111709, 30 Aug.
2001.
144 hepburn, e Black Flag, pp. 291-2; Teresa Albor,. ‘Killers on the high seas’.
Sunday Morning Post, 2 May 1993 and conversation with Eric Ellen, Sept.
2007. For fuller descriptions of the ships taken see Abhyankar, ‘Maritime fraud
166
small boats, weak states, dirty money
Transnational crime groups have in many cases adopted management
methods similar to those of modern business. ey have the ability to operate
flexibly, to seek out opportunities that offer the least resistance and therefore
potentially the greatest profit. In those periods when piracy is the subject of
intense law enforcement interest in its areas of operation, or when the mar-
kets for pirated goods offer insufficient reward (perhaps also because of police
pressure), then they can invest in other criminal or even legitimate activities
until law enforcement attention has moved elsewhere.
145
e relationship between the “organising mind” and the pirates varies
between countries and between regions. In Bangladesh local mafias appear
to be heavily involved. In Somalia the assumption has been that the pirates
were answerable to a very small number of warlords, who were involved in
the country’s politics, and who were involved in their turn with others at
the country’s highest political levels and overseas. In Nigeria corruption
is so endemic that identifying what groups might exercise control and on
whose behalf is almost impossible.
146
What is known is that Nigerian crimi-
nal activity is widespread not just within Nigeria but across Africa, Europe
and North America and is sufficiently well organised to have won powerful
shares in major criminal activities such as fraud, counterfeiting, drug run-
ning, gambling, prostitution and oil “bunkering”.
147
In Southeast Asia, when vessels have been hijacked and, in some cases,
turned into “phantom ships”, fraud and piracy can merge. In June 1979
the Salvage Association set up an ad-hoc working party called FERIT (Far
East Regional Investigation Team) which later that year published its con-
fidential, industry report.
148
e team was funded by various marine insur-
and piracy’, pp. 178-9; Menefee, TMV, pp. 83-4, and on the Silver Med spe-
cifically Carpenter and Wiencek, ‘Maritime piracy in Asia’, pp. 82-3. See also
ICC-IMB, ‘phantom ships’, section 6; ICC-IMB, ‘Organised maritime crime
in the Far East’, pp. 72-3 on the Isla Luzon and p. 68 on the Silver Med. Also
NGA ASAM 1989-6, 1 July 1989 on the Isla Luzon.
145 Tamara Makarenko, ‘Transnational crime and its evolving links to terrorism
and instability’, Jane’s IR, Nov. 2001, p. 24; Mark Galeotti, ‘e new world of
organised crime’, Jane’s IR, Sept. 2000, p. 47.
146 Last, ‘Tempting riches of Nigeria oil crime’.
147 Jonathan Winer, ‘Nigerian crime: Testimony before the house Sub-committee
on Africa of the house International Relations Committee’, Washington, DC,
11 Sept. 1996.
148 F.E.R.I.T. Report. ND. is report is extremely difficult to obtain, however,
George Lauriat, ‘Awash in an ocean of dollars’, FEER, 16 Nov. 1979, pp. 66-9
provides a reliable account of its main points.