Iraq

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Ind UU)]

My Lords, it has been interesting to listen to the voices of experience today after having listened to the speculation coming from the Government over the last two or three weeks. It really is pathetic that we are using terms—I go straight to the head of the Government—such as “no feet on the ground”, on which comment has been made already. If we go in and bomb these dreadful terrorists who will use civilians as cover, we will kill civilians. Whether it be in Afghanistan or anywhere else, when you bomb, the people you kill turn out to be civilians. That is the propaganda war lost for a start—lost at home and lost abroad. The one thing that I should like to see very clearly enunciated today is that, if we are going to do our duty, as we did not do in the past, we should do it fully with our military involved at every stage. You cannot have Special Forces without supply and resupply or Special Forces holding ground reinforcing the rule of law.

It has been hurtful for many of us to hear the problems that we left in Iraq. Let me be blunt: our Foreign Office did not do itself a great favour in terms of being able to monitor what was happening in Iraq that got us to the stage we are at today. What has it been doing in all those years? We have been supporting Nouri al-Maliki, who was unapologetically anti-Sunni and unapologetically in thrall to the Iranian regime. Of course, we are all in thrall partly to the Iranian regime now.

When in this House, again and again, I and others warned about what was happening and what Nouri al-Maliki was up to, we were ignored. It is only one year since his forces went into Camp Ashraf and slaughtered 52 unarmed refugees. What did our Government do? They made excuses and said, “It was not al-Maliki’s forces that did it”. I am afraid that we know different. If noble Lords will excuse any repetition, in terms of getting our terminology right, let us have a proper evaluation as to what we are going to do to restore law and order. We have managed to get rid of al-Maliki now. Even the Government admit that he was rubbish, to put it mildly.

However, it is too late. Have we got any guarantees from al-Abadi as we rearm him in terms of his attitude to the Sunni tribes? Have we looked as we rearm the Peshmerga? Have we looked at our relationship with Turkey? Let us remember that that is the erstwhile PKK. What are we doing internationally to ensure that our friends for many years—almost 100 years in Turkey’s case—are protected, and are part of and are aware of what we are up to or is this going to be another flash in the pan? Is this going to be another waste of young men’s lives? I hope not. I lived through 28 years of terrorism. I know what terrorism is. I know how our forces operate and how they should be supported. It has not happened in the past. Let us hope that we will have a guarantee today that it will happen in the future.