Iraq

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (LD)]

My Lords, as chairman of the AMAR International Charitable Foundation, the executive chairman of the Iraq Britain Business Council and the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Iraq, I have an enormous vested interest in the country, as noted in the register of Members’ interests, and in the most recent terrible incidents in the region. I visit the country very regularly, and I have a deep commitment to the health, welfare and future of its people. My interest in the debate that the Minister has initiated this evening is in seeing how we in the United Kingdom can use our limited resources and power in ways that are most beneficial for our nation, for the Iraqi people and for the region.

I remind noble Lords that since the fall of the Saddam regime, right up until earlier this month when ISIS swept into Mosul, the country was making remarkable progress. Democratic elections had been held not once, not twice but several times. The most recent was declared by the UN special envoy to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, to have been genuinely free and fair—indeed, they passed off with extremely little incident. While there is indeed a convincing argument that Prime Minister Maliki and his predecessors should have done a lot more to make their Governments inclusive, the democratic process was none the less starting to take hold.

I point out to noble Lords that the system of elections that the United Nations bequeathed to the federal Republic of Iraq was not designed on the European Union model. There is no d’Hondt system in Baghdad’s electoral commission. In other words, the model that was bequeathed was not the first past the post model that we the British put in, which was widely praised and liked, but is somehow a halfway house. It is not designed to produce a coalition Government; it is not designed, as Prime Minister Maliki said today, to produce the sort of Government that the international community is requesting of him. The system that has been designed has produced an outcome. Yes, it was democratic; yes, it followed the rules; yes the electoral commission and the United Nations—there were no international observers this time—declared it to be free and fair. It is neither correct nor proper for us now to demand a form of government that does not fit the model and which would, therefore, be undemocratic.

The 10% growth rate that the country has enjoyed over the past few years was based upon the proper values that were bequeathed in the constitution. This evening, we had the Human Rights Minister speaking at an all-party group, for example. He reassured us—and I have seen him and his Ministry in action on the ground—that human rights were at the heart of the Government’s policies. I do not pretend, and nor does he, that the implementation of the human rights agenda is absolutely perfect—far from it. However, he has set up a human rights institution and has been working incredibly hard to try to make it work; I can prove this entirely with my evidence-based knowledge of his work and that of his Ministry.

In the justice system, judges are trained by UK judges, no less. Yes, they have been left with a tiny justice system. Nevertheless, the judges have fought extremely hard to fulfil the requirements of a proper justice system. Indeed, I have been hosting some of them to come and see our own Supreme Court and sit in the Old Bailey to understand exactly what they should do. It is not for want of trying that the justice system has not been fulfilling its potential. Indeed, the fundamental freedoms, the rule of law and the fight against corruption, have all been embedded and were starting to work.

Iraq’s enormous supply of natural resources has of course played no small part in helping to fuel the renaissance of the entire country. Here is where Britain’s strength has been so obvious. Shell, BP and almost all of the big oil companies are working out of here, including Chevron, Foster Wheeler, Vitol and so on. They have all been working immensely hard, and Shell and BP alone have been producing 80% of the country’s GDP. That, I suggest, is one of the big resources and our Government should do all they possibly can, once this crisis has passed, to work hard to get the investment of British companies in Iraq.

The misery at the moment is that all of this good work has been thrown into jeopardy. The gang of thugs, the Islamic extremists that call themselves ISIS, have wreaked havoc in the west and north-west of Iraq for some time now. Their brutality is unprecedented, even in a country that has seen more than its fair share of horror over the past few decades. Their numbers have burgeoned; they have grown dramatically. At first, 500 thugs came into Mosul; they are now in their thousands, and now they have the most enormous sums available to them and are fully armed. How terrifying for the people of Iraq. We should do all that we possibly can to help.

To group back to the theme for a moment of the British businesses in Iraq, Iraqis think very highly indeed of this British resource. They think very highly of the quality in our work and of our lack of corruption. They think very highly of the quality of the people that we employ and of our technical abilities and innovations. We should do all that we can to satisfy that wish. They want to see British companies in Iraq.

Last month, only four weeks ago, I was able to host 80 Iraqi businesses here in London, in Mansion House. So the synergy is working—the connectivity and the capacity to build partnerships and forge contracts. This is the underpinning of the success of Iraq before the ISIS people emerged. ISIS has no place in modern society, and I am confident that other noble Lords throughout the debates on Iraq in the coming weeks will say categorically that these people will have no link with Islam at all. I doubt that there is any tiny shred of knowledge about Islam in their warped brains, because Muslims are—like Christians and like followers of Judaism—people of the book. We share completely common values. Yes, there are customs and practices that may jar between our three sisters, as it were, of the people of the book, the Abrahamic faiths. But let there be no mistake at all: these values are inherent in all three of the world’s greatest religions. Islam has nothing to do with any of these people.

The immediate difficulty for the people of Iraq is how they can survive without international support. Wiser colleagues than me this evening have said no to this, that and the other, in terms of that international support—so what support are we going to give? I would suggest that we have to look very carefully at what we can provide. For example, there is the AMAR International Charitable Foundation, which I chair. There is simple work—high-quality medical work and educational work—in the models offered to us by the National Health Service and the Department for Education here. Those models are exemplified in the teaching of the World Health Organisation and UNESCO. We have a huge amount that we can offer to ordinary people in Iraq. I suggest that one thing that we can do is, yes, on the military side. It is not for me to say whether troops should be put anywhere at all, although I am very sad to see the cuts that have so degraded the numbers of troops and the capacity that we have in military, hard-power terms. None the less, with our knowledge and the way in which the Iraqis respect what we have to offer, I would really like to see us do the same as the USA and at least have military advisers in Iraq.

It is not going to be easy to get rid of ISIS. We have seen in Iraq—and as I said, I have visited the camps, for example—hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees who have been driven out of their country by ISIS and al-Qaeda. Now they are inside Iraq, which is a much bigger country than Syria and far wealthier. Therefore, as ISIS takes over different parts of Iraq, as it has done so successfully, in such a sweeping short moment, is Iraq really going to able to sustain the opposition to stop the invasion of Baghdad, for example? Our military advice is sorely needed. It is not for me to say whether or not it should be followed up by something harder, but I am absolutely sure that the Iraqis want our businesses, our military advice and our model of democracy. Above all else, they want our support and intervention to help them to regain their balance and lead the decent, civilised, normal life that a country of their great wealth, history and culture surely deserves. I urge the Government to do all that they can and not to hold back. Let us not be Johnny-come-lately yet again.