Piracy

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stirrup]

My Lords, I am delighted that we are able this evening to be able to debate such an important topic. I, too, thank and congratulate my noble friend Lord Luce for his persistence in securing us the opportunity. We have already heard a number of wise and powerful contributions, which have made many of the points I might myself have made but will not now seek to repeat. I would, though, like to say a few words about the maritime security mission and about Operation Atalanta in particular. It has been a great success. It has been demonstrably successful in contributing to a reduction in pirating. Not all of that reduction can be attributed to naval activity alone, of course, but Operation Atalanta has, nevertheless, made a significant contribution. It has been successful in fostering maritime co-operation with nations that have little experience in working with partners and with little previous incentive to do so. The most significant example of this is China.

We must not make too much of China’s participation in anti-piracy operations. It remains, after all, a difficult and uncomfortable bedfellow on a great range of international issues. Nevertheless, the role that China has played is, to my mind, a healthy and positive development in the context of wider global security. A China that plays its part in multilateral efforts to foster peace and security must be a good thing. The longest journey starts with one step.

Operation Atalanta has also been successful in demonstrating that the EU can have an important role in certain kinds of military operations. I spent too long sitting in EU military committee meetings to be under any illusion about the organisation’s capacity for the harder, more complex kind of operations. Too often, discussions were dominated by political manoeuvring and demarcation disputes with NATO. Unlike NATO, the EU has no proper, effective military strategic organisation or process. Nevertheless, when it works in concert with NATO, when it makes use of shared resources rather than trying to duplicate structures, and when it focuses on operations that make use of its political strengths and avoid exposing its military weaknesses, then the EU can be a very valuable player on the global security stage. Operation Atalanta has clearly demonstrated that.

Having said all that, we must remember that, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, Atalanta was set up with a very limited objective: to protect World Food Programme shipping. Anything else it might be able to do to counter piracy more widely was subject to it having the spare capacity, and there is not very much of that.

The area of sea space that has to be covered is immense, particularly when wide-area surveillance capability, such as that provided by maritime patrol aircraft, is so scarce. Of course, the pirates inevitably react to and counter tactics that are employed successfully against them. They have ranged ever further from shore, for example, through the use of mother ships. We should therefore expect further innovation from them. It would be dangerous to assume that any reduction in the number of successful pirate attacks will necessarily be permanent.

The military operation is an essential tool in addressing piracy but, as other noble Lords have observed, it will not provide a lasting solution. It is a truism that in the long run piracy is dealt with not at sea but on land. That is why the wider issues of Somali governance are crucial. The fact that Somalia as an entity does not really exist makes the problem even more challenging and reinforces the need for us to continue our efforts to understand and influence, for example, Puntland, which is home to so many pirates.

Finally, this is not a problem that will be resolved quickly. It has been with us for a number of years already. Operation Atalanta itself has been running for four years and we must expect that the need for the current multi-strand approach to security in the region will continue for some considerable time. That will require patience on our part and it will require persistence, but it will also require sustained investment in the kind of diplomatic and military effort which is often taken too much for granted but which does not happen by accident.