Pointed pistols and shouted commands announce the arrival of Britain’s Royal Marines aboard Iraqi vessels suspected of smuggling oil.
The 10-member Royal Marines team based on this Royal Navy frigate is part of a coalition Maritime Interdiction Force (MIF) that for more than 12 years has enforced United Nations embargoes against Saddam Hussein’s regime.
As a war with Iraq looms, navy officials say their continuing interdiction effort has blocked more than 80% of illegal oil leaving Iraq by sea. ”Nothing’s 100% but there has been a very remarkable drop,” said Captain Michael Cochrane, commander of this ship on Sunday.
”I happen to know that none has got out for quite a long time.”
US and Australian vessels are also working in the MIF, with Kuwaiti support, but a total of 21 nations have participated over the years. Typically about six ships are involved at any time. As Britain continues to build up its land and ground forces
ahead of any war with Iraq, there are now almost 30 Royal Navy ships and support vessels in the Middle East region, along with about 9 000 sailors, marines and airmen.
Regardless of what happens in the future, the Chatham, its sailors and the marines aboard have a job to do now — stopping the smugglers which the navy says have shifted from large steel-hulled ships to smaller dhows capable of carrying 1 000 tons of oil.
If the vessels do not respond to radio queries, they are deemed ”non-compliant” and the Royal Marines are sent out to board them using two rigid inflatable boats dropped from the Chatham.
Armed with rifles and pistols, the marines scale the side of the vessels using ladders, secure the ship and search it. Sergeant Simon Dack (29) from the county of Devon in southwestern England, said his team had boarded 70 vessels from the
Chatham, and earlier from HMS Cumberland on which his team was based in November and December.
The Cumberland was operating in the Gulf of Oman and off the Horn of Africa to intercept illegal weapons and suspected terrorists as part of a separate multinational operation.
Dack said none of their boardings had faced armed resistance. Sometimes the dhows try to evade interdiction by attempting a mass ”breakout” but even that has a slim chance of success.
The boarding parties stopped and searched 26 vessels in one recent night. ”We managed to block them and send them all back,” said Marines Corporal Craig Beattie (28) of Kendal, Cumbria, in the far northwest of England.
A Royal Navy officer said the amount of illegal oil loaded in Iraq fell from an estimated 1 372 million tons in 2001 to 581 000 tons in 2002.
”2002 was a very successful year,” said the officer, who asked not to be identified.
As the smugglers have shifted to smaller dhows, there has been little work for a special 15-member team of Chatham sailors who specialise in searching large merchant vessels.
”We haven’t yet been used,” said Lieutenant Rob McClurg (24) of Southampton, southern England, whose team has been on stand-by since the frigate arrived in the Gulf about seven weeks ago.
A weapons engineer, he and others on his team volunteered to take on the extra job of search specialist.
”We’d be quite pleased if we got used,” McClurg said. – Sapa-AFP