Maritime security: threats and challenges.

• Author: Abid, Sabiha

Byline: Sabiha Abid

Pakistan has a strategic stake in peaceful navigation and security of Indian Ocean region. Our interests emanate from our coastline that is over 1000 kilometers long, an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of around 300,000 square kilometers, the Karachi port and the newly built deep sea port of Gwadar. And to add to this complex scenario, today, the Indian Ocean faces many non-traditional security challenges and threats including piracy, illegal fishing, human trafficking, drug smuggling, trafficking of weapons and above all maritime pollution. The militarization of the Indian Ocean region, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, increased missile capabilities and power projection by foreign militaries are a threat to peace in the Indian Ocean Region. And this trend is likely to intensify in the coming years.

At the same time, the Indian Ocean also contains some of the world's most important choke points, notably the Straits of Hormuz, Malacca, and the Bab el Mandeb. The strategic importance of these choke points for global trade and energy flows means that a number of extra-regional states have decided to maintain their naval presence in the Indian Ocean.

To counter the threats being radiated from extra regional forces and neighboring countries would probably take much of the budget and time to raise our Navy from present Navy to Blue Water Navy.

Presently the biggest of all threats is our self-created issue of pollution along the coastal belts especially in Karachi. The threats to our Maritime security is pollution coming through different means e.g. the garbage of whole Karachi mixes into Arabian sea through the dirty flows of Lyari Nadi. The industrial effluent, sewage disposal and oil discharges are the major security...