Syria and the Middle East

Lord Bates Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

It is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, who is always very thought-provoking. The only point with which I slightly take issue is more a moral one than a foreign policy one about the line between good and evil. Far too often we hear portrayed in public discourse, particularly in regard to foreign policy, that there are unblemished good people and despicable bad people. We align ourselves with the good but, when we intervene, we find out that they were not quite as good as we thought and the bad were not quite as bad as we thought. I am reminded of The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in which he reminded us that the line between good and evil runs not through religious groups or nation states but through each and every human heart. That is something we need to bear in mind as well.

I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Warsi for introducing the debate. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, reminded us that she was on duty in this House on Thursday last week, replying to a Question, and here she is again today. Over the intervening weekend, she was in Afghanistan, Pakistan and, I think, Kazakhstan. She has amazing energy and dynamism. If there was ever an award for value for money on the part of Her Majesty’s Ministers, she would come top of the list in my view.

Like most people, I have been deeply moved by the scenes we have seen every day in Syria. Last year, during the Olympics and Paralympic Games, I could not quite bring myself to celebrate this great party in London when many of the parties to it were actively engaged in a humanitarian disaster in Syria. Therefore, I went to Lebanon, probably fairly naively in many people’s view, to try to offer humanitarian assistance, and ended up in the Bekaa Valley, where I saw the wonderful work that organisations such as World Vision were doing.

One of the hopeful things which struck me was that I had expected to see mass refugee camps in the Bekaa Valley but did not do so. When I asked where they were, I was told that such is the generosity and hospitality of the people in that region that they had taken all the refugees from Syria into their homes and the humanitarian aid was being distributed to the people who had taken them in. I was moved to find out that they would literally give the refugees their last cup of flour or their last glass of water.

After a couple of days, we went to Zahlé, a Christian town overlooking the Bekaa Valley, where one evening I went to the home of a very gracious academic from Damascus who had been exiled to Zahlé with his family. As is the wont of politicians, I wanted to know what the quick fix was and what needed to be done. In a fairly heavy Arab accent, he said, “You need to understand history.” When I replied, “Tell me about it”, he said, “No, you need to understand your history in our history.” Again, I did not quite understand, so he patiently explained to me that the best thing I could do was not necessarily to be there in that situation but to go back and learn more about our country’s history in that region.

I did not go back to London but to Beirut. Thanks to a backstage pass at the American University of Beirut, I managed to get access to a comprehensive reading list and sat in café-bars in Hamra reading up on what had happened. I was frankly amazed because there was much of the history that I had not appreciated. It stretched back to 1798 and the Napoleonic invasion of Syria, which then led the British to consider that their line of supply to India, the jewel in the crown of the Empire, was potentially under threat. We immediately decided to invade Afghanistan and had the first Anglo-Afghan war because that country was to be a buffer state. We did not like the person in charge there, so we changed him and put in someone we thought was more favourable to us. They did not last long and we were back 30 years later, involved in the second Anglo-Afghan war, this time with a larger force to back up a despotic leader who mercilessly oppressed his people. However, in exchange, he allowed his foreign policy literally to be dictated by the British. That situation continued for a while.

The Russians also had interests in and wanted to make moves towards India, and expressed a desire for a greater stake in Afghanistan. That led to a carve-up between Russia and Britain—no Afghans were involved—along the Durand line. If history tells us one thing about British foreign policy, it is that the one area in which we are deficient is drawing lines on a map. We do not have a particularly good track record in that regard, whether it was Radcliffe in India, Pakistan and East Pakistan, Durand, or Sykes-Picot in Syria. We made those and further agreements that culminated in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which the noble Lord, Lord Wood, mentioned in his excellent speech. The area was also divided up under the Mesopotamia mandate. I read writers such as Gertrude Bell, TE Lawrence and Aubrey Herbert and my eyes were opened to what had been happening.

I realised afterwards how important it is to understand how we are viewed in that region. Therefore, when we come in with thoughts about arming one group or another, or intervening in a particular area, it can be misconstrued. I have noticed that there are three historians in the Foreign Office, and my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, as a historian, is keen to expand our historical access in the Foreign Office. The current historian there has remarked that some of the people of Helmand think that the British are there today to avenge the defeats of the first, second and third Anglo-Afghan wars—I forgot to mention the third. Therefore, understanding history is crucial to all this. It was Edmund Burke who said:

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it”.

If we can understand more about how we are perceived, we might draw a few conclusions. The first is that we do not have the basis or moral authority to act alone in that region. Going back 200 years is one thing, but I have to say that the past 10 or 20 years have not been too distinguished either. We need to be very conscious of that. The only legitimate means by which we can engage in the Middle East is through the United Nations. The fact that we cannot do more through the United Nations is in many ways a result of what happened when the Chinese and Russians felt that they were duped by certain resolutions relating to Iraq and Libya. Therefore, the first thing we could do would be to repair those relations with China and Russia so that we get a unified voice.

I do not think there is any doubt that the future of the Middle East lies in the hands of the people of the Middle East. They have to resolve this matter themselves. Part of our contribution to that will be to acknowledge that, whether it was the Russians during their imperialist time, the French during their imperialist time, the Germans with the whole episode of building the Berlin to Baghdad railway before the last war, the British or, more recently, the Americans, far too often we have seen the Middle East as something of a plaything or an instrument to be tackled.

I end with a quotation from George Curzon, a British Foreign Office Minister who went on to become viceroy of India. He categorised that whole period of 19th-century intervention in the Middle East as the “great game”. He said:

“Turkestan, Afghanistan, Transcapia, Persia—to many these names breathe only … utter remoteness … To me … they are the pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the world”.

We have a history in that region that is part of the problem in that region. Being honest and open about that and seeking to engage with people, encouraging them to make their own future without foreign intervention, is the only way forward.