Syria and the Middle East

Lord Wood of Anfield Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wood of Anfield]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for this opportunity to debate the situation in the Middle East and Syria in particular. I pay tribute to her continuing concern for and commitment to the issues in the region, which I think is evident to everyone in the House.

I want to focus my remarks on Syria and the immediate region around it, and to look at four related issues: the state of the conflict; the case for arming the Syrian rebels; the spillover of the conflict into the wider region; and where the international community’s efforts should be focused.

The basic facts of this conflict make for grim reading: two years of violence and civil war; more than 90,000 people dead, with 5,000 now being killed each month; suggestions that chemical weapons have been used; 4 million people internally displaced; and 1.5 million refugees in neighbouring states, about half of whom are children. It is a situation that appals us all and demands our attention and engagement.

However, a response must start with an understanding of the country, of the region and of the conflict. It is a recent conflict, but one with deep roots. Thomas Friedman has gone so far as to say that what is happening in Syria, as in other Middle Eastern countries, is,

“the long-delayed consequences of the end of the Ottoman Empire”.

Syria, like Iraq, is an artificial state that was born after World War 1 inside lines drawn by imperial powers. The communities of Syria—Sunnis, Alawite/Shia, Kurds, Druze and Christians—were forced to live together under rules agreed by others, not by their own consent. As Assad’s authoritarian rule collapsed, Syria now looks more like Lebanon in the 1975-90 period: a fragmented, sectarian country, with continuing violence between communities, and a central state that has neither the might nor the legitimacy to bring order to the whole country. This is a conflict whose resolution demands some fundamental reconceiving of the kind of country that Syria is and the social contract that underpins it.

The conflict is marked by three dominant features. First, the civil war is becoming more entrenched, with no prospect of decisive military victory for either side. Optimism about the prospects for a victory for the Syrian rebel forces has subsided in recent months. Assad’s forces have better armoured equipment and significant air power strength. They have gained confidence from recent captures of rebel strongholds, and have successfully consolidated in recent months the main population centres and the routes that connect them—from Homs to the coast, from Damascus to the Jordanian border. They have stopped the flow of senior defectors, and have trained a militia of 60,000 to guard positions formerly held by the Syrian military. Any strategy based on a prospect of military defeat for the regime at this point looks highly unrealistic, to put it mildly.

Secondly, the conflict is characterised by the involvement of multiple foreign powers on all sides, the overwhelming preponderance of which is escalating violence. The regime is benefiting from weapons, technical assistance, surveillance drones and help in monitoring internet traffic from Iran. Hezbollah and Iran have built a 50,000-strong militia to support Assad’s forces. On top of this, Assad benefits from significant Russian assistance, with multiple active arms contracts between Syria and Russia, and an S-300 air defence system about to be delivered to Syria from Moscow—the announcement of which was made just after the Foreign Secretary vetoed the EU arms embargo.

On the rebels’ side, foreign fighters are coming from a range of Arab countries through the Jordanian and Turkish borders to fight Assad. Extensive support continues to be provided by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the latter having allegedly spent $3 billion funding the rebel forces and offered $50,000 to every Syrian army defector and his family. Qatar has sent 70 military flights to Turkey with arms and equipment. According to American intelligence sources, and despite the expressed concerns of the Obama Administration that such weapons may fall into the hands of militant Islamists, Qatar has shipped Chinese-made shoulder-fired missiles to be used against Assad’s air force.

Foreign power intervention in Syria on both sides not only makes the conflict more entrenched but makes the securing of peace more complex. The outgoing head of the Syrian national coalition, Moaz al-Khatib, said shortly before leaving his post:

“The people inside Syria have lost the ability to decide their own fate. I have only become a means to sign some papers while hands from different parties want to decide on behalf of the Syrians”.

I would be interested to know what conversations with the Qataris and Saudis, in particular, the Government have had about the extent and form of support which they are providing to the rebels, and whether the Minister shares the concerns of many about the effects of that support.

The third feature of the conflict that stands out is the fragmented nature of the rebel movement. One expert described it as a “bewildering array” of groups: defectors, Kurdish groups, volunteers, local militias, Islamist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, foreign fighters and the official Free Syrian Army brigades. Many of them are fighting for a reformed, democratic Syria, but some of the Sunni militias are becoming increasingly radicalised, aligning with groups such as al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, who have called for a jihad against the Alawites and want an Islamic state. At least one al-Qaeda-affiliated group, the Islamic State of Iraq, has proclaimed an affiliation with the Nusra front and in April, al-Qaeda in Iraq boasted that it was reinforcing al-Nusra with experienced fighters and about half of its budget.

The rebels are brave and committed to ending Assad’s cruel rule, but they are a diverse, fluid and unstable collection of groups whose agendas and interests compete with one another as well as reflecting the interests of foreign powers. The character of the rebel movement becomes a crucial consideration when we turn to the question of the wisdom of the UK collaborating in supplying it with lethal military support. I note that, following the lifting of the EU arms embargo in May, the Foreign Secretary said:

“We haven’t taken any decision about funding”—

arming the rebels—

“but we don’t rule any option out”.

I understand that, but it is a statement that raises the question: what exactly is the justification for arming Syrian rebel forces? Is it that it would help bring a decisive victory? If so I fear that that is heroic given the facts on the ground. Would it level the playing field? If so, it does not seem a strategy likely to reduce violence, but rather to prolong it. As the Foreign Secretary himself said:

“There is no purely military victory available to either side without even greater loss of life”.

Is the case that tilting the balance would be more likely to lead to a military stalemate so that Assad would agree to come to the negotiating table? If so, how realistic is that, given that Assad seems to be doubling down in his military strategy, given that he continues to receive extensive support from other countries, and given that the insistence that Assad cannot be part of a post-conflict transition—whatever the wisdom of that position—is unlikely to make him want to put his weapons down? Or perhaps the case is that arming the rebels makes a palace coup in Damascus to depose Assad more likely? If so, that is a highly speculative basis for such a consequential strategic decision.

Given the state of play of the conflict, I am not convinced that arming the rebels can plausibly be thought to be part of a strategy that reduces violence rather than fuels it. There is a second consideration: what assurances do we have that any weaponry given would stay in the hands of moderate rebels rather than Islamist rebels? The Foreign Secretary has said that non-lethal equipment has already been given to the rebels and that there is no evidence it has got into the wrong hands. With respect, that is insufficient reassurance, for many reasons. There are reports of clashes between rebel groups over resources such as oil already. The market for lethal equipment is significantly different to that for non-lethal equipment; and the consequences of it falling into the wrong hands are much more severe. The absence of systems of monitoring is therefore considerably more concerning in the case of lethal assistance. The Minister alluded to the possibility of Syria becoming a failed state. How do we know that the weapons will even stay inside the borders of Syria?

There is also concern about the compatibility between a strategy of opening up the possibility of arming rebels and the credibility of a commitment to a negotiated solution. Does the Minister agree in retrospect that it was perhaps short-sighted for the Government to use the run-up to the G8 summit spending so much time talking about the case for arming the rebels, rather than how to secure a start date for the Geneva II conference? Is there not a danger that offering more weapons might encourage the rebels to seek a military victory rather than resolution in a negotiated settlement?

Overall, concerns about the coherence of the rebel forces, the security of the destination of weapons, the improbability that making more weapons available would bring a quick end to the conflict and the tension between moving towards Geneva II and making more arms available all combine to suggest that arming the rebels would not be a move likely to help to reduce violence and promote stability.

I turn to a further reason why we should be reticent about increasing the supply of arms inside Syria. The conflict is fast spilling over into the wider region; in Iraq, for example, it is having a seriously destabilising effect. Sectarian tensions are growing as Sunni minority protests in favour of reform combine with growing Shia angst that a pan-national Sunni counteroffensive is mobilising across the region. In Turkey, border incidents such as the bomb that killed 50 people on 11 May reflect the porous frontier across which insurgent groups pass every day. Turkey’s relations with Iraq, Syria and Iran have degenerated spectacularly, while domestic political unrest is increasing.

Lebanon is perhaps of most immediate concern in the fallout zone. It is the country that is first in line for contagion, but also a metaphor for the fragility of the entire region. Although it has a population of only 8 million it has taken more than 500,000 refugees. It is divided internally on Sunni-Shia lines and has a weak central state and porous borders. It is very close to major population centres in Syria, and Hezbollah operates as a state within a state. In recent months Lebanon has delayed elections and lost a Government, while in June, fighting between the Lebanese army and radical Sunni groups and Alawite-Sunni tensions have led to violence and death in different parts of the country.

Given Lebanon’s fragility and importance as a nexus of conflict for the entire region, it deserves our attention, even though it has traditionally fallen into the francophone area of influence. Will the Minister explain what we are doing to support the Lebanese Government and their army at this crucial time? What more could we do directly to ensure that some sort of stability is maintained in the crucial coming months? In particular, is the Minister alive to the perception some in Lebanon have that the West talks only to Sunni and not Shia groups, and to the destabilising potential that such perceptions may inadvertently have?

The danger that the Syrian conflict will trigger conflicts among neighbours with porous borders should make us think twice before embarking on a strategy of providing more weapons. However, contrary to what is sometimes suggested, the alternative to supporting military action is not inaction. Although we are a long way from being the major influence on the region, there is much we can and should be doing or even leading on in the international community to improve the situation. In the short term we can prioritise working with Governments in the countries most at risk of spillover, to shore up the legitimacy of internal state structures. We should prioritise ensuring that G8 countries honour their commitments to supporting humanitarian assistance to refugees, and should lead the case for pressing for greater and safer access for aid agencies. We should focus our engagement with the rebels on unifying them, rather than arming them, and should spend diplomatic capital on urging other actors in the region not to take action that escalates the conflict from either side.

However, we should also make it a priority to think about the format, structure and terms of the negotiations that—one day—will be the only means to a stable solution. A central issue is to understand whose participation will be needed in those negotiations if their outcome has a chance of ending the violence. The noble Lord, Lord Williams of Baglan, who has considerable experience and wisdom in matters of international diplomacy, has remarked:

“Negotiating with friends and allies is never the challenge. The real diplomatic challenge has always been negotiating with those with whom we are diametrically opposed”.

The question of whether any stability can be secured in Syria without engaging with Iran in particular is a serious and very difficult one. We stand side by side with the Government in their stance towards Iran, on both the nuclear security issue and in condemning their sponsorship of violence and terrorism outside Iran. However, the election of President Rouhani last month seems to offer tentative grounds for some cautious optimism about a change of stance in Tehran. Of course, it is very early days, but to hear President Rouhani promise “constructive interaction” with the world through a moderate policy, pledge that Iran is,

“ready to show more transparency”,

and that it will build a new relationship with the international community marks at least a rhetorical departure from his predecessor’s posturing. In light of this, and with the genuine full understanding that we must wait for change to become more than a promise, will the Minister tell us whether there are plans to engage in a different way with Iran under President Rouhani, and whether she thinks that Iranian participation in any Geneva II conference is either possible or desirable?

The sad truth is that an end to the Syrian civil war seems a long way off. Only by facing up to the fundamental facts of the conflict—that there is no prospect of decisive victory, that the conflict has started to destabilise the wider region, and that a number of external powers have become actively engaged—will we gain a proper perspective on the likely consequences of any further intervention of our own.