Piracy, Maritime Terrorism and Securing the Malacca Straits

9. Maritime Piracy in Southeast Asia: The Evolution and Progress of Intra-ASEAN Cooperation

Maritime Piracy in Southeast Asia 163 9 Maritime Piracy in Southeast Asia: The Evolution and Progress of Intra-ASEAN Cooperation Tamara Renee Shie Introduction Although maritime piracy is not a new phenomenon, it is one that has, over the last two decades, received increasing amounts of both media and political attention. This has been in part due to the transformation of security issues at the closing end of the Cold War and the spectacular rise in piracy attacks during the same time period. The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks brought further attention to the issue, as concerns over the mounting vulnerability of the international maritime transportation sector to piracy exposed an area ripe for terrorist exploitation. Piracy is considered to be one of the many new or non-traditional security issues to have emerged in the post-Cold War era. These issues “arise from factors or actors which are sub-state or trans-state in character, are diffuse, are multi-dimensional and multi-directional, cannot necessarily be managed by traditional military means, and often threatening to something besides the state.”1 This is very different from the traditional view of security, which focuses mainly on the external threats to a states’ 09 PMaritime Terrorism Ch 9 9/28/06, 2:25 PM 163 164 Tamara Renee Shie security. Due to the transnational nature of crimes like piracy, the actions of a single state or even a limited number of states are often inadequate to combat the problem. Non-traditional security issues require more than occasional bilateral security agreements; they often require consistent and comprehensive multilateral cooperation. For several reasons, Southeast Asia has emerged at the centre of the piracy maelstrom. First, the region hosts more piracy attacks than any other. In the 1994 International Maritime Bureau (IMB) Annual Report reported piracy attacks2 worldwide totalled ninety; with more than fifty per cent of those attacks in Southeast Asia. Since then piracy attacks have increased almost five-fold, reaching a worldwide peak of 469 in 2000, with a majority of attacks occurring in Southeast Asian territory: the South China Sea, the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, and in the ports and waters of Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Second, by virtue of their geographical location and relative efficiency, Southeast Asia’s ports and waterways are essential to international maritime trade. Six of the world’s top twenty-five container ports are located in Southeast Asia: Singapore, Port Kelang (Malaysia), Tanjung Priok (Indonesia), Tanjung Pelepas (Malaysia), Laem Chabang (Thailand), and Manila (the Philippines). Singapore currently ranks as the world’s busiest port, the second largest container port, and the third largest port when considered in terms of global cargo percentage. It is also the location of the third largest oil refinery industry in the world. Over 135,000 maritime vessels were reported to have docked at Singapore in 2003. Therefore, the seas of Southeast Asia are some of the most heavily traversed in the world, conveying goods between the markets of Europe, the Middle East, East Asia and North America. One quarter of the world’s commerce passes through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. Third, despite both national and multinational attempts, international stakeholders have become increasingly concerned over the failure to bring piracy in the region under control. Much of the past research on Southeast Asian piracy has more heavily acknowledged the anti-piracy efforts of extra-regional stakeholders, such as shipping companies or concerned nations like Japan and the United States over intra-regional unilateral, bilateral, or multilateral actions.3 Indigenous approaches, although mentioned, are implicitly regarded as inadequate and ineffective. Therefore, proposed solutions have often placed greater emphasis on the involvement of outside parties.4 This may be representative of a tacit consensus within the international community that because individual countries in the region and the regional 09 PMaritime Terrorism Ch 9 9/28/06, 2:25 PM 164 Maritime Piracy in Southeast Asia 165 TABLE 9.1 Southeast Asia Reported Piracy Attacks by Location 1991–2004 5 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Cambodia 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Indonesia 55 49 10 22 33 57 47 60 115 119 91 103 121 93 Malacca Straits 32 7 5 3 2 3 0 1 2 75 17 16 28 37 Malaysia 1 2 0 4 5 5 4 10 18...