Changing Face of Sea Piracy in the Eastern Indian Ocean Region: Examining India’s Role in Maritime Cooperation

There is hardly any dispute that the Eastern Indian Ocean like its historical past is once again emerging into a ‘cosmopolitan’ maritime arena underpinned by long stretches of peaceful exchange of commodities, energy and other maritime accessories. It has witnessed a new constellation of ‘inward-looking’ regional powers with a ‘bazaar nexus’ (for mercantile goods and energy supply) with Asian and nonAsian powers. Economically, small and middle powers of this region do share and accommodate all to draw the benefits of a highly globalised ‘closely-knit’ mercantile system. Problems relating to trade hazards— ‘maritime mugging,’ ‘sea piracy,’ ‘illegal transfer of arms and ammunition, maritime terrorism, has already been addressed adequately by the collective effort of member nations under the aegis of ASEAN. This goodwill effort in the maritime zone awaits response from the cultural domain as well, which still lacks its frequency and luster of the glorious past. Although loads have been talked about, there has been little in action. The present paper is an attempt to study the community building efforts of ASEAN in connivance with emerging powers like India and China; and efforts at building up an Indian Ocean community as it existed in its past—sans feuds, sans fight—but unhindered exchange of culture and trade.


Introduction
From 'simple adventurers' to 'commercial merchants' and later 'crude explorers' groping for new pathways to fortune, the Eastern Indian Ocean centered upon the Bay of Bengal and stretching down to the Malacca Straits, the South China Sea and beyond has represented a unique 'integrated world' alluring merchants, mariners, soldiers and poets for time immemorial.
Initially, merchants from South and Southeast Asia carried cargos from the 'Spice Island' to markets around the Bay of Bengal to entrepots in South India and Sri Lanka. These were later trans-shipped in Arab and Persian craft to ports in Persian Gulf, Arabia and the Red Sea. With commodities also came cultural and religious influences. What started as a 'well integrated' 'interregional' political, economic and cultural activity, gradually gave way to 'rampant vandalism' and 'forced incursions' unleashed by the Europeans [more so by coming of the British in the 18 th century] that literally crumbled {but never stopped} the commercial activities across this Ocean.
The sudden 'gush' of colonialism put the Ocean on a back seat and brought human activity to the forefront. Gory fights ensued between the 'indigenous people' and their colonial masters who successfully tore apart the entire Indian Ocean Region into separate regional entities-the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia.
The Europeans {mostly the British} stripped this Ocean off its unified cultural and religious identity. Although economic activity still exist centering the nodal junctures of this part of the Ocean-the Malacca Straits, the Sunda, Lombok Straits and the South China Sea, it has been juxtaposed with new complexities of the present era.
The present study attempts to examine the incidence of sea piracy along the Malacca Straits that has drastically come down to only two attacks by the first quarter of 2008. This success has been largely attributed to a) constant naval patrolling by the littorals straddling the Straits; b) Coordinated commitments of extra-regional powers to arrest this menace; c) ASEAN's success as a full-fledged legal entity with expanding room for 'constructive engagement' and its commitment towards building up an ASEAN community and a common market by 2015; d) Increased involvement of India, as New Delhi's 'clean image' has given her a calling role to address the incidence and growing brutality of sea piracy, maritime terrorism and gun running in this area. So, after 50 years of independence of most of the countries along the Eastern Indian Ocean, we find a renewed attempt at forming an Eastern Indian Ocean community with all its past attributes of an economic, political and amateur cultural entity. It's only a matter of time to see this goodwill gesture spread across the entire Indian Ocean region from the Malacca Straits to the Persian Gulf.

The Malacca Straits
Since 1991 the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) identified the Southeast Asian waters as most vulnerable to piracy attacks accounting for 57% of the actual and attempted attacks reported globally. In the first six months of 2002, of the 171 incidents reported worldwide, the highest 44 came from Indonesia itself. The attacks vary from stealing valuables from the merchant vessel crew to seizing a ship's entire cargo or the entire ship itself. Three types of piracy have been underpinned by scholars so far; a) Habor and anchorage theft-The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) defines these types of assault as low-level armed robbery-an opportunist attack on a ship mounted close to land by small high-speed craft crewed by 'maritime muggers' armed with knives. Their targets are usually cash and portable, high value personal items with an average theft between $5,000 and $15,000.
b) Ransacking and robbing of vessels on the high seas or in territorial waters. The IMB defines these types of assault as medium-level armed assault and robbery-violent attacks of robbery involving serious injury or murder by well-organised gangs usually heavily armed and working from a 'mother ship'.
c) Hijacking of vessels to convert them for the purpose of illegal trading-the so-called 'phantom ship phenomenon'. This type of piracy involves methods in which vessels are first seized; their cargoes are off-loaded into lighters at sea. The ships are then fraudulently re-registered, the cargo is never delivered to its intended destination, but transferred to another vessel or taken to an alternate port where it is sold to prearranged buyers. The IMB defines this type of assault as a major criminal hijack-well resourced and planned international criminal activity using a large gang of highly trained men including terrorist groups active in the area. The hijacking of Alondra Rainbow in 1999 is a classic example of the involvement of organized crime in the hijacking of ships. 2 While sea piracy has been endemic to this region for hundred of years, the significance of post Cold War piracy lies in its frequency and in growing brutality of the crime. According to the former director of IMB, Captain Mukundan, "the incidents of hijacking have increased dramatically since 2000," and these are serious and violent attacks committed by organized criminal syndicates. "Crew members are often abducted or injured and both the ship and cargo worth millions of dollars are often stolen," Mukundan said. Out of the 72 casualties reported in 2000, 57 deaths were due to attacks by terrorists rather than pirates, as 17 sailors died on the USS Cole and 40 deaths were due to a bomb explosion abode a ferry in the Philippines.

Problems in Combating Maritime Crime
While poverty, unemployment and gross deprivation maybe logical explanations behind such high incidence of piracy in the region (this may not be a sufficient explanation for terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya where their recruits are selected from middle-class backgrounds), most of the unilateral efforts of the littoral states to combat the menace has been incapacitated by weak law and order, corruption, lax immigration controls, political subordination of large segments of the population and pressure of separatist/terrorist groups threatening disintegration of the core ASEAN countries. Besides, the problem of state jurisdiction has further complicated the problem of sea piracy and maritime terrorism in this area. In most cases the state concerned has to call off the chase because of the suspect vessels easy access to a neighboring national boundary where no agreement of 'passe comitatus' has been signed. The May 1992 Royal Malaysian Police marine chase against a stolen trawler preying on other vessels substantially illustrates this fact. The Malaysians were forced to call off the chase when the suspect vessel entered the Philippines water. As no agreement of passé comitatus was signed between Manila and Kuala Lumpur it worked to the advantage of the fleeing trawler. To add on, most acts of 'sea robbery' in Southeast Asia takes place in the territorial waters that are not covered by Article 15 of the 1958 Geneva Conventionwhich defines piracy as an act that in some ways endanger the safe navigation of a ship on the high seas. 6 Even the naval resources of the region's coastal states suffer acute scarcity. According to the IMB, Thailand possesses only 60 coastal patrol and combatant craft, Indonesia 57, the Philippines 54, Malaysia 37 and Singapore 19-these being insufficient to cover their respective territorial waters.

Efforts at Combating Maritime Crime
Post 11 September/2001, most of the countries having woken up to the reality centering the increasing vulnerability of the SLOCs (reports confirmed that the Al Qaeda owned some 20 terror ships in the Asia Pacific region) came up with some 'quick response' to arrest the problem. The Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) for instance established the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) in November 2005. This coast-guard type organization providing sea-going constabulary services funded with an initial budget of $75 million is mainly used to acquire radar and patrol boats to coordinate naval and police operations to deter terrorism, piracy and illegal immigration, environmental and pollution control and aid search and rescue efforts.
In July 2003, the Indonesian Navy (TNI) announced plans to consolidate it Eastern and Western Fleets into a single command in order to simplify command and control. The establishment of a Naval Patrol Command Centre (Puskodal) at Batam and Belawan with special forces were equipped to respond to armed attack from pirates and terrorists. It also launched Operation 'Gurita' which resulted in the arrest of several pirate gangs and seizure of six boats in the latter half of 2005. 7 As far as Philippines and Thailand is concerned, in 2003 the Philippine Navy created a fifth regional force in eastern Mindanao creating three commandos in areas troubled by Islamic insurgencies. The Royal Thai Navy (RTN) with strength of 12,000 personnel is taking all necessary steps to upgrade its maintenance and support capability through the acquisition of large aircraft and replenishment ships. A major addition to the RTN Fleet is the 11,400 tonne displacement vertical/short-off landing carrier, the Chakier Naruebet, which is the first air-capable vessel to enter services in Southeast Asia.
Suggestions have also been made to secure ships through the Secure-Ship and Ship Loc system. While Secure-Ship is a non-lethal electrifying fence (9,000+ volts) surrounding the whole ship, ShipLoc is fully complaint with the IMO regulation SOLAS XI-2/6 adopted during the diplomatic conference in December 2002. It's an inexpensive satellite tracking system which allows ships over 500 GT in case of danger, to activate an alarm button and automatically send a message to the ship owner or a competent authority. 8 Where unilateral measures to curb maritime atrocities have more hurdles to cross, the bilateral and multilateral measures of the Southeast Asian littorals to arrest maritime terrorism are truly commendable. Here, of special mention is the role played by ASEAN and other extra-regional powers including India. The subsequent section attempts to examine the above hypothesis.

Bilateral & Multilateral Cooperation
While each nation of maritime Southeast Asia has been busy strengthening their naval forces, the three littorals straddling the Malacca Straits-Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore felt the need to coordinate efforts to ensure the maritime security of the region.

ASEAN's Role in Maritime Security
This 42 year old regional organization has adopted a Charter in December 2007 and fully committed itself to evolve into a security, economic and socio-cultural community and a common market by 2015. Often criticized as a 'nascent' security community based on the 'ASEAN Way' of abiding to the principles of non-interference in each other's internal affairs, pacific settlement of disputes and respect for one another's territorial integrity as underpinned in the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) signed in 1971, ASEAN's diplomatic coherence and convergent purposes have been severely weakened by the economic crisis of 1997, East Timor's disintegration from Indonesia, the 'haze' problem and in dealing with various non-traditional security issues that gripped the region in the post Cold War period. Even last year ASEAN has been accused of doing little to address bilateral conflicts-between Thailand and Cambodia over an ancient Buddhist temple located near their boundary; Indonesia and Malaysia's dispute on the Ambalat Sea off Sulawesi over the question of rights to oil and natural gas; ASEAN's inability to influence or shape the course of events in Myanmar where pro-democracy forces have been put down by the military and Aung San Suu Kyi has been kept under house arrest for years. All these have brought ASEAN's reliance on 'consultation and consensus' under the scanner as scholars have pointed out that if sovereignty or non-interference in internal affairs is going to be upheld in bilateral disputes, then how ASEAN can aspire to become a security community? Hasn't ASEAN reached a stage after 42 years where it could dare to go beyond the norms of respect for absolute sovereignty and noninterference? 10 But the very fact that the organization has succeeded to keep the region free of any major inter/intra-state military conflicts, while it has involved major countries around the world as dialogue partners through the ASEAN Summits, ARF, ASEAN+3 and East Asia Summit, proves that 'ASEAN in the driver's seat has been reasonably skilled and steady." ASEAN in July 1998 decided to practice "flexible engagement" among its member states on non state-centric threats. At the third ASEAN Informal Summit in Manila on 28 November 1999, ASEAN accepted Thailand's proposal to establish "the ASEAN troika" as an ad hoc body at the ministerial level so that 'ASEAN could address and cooperate on issues affecting regional peace and stability. 11 In the maritime arena, to address the problem of sea piracy and terrorism, by May 2002, ASEAN adopted a Work Plan by Special ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Terrorism in Kuala Lumpur. Among its commitments included calls for: a) Establishing a compilation of national laws and regulation of ASEAN member countries pertaining to piracy and armed robbery at sea, enabling a regional repository of such laws and regulations to be made available on the ASEAN WEB. India, Australia and Japan besides Singapore were among the regional powers who participated in the naval exercises, deploying some of their state-of-the art warship at the exhibition. 12 On 19 June 2003 the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) issued a Statement on Cooperation against Piracy and Other Threats to Maritime Security. It recognized that piracy and armed robbery against ships and the potential for terrorist attack on vulnerable sea-lanes threatens the Asia-Pacific region and that regional cooperation efforts are necessary to combat transnational organized crime. It also endorsed ongoing efforts to establish a legal framework for regional cooperation to combat sea piracy and to consider proposals to have prescribed traffic lanes for larger ship tankers with coastguards or naval escorts wherever possible on the high seas. 13 Even in tackling the issue of the South China Sea, ASEAN exercised its external institutional balancing strategy-first, through the official communiqué passed in July 1992. China has often followed a dual approach in dealing with ASEAN. On the one hand under its New Security Concept it follows friendly and cooperative relation with most of the Southeast Asian nations. On the other hand, it does not let outstanding issues be forgotten. Its disputed claim over most of the islands of the South China Sea and its naval installations at Pescardores (Pengshu), Pratas (Donghsa), Paracels (Xisha), Spratly's; its 'Myanmar policy' of building the regimes infrastructure and fulfilling its need for small arms supply-primarily aimed to get an easy route from Yunan to the Indian Ocean has created much hiccups among the regional countries. 15 In response ASEAN has been quick to pursue "soft balancing" by extending the involvement of Japan, India and Australia {with US as an observer nation} as a thinly disguised way to reduce China's influence in the region, on the one hand, while enabling "constructive engagement" through ASEAN's shift in emphasis to ASEAN+3 (with There's no doubt that China's relation with Southeast Asia have been and will continue to be marked by a mix of competition and collaboration. China's rising power remains a big concern for ASEAN as it seeks avenues to deal with security challenges from China through a mix of deterrence and cooperative security approach -its highest level of formal institutional cooperation well apparent in the case of the South China Sea Declaration of 2002. China had to succumb to ASEAN multilateralism on a subject that it had previously insisted on resolving on a bilateral basis. In fact, ASEAN in addressing other outstanding maritime issues (non-traditional and nonstate centric issues) have sowed the seeds of Karl Deutsch's notion of an Asian "we-ness" highlighting all the traits of a 'matured' maritime community. 1718 ASEAN through the Work Plans, maritime exhibition and Statement on Cooperation against Sea Piracy and other threats to maritime security, involvement of extra-regional powers to jointly patrol the SLOCs have tactically desuritised post Cold War maritime atrocities from the state level to the security-level. This has minimized the institutional dilemma between ASEAN and non-state centric issues. If this trend followed in addressing other nontraditional security issues, this can easily enable ASEAN's ascendancy from a 'nascent' to a matured' security community in the years to come. 19 A closer look at the role played by USA, Japan and India will further help us to understand the all comprehensive maritime balancing act carried by ASEAN at the regional, sub-regional and extraregional level.

Role of US, Japan and India to combat Sea piracy & Maritime Terrorism
Post 11 September 2001, US initiatives undertaken to ensure the security of the Malacca Straits include the Container Security Initiative (CSI), the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and the Regional Maritime Security Initiative (RMSI). The 2006 US Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR) emphasizes plans to deploy stealthy B-1 and B-2 bombers to Guam and to move an additional carrier battle group totaling to six throughout the Pacific and Indian Ocean, along with 60 per cent of the US submarine force. 20 It has also come up with a concept of a '1,000 ship Navy'. According to experts "the fleet is a global maritime partnership that unites maritime forces, port operators, commercial shippers and international, government and nongovernmental agencies to address mutual concerns. The United States Pacific Command (headquartered in Hawaii) has an area of responsibility (AOR) which stretches from the west coast of the US to the east coast of Africa. There are about 40 countries in the AOR; the US has formal treaties with six countries-Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines.  Although former President Bush's preoccupation with Iraq/Middle East had distanced USA from this zone, enabling an ambitious China to fill the 'big-power' vacuum. But ASEAN through institutional adaptability have aptly 'mediated' the impacts of a new regional order set by Beijing. Here, the ARF accommodated "the more benign aspects of world order while keeping its more interventionist aspects at bay" by "tying the US presence to the region but trying to dilute US influence through diffuse and highly consensual mechanism." 22 (US has been scrapped from major Asian arrangements-ASEM, East Asia Summit, Chiang Mia Initiative, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation). This institutional balancing strategy has helped smaller countries to integrate and accommodate an irredentist China and limit US unilateralism.
For USA, Japan has been the indispensable ally and counter-balance to China in East Asia. ASEAN has welcomed this alliance, initially as a reassurance that Japan would not become an independent military force as it was during the Pacific War and more recently Tokyo is being seen as a significant contributor to sea lane security.
After 9/11, the Japanese Coast Guard became a fourth branch of Japan's armed forces. This is significant for Southeast Asia because it coincided with Tokyo's expanded antiterrorism legislation that authorized the dispatch of navy ships to the Indian Ocean to fuel American and British vessels bound for Afghanistan. By 2006, the Japanese Coast Guard along with the Navy has been actively involved in securing the safety of the sea-lanes as Japanese merchant ships and freighters have also been subject to piracy in the Asian waters. (the Alondra Rainbow incident in 1999, when a Japanese cargo ship was hijacked off the Indonesian waters which was later retrieved by the Indian Navy. Agencies meeting in Tokyo, primarily aimed at tackling the problem of piracy, maritime terrorism and unlawful acts at sea with an intention to ensure maritime security and uninterrupted flow of seaborne trade. 24 However, so far Japan's most successful contribution has been in the form of the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP), the first government-to government agreement to enhance the security of regional waters. Its initiative aims to enhance multilateral cooperation among 16 regional countries, namely the ASEAN plus Japan, China, the Republic of Korea, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to combat sea piracy and armed robbery against ships in the region. It includes an authoritative definition of "armed robbery against ships" and provides for the establishment of an Information Sharing Centre to be located in Singapore. 25 Japan's maritime cooperation shows that although Tokyo is a close ally of the US, it is keen to play an independent role in the Asia-Pacific. This has been culminated by, India's relationship with Southeast Asia has just started to deepen in the last several years as it has adopted it "Look East" policy spurred both by an attraction to East Asia's economic growth and by a desire to escape the constraints of South Asia. Gradually New Delhi has seen itself ascending from the sectoral dialogue partner status (1992) to a full While some scholars would make us believe that US competition in the Asia-Pacific region is actually China-centric with New Delhi being used as a 'buck' to keep an eye an irredentist China, it would be good to propose an Asia-centric theatre where a Chinese pole with its ties to Pakistan, Iran, Myanmar and an Indian pole with its ties to the core ASEAN members, Japan and smaller Pacific countries will chalk the future activities of the entire IO region with USA playing the role of an 'observer nation' (as it recedes to a new-isolationist facade) in this zone.

CONCLUSION
Albeit the power game, there is hardly any dispute that the Eastern Indian Ocean like its historical past is once again emerging into a 'cosmopolitan' maritime arena underpinned by long stretches of peaceful exchange of commodities, energy and other maritime accessories. It would witness a new constellation of 'inward-looking' regional powers with a 'bazaar nexus' (for mercantile goods and energy supply) with Asian and non-Asian powers. Economically, small and middle powers of this region would share and accommodate all, (even adversarial postures) to draw the benefits of a highly globalised 'closely-knit' mercantile system. This 'economic goodwill' will spill-over to other comprehensive security domains-humanitarian assistance during natural calamities, addressing problems relating to AIDs, incurable diseases, environmental hazards, to name a few. Even problems relating to trade hazards-'maritime mugging,' 'sea piracy,' 'illegal transfer of arms and ammunition, maritime terrorism, would call for a collaborative approach with no scope for any maritime balance of power or dominance of any particular power (inside or outside). Here ASEAN would be the hub and leader of a wider Asia-Pacific peace-keeper, calling for a durable peace, a nonhegemonic order (according to Amitav Acharya) 29  Indeed the goodwill that has flown into the economic domain needs to percolate the cultural domain, which still lacks its frequency and luster of the glorious past-where two-way movement across borders were well evident in the historical relics, cultural activities (theatre, poetry), religiosity and scholarly exchange. Although loads have been talked about, there has been little in action. It will take quite sometime before the Indian Ocean can be truly termed as 'a hundred-horizon' an interregional arena. 30 Of course, in the traditional maritime domain, the trend would be typically realistic with the two emerging giants-China and India competing and containing for maritime superiority. But this trend, although worrisome for other middle and small powers of the region would never escalate into a major conflict keeping in mind the 'trade benefits' that looms high over both India and China and the historical truth characterized by an Indian mandala system that was non-invasive in nature. The Indian kingdoms that emerged in 'Farther India' enjoyed only ties of tradition with Indian dynasties; there was no political dependence-and a Sinic tributary system that was merely aimed to influence politics and derive short-term economic advantage, but with no real control over people or land. 31 And above all the presence of ASEAN that has enabled to keep any outstanding conflict situation at bay.