‘Red Sea Highway Patrol’ Enforces Embargo

On an average of three times a day, a handpicked team of armed U.S. sailors boards merchant ships in the Red Sea that might be trying to break a U.N. embargo to get supplies to Iraq.

“We’re the Red Sea Highway Patrol,” said Gunner’s Mate William Kitchens, 27, of Lakeland, Fla., a member of Boarding Team Alpha aboard the guided missile cruiser Biddle.

“We should put a red and blue light atop the ship with a siren. It’s more police work than anything else. We’re stopping contraband from reaching its goal,” Kitchens said this week.

The United Nations authorized the naval quarantine to punish Iraq for its Aug. 2 conquest of Kuwait. Nothing but medical supplies are allowed in, and no ships, including tankers carrying Iraq’s lifeblood of oil exports, are getting out.

Much of the seagoing police work is done in the northern Red Sea, which includes traffic coming south from the Suez Canal and bound for the Jordanian port of Aqaba.

What was one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes just three months ago now has more warships than merchant vessels.

“The shipping volume has been substantially throttled down. There’s been an 80% reduction in the volume of shipping,” said Rear Adm. Nick Gee, commander of Red Sea operations by the Maritime Interdiction Force.

A ring of warships is on patrol around the Arabian peninsula, which is bounded by the Red Sea, Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. One of the warships is the Biddle, part of the task force accompanying the aircraft carrier Saratoga.

“It’s a total roadblock. This is a very effective blockade,” said Capt. Louis Harlow, the Biddle’s skipper. “The Iraqis have to be hurting.”

Since the embargo began in August, 3,107 ships have been intercepted, with 310 boarded.

Earlier this week, the Biddle stopped the Greek container ship Zim Venezia, which was headed for Eilat, Israel, right next door to Aqaba.

A 20-member boarding team carrying side arms and shotguns and wearing flak jackets scurried down a rope ladder onto a 26-foot whale boat for a 1,500-yard trip to the merchant ship.

The boarding party, made up of Navy and U.S. Coast Guard personnel, checked the ship’s paper work and crew before it was allowed to continue.

The Navy has nicknamed the Red Sea operation Toto Station, after the line in “The Wizard of Oz” when Judy Garland tells her dog, “Gee, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”