Piracy: Operation Atalanta (EUC Report)

Lord Williams of Elvel Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Elvel]

My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, not least because I usually agree with what he says, perhaps because his wife and my wife are members of the same book group. Leaving aside that rather frivolous comment, he has made very good points. This is a very opportune debate, not least because of the renewal of the Atalanta mandate. I want to concentrate on a particular aspect which other noble Lords have raised. First, I remind your Lordships what the summary of the report says. It states:

“There will be no solution to the problem of piracy without a solution to the root causes of the conflict on land in Somalia”.

It is worth having a look at where we are at the moment, with a record ransom of $12.3 million for two ships and estimates of a total sum of $100 million. Although Atalanta and other operations in theatre can claim successes, the International Maritime Bureau reported that ship hijackings in the world reached an all-time high in the first nine months of 2010. Although we recognise that Atalanta and some of the other operations have been reasonably successful, there can be no room for complacency, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, pointed out. I will come back to something that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said at the end of my speech, but it is worth looking at why we are in this situation and at the history of Somalia.

Somalia is the size of the state of Texas and has a coastline of some 1,600 miles. It is in the Horn of Africa, which, since the opening of the Suez Canal, has been a strategic point between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, and hence from Europe to Asia. Its population is poor, ill educated, belongs to clans and has benefited—if I may put it like that—from the fact that in the Cold War Somalia was part of the Soviet system. Ethiopia, its neighbour, was part of the American system—that changed in the 1970s—so that whenever anyone in Somalia wanted arms they called either Washington or Moscow.

The remains of a Russian—or actually Soviet—base can still be found in Somalia. I shall never forget the after-effects of the Cold War. At the end of the Cold War, Somalia deteriorated into civil war. There was no particular government, there was no particular regime, and the colonial powers had departed. In the end, a federal state and a transitional federal Government were established, which were meant to keep control of Somalia as a country. That has not really worked because Puntland in the north, which is the centre of piracy, has more or less disassociated itself from Mogadishu in the south, which is the federal capital. The south of Somalia is controlled, by all reports—and I would welcome the Minister’s comments on this—by al-Shabaab, a very sinister organisation to which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred and which has now admitted, in February of this year, that it is associated with al-Qaeda. That, as I will make clear at the end, is why this is such a serious problem and not just a maritime problem.

Who are the pirates? They are associated mainly with the old fishing industry of Somalia, which was pretty well destroyed by international, big, heavy fishing operators who cut the nets of the local fishermen, blew up the coral and blew up the fish. The only thing a Somali fisherman could do was to capture the ships, which was a very simple operation because there were plenty of arms flying around after the Cold War. Everyone had AK47s or whatever, and there was a big arms-smuggling trade coming from the Yemen. All they could do was say, “People are more valuable than fish”, so they captured the people. This is what happened and what continues to happen.

The pirates form gangs. They call themselves companies, with names such as Somali Marines, Central Somali Coast Guard and Ocean Salvation Corps. These gangs have spokesmen; their leaders call themselves Big Mouth, Silver Tooth, Red Tooth and so on. They are heroes, they are rich. They come into Eyl—the centre of piracy in northern Somalia—and they scatter money around. There are piracy weddings, like the Mafia weddings in Sicily. We have not yet learnt to grapple with this, but we must. There is even a stock exchange that trades shares in pirate companies. Where do these revenues—$100 million—all go? Part of it goes of course to buying arms; there is, as I said, a big arms-smuggling trade across the Gulf of Aden from the Yemen. However, part of it, more sinisterly—5 per cent according to reports—goes to al-Shabaab and finances terrorism. This is where the Government, the EU and the United Nations have to make a serious response, not just to the maritime problem that other noble Lords, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the report have described, but to the consequences of not doing anything. This is, as I said, finance for terrorism.

I quite understand why historically the Somalis have engaged in this form of piracy—or kidnapping as I call it, because they do not involve themselves in the cargoes of the ships, they just want the people. That is why people pay ransom. I quite understand that, but it is a serious problem that has so far been underestimated. If it were just a question of ship owners or insurers paying out large ransoms, we could be relatively relaxed about it. We could say it was a nuisance and a bore, but it is much worse than that. Somali piracy is financing terrorism.

As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, quite rightly said, there is no quick fix. One thing is absolutely certain, however—I join the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in stating this categorically—there will be no solution unless and until there is effective governance in Somalia, respect for the rule of law, reliable security agencies and alternative employment opportunities for the Somali people. I very much hope that in his response the Minister can show us the path he thinks we should go down to achieve that objective.