[Kabar-indonesia] LAT/Malacca: A welcome voice in a sea of chaos

[Joyo at aol.com]

Los Angeles Times
November 13, 2006

A welcome voice in a sea of chaos

When pirates attack in the Strait of Malacca, and they often
do, besieged ships get quick advice from a Malaysian veteran
of the crises.

John M. Glionna, Times Staff Writer

photo: On the Lookout: Malaysian military policeman Hasnon
bin Aron helps protect ships as they pass through the Strait
of Malacca, whose waters are regarded as the most pirated in
the world. Photographer: John M. Glionna Los Angeles Times

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- NOEL CHOONG was working late the
night he got the distress call: Just off the Malaysian coast
in the darkness, a Japanese tugboat and barge were being
attacked by a dozen pirates armed with AK-47s and rocket
launchers.

The 154-man crew aboard the barge Kuroshio was frantic. As
the vessel churned slowly northward through choppy waters of
the Strait of Malacca, headed for Myanmar, it had suddenly
been surrounded by three fishing boats.

The armed men stormed the little tug. Shots were fired. The
captain and two others were taken hostage. The desperate
barge crew plotted a rescue mission to free their shipmates,
who were being held with guns to their heads.

A slender, tough-to-ruffle figure in his mid-40s, Choong
urged the crew not to try anything stupid. "The pirates had
high-powered weapons," he said later. "We told them: 'You're
unarmed. You can't fight guns.' "

As his staff radioed for help from Malaysian marine police,
Choong stayed on the phone with the terrified seamen.
Pirates may be oceangoing desperadoes driven by poverty or
greed, he assured them, but they usually are not killers.

Unless, that is, they were cornered or provoked.

"For that crew, this was a night from hell," Choong
recalled. "I was just trying to be their friendly voice of
reason."

Choong is a pirate catcher, a maritime crisis negotiator who
handles the high-anxiety drama of modern-day pirate attacks
in real time. He's also a detective, a high-seas sleuth with
a host of shadowy shipping industry informants he uses to
run down hijacked ships.

In the outlaw Strait of Malacca, whose waters are considered
the most pirated in the world, his services as director of
the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Center
are in near-constant demand.

The 550-mile-long channel, flanked by Singapore and Malaysia
to the east and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the
west, is one of the world's most strategic international
waterways and its busiest shipping lane. Each year, 60,000
vessels, the equivalent of nearly half the world's entire
merchant fleet, negotiate the funnel-shaped shortcut between
the Pacific and Indian oceans. They range from mammoth
supertankers as large as city skyscrapers to tugs and
barges.

Such seaborne commercial traffic attracts a sophisticated
brand of piracy that has moved far beyond the scabbards and
cutlasses of the 17th century.

Many are opportunists, Choong said, impromptu gangs of poor
fisherman who can't resist the allure of lumbering, unarmed
vessels laden with cash and goods: "They realized that
robbing unarmed sailors is a lot easier than robbing a
bank." Others are more ambitious and well-organized,
professionals who plunder ships for crime syndicates,
warlords, corrupt government officials and even regional
terrorist groups.

IN recent years, Choong says, emboldened pirates have become
more sophisticated. They forge passports and other documents
to turn working maritime vessels into slave- and drug-
running ships. They use satellite phones and global
positioning systems.

With high-speed fiberglass boats, they creep up from behind,
using the cover of the ship radar's blind spot. With
grappling hooks and expert climbing skills, they scale the
vessel's mooring ropes and overpower isolated and vulnerable
crews.

The pirates don't just use the cover of darkness. They also
take advantage of national sovereignty laws.

Knowing that marine police must observe territorial
boundaries, flotillas of fishermen from such places as
Sumatra or freelance commandos from the Indonesian navy
ambush ships and then race back to the safety of their
sovereign waters, often just a few miles away.

In a trick from centuries ago, pirates may disguise
themselves to approach wary vessels. Some pose as marine
police, uniforms and all, doing routine checks.

Shippers have retaliated: In the Strait of Malacca, vessels
use powerful water hoses to blast would-be boarders off the
deck or to swamp the boats below. Some post mannequins
dressed in overalls and hard hats to give the impression of
a larger crew. Captains of smaller boats spread carpet tacks
on their decks at night, hoping to slow pirates, who often
attack barefoot to give themselves a better grip and to
minimize sound.

Bigger boats illuminate decks with floodlights and travel in
a zigzag to create a wake to sink small boats. Day and
night, the more watchful captains use closed-circuit TV to
monitor the water around them. Some hire armed commandos for
security, because in the anarchy and take-care-of-your-own
credo of the high seas, isolated ships in jeopardy know they
cannot expect help from another unarmed craft.

Many pirate attacks are hit-and-run robberies. In others,
crew members are kidnapped for ransom, even tortured and
killed. Countless vessels have been hijacked, their
nameplates and paperwork swiftly changed, and turned into
ghost ships used by syndicates for drug and slave smuggling.

Authorities estimate that only 10% to 30% of pirate attacks
are reported. Still, in the last five years, 195 attacks on
seaborne vessels in the Strait of Malacca have been logged,
including 49 kidnappings and seven deaths. More than $1
million in ransom was paid last year by owners of ships
transiting the passageway, statistics show.

BY 2005, the shipping gantlet had become so dangerous that
Lloyd's of London declared the strait a high war-risk area
for insurance purposes, citing its "war, strikes, terrorism
and related perils." The advisory was lifted this year after
Singapore and Indonesia began coordinated air and sea
patrols.

Although the last 12 months have brought an uneasy hiatus,
Choong says recent incidents suggest piracy may be back --
with an ominous new wrinkle.

In July, armed attackers boarded two United Nations-
chartered vessels carrying tsunami relief supplies. In the
first incident, six men in military fatigues brazenly
stormed the ship before noon, one of the first reported
daylight raids.

The next day, a dozen heavily armed men claiming to be
attached to the Free Aceh Movement, an Indonesian separatist
group, commandeered another U.N. ship. The same week, a gang
of 35 pirates with machine guns and rocket launchers seized
a fully loaded gasoline tanker and kidnapped its captain. He
was later released with the vessel.

Choong and others believe such instances suggest the
possibility of a major terrorist attack in the Strait of
Malacca, which slices through the heart of a region rife
with political and religious unrest.

International security experts also fear that militants
might commandeer a giant crude oil tanker for use as a
floating bomb.

JUST a mile and a half wide at its narrowest point, the
strait is a crucial maritime choke point. Experts say
terrorists could sink a huge tanker at a narrow juncture,
wreaking environmental havoc and bringing international
maritime commerce to a halt.

Though experts differ on its likelihood, some say the idea
is not farfetched.

"If someone in 2000 said people could hijack planes and fly
them into the World Trade Center, critics would have said,
'Oh, that's not going to happen.' But some incidents suggest
terrorists are looking at the Malacca Strait," said John
Brandon, director of the Asia Foundation, which monitors
U.S.-Southeast Asia relations.

"Pirates recently hijacked and tried to learn to steer an
oil tanker in the Malacca Strait. That raises a troubling
question: Why do they want to learn to steer?"

Choong has given briefings to global investigative agencies
such as Interpol and to anti-terrorism officials from
numerous countries, including the United States.

His assessment is troubling.

"Singapore is vulnerable -- it's very pro-West and
surrounded by Muslim nations," he said. "Militants could
cause environmental damage and cripple the world economy.
What more could a terrorist ask for? Everything is there."

Choong came to the piracy reporting center in 1997, no
stranger to the sea. As a former chief officer and merchant
marine, the soft-spoken Chinese-Malay, who grew up here,
knows the fear that pirate attacks inspire.

A religious man who doesn't drink or smoke, he maintains a
coolly professional anger against sea robbers and bandits
who torture, kidnap and kill his fellow seamen. His
employer, the International Maritime Bureau, is part of the
Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce, whose fight
against piracy is mandated by the United Nations.

>From his 35th-floor office in a Kuala Lumpur high-rise 100
miles from the choppy waters of the strait, Choong keeps a
bunkered-down mentality, always ready for the next pirate
attack. The walls of his reception area are covered with
world maps that bear red pins to mark the latest plunders.

Choong's purview is worldwide, from the troubled waters off
Somalia and Bangladesh to the ungoverned South China Sea,
but the Strait of Malacca is his most constant headache.

His role is not to make arrests or conduct criminal post-
mortems after attacks. Rather, he runs a sort of 911 service
for seaborne vessels under siege. Through daily situation
reports, his agency offers vessels an early-warning system,
giving crews a heads-up that they are entering waters with
recent pirate activity.

He has also developed a network of informants, shipyard
workers and fishermen who peddle tips to help track down
hijacked ships. Many contacts are criminals, so Choong takes
precautions: He's never photographed. Some family members do
not know his job. He changes his route to work.

In delving into Asian organized crime syndicates, he and his
team meet shadowy characters in big-city airports and dense
jungles.

He wants information and he's willing to pay, money that
comes from ship owners and insurers. "We tell our informants
we can't guarantee their safety -- and some do get killed.
There's nothing we can do about that," he said.

"We don't get personal with them. That way we can live with
it if they die."

Choong has been threatened. One source told him he could
have anyone killed for $500. "I knew what he meant, and it
scared me," he said. "But I tell these people that if you
kill us, new people will be hired. If you bomb our
headquarters, a new one will be built. You can't close us
down."

Despite such threats, Choong's war against piracy goes on.
Some battles end better than others.

ON that night in March 2005, when bandits attacked the
Japanese tugboat Idaten and its construction barge, the
Kuroshio, Choong urged the barge crew by phone to take
pictures of the pirate vessels for evidence.

For nearly an hour, the pirates held the tugboat's captain,
chief engineer and a crewman at gunpoint. Then, sometime
before midnight, the armed invaders fled with the three men.
As Malaysian marine police escorted the tug and barge to
port, Choong alerted the ship owner to begin the delicate
task of negotiating the release of the hostages.

Over the next few days, the owners, along with Japanese
government officials, kept up a dialogue with the pirates.

Meanwhile, the hostages were spirited among fishing boats,
and finally taken to the jungles of southern Thailand.

After the ship owners paid an undisclosed ransom that Choong
described as "way above market value," the men were
released, but the pirates escaped. The saga made headlines
-- with scant mention of Choong. And that's the way he likes
it.

"This time nobody died," he said. "Still, it's a dangerous
game."

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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