Australia, explained.
Narco-subs are small, low-on-the-surface, semi-submersible vessels that can make their way across vast oceans with no stops (Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images)
Criminals are always looking for an edge. Listening to what the Pacific needs and coordinating maritime security responses will help blunt the threat.
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“Narco-subs” in the Pacific demonstrates need for effective maritime security cooperation“Narco-subs” in the Pacific demonstrates need for effective maritime security cooperation
In recent Australian maritime security conversations, it would be fair to say that submarines have featured fairly prominently.
Although the tenor of sub talk this week still proved head-turning, when a 62-country operation busted six “narco-subs” carrying a whopping 1000 tonnes of marijuana and 400 tonnes of cocaine bound for Australia. The value of the drugs was estimated at AU$1.5 billon. It shows narco-subs are an emerging security risk.
It is a law enforcement adage that criminals try to stay one step ahead of authorities, and technology is one way of doing so. These small, low-on-the-surface, semi-submersible vessels can be challenging to detect and can make their way across a vast ocean with no stops – thereby limiting opportunities for interdiction by authorities.
The local consequences of the drug trade across the Pacific are significant.
Criminal organisations, particularly South American cartels, are not working alone. Cartels are complex co-operatives made up of criminals from different organisations seeking to leverage economic advantage over the drug trade, with influence in different places, working together towards a common cause – profit. They are, by nature, international commercial ventures. And like any other business, they are willing to invest capital.
Alarmingly, despite being discovered near the uninhabited French-controlled atoll of Clipperton Island, around 1000 kilometres south-west of Mexico, one of the vessels was apparently destined to deliver its five-tonne load of cocaine to Australia, more than 11,000 kilometres west across the Pacific. The reason is simple: in Australia, cocaine attracts a reported premium of around $240,000 per kilogram – six times higher than the US price for the same product.
While semi-submersible technology is relatively new, the trans-Pacific route is not. For more than a decade, authorities have been combating narcotics transshipment through remote paths and lesser-populated islands. Heroin, cocaine, and the precursors for methamphetamine have crossed the Pacific Ocean, sometimes washing up or intentionally landing on Pacific Island shores. Some Pacific states have become places of re-packing drugs for export.
The local consequences of the drug trade across the Pacific are significant. Guam, Tonga and Fiji have seen clandestine labs develop, hooking many locals on meth in countries where there is little drug addiction assistance.
US Coast Guard intercept a drug-laden semi-submersible in the Eastern Pacific (US Coast Guard/Flickr)
Pacific states and their partners have focused on transnational organised crime. The Pacific Islands Forum this year launched its Regional Transnational Organised Crime Strategy, where importation, transshipment, precursor trafficking, domestic trafficking and usage of illicit drugs were noted as the most prevalent form of transnational criminal activity in the region. Large-scale busts this year in Fiji and Tonga alone demonstrate that Pacific Island countries are taking transnational crime seriously. It also proves their detection, investigation and prosecution can deter further crime of that type – but criminal actors are always looking for the next step to evade the law.
What marks the narco-sub apart is that this shipment was apparently not intended to stop at any Pacific Island nation – it was capable of making the journey non-stop and in its entirety from supply shore to market shore. This creates new challenges for maritime security agencies and law enforcement.
Our research project on maritime security cooperation highlights the need for coordination between Pacific states and partners, particularly foreign actors who without coordination are “repeatedly identified as undermining regional security” by Pacific leaders.
Maritime security is often left as a conversation just held between militaries – of which there are only three in the Pacific Islands region.
Cooperation efforts to tackle transnational crime are becoming increasingly saturated, too. Numerous longstanding law enforcement regional organisations are now joined by new ones funded by Australia, the South Pacific Defence Ministers' Meeting of military organisations, which now discuss transnational crime, the South West Pacific Heads of Maritime Forces, and numerous bilateral and multilateral programs to prevent illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Australia’s Pacific Maritime Security Program is heralded as one of the best ways to combat maritime crime, providing patrol boats and aerial surveillance for detecting IUU fishing and other forms of transnational crime.
IUU fishing costs the Pacific more than US$616 million each year, in areas where fishing licensing brings in the majority of government revenue. Importantly, many of the tools used for maritime domain awareness for IUU fishing can also be used to detect the illegal drug trade, which uses small crafts, transshipments, and now narco-subs.
Critically, such programs must be led and guided by Pacific interests and voices. In our research, we have heard anecdotes about international partners not listening to local law enforcement professionals trying to direct the ship to where they know illegal activity is occurring. Instead, partners often think they know better and divert surveillance elsewhere. Only genuine cooperation will benefit the Pacific Islands region as it battles numerous maritime security challenges.
Maritime security is often left as a conversation just held between militaries – of which there are only three in the Pacific Islands region – Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Tonga (although Vanuatu has a paramilitary). However, all Pacific Island states are connected by and rely upon the ocean for food security, economic security, and their relationship with culture and ancestors. Pacific Island leaders have called for an “ocean of peace”, and while the precise meaning of this concept is still to be clarified, it’s clear that human security issues are the priority for Pacific Island countries. Maritime security must move beyond militaries, but be central to engagement in the region from a Pacific perspective.
As the debate heats up about future AUKUS submarines for Australia, below the surface, it is the narco-subs that deliver direct security challenges now. By prioritising resources towards existing and emerging maritime security issues that the Pacific want to see addressed, Australia can demonstrate it is listening to Pacific partners.
About the authors
Henrietta McNeill-Stowers
Dr Henrietta McNeill-Stowers is a Research Fellow (Pacific Security, Geopolitics, Regionalism) in the Department of Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University.
Genevieve Quirk
Genevieve Quirk BSc (UQ), DULF (UParisIII-Sorbonne), MEnvLaw (ANU), PhD (UOW) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on Pacific Maritime Security Coordination at the University of Adelaide.
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