11 - Bilateral and Regional Initiatives to Curb Acts of Maritime Terrorism and Piracy in the Region

Summary

It is my intention to examine the maritime threat potential in South and Southeast Asia and draw attention to some of the trends in regional/ bilateral initiatives by which the countries in the region are planning to secure their maritime interests.

There have been a few important developments in the maritime dimension especially in the last five to ten years. To the immediate south of India, the foremost threat comes in the form of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which has been extremely active on the high seas. Not that it is a new phenomenon. In fact, the very sustenance of this guerrilla force has been largely dependent on the use of both the territorial waters in and around Sri Lanka, and the adjoining high seas. The importance of the seas to the armed struggle by LTTE is indicated by the speech of the its leader (Velupillai Prabhakaran) during one of the Heroes Day speeches in which he had this to say:

Geographically, the security of Tamil Eelam is interlinked with that of its seas. It's only when we are strong in the seas and break the dominance our enemy now has that we will be able to retain land areas we liberated and drive our enemies from our homeland.

Realising the importance of sea communication, LTTE created its own sea logistic group by investing in merchant ships with dual use. They were registered in Flags of Convenience countries and were used for legitimate and illegitimate trade. These ships were used in the past for picking up military hardware for LTTE from arms markets around the world. It was also reported that they were involved in the drugs trade to finance their arms deals. It is known and recorded that many of the arms purchases were made in Southeast Asian countries. Let me cite as an example the case of MV Yahata. It left Phuket with a huge weapons cargo for Karachi in January 1993.