Preface

Summary

This book aims to answer these questions:

1. • Are Al-Qaeda, the world's most feared terrorist network, and like-minded extremist groups interested in using ships, ports, and the sea and land links in the global cargo container supply chain, for their own purposes?

2. • Is one of their aims to use a ship or container as a weapon to attack a major port-city or disrupt traffic in a key strait or waterway for international shipping, possibly using a nuclear or radiological bomb?

3. • If so, could such an attack slow or even halt seaborne trade, a vital engine of the world economy?

4. • What is being done to counter threats of maritime terrorism and how effective are the safeguards?

These questions may sound melodramatic. But the evidence gathered in this book shows that the threats to seaborne trade and its land connections, including ports and adjacent cities, are very serious and are being treated as such by knowlegeable officials, private sector executives and security analysts in North America, Asia, Europe and Australasia whose countries, trade, assets and people abroad may become terrorist targets.

Much is now known about the operations and plans on land and in the air of Al-Qaeda, its affiliates and emulators. This has been widely publicized. But less is known about the maritime-related activities of terrorist organizations which this book documents. Governments around the world are concerned not only that Al- Qaeda and like-minded terrorist groups will strike more frequently, but that they may strike with more powerful weapons in new ways, including via the sea.

As this book makes clear, Al-Qaeda aims to disrupt the seaborne trading system, the backbone of the modern global economy, and would use a crude nuclear explosive device or a radiological bomb to do so if it could get its hands on either and position it to go off in a port-city, shipping strait or waterway that plays a key role in international trade.

This book does not cover chemical or biological weapons, although both are of interest to Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups. While terrorists might use ships or cargo containers to smuggle chemical or biological weapons or poisons into a country for an attack, these toxins could not be effectively dispersed by ship or container and would need to be offloaded for final use.