POLITICAL & CRIMINAL VIOLENCE
Jul 09 2009
Targets include Government, military, law enforcement and in-country infrastructures and key related personnel; high net worth individuals and significant financial, industrial and business enterprises, including maritime concerns. The threat of hijacking aircraft for the purpose of passenger ransom, or used as a weapon of destruction (e.g. 9/11), has always been high on the list of risks and so, increasingly, is the hijacking of cargo and passenger shipping for ransom purposes, and the very real possibility of using container ships as platforms (Trojan horses) in which to deliver conventional improvised explosive or CBNR devices.
As the effect of coordinated allied counter-terrorism strategies and tactics start to impose themselves on the protagonists of national and international political violence, they are turning their attention increasingly towards targets of a more iconic, maritime nature. For example, recent attempts to hijack the American owned ships Maersk Alabama (container ship) and cruise ship MV Nautica, serve to highlight the fact that the continued and increasingly viable widespread hijacking of high value vessels is irrefutable. It is therefore reasonable to assume the terrorists and pirates who carry out the protagonist’s bidding now realize, by virtue of the fact that, through gaining experience with every hijack, they increase their capability and, with it, the wherewithal to increase their remit to exploit more ambitious targets. Hijackers have already managed to hijack cargo ships in excess of 150,000 tonnes, and now have the experience and opportunities to hijack vulnerable, major prestige cruise ships, passenger liners, and high net worth individuals such as the owners of Super Yachts, their crew and passengers and, also, Round the World Yacht Race crews. All of which will offer them much higher value returns in pursuit of their malevolent objectives.
Although the MSC Melody, MV Seabourn Spirit, MV Balmoral and MV Nautica were small vessels by comparison with most cruise ships and passenger liners, the pirates have already proved capable of boarding and hijacking much larger vessels, for example the Maersk Alabama and the Sirius Star (tanker – 166,000 gross tonnage), which shows size no longer matters if the prize is right. It must therefore be accepted that, as the threat from maritime political violence increases, there is a far greater need now than there has ever been in the past, for appropriate, proportional and cost effective marine risk management and loss prevention.