|
{PRIVATE}{PRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT=The New York Times"}
December 12,
2002
Warnings From
Al Qaeda Stir Fear That Terrorists May
Attack Oil Tankers
By KEITH BRADSHER
|
|
{PRIVATE}
|
|
{PRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT=A"}
Mr. Rahman, an
experienced Indonesian sailor, was getting ready to fight pirates and terrorists,
dangers especially great in this important waterway, the fastest route around the southernmost tip
of continental Asia.
A recent audiotape
believed to have been made by Osama bin Laden praised and seemed to take
responsibility for a suicide attack two months ago in which a speedboat packed with explosives
rammed and crippled a French tanker, the Limburg, off Yemen. Other leaders of Al Qaeda have
vowed to cut the "economic lifelines" of the world's industrialized societies.
The threats have
focused the attention of intelligence agencies and marine police worldwide on
the vulnerability of tankers. Representatives of most of the world's seagoing nations are meeting
in London to discuss how to keep ships safe from the long-term problem of piracy and the new
risks of terrorism.
"With the
attack on the Limburg, commercial vessels, especially vulnerable vessels like tankers,
are terrorist targets," said Pootengal Mukundan, the director of the International Maritime
Bureau, a United Nations affiliate that works with Interpol to combat seaborne crime.
Nowhere has the
concern been more acute than here in the Strait of Malacca, between Malaysia
and Indonesia. A quarter of the world's trade passes through the strait. That includes half of all
sea shipments of oil, bound for East Asia or sometimes the United States, and two-thirds of the
world's shipments of liquefied natural gas.
More pirate attacks
occur in Indonesian waters than anywhere else in the world. The pirates have
spies in ports to identify valuable targets, and sometimes confederates aboard as well.
Since Indonesia
has many radical Muslim groups with a history of violence, which have been
linked to the bombing in Bali in October, law enforcement and intelligence officials worry that
terrorists may tap the pirates' expertise to mount attacks on ships in the region.
Smaller tankers
like this 420-foot-long vessel, making slow trips through the strait while fully
laden with valuable cargos, run the greatest danger, Mr. Mukundan said.
The big fear is
that Al Qaeda might seize a ship and crash it into another vessel or into a refinery
or port.
Singapore, where
the Petro Ranger started its current journey, has the world's second-busiest
port, after Hong Kong's, so its government has taken the threat of terrorism very seriously.
As the ship began
inching away from the jetties of Singapore's immense refinery, where it took on
three million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel, a brown Singaporean F-4 Skyhawk fighter flew
overhead on combat air patrol, a precaution started after the attacks on Sept. 11 of last year.
A Singaporean Hawkeye
airborne surveillance plane circled twice over the refinery in the next
hour, while a half-dozen fast patrol boats with deck guns and a small gray warship cruised the
anchorage. One of the patrol boats escorted the Petro Ranger.
But once vessels
enter the Strait of Malacca they are essentially on their own. An hour from
Singapore, the Petro Ranger peacefully steamed past Iyu Kecil, a jungle-covered Indonesian
island that Mr. Mukundan described as a base for an organized crime gang that has been hijacking
small tankers to sell the cargos.
Three hours later,
the Petro Ranger sailed past Laboh Point, Malaysia, where the tanker's crew
had a close call just two months ago. A watchman on the deck of the Petro Ranger spotted a fast,
low boat with no lights within 100 yards of the stern.
The tanker's bells
sounded to wake the unarmed crew, a radio call went out to the Malaysian
coast guard and Istaque Hossain, the second officer, aimed a spotlight at the craft to signal to the
occupants that they would not take the Petro Ranger unawares.
The spotlight revealed
the boat to be packed with crouching men. "All of them were squatting,
coming very close in masks and full black body suits," recalled Fong Chung-chen, the Petro
Ranger's Malaysian chief officer. After it was caught in the light, the boat sheered off and
vanished.
Armed with machetes,
swords, even assault rifles and hand grenades, pirates often climb up the
stern of a vessel, using grappling hooks and rope or sometimes shinnying up thick bamboo poles
with hooks at the top. Pirates frequently choose the stern because it is low and because they are
unlikely to be seen by officers on the bridge watching the sea ahead.
Once aboard they
try to disable a ship's radio systems before the crew can send a distress signal to
local coast guard units.
Experienced sailors
say pirates consider fire axes and hoses to be fair defensive weapons, unlike
guns, for which they often punish ship crews. The axes are used to sever the pirates' grappling
hooks, and the hoses spraying water off the stern are supposed to make the pirate boats wet and
slippery platforms from which to mount an attack.
The pirate boats
are typically equipped with several outboard motors on the back, allowing them
to go up to three times as fast as the tankers, which lumber along at 11 knots, the equivalent of 13
land miles an hour. The pirates also use a low-tech version of stealth technology: they choose
boats made of wood, which are hard to spot on radar.
Laws in many ports
bar the equipping of tankers with deck guns. Many companies, including
Petroships Pte. Ltd., which operates the single-hull Petro Ranger and seven newer tankers, also
ban the crews from carrying guns.
"Let's say
we shoot at them," Mr. Fong said. "When they board they would kill us all. Once they
board we are finished — if we lock the doors, they break the glass" of the windows.
Four and a half
years ago, a dozen pirates swarmed aboard this tanker off the eastern coast of
Malaysia and took the crew prisoner. The pirates sailed to China to try to sell the gasoline and
diesel fuel, then worth about $2 million at wholesale prices. But a Chinese marine police vessel
discovered the tanker and freed the crew.
The International
Maritime Bureau's records show a decline in reported attacks against vessels in
the Strait of Malacca in the last two years.
Bureau officials
say that partly reflects the fact that fewer captains are reporting incidents, but
also some progress in combating piracy.
China has begun
keeping pirates out of its waters, notably by executing members of one gang that
murdered the entire crew of a vessel. Malaysia has purchased more fast patrol boats and has
identified some of the ringleaders of pirate gangs based in nearby countries, said Muhamad Muda,
the commander of Malaysia's marine police.
"We gave them
the warning that if they ever came into Malaysian waters we will apprehend them
and eliminate them," he said.
Indonesia, struggling
with a crippled economy, has proven unable to mount such an ambitious
effort. Intelligence officials say most pirates are based on the Indonesian side of the strait and buy
the collusion of villagers by sharing their loot.
A few shipowners,
notably Petroships' chairman, Alan H. J. Chan, say efforts to date have been
completely inadequate, and have begun calling for the formation of a small military force,
operating under a license from the United Nations, to patrol the strait.
"A big project
may cost millions but save billions, and save lives, too," Mr. Chan said.
But Malaysia and
Indonesia oppose the idea, arguing that intelligence gathering and law
enforcement ashore are just as important.
Additional patrols
might discourage pirates but will not stop terrorists willing to die for their
cause, Mr. Mukundan said. The International Maritime Bureau has begun calling for the creation
of special shipping lanes reserved for commercial vessels in waterways like this one, with military
force used to exclude fishing boats and pleasure craft.
"The only
way to stop it is to blow it out of the water before it hits the tanker," Mr. Mukundan
said. The United States and other countries have been leery of such a drastic response.
By 9 p.m. on the
second day of its voyage, the Petro Ranger was chugging across calm seas in
moonless, utter darkness. The nearest land was Tuan Point, Malaysia, where the captain of a
fishing trawler was kidnapped by pirates in broad daylight. He was later released unhurt.
Aboard the Petro
Ranger, Mr. Fong fretted over the radar. A long, thin fishing boat was barely
visible by its navigation lights, yet the radar showed no trace of it.
When Mr. Fong turned
up the radar, it showed a mass of reflections from every ripple on the sea,
and still no boat was discernible. The boat quietly passed around the stern of the Petro Ranger,
where it unexpectedly turned up on the radar, and then sailed off into the distance.
Two hours later
the Petro Ranger's 31-year-old engines began spewing clouds of sparks because
of a fuel mixture problem. The bridge officers were alarmed that sparks might blow onto the
cargo tanks, or that pirates might see the sparks as a sign of engine distress and pounce. It took
an hour for the ship's engineers to fix the problem.
After traversing
the narrowest and most dangerous 130 miles of the strait, the Petro Ranger safely
sailed up an estuary and docked at 6 a.m. at Port Klang, the main port for the Malaysian capital of
Kuala Lumpur. Mohda Hadapi, the Malaysian helmsman, was relieved after a nerve-racking night
of scanning a pitch-black sea.
His wife cries
each time he leaves, he said. "Pirates and now terrorists — after January, I'm going
to sign off, maybe find a job ashore," he added.
|
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
