Conflation of Piracy and Terrorism in Southeast Asia: Rectitude and Utility

Abstract

Introduction In March 2003, the New York Times reported attacks on several chemical tankers in the Strait of Malacca region by assailants with automatic weapons. (1) Two of the ships were sprayed with bullets, while another was boarded silently. While some attributed the attacks to terrorists, it was later revealed that the perpetrators were apparently only after equipment and other valuables. In other words, they were pirates, albeit unusually violent ones. A significant portion of incidents worldwide occur in Southeast Asia. (2) And since the events of 11 September 2001, the conflation of and has become common in the mass media and government policy statements, both within and outside the region. (3) But and terrorism may have different causes, objectives and tactics and thus may require different responses. This paper examines the rectitude and utility of the conflation of and into a single general threat to security. The precise definition of piracy/pirates and terrorism/terrorists has been problematic for national and international policy-makers alike. The standard international legal definition of is that used in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982 UNCLOS), Article 101, which was in turn borrowed from the 1958 United Nations Convention on the High Seas. (4) Here is defined as on the high seas, that is, beyond any state's territorial waters. The obvious problem with this definition when applied to Southeast Asia is that most robberies occur in territorial waters. Thus such incidents are not legally considered piracy. There is therefore no international agreement regarding prevention of, and enforcement against, most maritime violence or sea robbery, and arrest and prosecution is dependent on the state in whose jurisdiction the crime occurs. The process is further complicated in Southeast Asia because uncertain or unresolved boundaries complicate the question of legal jurisdiction over the crime. To address these problems, the International Chamber of Commerce's International Maritime Bureau (IMB) has defined as act of boarding or attempting to board any ship with the intent to commit theft or any other crime and with the intent or capability to use force in furtherance of that act. (5) This very broad interpretation includes almost any at sea. We will use the IMB definition as a working definition of for this paper. Terrorism is also a complicated concept and definitional consensus has been difficult. For the purposes of this paper the working definition for terrorism is that of piracy (6): ... any illegal act directed against ships, their passengers, cargo or crew, or against ports with the intent of directly or indirectly influencing a government or group of individuals. (7) This definition does not address issues such as state sponsored terrorism, and criminal activity associated with terrorism, but it will suffice as a working definition. and Maritime Terrorism: A Typology Maritime raiding in Southeast Asian waters dates back to the earliest polities like Srivijaya, Malacca, Aceh, Johor, Makassar, and Sulu, (8) Piracy was a complex socio-political-economic activity whose legitimacy was often justified by trade rivalries and even warfare. The political aspects of this early are not easily understood in the Western context. The closest equivalent was the privateering undertaken with approval from rival states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or the activities of piratical petty states that dotted the ancient Mediterranean. Thus the pirates of Southeast Asia did not often fit the Blackbeard criminal image. Trade was a vital dimension of polities in Southeast Asia, much as it is today, and protecting that trade, or destroying the trade of one's rivals, was a political as well as an economic tactic. …