Middle East

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Friday 16th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, it was with considerable optimism that we greeted the start of the so-called Arab spring a year ago, seeing in it a mirror of the events that freed eastern Europe from 1989 and confirmation for those who believed that democracy and liberty were indeed dormant in Arab countries, waiting only for the opportunity to express themselves. Your Lordships meet in a rather more sombre mood today. Rather than ushering in a new era of democracy and human rights, there may be the emergence Governments who are intrinsically hostile to the West and repressive of their own fellow citizens. We do not hear much now from the young liberated people who started the revolutions, but now we see regimes as repressive as those they replaced. Indeed, there is worse on the way for events in Syria are of a nature not witnessed since the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The danger is that, after one election, future genuine elections may never materialise, as was the case in Iran after the fall of the Shah.

The coming of the Arab summer is uncertain because of the lack of democratic party-political infrastructure in most of the Middle East countries that face change. We hope for stability, liberty, dignity, proper governance and better living conditions for them, but they are unachievable without the pillars of civil society being in position. Democracy is more than free elections. It requires free speech, a free press, a constitution, freedom for and of religion, equal justice under the law, individual rights, an independent judiciary and freedom of communication. That is where the UK can help. Our Government should provide support for that infrastructure and international organisations should support women’s participation and political leadership, for no country can prosper when half its population is effectively muzzled. The UK Government can help the Arab world meet the challenges of modernisation, which are so far unmet—science, technology, women’s rights, and communications—and prevent counterrevolution against modernisation.

In the distribution of foreign aid by this country—for example, millions are given by this Government to India, a nuclear country with a space programme, which has said that it does not need it—there is room to fund scholarships for Arabs of modest means to come here to study government administration and to send experts from here to the Middle East to help establish the pillars of civil society. It is urgent, for many are suffering in the mean time—namely, the Egyptian economy, Christian minorities in Iraq, Egypt and Syria, women and African migrant workers. Being in a minority in the Arab Muslim world was always dangerous and precarious, and minorities suffer even more when national unity is at the forefront.

Other generic problems in the Middle East are hampering a move to a good future—namely, the treatment of women; the inability to settle refugees, whether they are Palestinians, Iraqi refugees in Syria, Somalis in Yemen or Iranians in Iraq; and the unwillingness to host the minorities in their midst. That is in contrast to the multiculturalism and hospitality rightly expected by Middle Eastern migrants to this country and the West.

Of course, the question of Palestine is still important, but the uprisings enable us to see this question in context and to cease to believe that it is the cause of all Arab grievances. Israel is one of many countries in the Middle East whose boundaries were drawn by colonial powers without sufficient reference to peoplehood on the ground. Nevertheless, anti-Israel or anti-Jewish hostility is manifest alongside the uprisings. The turmoil has made Israeli peace more difficult because stable arrangements are currently impossible with neighbouring states and Egyptian control over the Sinai has weakened, although fortunately Egypt has maintained the treaty and recently helped broker a ceasefire with Gaza. Western powers should make clear their support for the treaty with Egypt. The dislike of Israel expressed by some Middle Eastern states owes something to centuries-old negative stereotypes and is however more than matched by their treatment of their own civilians.

The Syrian question is a blot on the history of the United Nations and has further weakened the standing of the UN itself. Its Human Rights Council has just adopted a report praising the human rights record of Gaddafi’s Libya. The greatest threat of all, where the spring was choked off, is nuclear Iran, supporter of Assad. Its nuclear success might be emulated by Saudi Arabia, perhaps Turkey and even Egypt. As a nuclear power, it will dominate the region and the energy supply. It threatens genocide. Its human rights record is particularly appalling, with executions, political prisoners, the persecution of women, gays and minorities, and its blocking of communications—allegedly the BBC Persian service and internet sites. If we do not act to contain Iran to protest against its lack of human rights and against the massacres in Syria, we will be accused of double standards.

The Queen is alleged to have said in relation to the financial crisis:

“Why did no one see it coming?”.

The Arab spring took everyone by surprise because they were looking the other way. Many misjudgments have been made about the Middle East in the past. For example, it was assumed that because President Assad and his wife studied in London they were nice people who could not behave badly. It is easy to believe that Iran’s intentions are peaceful when they are not. Certainly, the clarity of your Lordships’ deliberations would be much assisted if we were to receive the report of the Chilcot inquiry, which I believe was due some two years ago, for we need clarity and understanding.