Syria and the Middle East

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, for facilitating this very timely debate. Her strong statement on humanitarian aid was particularly welcome, although like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro I am concerned about the effectiveness of such aid and want to ensure that it is completely effective—a point that was also emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton.

The extent of the geography and the differences of analysis were always going to make this a diffuse debate, in which it is perhaps hard to find a focus save for the inevitable focus on Syria. I will start by endorsing in straightforward terms the words of my noble friend Lord Wood at the beginning of this debate about arms to rebels. That topic was analysed in some detail and with great insight by the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown; I will say for simplicity’s sake how strongly I agree with him, even if that causes him discomfort. As my noble friend Lord Wood also said, we need to understand the history of the region. I share the sense of urgency of the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Baglan, and the view of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that we are not in a position to do nothing—a view that was repeated a moment ago by the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs. I also encourage the Minister to respond to the comments made by my noble and learned friend Lord Morris of Aberavon on some of the legalities, which should be addressed tonight. However, I am in the same position as my noble friend Lord Anderson: I aim for perhaps a wider regional appraisal. I apologise in advance to my noble friend Lord Turnberg if I do not focus tonight on Israel and Palestine. This is a similar starting point to the one taken by the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar.

It is striking that across Syria, through Lebanon, in Iran and still more in Iraq, through several of the Gulf states on both sides of the Horn of Africa, across north Africa, deep into the Sahara, and north of and in Mali we are witnessing a harsh sectarian war within Islam—or fronts in a war, as the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, described it a short while ago. The noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, has also focused on this, and the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, quite rightly focused on how these events have demonstrated some of the United Nations’ failures in getting a proper grip on it in the Security Council. Of course, the great paradox is that historically Islam was a religion marked by greater pluralist tolerance than a great many others were. However, now we see on many fronts a widespread war between Sunnis and Shia and subsects within each of those great traditions.

Tragically, the sectarian divide in some places now takes the form of sectarian barbarism. In Syria the Shia Alawites target Sunnis, with the undeniable help of the Iranian Shia, including the Revolutionary Guard and Lebanese Hezbollah. In Egypt, Sunnis launch lynch mobs against small Shia communities, encouraged by Salafist clerics, and attack Shia people as infidels. Extreme Salafists have entered Syria. The Syrian opposition ranges in a bewildering way from secular groups to al-Qaeda affiliates. Similar confrontational fronts can be seen right across the region. However, surely it is not adequate to see this as just a series of theological clashes—a point that was made earlier.

It is also clear that in several states minority clans have exercised or exercise power to the exclusion of the social, economic and religious rights of majority clans. Assad, Saddam and the Bahraini al-Khalifas oppress whoever constitutes the majority. In some cases, such as with the Egyptian and Saudi majority Sunnis, they oppress smaller Shia minorities. Almost all now also oppress Christians and members of other religions, across the Middle East, in north and west Africa and in some senses as far away as Pakistan. However, lest this is thought simply to be something happening within Islam, there seem to be similarities with the Buddhist oppression of Muslims and other minorities in south-east Asia.

This cannot be a contest over obscure or ancient disputes of religious legitimacy. For venal leaders, holding on to power is about holding on to power. For wider populations blighted by poverty, illiteracy and untreated disease, struggling for scarce power and resources and for a sustainable existence, religious difference becomes a symbolic sheen to legitimise brutal struggle. The enemy is far more easily stereotyped as the other. It is a dreadful but handy way of designating people, even neighbours, as enemies in life’s harshest competition, treating them as subhumans who get in the way of the fulfilment of particular groups’ aspirations—modern aspirations in some cases, but even the aspirations of some people to go back to premodernity.

How do we make sense of it, and what should we aim to do about it? Perhaps we should start with an unashamed question for us in the United Kingdom, and in effect the Minister opened with this proposition: what is the United Kingdom’s interest? Like the noble Lord, Lord Luce, I am keen to understand whether we are confident in answering that question, particularly in our assessment of Russian positions. The answer for the United Kingdom should never be cynical or neglect the interests of people where we share an explicit United Nations duty to protect, a duty that we share with others but where we have the highest expectation of ourselves and our allies. Our first interest, the precondition for the best, is assisting countries to become stable, making them less likely to morph into failed states harbouring people who in turn mean us harm. The analysis by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, of the extent of the instability is one that I share.

Of course we prefer the fully fledged path to democracy, social inclusion and the rule of law, however tortuous those paths. Today Egypt comes back to the top of our agenda, or certainly should do. At 4.07 pm today, while we were debating, the Egyptian army announced that it will sort things out within 48 hours, confirmed at 4.53 pm as an ultimatum. In a previous debate in your Lordships’ House, I started by saying that it was risky to speak at all or to guess what would happen even in the duration of the speech. I was given a note halfway through that debate saying that Mubarak had gone. Who knows what the rest of today holds for that important and complex country—huge demonstrations, deaths at the storming of the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters, the prospects that I have just related of what might be a coup?

First, it is clear that steps towards economic regeneration have not been taken as promised. Unemployed youth, an underemployed middle class and a poor risk profile for investment are signals of failure. Things take time, but there needs to be evidence of a route map and milestones. Secondly, while few may want democratic elections to be routinely overturned, as may be happening at the moment, President Morsi surely has to grasp that he cannot rule exclusively for the Muslim Brotherhood and generate viable economic conditions if he does so.

Thirdly, he cannot aim to dominate all state and many non-state institutions. I shall give the House what I think is a non-trivial but strange example: Mr Morsi ruled in the past few days that he would field, and if necessary impose, Muslim Brotherhood candidates for the boards of all the major football clubs, starting with those in Cairo, snuffing out even the most elementary pluralism. That has resulted in a petition for his resignation attracting 15 million signatures, 2 million more people than voted for him a year ago. We are seeing perhaps a return of Mubarak’s authoritarianism with an anti-secular twist.

With the exception of a few organisations, I fear that there is little attempt to encourage civic participation and strength and civic society. Economically, no investment is going to come in, according to the World Bank, which states baldly that the ease of doing business in Egypt is that it is a bad place to start any business, as tax reform, protectionism and state control shackle all prospects. This is in sharp contrast in many ways with Tunisia, which has begun to develop those economic prospects in a serious way. Do the Government plan to host or participate in any conferences to create the right economic conditions that might stimulate the prospects of those countries?

It would be futile in the course of a debate today to range over Libya, where there may be rather more promise, or indeed Mali, which for several days was the absolute focus of attention in this House but has scarcely been mentioned ever since. We see in every one of these cases the need for an economic platform to be developed and for the opportunities for pluralism to go alongside it. Briefly, of course, I have to return to Syria against the backdrop of the huge caution that has been expressed in this House about what to do, given the complexities. The prospect is simply of a failed state on the borders of the United Kingdom’s closest allies in the region—Turkey, Israel, Jordan and, potentially, Palestine, at the very heart of the Middle East. Strategically, we need a stable transition from Assad’s dictatorship, and so do the Syrian people. I fully acknowledge the long-term reflections on this by the noble Lord, Lord Risby, and his analysis of Mr Assad’s present position.

The risks, so far as we have judged them until now, have outweighed intervention. We have responded with caution. We recognise that the fragmented opposition is exclusively a Sunni club, and not one that is capable of a balanced Syrian settlement. We are witnessing a death spiral into chaos; uncontrolled fragmentation means unending civil war, and of course that is unsustainable for everyone. It has already spilt over, as many noble Lords have said, into its neighbours; it knows no borders. It emboldens Iran, which may or may not be in a state of change—I share the hopes of the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Luce, but who knows?—and Hezbollah, to everyone’s strategic detriment. Lebanon is now absolutely and directly involved in the war. Al-Qaeda has one of its most potent fighting machines embedded in the region.

This is not Bosnia—of course it is not—but there are some comparisons. President Clinton finally intervened when 100,000 Bosnian men, women and children had died, more or less the figure that we see in Syria today. UN and Arab League forecasts are now that 100,000 deaths are likely to occur just in 2013 if Assad proceeds with impunity. A more active policy is therefore inevitable, and doing too little will simply grow the crisis to too great a proportion. President Putin, plainly unimpressed by what the Canadian Prime Minister called the G7+1 summit, must surely work urgently with Secretary Kerry to create a national platform, bringing together all the legitimate ethnic and religious leaders. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, said that a common global response was what was needed, and that is plainly what they must work for. The process needs Russia, China, Turkey and the key Arab and European states, and consideration, as my noble friend Lord Wood suggested, is needed about whether Iranian involvement would help.

We must consider first how to protect civilians, minorities, the vulnerable and the country’s neighbours. We must get control of the chemical and other unacceptable weapons. We must design transitional governance and justice, and safeguard humanitarian work.

I doubt that preconditions, even about a tyrant like Assad, are likely to appeal to President Putin. His help is crucial. The noble Lord, Lord Williams, was right: it is not a risk worth running to exclude Russia or to suggest to the Russians that we have taken no account of them, particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, said, given the preoccupations that they will have with their own southern borders and the character of the struggles there.

To me, success would look like security sector reform, disarmament, the reintegration of combatants, improved governance, a date for elections, economic recovery and reconstruction scheduled to start. In this, I draw on Richard Holbrooke’s experience before and during Dayton: the least worst outcomes, even if they artificially create within the country smaller but secure and economically viable entities, may be the only solution with which people can live with some prospects. The opposition may indeed have indulged in terrible violence—I believe it has—but that can no longer be any kind of excuse for anyone, including for President Assad. A murderous regime has to understand that there is no victory that is followed that way by impunity, no freedom to bomb civilians to extinction.

The Security Council, or certainly its permanent members, should provide no further means to fly or to protect flights until Geneva II has been called, has negotiated and has concluded. There should be no long-term recognition of any regime that simply proceeds by violence. I say this because priority must be given to the negotiations, and no negotiation is an unthinkable course of action. That means that there can be no one-sided flow of weapons, and even with credible monitoring I suspect that that would be a huge difficulty. We might as well be candid about that, because I suspect that there is no control over events on the ground in a way that would be tolerable for us.

The priority for the United Kingdom Government, our allies and our interests is how we can promote Geneva II urgently. How can we add to the pressure not just for Geneva II but for the background work that is essential to make it successful? What process do we envisage as the urgent consequence of the G8 at the United Nations and elsewhere? Country by country, it is measurable goals of political and vital economic progress that will build the United Kingdom’s security in that region.