The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
The Strange Terrorism Threat From Cambodia
by James Dunnigan
March 14, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
The war on terror is often a police operation. This means that you soon find
that you have a list of “the usual suspects.” One of the strangest of those is
the Cambodian merchant marine. For example, the mysterious freighter that took
on an unknown load in North Korea recently, and is bound for an uncertain
destination, seems to have a Cambodian registry. Cambodia only has 211 vessels
registered that are 1000 tons (GRT) or larger. One would think that keeping
track of them would be easy, but the Cambodians have been having trouble for
quite a while. In the early '90s the Cambodia Shipping Corp., with offices in
Phnom Penh and Singapore, was given a contract by the Cambodian government to
handle its ship registration. The company offered online registration, which
made it easy to register a ship, with minimal verification of their ownership or
condition. This turned out badly. Cambodian registered ships were soon being
caught hauling cocaine, prostitutes, and sundry other shady cargoes. And then
there were the numerous accidents (a dozen in 2001 alone). In 2002, nine
Cambodian registered vessels were barred from calling at European ports, out of
a total of 66 sub-standard vessels of all types (oil tankers, bulk carriers,
chemical tankers, passenger), from all nations that were blacklisted (Turkey
came it at 26 and St. Vincent at 12). In the first four months of 2002,
Cambodian flag vessels accounted for nearly 15 percent of the 332 ship
detentions by Japanese port authorities. The Cambodians also began to worry
about the possibility that a ship bearing their registry might be used in a
terrorist attack, or to transport terrorists, thereby angering such aid donors
like the U.S., Japan, and China. Therefore, beginning that same year, the
government began trying to get rid of ships of dubious lineage. Meanwhile,
Cambodian merchant ships continue to attract well deserved scrutiny from navies
and coast guards involved in counter-terrorism work.
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