U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Richard J. Kavanaugh, left, and Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Morgan, right, conduct a port visit to Chittagong, Bangladesh. Kavanaugh has spent the past two years making port calls to shore up support for a multinational maritime security agreement. (Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard)
The U.S. Coast Guard last week helped broker a landmark security pact between countries in the Indian Ocean, an agreement that is a first for the region and could help stave off trafficking of weapons and humans on the high seas.
Nine countries signed the security pact, including India and Pakistan, according to the Coast Guard.
Lt. Cmdr. Richard Kavanaugh, an international port security liaison officer in the small Tokyo office of the Coast Guard Activities Far East, spent two years making port calls and facilitating the agreement. His office, with little fanfare, assists with security of U.S. and international shipping interests through the Asia-Pacific region.
Following are excerpts from a Stars and Stripes interview with Kavanaugh on Monday:
What problems were the Coast Guard and the member nations trying to address with the South Asia Regional Port Security Cooperative (SARPSCO)?
The common thread between the countries in the region and also of interest to the U.S. Coast Guard is ... human trafficking, weapons trafficking and drug trafficking.
How does Asian crime such as smuggling affect U.S. interests?
Speaking from the law enforcement aspect of the U.S. Coast Guard, trafficking drugs, humans and weapons is the main avenue for a lot of the terrorism, for instance. If terrorists are going to move from country to country, they are going to do it through human-trafficking avenues. Heroin in the United States is primarily coming out of the Asian subcontinent and that is all being trafficked through the Indian Ocean or through land routes. A lot of it is going through the Indian Ocean. Weapons trafficking is a primary source of funding for a lot of the terrorist organizations around the world. Specifically, the LTTE [the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] in Sri Lanka uses sea routes for a large portion of their weapons trafficking.
How difficult was it to bring together countries such as India and Pakistan who have deep-seated political differences, and why should they cooperate?
Maritime security is transnational. What comes out of one country goes into the next one. There may be historical animosity between several countries [but] trade is global. They are trading with each other and that trade requires cooperation to mitigate threats to ports where things are coming out and the ports where things are going.
Are such security pacts common in the Asia-Pacific region?
One of the primary reasons this initiative was started was in the Indian Ocean, there was none. There are other cooperative agencies around the world … that have maritime security sub-working groups and things like that. In the central Indian Ocean and throughout the Asian region, there were no cooperatives of this sort. This is quite groundbreaking.
Now that the pact is signed, what effect will it have on the region?
It may be early to say what effects it will have. It is a first step and a burgeoning cooperative. What it has done is start to chip away at some of the historical mistrusts. It will help foster greater communication through the ports and through the maritime shipping industry. Eventually, if it matures over time into a larger cooperative, it will foster a greater security network through a region that currently does not have one.
Southeast Asia has some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and the region also is known for piracy. What is the Coast Guard doing to fight piracy in areas such as the Malacca Strait?
We work closely with the governments of the region — Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore … We assist in capacity-building efforts for regional maritime law enforcement agencies. We work to help bolster their capabilities and reduce the risk of piracy in those waters.
What future steps should be taken in the Far East to decrease crimes at sea?
That is exactly what SARPSCO is about, how to reduce [crime at sea]. The key is first understanding the threat in the region and then it is cooperation. If ships leave port in one country’s waters and are known to be conducting certain [suspicious] operations, port operators and port authorities should contact their respective agencies in the next country and really keep these vessels from being able to operate in these waters. Cooperation is the key to global maritime security.
