Syria and the Middle East

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue today. In his book A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East, Professor Lawrence Freedman comes to a bleak conclusion:

“The continuity in many of the problems facing the Middle East suggests that they must be managed or endured; they are too rooted in the institutional structures, power balances, and cultures of the region to be solved”.

Freedman is a historian who can see the weariness of US policymakers over a span of half a century when power, politics and events conspired to defeat well intentioned forays into the Middle East. It is not surprising that we in the United Kingdom see events in a similar light; after all, it is nearly 100 years since the Balfour Declaration and the suffering of the Palestinian people still sits alongside the insecurity of the Jews. Ironically, both still look to the West for a solution, to a greater or lesser degree.

It is our responsibility to the people of Syria that I want to concentrate on today, as this is our most urgent priority. In so doing, I put on record my gratitude to Professor Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, who has proved a most thoughtful sounding board. However, before I set out my own personal position, it is important to acknowledge two things. First, the brutality of the civil war and the suffering that endures today are of concern to those on all sides of the House. We on these Benches have regular and constant discussions about the way forward. Today, I suspect that we will be coming from different perspectives on the way to proceed. Secondly, our different perspectives on how best to bring an end to the suffering of the Syrian people do not diminish from our common goal, which is for a negotiated and speedy end to the civil war and an outcome that brings an end to the armed conflict so that solutions to the coexistence of the different sides can be explored and developed. Whether that is though an international conference or through the UN Security Council finding the unity and the will to stop the carnage, we are united in believing that our country must do what it can to end the suffering.

My own views are coloured by my long engagement with and affection for Syria. I first went there in 1973 and, 40 years later, I can only be grateful that I saw again and again the history, culture and dignity of the people in better times. Were I to adapt John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” to this kind of conflict situation—that is not what he intended it for but nevertheless I think it applies—I do not believe my views on where we are today and what we should be doing would be any different had I never set foot in Syria. With 93,000 dead and many millions displaced internally and externally, living in the most appalling conditions, it is only right that here in the United Kingdom the Government have sought to prepare for a future arming of the Free Syrian Army through the lifting of the EU arms embargo on Syria. This decision has, rightly, been debated extensively within government and, indeed, in both Houses—“rightly” because, if arms are supplied, it presages an intervention by our country that many will doubt can lead to any good.

There are those across this House who will argue that adding more arms into an armed conflict cannot possibly reduce the killing; indeed, we have heard that case from the noble Lord, Lord Wood of Anfield. I can only envy him his certainty. There are also those who feel that in arming the opposition we cannot know with whom we are dealing, who these people are and where our weapons will end up. Then there are those who might believe that we have no business taking sides—that it is a sectarian struggle between Shia and Sunni, and we are best out of it. Finally, there are those who believe that the mere act of arming one side will suck us into a full-scale intervention, with our own troops in the line of fire. All are perfectly reasonable questions, but I would seek to answer them differently.

I shall start with the view that where there is killing, providing more arms cannot reduce the killing. If this view was a morally held one which applied to all times and all eventualities, it could not stand the scrutiny of our own history. Leaving aside for now the First and Second World Wars, again and again, the United Kingdom has intervened in other conflicts after killing has commenced in order to stop the killing. We have done so in recent times in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Libya.

Specifically with regard to lifting the arms embargo, we have the example of the Spanish civil war. In the 1930s, Britain and France maintained an arms embargo, while the USSR gave support to the republicans, and fascist Italy and Germany supported the nationalists. Russian support enabled the communists to dominate the divided republicans and fascist support enabled the nationalists to defeat the divided republicans and win the war, with the fate of the Spanish people under Franco all too well known and still, to some extent, unatoned for in modern Spain.

It is also true that we can have no cast-iron guarantee that the arms we deliver to the Free Syrian Army will remain in its control through the exigencies of running combat day to day. There is no guarantee that were we to give weapons they would not end up in the hands of Assad’s forces, or indeed with Jabhat al-Nusra and its al-Qaeda fighters. However, the test that one should apply here is whether by arming the forces of the Free Syrian Army to the point that Assad is brought to the negotiating table, we are likely to succeed. If the answer—after assessing the risks properly as to what arms we should supply, to whom and with what level of training—is a likely yes, we should take the risk that some of our weapons might fall into the wrong hands. At the moment, we have a situation whereby the Free Syrian Army is suffering from shortfalls even of rounds of ammunition. If we can bring more symmetry into the equation, alongside the assurance from General Idris of the Free Syrian Army that his men will account for the weapons delivered and will seek to return them to us when all is said and done, then when we feel more secure in those assurances, we should move to arm it.

It may also be true that we do not know the different factions well enough or understand their motives to be able to make judgments as to who we might befriend. If that is the case, I am all for holding back, but as this war progresses, we know more and more who we do not trust. It is clear to me that Assad cannot any longer be part of the solution. I suspect that there would be consensus in this House that al-Qaeda in the form of Jabhat al-Nusra will not be a force for good in Syria, her neighbours or indeed the West. Our engagement must be based on our assessment of which side best reflects our interests.

Since our interests are reflected in freedom, the defence of minorities and their rights and upholding human rights in a future stable, peaceful and pluralist Syria, I feel that we are capable of working though which of the different factions can best deliver those values. Ultimately, this has to be an assessment that is laden with risks, but there are risks equally in turning our backs. There is a strong view, and has been for nearly a century in the Middle East, that the West engages with the region only in its own interests. What good then will western passivity have in this situation? What will we have demonstrated other than cold moral relativism? To the young Arab, it will simply prove the jihadi/al-Qaeda narrative that we do not give a damn about the suffering of Muslims because they are the other.

I am equally clear that a Government who use biological and chemical weapons against their opponents and are as ruthless as we have witnessed in the past two years cast themselves open to international action under the norm of responsibility to protect. If we have not arrived at that situation today, we may nevertheless have to prepare to do that in the future. Existing international law may impose that obligation upon us, through the Geneva conventions, if not the responsibility to protect. Given that the Labour Party has so clearly sets its face in opposition today, what would it do then, I wonder?

In conclusion, I reflect that we need to be clear about what the doctrine of non-intervention holds for us today. We cannot argue for multilateralism on the one hand, when the forces of globalisation, climate change or international terrorism call for us to work with others to solve problems, yet turn away when the most fundamental crisis arises: that of significant human death and destruction. In saying this, I am not saying that we must intervene. It is possible that our intervention, limited as it might be to supplying arms, might not succeed in our objective to bring Assad to the negotiating table. If we are clear that intervention at this stage will not achieve that objective, we should not do it. Whether we intervene or not, there will be consequences for us. Today affords us an opportunity to reflect on what those might be, although we do not have sufficient clarity. The Government are right to prepare for what might have to come.