Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, and I think that I agree with every word that he said. Having listened to this debate, it seems that there are really no good options. Every one has its downside. Despite the horror of 100,000 killed, 1 million refugees and the victims of terrible chemical warfare, the right course of action is still not clear—except that the case for armed force, for bombing, has not been made. Certainly, we would need more evidence. We have to wait for the weapons inspectors. We need more intelligence information that is in the possession of our Government and others than we have seen so far. Above all, we need evidence of Assad’s responsibility for the use of chemical weapons. It has already been suggested that the decision to use them may have been made at a lower level in the Assad military. It will be hard to prove—it will be difficult to get the evidence for that—but if that is the case, certainly if there is a hint of it, we cannot take action against the regime quite as has been envisaged.

My question is this: what is the hurry? For heaven’s sake, why are we in such a desperate hurry? Until a day ago, the view was that both Houses were being recalled today in order that there could be an attack at the weekend. That has been allayed a bit, thanks to many voices including that of the Official Opposition in the Commons. I cannot understand what the hurry has been. Why do we have to rush into something so difficult and so sensitive?

Another question has not been answered despite having been put. What are our aims in this? Yes, we can shell, bomb and attack various installations in Syria, but what are our aims? Having destroyed some of the assets there, if we go down that path, what happens then? Suppose we destroy one or two command-and-control centres? Surely they could be replaced, and then where would we be? What progress would we have made? I am not clear how we can contemplate doing anything unless we know clearly what our aims and objectives are. Frankly, I think the Government do not have those and we are not going to get very far.

In any case, any decision that we make surely has to take account of the interests of the Syrian people. I am not convinced that military intervention would bring benefits to the Syrian people, however one looks at it. It is widely accepted that military force cannot make things better in Syria. The question is how much worse military force might make things in that country.

Of course, as has already been said, we are not just talking about Syria. We must have concern for the stability of the region as a whole. I shudder to think what will happen in the region if there are massive attacks by Britain, the United States, France and perhaps other countries. There will be revulsion at this and we will lose the moral high which we have been trying to claim all along.

Then again, it is possible to attack some of the installations in Syria without effectively taking sides in a civil war. We cannot say we are not doing so; we are bound to be doing it. We are taking action on one side against the other. How many of the people in the Syrian opposition are actually jihadists? How many of them would represent a type of Government which, if they controlled Syria, would be pretty inimical to anything in which we believe? If we have taken action to bring them into power, we will have a lot to answer for.

There are clearly large stockpiles of chemical weapons in Syria. I note that Syria is one of several countries that has not signed or ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. I wonder whether it would not be possible to resume diplomacy with Russia and Iran and say, “Look, we are not going to attack but Assad has got to get rid of these chemical weapons. There has to be a clear and publicly demonstrated policy of removing those chemical weapons from the soil of Syria”. Surely even the Russians might just listen to that and say, “If nothing else changes but those weapons have gone, we will not have lost out but the people of Syria might benefit because they could not be used again”.

Finally, we need to think hard about the refugees. There is a desperate crisis, whether it is in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon or Iraq. We need to finish our discussion on this by saying that we must commit ourselves as the West to doing more to help those countries to deal with these many millions of refugees.

I finish as I started: at this stage, I am simply not persuaded of the case for military intervention. There would have to be a lot of interesting evidence before I changed my mind.