Syria and the Middle East

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan]

My Lords, I welcome the debate. It has been an extraordinary period in the history of the Middle East and this weekend was no exception, with huge demonstrations in Cairo pressing for a more inclusive Government less dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and seeming progress in the Middle East peace process following talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and President Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine. We must hope that Prime Minister Netanyahu will respond positively in the coming days.

At the heart of the matter is the civil war in Syria, which threatens the fate not only of that nation but of the whole region. After more than two years of war and 100,000 dead, we are no nearer a solution. Despite the Prime Minister’s brave efforts at the Lough Erne G8 summit last month, all that could be achieved was a reaffirmation of the conclusions already reached in Moscow in the talks between Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov in May. As things stand there seems little hope of progress until the UN General Assembly meets in the third week of September in New York.

To say the least, a more urgent diplomacy is needed, one that seeks an agreement on an immediate ceasefire, the deployment of UN observers, unimpeded access for the international humanitarian agencies and elections in the next six months, supervised by the United Nations. These are the elements that the international community should try to come together on. As the gaps between the P5 seem so substantial, the Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, must assume the responsibility of seeking to make progress towards an agreement for the sake of the Syrian people and for the region, including engaging with the new Iranian Government, to be led by President Rouhani, who by the way was responsible for the only decisive freezing of Uranium refinement in 2003.

Wars can be won only in two ways: either through the victory of one party over the other or by a negotiated settlement. In the case of Syria, the former is neither desirable nor probable at this stage. I believe it was the great German statesman Otto von Bismarck who said that making peace was like making sausages; you do not want to look too closely at the ingredients.

There are some who reject any contact, let alone a potential agreement, with the Assad regime. Hateful and vicious as that regime is in many ways, there is no alternative. I remind the House that in the 1990s in Bosnia, peace came through the Dayton agreement, and that we negotiated with Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic. A few years later, we did so again with Milosevic over Kosovo. In the first UN mission in which I served, in Cambodia, the UN implemented the Paris peace agreement of 1991, agreed by the Security Council, which recognised the Khmer Rouge as a key party in the country’s future. Absent meaningful western military intervention, which we are ill fitted for after Iraq and Afghanistan, a negotiated settlement is the only way forward in Syria.

Despite temporary victories such as that at al-Qusair, President Assad cannot win back or reverse the erosion of his domestic and regional legitimacy. However, this cannot mean that his Government should not be a party to the talks that will eventually define the future state of a truly representative Syrian Government. Like it or not, his army remains the dominant military force. Moreover, it still has substantial domestic support.

The opposition, sadly, has lacked political and military coherence. Even if supplied with any amount of arms, it will not overcome these shortcomings. With notable exceptions such as George Sabra and the veteran dissident Michel Kilo, it is drawn almost wholly from the majority Sunni community. Not only the Alawite community but Christians, Druze and Kurds have not been drawn in any substantial numbers into the opposition.

I turn to Lebanon, where I served between 2008 and 2011 as UN special representative. Lebanon is the country most affected by the Syrian contagion, and one of its major political forces, Hezbollah—probably the most heavily armed non-state actor in the world—is substantially and overtly a party to the Syrian civil war. That reckless action cannot but have profound consequences for Lebanon and for the sectarian divisions that are now so raw throughout the Middle East. In Egypt only last week we saw the brutal lynching of four Shia villagers in a hamlet on the outskirts of Cairo.

What of the Lebanon? Sadly, the country is now an integral part of the geography of the Syrian civil war. The authority of its Government and institutions, never historically robust, has been undermined by the civil war in Syria. Hezbollah’s increasing involvement has inevitably raised sectarian tensions in Lebanon. This is seen most clearly in the second city of Tripoli, where the country’s only Alawite community has been involved in clashes with its Sunni neighbours, which have claimed tens of deaths over the past months. Even more serious were the clashes the weekend before last in the city of Saida between the army and an Islamist group, which claimed 35 lives.

I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, to keep a close eye on the travel advisory for Lebanon. There are few exits from the country. In the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, most British and other foreign nationals were evacuated along the international highway to Damascus. Clearly, that option is no longer open. The one airport in Beirut is close to the Hezbollah suburb of Dahiyeh and is easily closed with one telephone call from Hezbollah. I am concerned that Lebanon could—I pray it will not—descend into widespread civil strife in a matter of hours.