Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
180-199)
Dr Lee Willett and Mr Jason Alderwick
21 JANUARY 2010
Q180 Lord Swinfen: Like the IRA saying
that they have to be lucky only once, but we have to be lucky
all the time.
Mr Alderwick: Exactly. I do not get an assessment
that there is a very sophisticated intelligence operation. You
know, there were rumours of Somalis operating in the UK shipping
industry, feeding information back to clans based in Puntland,
which were then conducting operations against specific ships.
I certainly have not seen any evidence to suggest it is that orchestrated
or organised. I just think a lot of these attacks are highly and
hugely opportunistic, and frankly there is enough out there, there
is easy meat out there for them to take advantage of.
Q181 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Interpreting
the conversation of those who are captured, listening to and understanding
the communication between the pirates themselves, is this adequate?
Are we able to draw on the several hundred thousand Somali community
in the UK, perhaps from other clans, who are able to assist us?
Mr Alderwick: There have been engagements by
the naval forces, certainly on the Atalanta side, to engage with
the Somali diaspora that are here in London. I do not know how
regular and how continuous that engagement is, and whether or
not there is a kind of formalised relationship. I would say it
probably is not. I would lead you to the shortfall we have in
linguistic support for the mission, I think that is an area that
could be exploited that probably is not being exploited at this
time.
Q182 Lord Anderson of Swansea: How do
we then communicate to the pirates?
Mr Alderwick: Pretty primitively, if you are
not a linguistic specialist.
Q183 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: Last week,
Admiral Hudson came along, he would not tell us what the rules
of engagement were. Do you understand what they are, and if you
do, do you think that they are robust enough? Do different nations
have different rules of engagement? Should there be common rules
of engagement? Would it be desirable for the EU operation to be
able to pursue pirates on land?
Dr Willett: As I understand it from my research
in this area, the NAVFOR, the Atalanta nations argue that their
RoE framework is both very robust and robust enough for what their
mandate requires them to do. Each nation does have individual
RoE within that that allows them to be able to chop from EU to
national tasking as the circumstance requires, and indeed that
is a benefit, because some nations would rather not do some things,
or do not have the capacity to do some things, and other nations
can fill that gap. Now the other forces, the NATO forces and the
CMF, do operate on different rules of engagement, and as I understand
it, the CMF forces in particular, but also some of the NATO forces,
are operating by and large on national mandates. So the RoE from
the EU's point of view certainly is regarded as being robust enough
to give them what they want to do. Whether or not one could do
more to that; well, of course, there is the issue of what the
law allows you to do: the definition of being able to use lethal
force, for example, is only if there is imminent threat to life,
so arguments for developing an exclusion zone which is so far
out that you could only assume that a vessel or pirate skiff out
there was there to do one thing and one thing only, and that is
conduct pirate attacks, and the argument that you could therefore
assume that that vessel was there with hostile intent and could
sink it, you cannot do that, because there is no imminent threat
to life, so there is a limitation. Part of the problem this does
create from an operational point of view is that when you have
suddenly the risk of loss of life, if the pirates have taken a
ship or are about to take a ship, the risk of naval forces fighting
back in that circumstance, of course, increases the risk of loss
of life for both hostages and forces trying to free them, so it
is not an ideal solution either. In terms of pursuing the pirates
on land as well, I think that creates a situation that is incredibly
fraught with operational difficulties. The pirates blend very
quickly and easily into the civilian population ashore. So the
idea that you could use military forces to go ashore, to storm
ashore and take out pirate camps, for example, the camps are indeed
very, very primitive, and isolated in some cases, but when the
pirates themselves blend very easily into the community, it makes
the idea of going ashore to pursue pirates quite difficult. One
only has to look at the examples of the French, I believe it was,
who tried that on a couple of occasions, without, as I see it,
significant success.
Q184 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: I have to
say, My Lord Chairman, I found it very helpful that there was
a programme on the wireless I think on Monday at 9.00, so I am
sure no member of the Committee or indeed those giving evidence
today was listening to it. This was the captain of a ship who
had actually avoided being taken by pirates, at the mouth of the
Gulf of Aden. He had had a very large number of AK47 bullets fired
at his ship, two RPGs were fired at it, one of the rocket propelled
grenades actually went into a fuel tank, which was very fortunately
empty, and the other one went across the top of the bridge. Are
we saying that this was only done to intimidate people on this
ship, and they did not really want to kill anybody? I thought
it was slightly unfortunate that part of the captain's account
of what had happened is he said that if any people had been injured
as a result of this attack, he would have surrendered at once.
As it was, he actually managed to get away, with quite good tactics
and very good control of his ship. This strikes me that we are
playing quite a rough game here; we do not seem to have convicted
any pirates, we do not seem to caught very many, and we seem to
be fighting with one hand behind our backs.
Dr Willett: I would argue very briefly that
I do not think it is in the pirates' interest to risk killing
the crew. The assault, the tactics they use will be to encourage
the crew not to fight back, to let them take the vessel as easily
as they can. From a commercial point of view, the guidance still
from the shipping industry bodies and from the EU is that taking
weapons on board for example to defend yourself just increases
the risk of loss of life and therefore is undesirable. It is almost
at the point where if a pirate attack is about to happen and weapons
are being fired and hooks are being thrown over, it becomes then
something of a hostage issue to be dealt with further down the
line. The guidance given to the ships is to do what you can to
prevent the pirates getting on board for 30 minutes or so, which
is the time that it takes for a helicopter to arrive on station
to then scare the pirates off. So there is an element of deterrent
on both sides, but the risk of concern over loss of life, as opposed
to paying out a ransom, is where the key issue is.
Q185 Lord Hamilton of Epsom: The captain
of the ship said that he did not want to see his crew armed, but
on the other hand, he did not have the same reservations about
carrying mercenaries who would be armed. Would you say that he
was wrong on that?
Dr Willett: As I understand it, there are some
nations or some ships that do carry private security companies
on board. But again, this does increase the risk, because a weapon
on board is perhaps one that will then be used. One could argue,
I suppose, would that deter the pirates; well, the evidence at
the moment suggests not, and one only has to look at situations
with some of the attacks that have been where weapons have been
fired on both sides, and people have been killed, that suggests
that there is still significant risk to loss of life, whichever
side is holding the weapon, which is undesirable. The point that
I might like to make if I may with regard to the private security
companies is I think there are other ways in which they could
be used. There are private security companies that have capacity,
ships, ex-special forces on their books trained; well, if they
have that capacity, do we not have options then to encourage them
to discuss with governments, whether that be the US or other national
governments, to work with taskforces, with the navies, to have
those assets made available to the Somalis, for example, to provide
capacity building in terms of training the Somali pirates to become
coastguards, for example; turn it around and use that private
security company capacity to offer it as an asset to the Somali
government.
Q186 Lord Crickhowell: Can I ask you
a related question, one frequently asked by the public: you have
had circumstances where perhaps a Royal Navy ship is very close
alongside, when people are being taken, and people decide not
to shoot; I can understand why, but it is a question the public
does not understand, why. Would you comment?
Mr Alderwick: Specifically, I think you are
alluding to the Chandler incident, where it was believed that
they were all in position to intervene. When you start to make
an intervention, once the pirates have seized the vessel and actually
have hostages, then it becomes a very specialist military task.
It is a Special Forces role to do that kind of intervention. It
is not within the skillsets of the boarding parties and the boarding
teams that are currently out there on operations. They do board,
search, conducting generally unopposed boardings, so they do not
have the skillsets to do it. Whilst they are trained to fire arms,
they are not highly specialist marksmen. So as Dr Willett says,
I think on balance the threat to life would be greater. There
may also be times where in the public's eye, and in the media's
eye certainly, the military forces have not been robust enough,
they have not taken the initiative, but it may well be that other
military forces are being tasked to be involved, such as special
forces. Now in a UK context, anything involving special forces
is embargoed in the media sense, so you may have a naval spokesman
in a position whereby he cannot—it looks as if no action
is being taken, because the issue that he has been asked to talk
about is under the Special Forces Directorate, and is therefore
not in the public domain, and he cannot talk about it. So he cannot
say, "Things are being done, things were being done",
he is left in the position whereby he is seen effectively not
doing the right thing. If I could just go back to one of the questions
on RoE, the incident you said where the seafarers had been subjected
to repeated RPG attacks and small arms fire; had there been a
military unit on station, that is clearly a case of imminent threat
to life, and they would have taken robust military action without
question. So the rules are robust enough, where there is threat
to life, for military action to take place. I would say that what
you have to remember is this is a constabulary operation, this
is a criminal operation, this is not a military operation, and
because of that, we have to operate virtually under civil constraints,
unless there is this threat to life, and that does stop you taking
action. Whilst the newspapers may shout and cry for stringing
the pirates up, it is not the 17th century any more, and we cannot
do that. It is not in anyone's interests to do that.
Q187 Chairman: I think you have lost
the mood of the meeting!
Mr Alderwick: I am sorry, but we have to rely
on international law, at the end of the day. It is not the 17th
century any more. Do you understand what I am saying?
Q188 Chairman: This is a very, very important
point.
Dr Willett: One very small point to respond
to that question directly. Mr Alderwick mentioned the issue of
Special Forces; of course, they are at the sharp end. In that
particular case of the Chandlers, special forces would have been
the sharp end in terms of actually mounting any kind of rescue
attempt, but of course, in terms of pursuing the pirates at that
point, after the Chandlers had already been taken hostage, again
the UK ship concerned was a support ship, and would not be the
ideal kind of ship with which to go pursuing pirates, as it is
not a warship. So the unfortunate circumstance of place and time
with the wrong assets not quite being available at the right moment,
and again the risk of the wrong kind of warship, with not quite
the right kind of personnel on board, pursuing pirates that are
jumpy, twitchy, prone to violence, with two people on board, was
in risk assessment terms to be regarded as risking their lives
further. At that point, it became a hostage rescue situation.
Q189 Lord Williams of Elvel: What would
happen in practice if international law is in fact violated, if
a dhow is blown up at sea? The pirates are not going to take us
to court, are they? What actually would happen?
Mr Alderwick: You are right, those individuals
probably would not be able to seek redress, mainly probably because
they would be dead. However, you have to bear in mind, you are
asking the commander of that ship to effectively carry out something
that he would not in his eyes view as lawful, i.e. destroying
that ship, or killing those pirates. So I just do not think there
is the appetite to step out of bounds of the international legal
framework, which we effectively want to endorse and support, the
lawful use of the sea, etc, and I just do not think internationally
it would wear well as being in our best interests to do that.
Q190 Lord Anderson of Swansea: In the
crucial half an hour before the naval fifth cavalry come, how
much effort is put into fortifying the bridge to protect the relatively
small crews on these ships over that crucial period?
Mr Alderwick: Dr Willett said, I think, 25%
are in non-compliance, so that works out at around about 3,000
or so.
Q191 Lord Anderson of Swansea: But the
rest have a protected bridge area?
Mr Alderwick: Yes, well, ballistically protected,
no, but are they welding doors shut, are they putting barbed wire
on doors, are they padlocking entrances, are they making sure
that any ropes or entanglements that would provide you an opportunity
to board your ship have been removed; yes, they are doing that.
Do they have fire hoses rigged and on to stop you being able to
come alongside a ship in your small pirate skiff, you get flooded,
oh dear, you sink or you have to regroup and try again. So you
can make robust efforts to deter them. Is your ship transiting
at its best possible speed? Is it going as fast as it possibly
can? Evidence suggests that some ships still transit the area
at 8 knots, and if you do that, a 30 knot skiff or a vessel that
is able to go that fast can easily approach you, and you can be
boarded. So if you are manoeuvring at the maximum serviceable
speed of the vessel, if you are using the sea state and swell
conditions to make the boarding for the pirates as uncomfortable
as possible, and offering up those other measures, then the likelihood
of surviving this 30 minute limit is do-able.
Q192 Lord Chidgey: But is it not 30 minutes
before they board, rather than 30 minutes before they take the
bridge?
Mr Alderwick: No, from the start of the attack
effectively it is 30 minutes. If the pirates have boarded the
vessel and have got charge of the vessel—if they are on
board and have not as yet got charge of the vessel and the crew,
then it is still likely that a military intervention would take
place, but as soon as that vessel is effectively under the command
of the pirates, that is it.
Q193 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Capability
shortfalls; you probably read the evidence of Admiral Hudson last
week, he mentioned particularly that the availability of tankers
would allow him to keep his ships at sea longer; he mentioned
UAVs; he mentioned maritime patrol aircraft; and we have heard
also in the past of hospital facilities for ships. What are the
prospects of remedying these deficiencies?
Dr Willett: I think one important point there
to make is that this needs to be viewed from an international
point of view. A nation, for example the UK, is not suddenly going
to find an increased number of maritime patrol aircraft or helicopters
or surface ships to be available. It is encouraging other nations
to provide assets, and one can look very recently at, for example,
the Saudis' provision of a tanker or the Japanese provision of
a tanker, for various operations in the region, as being important.
It is encouraging other nations to come to the party and to bring
what they can. If you look at the MPAs, for example, if I am right,
I stand to be corrected, even Luxembourg have provided a maritime
patrol aircraft which is operating in the Seychelles area. So
this is an international problem that is best supported by an
international solution, so encouraging other nations to provide
what they can I think is perhaps the most logical short-term solution.
Q194 Lord Anderson of Swansea: But to
encourage is a fine principle, are we succeeding, are we giving
Admiral Hudson the tankers which he needs?
Dr Willett: Perhaps naval officers or military
officers will always argue they never quite have enough, but there
is certainly a significant gap in terms of maritime patrol aircraft,
I would argue. It would seem that nations are offering more; the
French, I think the Spanish have maybe perhaps provided an asset
as well, so we are getting there slowly, but nations and navies
as a whole are very thinly stretched and have requirements elsewhere,
so it is making little contributions as we can.
Mr Alderwick: Very briefly, I would agree with
Dr Willett and in fact the list of shortfalls that I have got
reads exactly as Admiral Hudson's list of shortfalls. I think
what you can say is though—you asked, are we doing enough?
Well, no, and there are shortfalls and they are well documented.
But it is within the context of unprecedented naval action to
date. There has never been this level of international action
on this issue in the maritime sphere. I think that is an important
message to take away. Yes, there are shortfalls, yes, we could
do with more auxiliary support and all the other force multipliers,
but actually, efforts to date have been pretty good.
Dr Willett: Sorry, half a sentence I should
perhaps have added, if you break it down into what these assets
can actually do, an MPA patrol aircraft would provide you with
some surveillance and some warning of an impending attack, as
could a helicopter. A helicopter could be deployed on station
to perhaps deter the pirates from coming aboard, but if you actually
are talking about the hard end point of stopping a boarding potentially,
or prosecuting a pirate attack in some other way, a warship is
what you need, and you can have all the intelligence and all the
information that you like, but if you have nothing grey at the
end of the day to go out there and actually prosecute the target,
then the information does not deliver the value, the effect that
it should.
Q195 Lord Selkirk of Douglas: I think
in part you have already answered this question, but I would like
to ask just in case you have anything to add: what is your assessment
of the degree, speed and effectiveness of command and co-ordination
between the EU's operational command at Northwood and the EU force
commander in the field, and also among the national contingents
of the EU operation?
Mr Alderwick: Good is what I would say, briefly.
I mean, I think they have got secure voice and secure internet
chat facilities. Essentially most of the players are NATO members
as well, so a lot of the NATO equipment that is used to communicate
is being used in the Atalanta Operation to enable communications,
so I think communications is not necessarily an issue. Command
and Control is not an issue within the Atalanta set-up. The problems
arise when you are trying to operate with other nations that are
not part of the set-up, that are outside of the Coalition Maritime
Force framework, the NATO force framework and the Atalanta framework.
You had in the past difficulties; now you have at least got realtime
internet chat facilities between the different contributors. I
think that is probably just enough; yes, you might like VTC, video
teleconferencing or secure voice between everyone, that would
give you an ability to respond a bit quicker, but actually, what
the forces are engaged upon is not complex air defence or anti-submarine
warfare, whilst the situation evolves relatively fast, it is not
overtaking their ability to communicate with each other in most
cases.
Q196 Lord Selkirk of Douglas: With regard
to other countries like China and Russia, we have heard evidence
that they are pursuing their own interests and protection of their
own shipping, rather than more generally. Do you think there is
scope for greater co-operation between NATO forces and also other
countries like China and Russia?
Dr Willett: That is obviously a hugely significant
political question, do they wish to do so. Part of the problem
is this is like a 11-year olds' football match, and everybody
wants to be in the same place, where the ball is, because everybody
wants to be seen to be trying to get stuck in and be involved,
so there are nations that are there because they have to be seen
to be there. The Chinese are an interesting example, because obviously
they have significant interests in the African region, and while
this deployment is their first out of area deployment with a naval
force, which is significant in itself, they obviously have keen
interests in protecting their interests in that part of the world.
But in terms of communication, the reality of actually being out
there at sea tends to make nations think again. For example, if
one was in a Chinese warship that is deployed a long way away
from home, and had the issue of starting to run out of food, how
do you feed your sailors, and there are American warships bobbing
about, and British warships bobbing about, but you have no way
or no time to get into port and no supply ship of your own nearby,
an option may be that you get on the net, speak to a friendly
warship, which may happen to be a NATO or an EU warship, and ask
for help. I think that reality is being borne out in this operation,
in that there are ships there from different nations that have
to find ways of co-operating when circumstances at a very tactical
level make them do so.
Mr Alderwick: Could I also add that specifically
with the Chinese and the Indians, I do not think there is an incident
that has taken place whereby they have been in the vicinity and
they have not gone to the assistance of another ship. There is
that code of conduct out there that actually you will do something,
come hell or high water, you will intervene if you can, and they
certainly are doing that. There is a committee, I do not know
if this was brought up in previous sessions, but the Shared Awareness
and Deconfliction Committee that meets once a month, and that
brings all the participants in the region together. At the moment,
it is a co-chair between the Coalition Maritime Force and Atalanta,
there are two co-chair positions, and there is also going to be
an additional rotating chair appointment as well, and the Chinese
have already indicated quite strongly that they would wish to
be part of that. My understanding is that outside of their national
commitments to convoy their flag state ships, when they are not
in a situation where they are specifically escorting their own
ships, they have said that they will potentially come into this
IRTC arrangement of group transits and the force composition there.
So I think as Dr Willett has said, thus far, things are developing,
things are moving, increasing co-operation is happening, and that
is one such example.
Q197 Lord Williams of Elvel: Just to
talk about fishing for a moment, the mandate has now been extended
to monitor fishing. First of all, in practice, what does that
mean, and is it in your view valuable?
Mr Alderwick: It is an interesting one, as you
said, the mandate has been re-extended, this is an additional
tasking. There is no doubt that the fishing community has been
affected both internally, if you like, with the political strife
in Somalia itself, but externally, there is a perception, if you
like, of other countries coming in on an industrial scale and
exploiting the fishing stocks off the coast there. Who do you
report to, I think; it is all right recording and monitoring,
but who are you reporting to, and to what effect that will have
is probably another point, because if you do not have the enforcement,
the regulation capacity or the ability to license and control
your Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), well, it is all great about
reporting, but in terms of a positive effect, the results will
be limited. I think early indications are that this is in the
early stages, it will at least give both the Somali government,
Puntland and Somaliland an idea, if you like, of the scale and
scope of potentially unregulated fishing activity that is occurring.
So from that point of view, we will be able to see how much business
and revenue is being lost. But, until you are in a position to
enforce and develop the capacity of Puntland or the TFG to regulate
the waters, then I do not think it is going to be that significant.
Q198 Lord Williams of Elvel: There is
a theory that some of the illegal fishing and indeed the dumping
of toxic waste has actually encouraged Somali pirates; is there
anything in that theory?
Dr Willett: Very much so, that is part of the
theory. In fact, there were even pirates interviewed on the media
last year, and they made exactly that point, that because Western
ships were coming illegally into their waters and taking their
fish, they had no other choice, but what is interesting, of course,
is that illegal fishing and toxic dumping seem to have disappeared
as an issue. You can make an interesting argument as to whether
that is the presence of the warships or whether that is the presence
of the pirates, or together, the deterrent effect of the two is
stopping that. But what is interesting about the mandate issue
I think is this, in that fishing stocks are now understood to
be on the increase again, so does this, pardon the language, ring
the dinner bell for the illegal fishing again? So is it therefore
important that it is part of the mandate to monitor fishing areas,
so that if the increase in illegal activity does start again,
that it can be addressed.
Mr Alderwick: Could I just add to that? It is
interesting actually that, as Dr Willett said, what is happening
is that the industrial fishing that was taking place, simply because
of the piratical activity, is now no longer there. Some ministers
within the EU thought that the EU taskforce was effectively a
fishery protection organisation, and should be used to support
the EU fishing industry, to operate in the waters off the coast
of Somalia; believe it or not, that is what has happened. I mean,
it is simply not right that that is the case. There is anecdotal
evidence to suggest that fishing stocks have recovered, but there
is certainly no detailed scientific evidence to support this.
We are talking about reports from game fishermen operating out
of Mombasa, things like that, saying they have had record catches
of certain types of game fish, that before you would maybe catch
two or three a season, now you are catching 15. So that is the
anecdotal evidence to suggest that the fish stocks have recovered.
On the illegal dumping side, in the early 1990s, there was a lot
of suspicion that this activity was taking place, and indeed,
the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) conducted a series of investigations
and research reports I think in the late 1990s with the most recent
one in 2005, and both those reports are fairly extensive, and
found no evidence to suggest that illegal dumping was taking place.
What is important to remember is that both Somalia and to a certain
extent Yemen have no capacity to control their pollution, to process
their own waste as well, so there is an environmental issue just
concerning the activity within that state itself. What you did
find is that oil tankers would go through the region, and before
maritime pollution laws were in effect, they would wash their
tanks out, and you would get a lot of oil coming from offshore
on to the shoreline, and again, there are reports of up to 30,000
tonnes a year being illegally discharged into the Somali Basin
and the Gulf of Aden, so that would have a significant environmental
impact. But I think what we have seen is that the consequences
of this activity have almost become mythological, and they have
been used by the pirates to justify their actions, but actually,
the reality is it is plain old criminality here, and the explosion
in piracy is as a consequence of low risk and high rewards, and
nothing else.
Q199 Lord Williams of Elvel: Do pirates
use fishing vessels, as it were, by night and then operate as
pirate vessels during the day? Do they switch over from one to
another very easily?
Mr Alderwick: Again, there is evidence to suggest
that what you need are people with specialist skills if you are
a pirate, so at least one person in the boat is what you would
call a professional seafarer, a fisherman, so he may well be fishing
by night, and conducting piracy by day, that is probable. But
the vast majority of the pirates are illiterate, they are drawn
from coastal towns, they are just drawn on the attraction to make
more money in a single month than they could potentially make
in more than 10 or 15 years of making an honest living.
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