Counterterrorism Blog

An article in the January 23, 2008 issue of Jane's Defence Weekly (subscription only) caught my attention, because it included a public statement from a senior Navy civilian official about the potential terrorist threat to shipping lanes through the Arctic Circle and Panama Canal. The theme of the article is that, "The disappearance of Arctic sea ice raises serious sovereignty and security issues for the five nations that claim parts of the Arctic Circle's outer ring - Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States - as well as for indigenous peoples in the region... The countries are vying for access to new commercial shipping lanes and vast energy reserves no longer shrouded in ice. They are also wrangling over who will control and secure increasingly ice-free waterways north of Canada, which could serve as conduits for illegal immigrants and terrorists." That last phrase is based, in part on a public statement last year by the Naval civilian official and quoted in the Jane's article:

"'When you go through the Panama Canal, every terrorist and his brother knows you're there,' Barry L Campbell, head of operations at the USN Arctic Submarine Laboratory in San Diego, California, said in a March 2007 navy statement. 'When you go through the Arctic, no one knows you're there.'"

Cambell has over 20 years of experience in submarine operations, and it's hard for me to believe that he would make that statement without serious intelligence behind it.

Is there really a threat of terrorist intelligence operations or actual interference with shipping either in the Panama Canal or near the Arctic Circle? I asked Larry Johnson, who has years of experience in the Panama Canal area in government and private consulting, about Campbell's statement. His response:

"The public statement is a bit farfetched. Terrorists in Iraq are not in a position to monitor when any ship, much less a US military vessel, is transiting the canal. So I'm not sure what the spokesman means by implying all terrorists. And if hitting a US vessel in a canal is a priority it would appear the terrorists don't understand the threat. They are better off going after the Suez (more proximity). Second, the specific time that a US naval vessel transits the canal is never announced in advance. Accordingly, anyone who wants to target such a vessel must set up in advance and sit and watch. Then you have to put in place the means for launching an attack. What are we talking about here? Small arms fire and rpgs are potentially lethal nuisances, but pose no significant threat to the vessel's integrity. Torpedo or missile? Not likely. Boat packed with explosives. More feasible. There is a vulnerability on that front if someone decided they wanted to attack a US ship in transit.

There are individuals--all major merchants--in the Colon Free Zone who have provided financial contributions to Hamas and Hezbollah. However, no evidence whatsoever that they have set out to conduct surveillance of US targets."

Other recent reliable information doesn't indicate a concern in the official counter-terrorism community about either area. None of the recent "Worldwide Threat to Shipping" reports issued weekly by the Office of Naval Intelligence name the Panama Canal or Arctic Circle as sites with "reported active violence against shipping,
a credible threat to shipping, or the potential to develop into a direct threat to the safety of shipping." A January 8, 2007 report by the Congressional Research Service on maritime security and potential terrorist attacks did not name either area as a potential location or target. In a report issued this month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration included the Panama Canal as one of the world's six "important world oil transit chokepoints" and described it as a "suspected terrorist target," but didn't provide details on that description. The Canal carries, by far, the least amount of crude of any of the six named chokepoints. A 2003 OECD report named the Panama Canal as one of nine shipping "bottlenecks" but did not include it in a description of shipping lanes suffering from "pirate activity."

So it seems to me that Campbell's 2007 statement is not representative of the Navy's current position as reflected in official and open intelligence. Either there should be more open intelligence to back it up, or it cannot be cited as a basis for asset development and deployment decisions. I called the Arctic Submarine Laboratory for a comment but did not receive one.

(Thanks to EagleSpeak, a longtime and excellent maritime security blog, for links to original documents cited in this post.)