Arms to Syria

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) spoke eloquently for the majority view in the House, as does the motion. May I apologise in advance for having to leave the Chamber if the debate runs past 3.15, as I have a long-standing speaking commitment?

I am not a pacifist. I was a Cabinet Minister when the decision was taken to invade Iraq. I was Africa Minister when we sent troops to save Sierra Leone from savagery. But as a former Foreign Office Minister responsible for middle east policy, including Syria, I vehemently oppose British military intervention of any kind in Syria.

We all share the Prime Minister’s genuine anger at the humanitarian disaster. We all agree that Bashar al-Assad has become a callous butcher who, instead of responding positively to non-violent protests when the Arab spring reached Syria in March 2011, drove his people into carnage and chaos. Russia and Iran have been culpable in the unfolding horror, and so have the Saudis and Qataris. But Britain, too, is culpable. We should have promoted a negotiated solution from the very beginning. Instead we began by demanding Assad’s unconditional surrender and departure. However, calling for regime change meant chasing an unattainable goal at the cost of yet more bloodshed and destruction, and so did supporting a rebel military victory.

That was fatal. Britain should have offered a practical strategy to end a deepening civil war, because this was never simply a conflict between a brutal regime and the Syrian people. Assad and the ruling Shi’a-aligned Alawite minority form a 10th of the population and were never going to give up power if it meant, as they fear, being oppressed by the Sunni majority. Christians and other minorities are similarly nervous about change. Together those behind Assad amount to nearly a third of the Syrian people; add the Kurds and the total reaches about 40 per cent. Few of them like Assad or his Ba’athist rule, but they fear even more the alternative—becoming victims of genocide, jihadism or sharia extremism.

This is not some simplistic battle between evil and good. Nor is it simply a battle between a barbaric dictator and a repressed people. It is a civil war, and a highly complex one into which Britain treads at its peril. It involves Sunni versus Shi’a, Saudi Arabia versus Iran and, a cold war hangover, the US versus Russia.

[Mr Jenkin]

I do not necessarily demur from a single word of the right hon. Gentleman’s analysis of the complexity of the conflict, but what effect does it have on the efforts to bring those parties to the negotiating table when the International Criminal Court makes it virtually impossible to manage any kind of orderly transition, let alone continuity in the existing regime? He seems to be suggesting that that might be one of the options.

[Mr Hain]

I will address that point in a minute.

Regime change in Damascus could be the outcome of a negotiated solution, but if, as the UK and the US are effectively doing, getting rid of Assad is set as the precondition for talks, the carnage will continue. Surely we should by now have understood from Britain’s long and bitter experience in Northern Ireland that setting preconditions will prevent attempts at negotiation from even getting off the ground.

The Prime Minister’s “good guys versus bad guys” prism is hardly made credible by the presence of al-Qaeda fighters among the west’s favoured rebels, nor is it by the barbarous murders of innocent Syrian citizens by some rebels. Other parties have started to intervene, such as Hezbollah, in turn dragging in Israel, another lethal development. The collateral impact of 1 million Syrian refugees in Jordan is especially dangerous. Iran will not back off because of its key interests.

If the regime were somehow toppled without a settlement in place, the country could descend into even greater chaos. Russia fears that anarchy because, like the US and the UK, it has key strategic military, economic and intelligence interests in the area; for example, Syria provides Russia’s only Mediterranean port in a region where the US is well placed militarily. The only way forward is to broker a settlement, with Russia using its leverage to ensure Assad negotiates seriously. Like it or not, Russia is critical, as is engagement with Iran: otherwise, a Syrian settlement will not happen.

The guidelines for a political transition approved by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council at the Geneva conference a year ago on 30 June 2012 still provide the best road map for a Geneva II, but the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia and their allies must drop their present stance and help to implement that. Preventing Iran and also Assad from attending a peace conference means that it will not even get off the ground. Transitional arrangements that reach the end point of democratisation are crucial, but their pace must be negotiated, not imposed. However unpalatable, Assad and his henchmen may have to be granted immunity to get them to sign up: hardly worse than the continuing barbarity and devastation of ancient heritage. All state employees, including the ranks of the armed forces, must be allowed to keep their posts, to avoid a repeat of the chaos caused by America’s de-Ba’athification in Iraq. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call on 9 October 2012 for both a ceasefire and an embargo on more arms going to the opposition as well as Government forces, should now be heeded. A Yemen-type process may even figure. There a hated president did not actually resign but equally did not stand for re-election.

This will all be incredibly, tortuously difficult, and I understand that Foreign Office Ministers are seeking to grapple with this on our behalf, but what is certain is that UK policy was always going to fail. The Prime Minister began with a demand for regime change, which did not work. Then he supplied “communications equipment” and other resources, which failed too. Then he tried to supply British arms and got the EU arms embargo lifted, until cross-party opposition in Parliament made that very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

Unless there is a radical change, all the hand wringing and condemnation as atrocity follows atrocity is empty. Two years after the Syrian uprising, it is high time for Britain, France and the United States to change course. They, as well as their allies, including Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, need to recognise that neither side is going to win the civil war now destroying Syria. Instead a political solution has to be the top priority.

Britain needs to work with its friends in the Syrian opposition and persuade them to go to Geneva with a credible plan for a compromise: local ceasefires, access to humanitarian relief, and the names of prospective members of a new Government of national unity, which will include Ministers from the current Syrian Government. Together they can initiate a process of constitutional reform for new parliamentary and presidential elections with UN observers. Only through mutual concessions by both the regime and the opposition can the people of Syria be saved from the current nightmare. All this is going to be incredibly difficult, as I said, but it is the only way forward, I strongly submit. The present policy and past policies have got us into this awful mess.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn]

That presupposes that we pass the resolution and that the Government do that but do not consult us, so we are about four stages away from a Minister being in contempt of Parliament. If a Minister was to be held in contempt of Parliament, the House would have to deal with it. It is more important that we get to a point at which there is proper consultation.

I believe very strongly that any decision of the House must be made well in advance of any action. I remember the House being recalled in January 1991 to support the Government’s intervention in the Gulf war, at which time a large number of British and American troops were already in the area preparing to go into Iraq, so the die was already cast. We do not want to be brought back here in August when the Government have arranged large shipments of arms to go to the Syrian opposition, which will all be stacked up at Stansted airport ready to go, and we will be asked to approve it. We want a serious decision well before any such action is even contemplated by the Government.

[Mr Hain]

Does my hon. Friend accept the distinction between action that pretty much has universal support across the House—for example, going to war against Hitler or sending troops to Sierra Leone—and this or similar situations where there is clearly no consent, or at least substantial cross-party opposition, which is why this motion is so important?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My right hon. Friend is right. The motion is so important because there is such a large degree of concern over the parliamentary process and the actions that might or might not be envisaged by the Government at the present time. I do not know how many Conservative MPs are opposed to arms being supplied to Syria—I have heard lots of figures, including 50 and 80. We do not know what the figure is. I also know that a large number of Opposition Members are equally concerned about it. There is a big Back-Bench opinion on this, which is why we have secured the debate and why I hope we will get this decision, encouraged by the strength of Back-Bench opinion.

Those Members with long memories will recall that interventions and arms supplies have all kinds of unintended consequences. When the Soviet Union went into Afghanistan in support of the Najibullah Government, who were under a lot of pressure, the USA responded by supplying vast quantities of arms to the mujaheddin opposition, along with training, facilities, logistics and all the other things that are now being talked about in relation to Syria. Those arms all ended up with what eventually became the Taliban, and then with what eventually became al-Qaeda, and they are still around and have perpetuated the most appalling situation in Afghanistan for many years, including our intervention in that country. We should think a little more carefully about where the arms go.

Other Members have made the point about the more recent intervention in Libya and the supply of large quantities of arms to a rather complicated set of opposition groups that are not interlinked, and where are those arms now? They are in Mali, Senegal and all over north Africa. They are promoting all kinds of conflicts across the region. Were we to be so unwise as to supply arms to the opposition in Syria, where will they end up, in whose interests will they be used, and who will use them against anybody else within the civil war in Syria?

I say all that not because I am in any sense an apologist for the Assad regime. The Oxfam report estimates that about 93,000 people have already died in the recent conflict and that there are 1.7 million external refugees and a very large number of internally displaced people. The situation is truly appalling, as are the human rights situation and police state methods of the Assad Government. However, there is a far from clear commitment by all the opposition groups in Syria to any respect for human rights or any democratic approach. If we send arms, we will be supporting groups whose intentions we do not know, nor do we know where those arms will end up. All we know is that we are sending arms into a situation, people are going to use them, more people are going to die, and the prospects for peace are much further away.

We should also recall, again for those with short memories, that there have been times when the Syrian Government have been very popular with the west. Syria has been a supporter on various occasions. There are suspicions that it has been used as part of the extraordinary rendition process. There have been lots of temporary allies across the region. Indeed, successive British Governments sought to have good relations with Gaddafi at various times, and there have been many others.

Finally, I want to make two brief points. First, on the refugee question, there are a very large number of Palestinian refugees in Syria who have made their way there from Nakba in 1948, from Iraq after its invasion, and at many other times. They are now being driven out, being treated very badly by many of the opposition groups in Syria, or ending up in Lebanon with very little support or resources, just like all the others.

Secondly, the answer has to be to look for a political solution to the whole issue that must involve Iran, Russia and all the neighbouring countries. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are pouring money and arms into the situation. Russia is supplying arms to Syria at the present time. Iran, as a neighbouring state, feels that the war in Syria is a precursor to a future invasion of Iran. I want the Minister to say that there is a serious attempt to use the opportunity of the new President of Iran to engage with the Iranian Government. We should obviously condemn Iran’s human rights record—the executions and all the other human rights abuses—but we will not achieve a political solution in the whole area unless we engage with all the powers that be, which must obviously include Iran. A date needs to be set for Geneva II so that we can bring about some kind of political solution that will end the fighting. All wars have to end with a political solution; let us have it now rather after another 100,000 are dead.