The Future Maritime Operating Environment and the Role of Naval Power

There is, moreover, a major security concern attached to the proliferation of FOC. Some small
countries have allowed ships to be registered anonymously with the result that anything can be
transported, facilitating the efforts of criminals and terrorists to take advantage of the freedom of
the ocean commons. For example, there is speculation that al Qaeda and the Taliban used such
vessels to smuggle heroin and hashish from Afghanistan; the funds that were raised were being
used to support their global activities. 134 Despite a heightened awareness of risk, some maritime
countries remain opposed to greater coastal state regulation of the ocean commons. Barring a
paradigm changing event, effective regulation of FOC will continue to clash with a legitimate
desire by governments to expand trading opportunities.
3.5 Organized Crime and Piracy
Trans-national criminal networks and terrorists are increasingly capitalising on the freedom of the
ocean commons. Separately, each poses significant challenges to the maritime security interests
of almost all coastal states. Loss of customs revenue, control over immigration (through human
smuggling), and the illegal drug trade, directly threaten the ability of some governments to
maintain order within their borders. When such groups combine their efforts, the challenge that
governments face is exponentially increased.
For terrorist groups (including those that are state-sponsored), shipping can be a principal means
by which they obtain arms and other supplies. Despite a UN arms embargo on Iran, Tehran
regularly uses maritime means to transport weapons, including missiles, to its main proxy in
the Middle East (Hezbollah) and thereby contributes to the region’s general instability. 135
North Korea does much the same with the Gaza-based Hamas. 136 Accessibility to targets in
foreign lands via the sea is a further vulnerability that terrorists have proven willing to exploit.
The attacks on Mumbai (2008) and the failed attempts by Hamas to penetrate Israel by sea in
mid-2014 are two such instances. 137
Alongside the use of the maritime sphere to facilitate terrorist attacks, there is evidence of ties
between terrorists and organized crime that rely on use of maritime transport. Working together,
they have created a network for the movement by sea of illegal immigrants and for illicit trading
that provides income and weapons for some jihadist groups. 138 Jihadist organizations, such as
al Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS), are believed to be interested in maritime targets. A leaked
134 See Frank Shanty, The Nexus: International Terrorism and Drug Trafficking from Afghanistan (Praeger:
New York, 2011), p. 186, fn 55, Benjamin Weiser, “Manhattan Jury Convicts Man Linked to Taliban
Leader in Drug Smuggling Case,” New York Times, 23 September 2008, “Drug money sustains al Qaeda”,
The Washington Times, 29 December 2003, and Gretchen Peters, How Opium Profits the Taliban (US
Institute of Peace: Washington, D.C., 2009).
135 Guy Taylor and Maggie Ybarra, “Despite sanctions relief, Iran aids Hamas with missile technology”,
The Washington Times, 18 August 2014.
136 Victor Cha and Gabriel Sheinmann, “North Korea’s Hamas Connection: ‘Below’ the Surface?”, The
National Interest (online) , 4 September 2014.
137 See Alan Cummings, “The Mumbai Attack: Terrorism from the Sea”, Centre for International Maritime
Security online blog, 29 July 2014 [accessed on 8 September 2014 at http://cimsec.org/mumbai-attackterrorism-sea/12280]
and “Hamas terrorists killed by IDF on Israel’s Zikim beach”, Reuters, 9 July 2014.
138 See Richardson, A Time Bomb for Global Trade, p. 58 and 86 and Angela Veng Mei Leong, The
Disruption of International Organised Crime: An Analysis of Legal and Non-Legal Strategies (Ashgate:
London, 2013), pp. 22–23.
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