Murphy Martin. Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money. Piracy & Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World
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maritime terrorists
fore, must be on identifying what secondary motivations can be fulfilled
at sea—a focus, moreover, that is reinforced by the recognition that ter-
rorists’ long term goals are often unattainable or poorly defined. Whatever
success terrorism can achieve can come about only as part of a broader
political strategy. Successful strategic effect requires a clear and realisable
political objective. Terrorism generally fails because the policy question
has not been answered with sufficient clarity.
435
It can also fail because the
link between the political direction and the terrorist application lacks a
shared understanding. As Colin Gray has put it: “As for the political vision
that should propel the entire process, it may lack practical connection to
behaviour in the field (for example, in the case of a united Ireland for the
IRA)”.
436
Given most terrorist groups’ lack of experience and poor under-
standing of the maritime domain, this link is likely to be particularly weak
when it comes to maritime operations, which helps to explain why so few
groups have operated successfully in that environment. Nonetheless, it is
possible that short term objectives, which Richardson groups under three
headings—revenge, renown and reaction—can be achieved at sea.
437
e desire for revenge is ubiquitous amongst terrorists.
438
ey want
their victims to experience in a physical way the pain and hurt that they,
in their own judgement, have suffered symbolically, politically or eco-
nomically.
439
Revenge is achieved most completely through killing or
such acts of humiliation as making kidnap victims beg publicly for their
lives. e targets certainly exist. ere are warships of oppressor states
such as the uSS Cole, and passengers on cruise ships and ferries such as
the Achille Lauro and Superferry 14. e modern equivalents of the Ger-
man industrialist hans-Martin Schleyer, who was abducted and mur-
dered by the Baader-Meinhof gang in 1977, or the politician Aldo Moro,
or both protagonists adopt ‘irregular’ methods: Julian S. Corbett, Some Prin-
ciples of Maritime Strategy, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute press, 1988; orig.
pub. 1911, p. 16.
435 Martin N. Murphy, ‘Terrorism and political effect’, unpublished paper, 2003,
p. 21; Richardson, What Terrorists Want, p. 85.
436 Colin S. Gray, ‘On strategic performance’, Joint Force Quarterly, Winter 1995-
96, p. 32
437 Richardson, What Terrorists Want, p. 80.
438 Ibid., p. 88; Martha Crenshaw makes the point that if there is a single com-
mon emotion that sparks terrorism it is revenge, for which there are numerous
historical examples: Martha Crenshaw, ‘e causes of terrorism’, Comparative
Politics, vol. 13, no. 4, July 1981, p. 394.
439 Murphy, ‘Terrorism and political effect’, p. 24.
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small boats, weak states, dirty money
who met a similar fate at the hands of the Italian Red Brigades in 1978,
exist on yachts or in coastal mansions, and while such attacks have not
happened as yet (and the potential targets are reported to have taken
elaborate precautions to ensure they do not) yachts have been attacked
and the Abu Sayyaf Group has snatched Westerners from coastal resorts.
Renown comes through publicity but in Richardson’s view it also in-
volves glory, the regard that is given to a terrorist group by its supporters
or peers as a consequence of a successful attack; the more audacious the
attack or the more symbolic the target, the greater the glory.
440
Attaining
this regard at sea is arguably harder. Mounting seaborne attacks demands
special skills. Attracting publicity can be difficult, as the Limburg incident
demonstrated, either for practical reasons such as distance from shore or
because such incidents have limited resonance with audiences for whom
the sea is an alien environment. Lastly reaction, any reaction, is welcomed
by terrorists. It demonstrates that their enemy takes them seriously, and if
it is oppressive can sometimes encourage a population to take their side.
An attack at sea, however, is unlikely to provoke a reaction at sea because
terrorists have little or no presence there. Yet a counter-attack on land is
also hard to provoke, as the Cole and Limburg attacks showed, as both
terrorists and counter-terrorists have difficulty in establishing a justifiable
link between the two mediums and placing the reaction in context.
As David Kilcullen has pointed out, groups such as Al Qaeda and
hizbollah use physical operations such as bombings and beheadings as
support material for their integrated “armed propaganda” campaigns. In
other words it is the “information” side of their operations that has pri-
macy, while the physical destruction and death are merely the means to
achieve a propaganda result.
441
e one noteworthy reaction to a mari-
time assault, the forcing down of the aircraft carrying the Achille Lauro
hijackers, ended unsatisfactorily for all concerned. Consequently, because
terrorists have not yet found a way of realising sufficient psychological ef-
fect from the sea to achieve political consequences on land, and because
the obstacles that inhibit success make reward more readily achievable
on land, terrorists’ reward at sea must derive in the main from other
sources.
440 Richardson, What Terrorists Want, pp. 94 & 95.
441 David Kilcullen, ‘New paradigms for 21
st
century conflict’, E-Journal USA,
May 2007.
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maritime terrorists
e obstacles confronting the maritime terrorist
When the phrase “maritime terrorism” is used three scenarios probably
spring to mind for most people: attacks on ports using large ships such as
LNG carriers, the use of containers to deliver weapons of mass destruction
(the “bomb-in-a-box” threat), and the use of small boats with bombs on
board to attack warships and tankers. e previous chapter discussed the
difficulties and obstacles that terrorists would need to overcome to fulfil the
first two scenarios. It is worthwhile now considering what obstacles they
would need to overcome if they were to employ what is believed to be the
most likely method they will use, a small boat to deliver an explosive charge
(the WBIED), and coastal raids, a method that has perhaps attracted less
attention than it should.
put very simply, terrorists have two broad categories of targets to choose
between: people and property. e value of any particular target from ei-
ther category increases if it has symbolic currency. Brian Michael Jenkins
asserted, some years ago, that terrorists want more people watching than
they want dead.
442
Except for the small but growing number of what have
already been described as “annihilation terrorists” who are prepared to
contemplate the man-made equivalent of mass-extermination events, this
remains true today.
443
Achieving theatrical death on land is clearly within the terrorist com-
pass. At sea it is more difficult. Death and injury to ships’ crews is hardly
newsworthy, as press and official indifference to the fate of crew members
442 Brian Michael Jenkins made this assertion more than once. See, for example,
‘International terrorism: A new mode of conflict’ in David Carlton and Carlo
Schaerf, eds, International Terrorism and World Security, London: Croom helm,
1975, p. 15. however, Jenkins has now reconsidered his position in the light of
new terrorist attitudes and the possibility that they could acquire WMD. See
Brian Michael Jenkins, ‘Will terrorists go nuclear? A reappraisal,’ in harvey
W. Kushner, e Future of Terrorism: Violence in the New Millennium, ou-
sand Oaks, CA: Sage publications, 1998, p. 249, also Terrorism: Current and
Long Term reats, RAND Testimony CT-187, Nov. 2001. Jenkins returned
to this notion more recently when he wrote that ‘weapons of mass destruction
have entered the terrorists’ imagination, if not yet their arsenal’: Brain Michael
Jenkins, ‘Redefining the enemy: e world has changed but our mindset has
not’, RAND Review, Spring 2004, p. 20.
443 Who has any doubt what Iran’s president Ahmadinejad, a wholehearted sup-
porter of terrorism, meant when he said that ‘Islamic countries’ must ‘mobi-
lise...to remove…the fake Zionist regime’ and warning that ‘an intense fury
will lead to a huge explosion’? ‘Iran’s Ahmadinejad calls for ‘removal of Zionist
regime’’, Agence France-Presse, 8 July 2006.
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small boats, weak states, dirty money
at the hands of pirates has shown. In order to kill large numbers of people
they need to be concentrated in one place. At sea such concentrations are
only to found on board cruise liners and ferries. Given the security meas-
ures that have been implemented in most major cruise terminals to prevent
internal seizure, a terrorist group’s most realistic current alternative is the
suicide boat crashed into the ship’s side.
e alternatives to attacks against people are attacks against economic
targets, which in the maritime environment means ships, ports, or fixed sea-
bed installations such as oil or gas platforms, oil or gas terminals, pipelines
or cables. Compared to aircraft, ships are strong and hard to blow up. Fixed
installations—oil platforms and terminals, especially because of the material
they handle—are more vulnerable simply because they cannot move.
however, driving a boat into even a fixed target is not the same as driv-
ing a car into a building. Roads are static; the surface of the sea is not. If
the maritime target is also moving the “relative motion calculus” becomes
substantially harder to compute.
444
Outside a harbour the problems grow
exponentially. Most terrorists are landlubbers; the sea is not what they are
used to. Training in navigation, coastal piloting and ship handling takes
time even if terrorists are able to draw on a maritime tradition. Training
needs to be supplemented by experience. Any operation has to take ac-
count of tidal movement, currents, wind, sea state, visibility, proximity to
land, underwater obstacles and the often unpredictable course changes of
other boats.
445
is knowledge, while applicable to all areas of the sea, is
also particular to the target environment. Knowledge of local sea condi-
tions and shipping patterns is critical. Terrorists like to place targets under
intense, long-term surveillance. ey also like to practice their attack pat-
terns. Both are particularly sensible preparatory steps in the unpredictable
maritime environment, but there are fewer places at sea where it is possible
to loiter discreetly than there are on land. Whilst it would be perfectly pos-
sible for terrorists to survey a target from a boat hidden in the middle of a
fishing fleet they would be conspicuous if the remainder of the fleet left to
follow the fish and they stayed behind. ey would be exposed equally if
they posed as sun-seekers on days without sun. Testing weapons and prac-
ticing the actual attack run could be equally problematic.
444 pelkofski, ‘Before the storm’, p. 22.
445 Ibid., p. 22. Although, as herbert-Burns points out, this unpredictability (for
which fishing boats in particular are notorious) could serve terrorists well when
they move to the attack phase of their operation: herbert-Burns, ‘Compound
piracy at sea in the early twenty-first century’, p. 105.
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maritime terrorists
e obstacles do not end there. Most terrorists are tactically conservative;
they stick to what they know works.
446
Experience has shown that grandiose
plans have often had to be scaled back.
447
Bruce hoffman has noted that
terrorists shy away from attacks that are complex and demand sophistication
in their planning and execution.
448
Operating at sea generally requires both;
attacking ships requires specialist knowledge, skills and equipment.
Yet it is the third obstacle that is likely to give terrorist planners the most
pause for thought. In degrees that vary according to their objectives, terror-
ists need an audience whatever star might be guiding them; otherwise, as
Benjamin Netanyahu memorably put it: “unreported, terrorist acts would
be like the proverbial tree falling in the silent forest.”
449
Jihadist attacks
in particular must, in Jenkins’ words, “offer good visuals, demonstrate
organisational reach and skills, cause heavy casualties, create terror, and
provide opportunities for individual heroism and sacrifice. Iconic targets
are desirable…”
450
For any attack where press coverage is the predominant
requirement, positioning the ship or timing the attack such that the media
can observe the event or readily cover its aftermath would certainly present
a problem. It would mean, almost inevitably, that the attack would need
to be carried out close to land, perhaps in a port or harbour. Some experts
would disagree: they assert that the increased resources of the international
media coupled with satellite communications mean that even if a cruise
ship, for example, were to be attacked in mid-ocean news teams would
be on site within hours.
451
is is possible but aircraft have only limited
endurance. Even those groups, such as Al Qaeda, that like to record events
for subsequent distribution would not find filming from a moving boat as
straightforward as filming on land. Consequently, for range of choice and
446 For a discussion of this see, for example, Bruce hoffman, ‘Change and conti-
nuity in terrorism’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 24, 2001, pp. 417 &
423-4 and Ehud Sprinzak, ‘e great superterrorism scare’, Foreign Policy, Fall
1998, p. 113. On the other hand hoffman sees the Achille Lauro hijacking as
evidence of innovation (though presumably inadvertent): hoffman, Inside Ter-
rorism, p. 198
447 Jenkins, Unconquerable Nation, pp. 82-4.
448 Bruce hoffman, Responding to Terrorism across the Technological Spectrum, Carlisle
Barracks, pA: uS Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 1994, p. 2.
449 Benjamin Netanyahu, ‘Terrorism and the media’ in Benjamin Netanyahu (ed.),
Terrorism: How e West Can Win, New York: Avon Books, 1986, p. 109. Also
Chalk, ‘Maritime terrorism in the contemporary era’, p. 21.
450 Jenkins, Unconquerable Nation, pp. 80-1.
451 Chalk, ‘Maritime terrorism in the contemporary era’, p. 23.
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small boats, weak states, dirty money
ease of access if nothing else, fixed targets on land have—and will remain—
the terrorists’ preference.
452
ere is, however, the halfway house option of raiding fixed land tar-
gets from the sea. e Sea Tigers have conducted what are, in effect, full-
scale amphibious assaults but a number of other groups, the palestinians,
the MNLF and the ASG have launched raids to kill people and capture
hostages. As there are so many economic and infrastructure targets such
as power stations, oil terminals and refineries, and mass casualty targets
that are readily accessible from the sea such as shopping malls, hotels and
exposed beaches, there must be some surprise that the tactic has not been
used more frequently. Raiders in most cases could launch their boats, spend
anywhere from 30 minutes and to several hours assaulting a target and then
make their escape before most of the world’s law enforcement organisa-
tions could mount an effective response.
When he was Britain’s First Sea Lord, Sir Alan West never wavered in
warning that maritime terrorism was “a clear and present danger” that could
“potentially cripple global trade and have grave knock-on effects on devel-
oped economies”.
453
he was not alone in issuing such a warning. While
there is no doubt that there are some potentially very worrying scenarios,
that is what they are: potential scenarios. e threat maritime terrorism
presents to international security, to the free flow of people and goods, as
opposed to threats in a specific and usually local context, remains, to date
at least, a low level problem. e public debate, the academic debate and
even the intelligence debate all suffer from “circularity”: we discuss possible
scenarios, they listen, we pick up their chatter which reflects what we have
been saying and we regard that as proof that our suspicions were correct. It
is important, in other words, not to exaggerate the threat.
454
452 For a fuller discussion of the pros and cons, and the reluctance of terrorists
to take to the water, see Chalk, ‘reats to the maritime environment’, p. 9;
Jenkins et al., ‘A chronology of terrorist attacks and other criminal actions’, pp.
63-85; omas S. Schiller, ‘Maritime terrorism: e threat’ in parritt
, Violence
at Sea, pp. 87-92 and pelkofski, ‘Before the storm’, pp. 21-2.
453 Michael Smith, ‘Navy steps up al-Qaeda anti-terror patrols’, Daily Telegraph, 26
Nov. 2002; Gordon omas, ‘Al-Qaeda’s suicide bomber navy poses real and
present WMD threat says Britain’s navy chief ’, bushcountry.org, 25 Sept. 2003;
‘First sea lord warns of al-Qaeda plot to target merchant ships’, Lloyd’s List, 6
Aug. 2004; Sean Rayment, ‘Navy chief has ‘too few ships to guard sea lanes
from terrorists’’, Sunday Telegraph, 7 Sept. 2003.
454 Mark J. Valencia is very clear that a few sensationalists have overblown the
threat. In his view the will might be there but the experience is lacking: inter-
view with author, 2004. Although the situations are not analogous, it is perhaps
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maritime terrorists
Why do terrorists use the sea?
Nonetheless, a small number of terrorist groups practice maritime ter-
rorism and another equally small group have shown interest in maritime
operations. Certainly terrorist targeting has demonstrated a displacement
pattern: as one target set is hardened they move on to another that is soft.
It has been suggested that as so many maritime targets are poorly secured
this would attract the terrorists’ attention. ere certainly are plenty of soft
targets at sea, but whether they are sufficiently accessible to displace land
targets in the hierarchy of terrorist preferences is questionable.
It is also important to draw a distinction between maritime terrorism and
maritime operations by insurgent groups more generally. From the position
that this wider perspective affords, groups can be seen to use the sea for three
purposes: terrorism, naval or proto-naval activity, and support operations.
Maritime terrorism has been a threat to a very limited number of coun-
tries: Israel, Sri Lanka, the philippines, Yemen, Nicaragua and what was
once the Spanish Sahara. until Al Qaeda attacked the Cole and the Lim-
burg no one else was greatly interested. Except in the case of Sri Lanka, the
threat was peripheral. It was the Al Qaeda attacks that briefly caught peo-
ple’s attention and, rather more enduringly, the attention of governments
and the maritime industry. When an attack on land is successful it captures
the headlines, which is what it is designed to do. When attacks have been
mounted at sea the results have been muted. Only those on the Achille
Lauro and the Cole have attracted significant international attention. at
terrorists themselves recognise this is reflected in the fact that so few have
taken place. Barring the sinking of a large cruise ship with thousands of
Westerners dead, another successful attack on a warship, the successful
delivery of a nuclear or RDD device to a major port, or the execution of
multiple and harmful attacks on the world’s transport system, this is likely
to remain the position.
Timing, admittedly, can be everything and a successful attack on an oil
tanker when supplies are tight would send tremors through the market.
putting it bluntly, however, terrorist groups are not Nazi Germany, able
to deploy submarines on a scale that almost brought Britain to the verge of
starvation. Terrorists want to instil fear, not just be a nuisance. unless they
worth recalling that the strong concerns expressed in the early 1980s about the
potential terrorist threat to offshore oil installations have so far not been real-
ised. See, for example, Jan S. Breemer, ‘Offshore energy terrorism: perspectives
on a problem’, Terrorism, vol. 6, no. 3, 1983, pp. 455-68.
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small boats, weak states, dirty money
take the strategic decision to cripple the global international shipping net-
work and commit the requisite resources, ingenuity and political acumen
to achieve that goal, given the relatively limited means at their disposal it is
not they who will defeat us, it is we who will defeat ourselves.
All political violence, war included, is concerned to achieve psychologi-
cal effect through the medium of physical force. In the case of terrorism
the balance is merely exaggerated because of the resource disequilibrium
between the protagonists. When the resources are more balanced and psy-
chological effect can be achieved only through substantial and sustained
physical destruction, then force needs to be concentrated. In such circum-
stances the insurgent group will begin to approximate more closely in terms
of strategy, tactics, technology and organisation to its regular opponent.
Concentration need not be about field formations; it can also extend, for
example, to the creation and utilisation of fixed base areas. If the insurgent
group is defeated because it has concentrated prematurely, then it will, if
it is still organisationally coherent, revert to irregular tactics and its previ-
ously dispersed organisational form. When forces concentrate they have
assets to protect and therefore devote more of their resources to defence.
On the sea only the Sea Tigers have evolved in this way. Because they
have assets to protect and need to guard the maritime flank of the territory
they hold, their current operational patterns are closer to those of a regular
navy than of a hit-and-run guerrilla group. In Sakhuja’s view the LTTE
have “all the attributes of a sea power” and amount to a “major non-state
maritime force.”
455
e palestinian groups in Lebanon were also moving in
this direction. Before the Israeli invasion of 1982 they were looking to buy
warships and coastal radars from the Soviet union and other states.
456
eir
ambitions were thwarted and they were forced to disperse.
e question then arises: if all these groups have found it difficult to
achieve the equivalent psychological effect from the sea that they can on
land and, except in the case of the LTTE, the risks of concentrating their
forces outweighs the potential gains, why are they still interested in mari-
time operations? e answer is that insurgents and other disaffected groups
need to move munitions and materiel and often men and money, in some
cases over long distances and in large quantities to support their land cam-
paigns. Almost by definition they have to move these things discreetly.
455 Sakhuja, ‘e dynamics of LTTE’s commercial maritime infrastructure’’, pp. 8
& 12.
456 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 163.
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maritime terrorists
Ships and boats can do both. e sea remains a vast space, but because
maritime traffic tends to follow predictable patterns this can mean the ves-
sel population in narrow waters can become almost innumerable. Finding
rogue vessels or, worse, rogue cargo amongst otherwise legitimate cargo
remains a formidable task. Any realistic assessment must conclude that the
advantage lies with the terrorist and insurgent (as it still does with smug-
glers) rather than with navies or law enforcement agencies. Even if a state
suspects that the ship of another flag state is carrying illegal cargo, while
it arguably has the right to board that ship with the master’s consent the
master does not necessarily have the right, depending upon the domestic
legislation of the flag state, to give permission for the ship to be searched.
If that permission is withheld, discretion is virtually guaranteed. States that
conduct searches without flag state consent or the authority of a uN Secu-
rity Council resolution leave themselves open to claims for compensation
and the risk of retaliation.
All insurgent and terrorist groups that use the sea share it with a wide va-
riety of criminals including smugglers, human traffickers, illegal fishermen
and pirates. Terrorists and pirates might or might not cooperate, but if they
share common interests they revolve around small boats, weak states and
dirty money. Terrorists and other criminals might or might not cooperate,
but if they share a common interest it revolves around discretion.