The pirates who could sink East Asia

Michael Richardson (Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore)

(This article originally appeared in the January 9, 2003 issue of South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and is reproduced here with permission from the publisher)

Singapore wants pirates, who often raid ships in Southeast Asian waters, to be treated as terrorists. In plundering a vessel, pirates frequently tie up the crew or lock them in cabins, leaving the ship on autopilot so they can escape without being pursued.
Singapore's Home Affairs Minister, Wong Kan Seng, who is in charge of the coastguard, said in a recent interview that terrorism camouflaged as piracy was a big worry in and around the straits of Malacca and Singapore, one of the world's busiest international sea lanes.

"If there's a crime conducted at sea, sometimes we do not know whether it's pirates or terrorists who occupy the ship, so we have to treat them all alike," he said. "It is difficult to identify the culprits concerned unless you board the ship."

The security of these straits is not just a matter of concern for the countries on either side of them: Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Northeast Asian economies should be apprehensive, too. The energy and raw materials that pass through Southeast Asian straits keep the economies of Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan humming. Without these seaborne supplies, the Northeast Asian regional economy would slow drastically, if not grind to a halt.

Japan and South Korea depend heavily on imported energy. More than 80 per cent of the oil that reaches Japan comes from the Persian Gulf, via the Malacca and Singapore straits. China may surpass Japan this year to become the world's second-largest crude oil importer, after the United States. Most of the oil reaching China from the Gulf and West Africa comes via the Southeast Asian straits.

Seventy-five per cent of global maritime trade passes through a handful of relatively narrow shipping lanes. These channels are geographic "chokepoints" because they are narrow enough to be blocked, at least temporarily, by an accident or an attack, including a terrorist operation.

Many of the vessels that use these straits and canals are laden supertankers, or carriers of ammonium nitrate, liquefied natural or petroleum gas, chemicals and other explosive, inflammable or dangerous material that could be attractive to terrorists as floating bombs or major sources of pollution.

Of all the major international straits, the Malacca and Singapore straits are the most vulnerable to attack and the easiest for a terrorist group to block, with the possible exception of the Turkish Straits. But the Malacca and Singapore straits are far more vital to global seaborne trade than the straits that bisect Turkey. The closure of this key waterway in Southeast Asia would disrupt world commerce.

Although more than 965km long, the Malacca and Singapore straits are congested and only 2.4km wide at their narrowest point in the Phillips channel near Singapore, one of the world's busiest ports. As many as 50,000 large ships use the waterway each year and that number is expected to double in the next 20 years.

If the Malacca and Singapore straits were blocked, tankers and other ships would have to use two alternative waterways through Indonesia. This would add as much as several days to some voyages between the Gulf and Northeast Asia. The US Department of Energy has calculated that if the Malacca and Singapore straits were shut, nearly half the world's fleet would have to sail further, generating a substantial rise in the requirement for vessel capacity, largely because of China's rapidly growing export-import trade.

If this were to happen today, when demand for ships exceeds supply, shipbuilding costs and delays would increase. Closure of the Malacca and Singapore straits would also increase freight rates worldwide. It would jolt the economies of Northeast Asia that rely on imported energy for continued growth. If the closure lasted for long, it could also be disastrous for Singapore's trade-dependent economy.

The Strait of Hormuz, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, is just as important for world energy trade as the Malacca and Singapore straits. Nearly half the world's oil and an increasing amount of its liquefied natural gas flow through it.

But this is much less important for non-energy trade than the Malacca and Singapore straits. It is also less vulnerable to closure than either the Southeast Asian waterway or the Turkish Straits because it is a lot wider and more tightly guarded.