On the high seas, the Australian Navy prosecutes the war on drugs

Updated

For days at a time, the two crews see and hear nothing. But today is different. In a matter of hours, $75 million of heroin will be flushed through a bottomless wheelie bin and into the Indian Ocean.

The lone fishing boat pitches and rolls with the swell across the vast Indian Ocean. The horizon is empty. The mission near complete.

But company is not far away.

Australian warship HMAS Arunta is searching the high seas off east Africa for the traditional wooden-hulled dhows favoured by drug smugglers.

Every year, thousands of kilograms of Afghan heroin is trafficked across the ocean on these boats to east Africa, then mainly on to markets in Europe by other means. The multi-billion dollar trade lines the pockets of drug traffickers — and terrorists too.

Now is peak season. The monsoon is coming. The smugglers need to complete their runs across the ocean before it becomes too dangerous for their boats.

It doesn't seem a fair contest — a small wooden boat trying to evade a modern warship. But Arunta faces a mammoth task: it's searching an area of ocean roughly the size of Queensland.

For kilometres, days at a time, all you can see from the ship's bow is rolling, uninterrupted ocean. And all you can hear is the 3,600-tonne frigate ploughing through the swell.

Lieutenant Stuart McPherson directs Arunta's course out here.

It's June 2017, and Lieutenant McPherson and the rest of the crew are seven months into a nine-month mission away from home, the longest time a Navy ship has been deployed overseas in nearly 30 years.

For the better half of this time, about 190 men and women have been contained to this 118-metre-long vessel. There are few places to hide in the ship's tight quarters.

By contrast, beyond those confines is one of the most open and remote places on Earth.

"It's just that feeling of isolation that you have," Lieutenant McPherson says.

Everyone onboard misses someone somewhere. Everyone has a life at home. Family. Friends. And life goes on for them. For Lieutenant McPherson, this deployment is particularly tough.

A week before Arunta sailed, his mother was diagnosed with end-stage lung failure and was on oxygen 24 hours a day. He didn't know whether she would survive the deployment. There were also challenges at home, where he had left his wife with three children under six.

"[With] emails and satellite phone, with big delays and dropping in and out, it's very difficult to have what most people would call a normal relationship. It's made it very difficult for us ... to in fact be there for each other when we have been struggling."

The navigator, though, has learned to reach out for help, realising he doesn't need to play to the military's 'tough guy' stereotype.

"You don't have to be that big, strong person — and being worried about professional embarrassment is nowhere near as important as worrying about your own mental health, because that is a serious thing.

"It can sneak up and get you."

But on this day, Lieutenant McPherson must set everything else aside. There is action afoot.

The ship deploys its Seahawk helicopter on a scheduled search of the area. The thudding rotors hurl sea spray into the air as the helicopter rises from the flight deck and disappears over the horizon.

The Seahawk can detect a dhow from up to 19 kilometres away. The searches often yield no results. But today is different.

About 12:30pm, as the helicopter is about to return to the ship, its crew spots a dhow steaming along a well-known drug route.

And by the following morning, HMAS Arunta has reached the suspicious boat.

"Hands to boarding stations" sounds from the ship's PA. A team of 14 Navy members, a special agent from the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and an interpreter dress and file onto the ship's waists.

About 8am, the team launches from Arunta. Their life jackets are stab-proof. Some carry 9-millimetre pistols.

As Principal Warfare Officer, Deanna Garbutt helps coordinate these boardings. The crew on the dhows aren't known to be hostile, she says, but the Navy doesn't take chances.

"The smugglers on these dhows, they're not the terrorists, they are just the ones making a living," Lieutenant Garbutt says. "So for them there is no business value in challenging a naval unit and potentially losing your life, which is what could happen.

"That doesn't stop me from being nervous whenever we send the boarding team over."

From the bridge wing, the ship's Commanding Officer, Cameron Steil, watches his team approach the dhow to make sure it boards safely and the boat's crew is compliant.

"You've got to assume that there is an element of risk there but you've also got to treat them with respect and dignity," Commander Steil says. "They are mariners nevertheless."

Even before the team reaches them, the small boat's crew huddles at the bow. The first Navy members secure the boat and scan for weapons, before the remaining personnel follow them on board.

The Australians have authority to board and search the boat under international law and Australia's maritime powers legislation.

An interpreter helps explain what is happening to the dhow's crew.

"It's always very important to get the message across that we're just there to do a search," explains Lieutenant Neil Partridge, who leads the boarding party. "Once we've done the search the crew is usually, in my experience, very benign and are quite cooperative."

In this case, it is clear the crew hasn't been fishing. There are no fish onboard and when the Navy tests the crew's ability to handle the boat's nets, they appear inexperienced.

NCIS Special Agent Darryl Tamash, assigned to Arunta as a law enforcement advisor, questions the crew throughout the day.

Tamash has worked in law enforcement for 23 years. He's witnessed various fronts of the drug trade — from his time as a police officer in the United States, busting kids selling drugs on street corners, through to now, questioning mariners suspected of smuggling hundreds of kilograms of uncut heroin across the Indian Ocean.

This boat's crew is sticking to its story.

"They had clearly established [it] prior to us getting there — that they were out fishing, that they were then looking for a broken dhow," Tamash said. "Which is kind of the typical one we hear."

The team methodically searches the dhow, bow to stern, inch by inch.

The smugglers are experts at concealing the narcotics in the boats' many void spaces, often purpose-built for smuggling. Searches have been known to last days, and often finish empty-handed.

No-one knows how the search will end — not the boarding party, nor the crew of the dhow.

The crews of these fishing boats often come from the rugged Balochistan region around Pakistan, Iran and southern Afghanistan. The heroin is smuggled from Afghanistan through Iran or Pakistan to the region's Makran Coast. It is then loaded onto the boats, shipped thousands of kilometres across the ocean towards east Africa — and then transferred to speedboats outside territorial waters.

This is now a main trafficking path for Afghan heroin to Europe, as the traditional Balkan and northern routes have been undermined by stricter border checks.

"It's definitely easier for them to smuggle more on the ocean," Lieutenant Garbutt says. "There are no gates, there are no borders, there are no security checkpoints.

"They've only got to get past half a dozen naval vessels that are scattered over a massive ocean."

While the bulk of drugs are believed to be shipped on to markets in Europe, some is also making its way to the United States. A portion also remains in Africa to feed a burgeoning domestic market.

The UN has warned the drug trade in east Africa threatens to create the world's next 'narcoland', like Latin America, where traffickers influence political life, the security landscape and the lives of citizens.

The Australians are out here, thousands of kilometres from home, to disrupt the flow of drug money to terrorist organisations. It's part of a 31-country partnership working towards maritime security across 3 million square miles from the Arabian Gulf down to the Indian Ocean off east Africa.

"It's the way that the Australian Navy ties into the larger fight against terrorism in the Middle Eastern region," Lieutenant Partridge explains. "By seizing and destroying... narcotics their proceeds can't be used to fund... terrorist fighters."

A well-documented beneficiary of the heroin trade is the Taliban. The UN estimates as much as half of the group's income comes from its involvement with narcotics.

Afghanistan is said to produce more than 80 per cent of the world's opium, the key ingredient in heroin, and the Taliban controls large parts of Afghanistan's poppy regions that produce the opium. The group taxes the production, manufacturing and smuggling of drugs in those areas, and in some cases has been directly involved in trafficking, the UN says.

There are also suspected links between the drug trade and terrorist groups like the Islamic State, Somalia's Al Shabaab and West Africa's Boko Haram.

As the hours pass onboard the rolling dhow, the sun grows hotter. But the search is unabating.

"You never want to be that team that's jumped off a dhow that did indeed have cargo and you didn't find it," Lieutenant Partridge explains.

After about four hours, a breakthrough.

"In the engineering compartment we came across what was a purpose-built void space that we believed was being used to smuggle narcotics," Partridge says.

Over the next few hours, the team uncovers dozens of plastic-wrapped packages containing an off-white substance. In all, 260 kilograms of high-grade heroin is seized.

Exactly where the compartment was and what led the team there can't be published, as the Navy doesn't want to tip off future smugglers.

As darkness falls over the Indian Ocean, Navy members finally return to Arunta carrying sacks laden with narcotics. The moon is full, the sky inky.

No-one can be sure who onboard the dhow knew about the drugs. But none protested when they were seized. Like those intercepted before them, the crew likely knew they and the boat would be free to sail home.

The Australians search, seize and destroy the drugs from dhows. But they won't seize the dhow, or detain the suspected smugglers — to do so, they would potentially have to bring them back to Australia for prosecution.

The smugglers aren't known to get paid in full for failed deliveries, but don't face serious consequences from drug lords, like beatings or death. The traffickers need to retain willing drug mules.

It means some of those onboard the dhow could smuggle again.

"There is what we call 'the frequent flyer': the people we've seen before and do it over and over again," says NCIS special agent Darryl Tamash.

"It's sort of frustrating, but I tend not to worry about it because there is nothing I can do about it."

Special agent Tamash believes seizing the dhows would deter the drug-runners.

"Typically these guys aren't moving drugs all the time. They may do it once and then they may fish several times before they do it again. So if they have no dhow then they have no livelihood."

A few days after the drugs seizure, Navy members take the drugs to the flight deck to be destroyed. Personnel dress in hazmat suits and masks to protect themselves from the high-purity heroin.

Even before the packets are sliced open, the vinegar-like smell of uncut heroin permeates the deck.

Samples are collected for tests and analysis by the Australian Federal Police and its American counterpart the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The drugs are grouped by stamp type. The stamps are the manufacturer's trademark. They are said to reflect the maker's credibility in terms of purity. Authorities have used the stamps to trace the heroin chain to Europe.

In one case, a drug stamp recorded during a seizure in the Indian Ocean was found six months later in drug busts by police in the United Kingdom. It meant part of the consignment made it to East Africa and onto Europe.

The team disposing the drugs weighs each packet. A bottomless wheelie bin is connected to a firehose and positioned at Arunta's stern. The system is designed to avoid the drugs blowing back onto the ship. The packets are cut open and poured into the bin.

In a matter of hours, an estimated $75 million of heroin is flushed into the Indian Ocean.

For every Australian crew member on the frontline of the drug interceptions, dozens back them up behind the scenes. The crew works around the clock to keep the ship running, from the cooks feeding everyone four times a day to the engineers relied on at every hour of the day to keep things running.

"We just can't turn the old girl off and put the anchor down," Commander Steil says. "Even if we do, things are still run. We still need to make sure the lights come on and systems are available."

For most of the crew, the only space truly their own is their bunk bed — half the width of a single bed.

"Things that normally would annoy you, you can't get away from," Lieutenant Deanna Garbutt says.

"So you sort of have to learn to cope. And in the same way, you have to learn to respect your shipmates and not do things that annoy them — not leave clothes lying about, not make a mess of the bathroom."

Deputy Weapons Engineer Lieutenant Steven Witzand deployed when his daughter Daphne was only 10 months old.

He crosses off the days until he returns home on a calendar his wife Rachel made him with family photos. "I think the toughest part was, I guess, watching Daphne grow up through photographs and then miss all those milestones," he says.

Everyone finds their own way to cope onboard and pass the time. Some escape into movies, TV shows and books. Some go to the gym or group personal training sessions onboard. And on any given night, there is likely to be a tense game of cards underway in the various messes throughout the ship.

For most, the rewards of being a long way from home outweigh the challenges. That's why they are here. They see new places. They put years of training into practice at sea.

Over Arunta's nine-month deployment, the crew carries out three drug seizures, two of heroin and one hashish, totalling 1,310 kilograms. That's an estimated $183 million based on Australian Crime Commission figures.

"It's a significant amount of money and it certainly offsets the cost of putting us out here," Lieutenant Garbutt says. "From those raw numbers, I think it meets the reason why we are out here."

The cost of Operation MANITOU — the Navy's maritime security operations in the Middle East — in 2016-17 was $44.9 million.

Since 2014, the Navy reports it has netted about 6,300 kilograms of heroin and around 18,200 kilograms of hashish, with a total estimated value of almost $6 billion, according to Australian Crime Commission Report figures.

But the sailors know they are only intercepting a fraction of what's being smuggled across the ocean.

"We have assets that can help us sense and detect various dhows and other surface contacts for a considerably large range," Commander Steil says.

"But at the end of the day it's an enormous part of the globe so we can't cover all of it."

Though the crew knows it cannot stop every one of the dhows, Lieutenant Garbutt, like others onboard, feels she is doing something that matters. Something worth the time away from home. The isolation. The tough goodbyes.

"When... we do happen to be in the right place at the right time and we find that even smaller vessel in a massive ocean, it feels pretty good to know that we have actually achieved what we came out here to do — which was never guaranteed.

"It is hard on families. I am very homesick — and I suppose that's the sacrifice you make to achieve this mission."

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About this story After months of requests, freelance journalist Alexandra Fisher was granted access to Australian warship HMAS Arunta as it searched for drug smugglers on a two-week patrol of the Indian Ocean off east Africa in June 2017. The ship was seven months into a nine-month deployment. Credits Reporting, photos, video: Alexandra Fisher

Editor: Matt Liddy After months of requests, freelance journalist Alexandra Fisher was granted access to Australian warship HMAS Arunta as it searched for drug smugglers on a two-week patrol of the Indian Ocean off east Africa in June 2017. The ship was seven months into a nine-month deployment.

Topics: drug-offences, defence-forces, terrorism, australia

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