Confronting All Ten Modalities of Maritime Terrorism
By Ian Ralby
May 06, 2023
Maritime terrorism remains a nascent field, and some have even argued that it is not actually a field at all. Regardless of any academic squabbles, however, terrorists have used and are using the maritime domain in a variety of ways, and it is critical for all security and counter-terrorism professionals to be not only aware of how terrorists exploit the maritime domain but prepared to counter them in doing so. Given the time-sensitive nature of preventing terrorists from being successful, it is critical to understand their maritime efforts, so as to be able to identify them as early as possible, and then intervene. Examining terrorist behavior in the maritime domain reveals at least ten different modalities, all of which could be considered “maritime terrorism.” A simple taxonomy of these ten variants allows law enforcement, security, and counterterrorism to start the critical process of first developing approaches for spotting maritime terrorist activities, then developing protocols and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for intervening in that activity, then exercising those protocols and SOPs, and finally implementing them to thwart terrorist activity. While it is the national prerogative of states to determine how they are going to tackle the problem of terrorism, this analysis seeks to support policy makers, security planners and maritime operators by articulating what modalities of maritime terrorism need to be addressed.
Prof. Curtis Bell of the U.S. Naval War College has argued, when it comes to maritime terrorism, “we cannot mistake the most spectacular for the most significant.” In this spirit, categorizing terrorist engagement in the maritime domain can allow security professionals to better identify such activities and develop effective responses to them, regardless of whether they involve an actual attack.
Given the disparity in how states, organizations and instruments define terrorism, it is perhaps useful to highlight what is meant by maritime terrorism. Maritime terrorists are criminals who use violence, intimidation, or serious disruption to create terror, fear, uncertainty, or chaos in pursuit of political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, or religious aims with some nexus to the maritime domain. As the following ten modalities highlight, this nexus varies. The first three are the “spectacular” attacks on the water or on land. The subsequent six are more subtle and, as a result, often harder to detect. And the last is a blurring that we are seeing more and more between “state sponsored” terrorism and states directly engaging in terrorist attacks themselves. All ten, however, should be pursued and interdicted as maritime terrorism.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/05/06/confronting_all_ten_modalities_of_maritime_terrorism_897900.html
