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The Malacca Strait is a narrow waterway that extends nearly six hundred nauticalmiles fromthe Andaman Sea to the South China Sea, betweenMalaysia and Indonesia. The strait provides a vital shipping lane for vessels sailing from Europe and the Middle East to East Asia, as well as smaller vessels on local voyages. Unfortunately, when we think of the Malacca Strait, images of a waterway infested with pirates often spring to mind.
While this image could arguably have been justified in the past, it is now rather outdated. According to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), which produces quarterly and annual reports on piracy and armed robbery against ships, there were only three successful and four attempted attacks by pirates on shipping in the Malacca Strait in 2007.1 This low level of piracy has continued into 2008, with the Half Yearly Report issued by the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) Information Sharing Center in Singapore listing only one successful attack on a vessel in the Malacca Strait and three attempted ones.2 Considering that around ninety thousand vessels transit the strait on an annual basis, the proportion of ships being attacked in the waterway is extremely small.
With statistics such as these, one might wonder why we are still seeing the publication of articles such as one appearing in a recent issue of National GeographicMagazine, whose cover delares, "The Strait of Malacca, Dark Passage: Pirates Haunt It. Sailors Fear It. Global Trade Depends on It."3 There seems to be a failure, particularly outside the region, to keep pace with the change in the frequency of pirate attacks and the scale of the problem.While piracy has certainly been a concern in the waterway in the past,with reported attacks reaching seventy-five in 2000, the number of cases has been falling since 2005, largely as a result of a number of countermeasures introduced by the three littoral states of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. This decrease in attacks was achieved despite a 10 percent increase in cases worldwide.
This article will discuss the reduction in pirate attacks in the Malacca Strait and how the attacks themselves have changed over the last decade. Themeasures attributed to the reduction will then be discussed, as well as...