Dire Straits

Scenarios of a terrorist strike in the strait vary, but they usually involve hijacking a tanker carrying chemicals, oil or liquefied natural gas. Blowing up an entire tanker is difficult—crude oil does not catch fire easily, for example—but it's not too hard to blast a hole in one so that its cargo is released, creating a maritime disaster. There's also the economic impact. When the oil tanker Limburg was attacked off the coast of Yemen in October 2002, insurance costs for calls to the country's ports rose by some $150,000 per ship. Such a situation would force shipping companies to make long detours around the strait, notes Dominic Armstrong, research chief for the London-based security firm Aegis Defence Services and author of a study on the dangers of maritime terrorism. "[That] could cause up to three or four weeks' extra shipping time," says Arm-strong, "the same period many companies have inventory for." Some firms could therefore find themselves with no goods to sell and no money coming in, producing a devastating—perhaps terminal—cash crunch.

Even without such scenarios, piracy in the Strait of Malacca is already exacting a human toll. "It's becoming more and more violent," says Noel Choong, director of the IMB's Piracy Reporting Centre. The cause is an outbreak of kidnapping for ransom by pirates in the strait, which most recently saw four sailors spirited away from a tugboat in October (two of the men are still missing). In the worst such incident, off the coast of northern Sumatra, four crew members were killed in January after negotiations between their kidnappers and the ship's owners broke down. "We have to do something about the kidnappings before they spiral out of control," says Choong.

As far as Teh Chor Joo is concerned, they already have. The 30-year-old Malaysian fisherman was on his usual night run for shrimp and squid a few kilometers off the western coast of peninsular Malaysia in June when his 9-m wooden vessel was approached by a rifle-toting group he assumed were policemen. "They fired some shots in the air and told me to get on their boat. They were young, about 25 years old, and grim-faced, looking like some gang from a movie, some of them wearing bandanas around their heads, all carrying rifles and a few with grenade launchers. I was really frightened. They told my brother to take our boat back and wait for a phone call."

That was the start of an eight-day ordeal for Teh, who stops to compose himself when he tells his story. Teh was taken to what he believes was a part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, then moved from one jungle clearing to the next each night, and hidden away during the day in the thick forest. One morning, Teh was finally bundled onto a boat and dropped off at gunpoint on a passing fishing vessel that returned him to Malaysia. (Teh and his family insist that no ransom was paid.)

Kidnappings like Teh's have spread fear in his fishing village of Kuala Sepetang, which is about 200 km north of Kuala Lumpur. "This is the first time one of our fishermen was taken," says local politician Chua Tiong San. "It's like having a baby snatched from the front room of your house." Chua surveys the scores of wooden boats bobbing on the murky green waters of the Sepetang River. "Now the whole town is too scared to go out to sea," he says sadly. "Look at all the boats tied up when they would normally be working. We are at the mercy of the pirates." So, it seems, is one of the world's most crucial waterways.