Piracy: Operation Atalanta (EUC Report)

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, has quoted the Select Committee which makes it clear that without addressing the root causes of the problem in Somalia, we shall not deal with piracy. A precondition for dealing with the root causes must be a functioning and stable central Government.

I congratulate and send best wishes to the new Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as Farmajo, whose appointment by the president was confirmed by the parliament on November 1. He is a member of the Marehan subclan of the Darod clan, which has produced many notable Somalis. He is reported to be experienced in conflict resolution and has offered to begin peace talks with the rebels, in whose leadership the Marehan are well represented, but he has warned the rebels that if they reject this offer, he will drive them out. Judging from the threat last week by one al-Shabaab commander Fuad Shongole that Kampala and Bujumbura will suffer fresh attacks if they do not withdraw their troops from Somalia—the noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to the Somali bomb attack in Kampala that cost 70 lives—the dominant view in al-Shabaab must be against any form of compromise. However, in the past few weeks, AMISOM has been gaining ground in Mogadishu and now claims to control half the city. The international community must give Prime Minister Farmajo and AMISOM its full support so that if talks begin, either with al-Shabaab or with individual commanders who peel off, the Prime Minister negotiates from a position of strength. If negotiations prove to be impossible, it will be even more important that the TFG is strengthened and stabilised.

I warmly congratulate the Select Committee of my noble friend Lord Teverson on what must be seen as a practical contribution towards solving this other huge problem that is weighing down the in-tray of the new Prime Minister—that of piracy based on Somali territory. There may or may not be a link, as has been suggested, between the pirates and al-Shabaab, and perhaps my noble friend can tell us whether there is any international investigation of what happens to the large sums paid by ship owners, such as the $12.3 million paid this week to release two vessels and their crews. In spite of the increasing effectiveness of the EU’s naval operation, which has escorted 73 WFP-chartered vessels safely into Mogadishu and has successfully disrupted more than 60 attacks on other vessels, the overall record for the first nine months of 2010 is slightly worse than for the equivalent period in 2009, in terms of the number of ships hijacked. It has also been mentioned that the pirates are adopting new tactics, such as the posting of hostages on their attack vessels, which was reported yesterday when pirates tried for the first time to hijack an EU-escorted AMISOM supply ship. The Spanish escort ship was unable to open fire on the pirates for fear of killing the hostages, and the rules of engagement need to be considered if they do not include an effective response to this tactic.

The Select Committee and the UN Secretary-General in his report of 27 October to the Security Council also agree that much more needs to be done and that the root causes of conflict and instability in Somalia need to be addressed if piracy is to be eliminated. It will be very interesting to hear from the Minister what specific ideas we have for ramping up the pressure on the pirates and for liberating the hostages without having to pay out millions of dollars in ransom, as we are doing now.

Meanwhile, the Select Committee makes several proposals which are not in the Secretary-General’s report. Do the Government normally draw the Secretary-General’s attention to the recommendations of our Select Committees that touch on matters that are before the Security Council? In his report, the Secretary-General appeals to,

“all ships traversing the high seas off the coast of Somalia to follow IMO recommendations and industry-developed best management practices, which have proved to significantly reduce the risk of being hijacked”

The Select Committee goes further, urging,

“that the terms and conditions of insurance effectively reflect the need to discourage shipping companies from failing to follow recognised best practice”.

Should it not be provided that the insurance industry grants cover to ship owners only on condition that they adhere to best practice? It would be useful to know whether the UN has discussed this with the IMO and, if so, what its reaction was.

The second major difference between the two reports is the absence of any mention by the Secretary-General of the capability shortfalls discussed by the Select Committee and referred to by several of your Lordships this afternoon. There is a shortage of tankers that are needed to increase the proportion of time spent at sea by operational vessels; there is a shortage of seaborne medical capacity; and there is a shortage of maritime patrol aircraft to carry out the essential task of surveillance. Ideally, as the Select Committee says, we would be deploying UAVs, as several of your Lordships have said, but EU air forces do not have any, as far as I am aware, and it is going to be several years before the UK and France jointly develop reconnaissance and attack systems—a matter which has been discussed in the papers recently, under the heading of a possible agreement between Dassault and BAE to develop these vehicles.

It was announced a year ago by the Americans that they were operating unarmed Reaper MQ-9 UAVs experimentally in an anti-piracy reconnaissance role from the Seychelles under an agreement with the Government of the Seychelles. Could the Minister say whether this operation continues; whether the intelligence that it provides is shared with NAVFOR; and whether there are any plans to extend the agreement to allow ultimately for the use of armed UAVs, as in Afghanistan? And, if so, what protection would there be for the hostages? That is not an ingredient in the problem in Afghanistan, but it certainly would be if UAVs were to deploy armed attacks on pirate vessels.

There is no mention of the use of geostationary satellites for surveillance, although there are plenty of references to the technology on the web. It should be feasible to identify the large mother boats, referred to by my noble friend Lord Teverson as being introduced now by the pirates, towing several attack skiffs, allowing them to carry out attacks far off the coast of Somalia—they say up to 1,300 nautical miles—and against ever larger freighters. Have the EU, NATO or the US-led combined maritime forces considered satellite observation to pick up suspected pirate operations? What conclusions have they reached?

There are also pirates, as have been mentioned, off the coast of west Africa, where there are easy targets on oil rigs, as we saw only yesterday when five crew members were kidnapped from a rig operated by a British company, Afren. It would be wise to look ahead even if for any reason the technology cannot be employed today.

The Select Committee says that in-theatre co-ordination is working well between the three multilateral operations and the eight individual states that have what the Secretary-General describes as,

“varying degrees of coordination with the coalition forces”.

He concludes that,

“there is a need to expand and formalize the mechanism whereby information obtained by military assets at sea is effectively collected and made readily available to various law-enforcement and judicial bodies”.

The IMO and Interpol are developing guidance on the collection of evidence following acts of piracy. In the mean time, there must be a temporary solution. Perhaps the IMO would be an appropriate custodian of the evidence until an authority is established for that purpose.

Finally, I ask my noble friend whether a bolder policy than the one we are adopting should not be considered. If the AU were to increase the strength of AMISOM to the point where not only could it clear the pirates out of Mogadishu, as it bids well to do at the moment, but could reoccupy the coast as far as the border with Puntland on behalf of the TFG, the pirates' bases along that stretch would be eliminated and the new Government of Prime Minister Farmajo would receive a tremendous boost. Uganda has argued at the UN that AMISOM should have 20,000 troops on the ground and that the Security Council should provide sustained and predictable financial and logistical support for it, instead of the present system of voluntary contributions. It says that piracy would be effectively dealt with by addressing the situation in Somalia itself. This may be a unique moment for putting both the pirates and al-Shabaab on the back foot.