In the middle of the crystalline waters speckled with sandbars and reefs that make up the Spratly Islands, in the South China Sea, lies stranded an old World War II ship of American origin, the Sierra Madre. Its rusty, holey shell has a long and tortuous history. In 1999, when it had been in the service of the Philippine Navy for two decades, the Government of Manila decided to run it aground on the Ayungin Atoll, a spit of sand that appears at the surface about 105 nautical miles west of the Philippine province of Palawan. . For the Philippines, which claims sovereignty over this disputed enclave, considering that it is located in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), the ship has become an outpost against China’s strength in the area and a metaphor in little one of the great geopolitical battle.
Technically, it is still an active warship. On board her, she Manila maintains a small military garrison. The detachment is often surrounded by Chinese ships that navigate the area to try to reaffirm their presence. The handful of Filipino troops, who rotate, survive the isolation while trying to prevent the deterioration of the ship, so damaged that it looks like something out of one of those apocalyptic movies. Some journalists who have come on board have documented how the water penetrates the interior, the rust that covers everything, how the military improvises harpoons for fishing, their loneliness. Beaten by water, wind and saltpeter, the disintegration of Sierra Madre It would complicate Philippine interests and most likely trigger an immediate response from Beijing.
Source: The Military Balance.
Source: The Military Balance.
The Asian giant claims 90% of the waters of the South China Sea for “historical reasons,” including this atoll it calls Ren’ai Jiao. It considers it part of its territory and believes that by sending a military ship to “land” in the shoal, the Philippines seriously violated its territorial sovereignty, despite the fact that a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2016 dealt a blow to Beijing by unanimously denying the legal basis for its arguments. The People’s Republic has always questioned the authority of the decision.
“We urge the Philippines to tow the illegally stranded warship as soon as possible and refrain from undermining peace and stability in the South China Sea,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry claimed in October.
The faded ship is at the epicenter of one of those very complex cases of international maritime law and is at the same time the uncomfortable China in the shoe that prevents Beijing from deploying at this point in the Spratly Islands. In the archipelago, where the interests of China, Malaysia and Vietnam, in addition to the Philippines, collide, Beijing has been extending its dominance with the construction of artificial islands and military installations, tightening the rope with neighboring nations, and irritating the United States, which He sees it as another example of growing Chinese assertiveness.
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Huge symbolic value
The Philippine ship “has enormous symbolic value, because it is proof of Philippine jurisdiction over its EEZ and continental shelf,” explains Jay L. Batongbacal, professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law and director of the Institute of Legal Affairs. Maritime and Law of the Sea of this university. Based on the 2016 arbitration, he adds, this country “has the right to manage, exploit, conserve and protect its resources,” he says in an email. And he adds that it is not that the Philippines claims sovereignty over the sandbar based on the ship’s grounding. “Rather, it asserts its rights as a coastal state with exclusive sovereign rights.”
Built in 1944 in Indiana (United States) as a tank landing ship, and originally launched under the name LST-821, it was assigned to the Pacific theater of operations during World War II in preparation for a possible invasion of Japan. There she won a star for her war merits. During the Vietnam War, she was refitted as a floating base in the Mekong Delta, where her crew were distinguished for their “extraordinary heroism,” as reconstructed by Jonathan L. Hoppe in an article from the United States Naval Institute. “The old LST [buque de desembarco de tanques, por sus siglas en inglés] “He has had a long and decorated career that spanned three navies and multiple continents over five decades.”
In 1969, as part of a US military assistance program, he was transferred to the Navy of South Vietnam, the nation separated from the communist north against which Washington’s troops were fighting. With the fall of Saigon, the ship, with capacity for 266 crew members, was forced to flee with 3,000 refugees on board and left Vietnam behind along with a flotilla carrying thousands of people. The Philippines allowed them to dock and disembark in its ports in exchange for those ships becoming part of its Navy in the future. This happened in 1976. At the orders of Manila, she was renamed Sierra Madre, in honor of the longest mountain range in the Philippines, and served as an amphibious ship until the Government decided to run it aground in the Ayungin shoal. “Although her hull is now full of pits and, for all intents and purposes, she is no longer seaworthy, the Sierra Madre remains in service and is, therefore, an official extension of the sovereign Philippine territory,” Hoppe writes.
Sparks often fly at this point in a highly volatile region, through which a third of the world’s maritime trade passes. In October, for example, a collision took place between Chinese ships patrolling Ayungin and two Philippine ships, which entered the area on a “regular and routine rotation and resupply” mission of the Sierra Madre, a key supply and shift change for the survival of the ship. According to Manila’s version, a Chinese Coast Guard ship caused its collision with the replenishment ship contracted by the Philippine Armed Forces. Later, a Philippine Coast Guard ship “was hit by a Chinese maritime militia vessel.” Beijing, on the other hand, argued that the Philippine vessels “ignored warnings” and “dangerously collided with Chinese Coast Guard vessels” that were “carrying out order maintenance tasks at the site.” Chinese authorities claimed they were trying to stop Philippine ships carrying “illegal construction” materials.
After this latest clash, Washington recalled that the mutual defense treaty signed in 1951 with Manila “extends to armed attacks against the Philippine Armed Forces, public ships and aircraft—including those of its Coast Guard—in any part of the South Sea. of China”, and reiterated its condemnation of China’s “expansive and illegal maritime claims” in the area.
Although the clashes subsided during the years of Rodrigo Duterte – closer to Beijing – at the head of the Philippine Executive, the altercations at different points have gained greater prominence since the arrival to power in 2022 of Marcos Jr., son of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and from his wife, Imelda, who has intensified her military relationship with the United States. The scuffles in these waters were part of the discussions between the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and the American president, Joe Biden, during their stabilizing meeting last week in San Francisco, in which they agreed to resume high-level military communications with in order to prevent misunderstandings. This week, Washington and Manila have deployed joint military exercises in the area, in another sign of their growing ties in the face of a situation that Marcos Jr. has described as “more serious than it was before.”
There is growing pressure from China on the enclave, with “increasingly intense attempts to prevent the Philippines from replenishing the sandbar,” according to Batongbacal, the jurist specializing in maritime law. “They are trying to prevent any attempt to repair or shore up the rusting vessel, probably hoping that she will sink very soon.”
But for Manila it is key to continue holding the ship in place. “If the old ship disintegrates, the Philippines could have difficulty maintaining its outpost,” she continues. “China could use such an event as an excuse to intervene and remove the Philippine troops from the sandbar, as well as destroy the ship; If she does so, she is also likely to thereafter cordon off the sandbar and prevent the return of Filipino troops or ships ever again.”
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