Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Ayman S. G. (Yürütücü), Kalkan Ö.
NATO Destekli Araştırma Projesi, 2006 - 2008
Today
global security is inseparable from the security of global economy and all
developed economies are dependent upon on abundant supply of energy both in
terms of stable prices and guaranteed supplies. We observe an increase in the
number of the countries that rely on supplies traveling over enormous distances
either through pipelines or tankers. Many states including North America and
Europe are dependent on imported energy.
Currently about a million barrels per day have already
been transported via Baku/Tbilisi/Ceyhan oil pipeline towards the European and
American markets. The volumes of natural gas dedicated to the European Union
are relatively small up to 2011. With the termination of the phase one of Shakh
Deniz project in
Importing energy is not an easy process. Especially
when we consider the fact that energy corridors are located in areas of
increased violence like the Middle East, Africa and
The geographical location of
Sea is attractive environment for terrorists.
Trafficking in weapons, drugs and human beings via sea have been important
source of income for them. In addition, sea provides greater scope for acts to
disrupt economies of nation or region because huge amount of commercial
merchandise move by sea permanently.
These
risks gained new dimensions with the introduction of new technologies.
Terrorists have genuinely found a new and surprising ‘course of action’. In the
military sense, the under water or sub surface domain is a new medium of
warfare. Terrorists acquiring midget submarine and some swimmer delivery
vehicles could pose important threats to maritime security. For example, mine
lying in Estuaries would cause a huge environmental event (a 200,000 ton tanker
striking a
Currently there are no terrorist groups that are
solely involved in maritime terrorist attacks. However, there are even now
several terrorist organizations and there could be even more terrorist
groups in the future, which have a capability for committing acts of
terrorism in maritime domain. Defining maritime terrorism and evaluating
organizations acquiring capability (or will) constitute an important phase of
developing cooperation at the international arena. Most importantly because,
they help to create the necessary awareness about such threats among e the
policy makers, the national security and counter terrorism experts. Acquiring
such a level of consciousness is a prerequisite for developing national and
international capabilities for intelligence collection, physical security and
crisis management in order to be able to anticipate, prevent and neutralize
such threats and to deal with the resulting crisis if the threats do
materialize could be developed.
It
is worth to note that it is quite problematic to draw a line between maritime
terrorism and piracy. Piracy is a crime motivated by greed, and thus predicated
on immediate financial gain. Terrorism is motivated by political goals beyond
the immediate act of attacking or hijacking a maritime target. Despite the fact
that end goal for both terrorists and pirates are different, they might use the
same tactics of ship seizure and hijackings and same methods of terrorizing
their victims. The potential problems posed by sea-borne terrorism are most
severe in the 600-mile (1,000-km) long Straits of Malacca, transited by 50,000
ships a year, where piracy has long established roots.
The
challenge of terrorism is inseparable from the challenge of the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction. In the past, mostly state actors wanted to
acquire nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and missiles for their
delivery. These days however non-state actors (terrorist organizations and
groups) are also seeking WMD capabilities. Nonproliferation export controls is
one of the tools that contains spread of WMD technologies and equipment. –
including getting these technologies and equipment into the hands of
terrorists. As such, export control activities directly and indirectly help
fighting terrorism. Maritime export control activities have direct relevance to
fighting maritime terrorism. Coast guards that patrol national and
international waters are to be trained and equipped to detect smuggling of
conventional weapons and WMD components regardless of whether they are destined
to governments or to terrorist groups. In this respect, one of the most
effective programs is the Export Control and Related Border Security Assistance
(EXBS) program which is led and sponsored by the US government. Training and
equipping coast guards to enhance their ability to fight weapons proliferation
and maritime terrorism is one of the aspects of this program. The EXBS program
has helped more than 40 countries around the world to improve their ability to
prevent and interdict shipments of dangerous items and technologies by
providing a wide variety of practical assistance tailored to each individual
country’s needs. EXBS’s activities in Azerbaijan constitute an evident example
of effective fighting weapons proliferation and maritime terrorism.
The
presence of unresolved, potentially explosive separatist conflicts poses
numerous security threats to regional and international security. The access of
separatists to the sea and the proximity of this kind of conflicts to major
seaports and energy transportation routes raise further concerns. In case of
reoccurring armed confrontation, the separatists might try to partially disrupt
the maritime transportation or attack the oil terminals on the sea thus
inflicting significant political, economic or military damage to the opposite
side. Unresolved conflicts and uncontrolled territories pose a significant
threat to maritime security in Black Sea region. A vivid example to threats
emanating from separatist conflicts is the case of uncontrolled territory of
Abkhazia.
Nations in the
When
we examine the ways how we tackle with the problem of maritime terrorism we see
that effective maritime terrorism similar to effective counter terrorism on
land is dependent on intelligence collection capability, effective physical
security, a good crisis management capability in case the terrorist managed to
carry out an act of maritime terrorism. Moreover, effective maritime counter
terrorism depends on regional and international cooperation in the form of
intelligence sharing, mutual operation assistance, and mutual legal assistance
an affective enforcement of internationally agreed measures to cope with
maritime terrorism.
The existing agreements are outdated and do not
respond to new security challenges. There is an obvious need to better
interaction among the regional energy producing countries, energy consuming and
transit countries in order insure the security and safety of the
transportation.
Formulating a workable international
response to these threats also requires a comprehensive analysis on terrorism,
entailing social, educational and economic approaches. Given the rapid changes
and political strategies within the Black Sea and Caspian Sea basins, now is
the time to look to improve prevention and detection by way of the human
factor.