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?"
