Destruction of Historic Sites (Syria and Iraq)

Debate between Tim Loughton and Edward Leigh

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

At 2 o’clock I must chair the Public Accounts Commission, so I will not be able to stay for the debate. I apologise to the House and I will try to come back.

I very much wanted to take part in the debate to talk about my personal experience, having visited both Syria and Iraq. I also felt that it was right to support my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). I support everything he said in his most impressive speech and I will not repeat all the excellent advice that he has given to our Government.

This issue might seem a long way away, but it is of the most dramatic importance. It is not just a cultural catastrophe, as my hon. Friend has outlined, but a humanitarian catastrophe of the first importance. One cannot divorce the preservation of artefacts from the preservation of local community. Only on Monday, Archbishop Warda of Irbil was at a meeting in the House of Lords, which I attended. He also gave a sermon in Westminster cathedral yesterday. He spoke most movingly about the trauma suffered by his community, which is of appalling proportions. The problems we have in our own country, the issues we were debating and getting very heated about in Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday and the budget I will be discussing later in the Public Accounts Commission all pale into insignificance when one listens to a man such as Archbishop Warda talk about his local community.

Twenty-five thousand Christian families have fled the Nineveh plain and 125,000 people—men, women and children—are without their homes. That is not happening in 1915 or 1940; it happened in August of last year. I have been to these places and I shall describe them a little in a moment, because I feel passionately that having started all this we have a responsibility to finish it.

Let me first follow on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Newark was saying about Syria. I have been to Syria, but I must admit it was not a recent visit. I have also received an invitation to speak at Damascus university on the plight of Christians, but I think that perhaps discretion is the better part of valour in not going to speak in Damascus at present. However, I have been to Damascus in the past and I visited the house in Straight street where St Paul was converted in the home of Ananias. Apparently that house is in good order and has not been destroyed. Whether that is because it is in a part of Damascus that is controlled by Assad forces, I do not know.

As my hon. Friend said, the destruction in Syria has been truly appalling. According to the United Nations, 300 cultural sites in Syria have been affected by the civil war. The United Nations Institute for Training and Research has accumulated a great deal of knowledge on what has been going on. Focusing on 18 areas of particular importance, UNITAR found 24 sites destroyed, 104 severely damaged, 85 moderately damaged and 77 possibly damaged. Those are sites of world heritage status. Such status is not granted casually; they are vital sites.

In one world heritage site in Syria, the old city of Aleppo, UNESCO believes that 121 historical buildings have been damaged or destroyed—equal to 30% to 40% of the area covered by the world heritage designation. The minaret of the 11th-century Umayyad mosque has been toppled, while the citadel of Aleppo is being occupied by military forces and has suffered at least three violent explosions.

The oldest surviving Byzantine church, that of St Simeon Stylites, built on the site of the famed hermit’s pillar, is at risk given its location 19 miles north-west of Aleppo. There is also damage to Krak des Chevaliers, which was created by the Hospitaller order in the 12th century. I should declare an interest because I am a Knight of that order. We are still around after all these centuries, trying to do good work in hospitals around the world, particularly in the middle east, and the work is extremely challenging. Illegal excavations are occurring in the Valley of the Tombs and the Camp of Diocletian—some of them undertaken using heavy machinery, bound to do a great deal of damage. The damage in Syria has been absolutely appalling.

I now turn to Iraq. When Saddam Hussein was in power, I visited the Christian communities there. I also visited Babylon, which, of course, is one of the great wonders of the world. Alexander the Great chose it to be the capital of his world empire. Following the mistaken invasion of Iraq, the coalition, unbelievably, created a military base right on top of the archaeological site, 150 hectares in size.

Babylon is a strange place. There is a lot of pastiche renovation undertaken by Saddam, but the damage to Babylon has been appalling since the invasion and it is getting worse, so I think that we do have a certain responsibility. Looters have attacked cities such as Nimrod and Nineveh, whose names resound with biblical and literary echoes that have rolled down the centuries, and they are now at the centre of destruction.

Let me quote from the prophet Nahum, whose tomb I visited in the village of al-Quosh. Of all the villages that I visited in the Nineveh plain in 2008, only two of those Christian villages—and I visited several—have not been occupied by ISIS forces. They are the villages of al-Qosh and Sharafiya. In the village of al-Qosh one can still find the tomb of the prophet Nahum, and what he wrote all those years ago still resounds today:

“Take ye the spoil of the silver, take the spoil of the gold: for there is no end of the riches of all the precious furniture. She is destroyed, and rent, and torn: the heart melteth, and the knees fail, and all the loins lose their strength: and the faces of them…are as the blackness of a kettle.”

That was Nahum talking thousands of years ago, and his tomb is right there, in one of the only two Christian villages that have not been pillaged and had their population expelled and churches trashed.

Unbelievably, in 2008 I was saying much the same thing. I organised a debate in Westminster Hall on the plight of the Christians and the Christian sites in the Nineveh plains. I also quoted Nahum, who said:

“Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.”

I said in that debate—it is there in Hansard—

“When I went to the Nineveh plains, what struck me was that there was a sense of security in those ancient, entirely Christian villages. I met many displaced people who had come up from Basra and Baghdad to settle in the Nineveh plains, and I heard some absolutely heart-rending stories.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 26WH.]

I went on to describe them.

It is extraordinary that, having started all this mess, having invaded Iraq—Saddam, for all his faults, was protecting some of these sites—

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Nicking stuff from them.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, but they were not actually being looted and the population was not actually being dispersed. Although things were bad under Saddam—I am no apologist for Saddam—I can tell my hon. Friend that they are infinitely worse there.

Back in 2008 I was given various reassurances by the then Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Bill Rammell, who told me:

“It is difficult to separate this issue from the broader picture in Iraq which, as a result of improving security and progress towards reconciliation, is a far brighter one than we have seen for several years—certainly brighter than it was a year ago.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 41WH.]

We have a responsibility. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark has given some practical ideas of what we can do, but I have visited those churches and I have listened, in those churches in the Nineveh plains, to services being held in Aramaic, the ancient tongue of our Lord, and I know that it is impossible to separate the expulsion of a people from the issue of the protection of those sites. ISIS, as a result of coalition bombing, has retreated from quite a few villages on the Nineveh plains. The Christian population could possibly be enticed to go back there—because the best way to protect the villages and the archaeological sites is to get the original population back—but they are too terrified to return because they do not trust the Iraqi army.

When ISIS enter a Christian village, they tell the Christians that they have three choices—“You leave, or you convert to Islam, or you die”—so most leave. If ISIS discover that someone is a Shi’a, they give them no choice; they kill them. I am afraid, however, that the Christian population in the Nineveh plains do not have confidence that the Iraqi army, dominated by Shi’as—because many Sunnis have joined or collaborate with ISIS—can protect them. It is therefore down to us.

I am not suggesting that we send some regiment from Aldershot to those burning hot plains where they will make themselves a target, but surely there must be a way forward. Having, in a sense, destabilised Iraq and put the Christian population at risk, can we just walk away and say, “We have fulfilled our side of the bargain by just putting in six planes”? I think we have to do far more than that. We have to arm the local Christian population; that is what they are asking for. I asked that question specifically of Archbishop Warda on Monday. He said, “That is what we want you to do—send in the international peacemakers, protect our people, let our people go back to our villages, and then we can protect their sites.” The same thing, surely—although it would be an infinitely more difficult and complicated picture—applies to Syria.

I will end on that point. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark has done a great service to the House in directing our attention to the appalling problems and humanitarian and cultural disaster going on in that part of the world. I hope that people in our country feel that, given our history, we have some sense of responsibility.

Protecting Children in Conflict

Debate between Tim Loughton and Edward Leigh

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The whole House will be grateful to the hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) for initiating this debate on protecting children in conflict. She was right to deal with the Palestinian situation, but I will not follow her example in any detail as I do not want to get involved in the debate about the rights and wrongs of the Palestinian issue, except for noting the suffering of both the Palestinian people and the Israeli people in a very difficult conflict.

I want to make some general remarks about how the British Government could try to improve the protection of children in conflict areas, particularly when it comes to education. Education is the subject on which I want to focus and I would be grateful if the Minister could deal with that problem when he replies.

I should perhaps declare a family interest. I am speaking today because both my elder daughters work for charities in Africa and have worked in Kenya, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. They keep me informed of their work and what is going on and, a few years ago, I visited the Congo with War Child to look at the appalling privations that children faced, particularly because of the conflict and the use of child soldiers. My visit had a deep impact on me and I am sure that, even despite all the excellent work of my hon. Friend the Minister and other Ministers in the FCO and DFID, there is still more that we can do.

As I say, I want to concentrate on education, but why are children particularly vulnerable? It is an obvious point, but they are vulnerable because they are young. When a three-year-old loses their parents in a bomb attack, it is virtually impossible for them to survive alone. If a 25-year-old loses a parent, it is a tragedy, but they can survive. It is right that the House should focus particularly on the appalling impact of conflict on children, which is much greater than its impact on mature people.

Of course, children suffer appalling and severe trauma from witnessing events. They do not have the life experience or emotional maturity to integrate a particular scene into the rest of their life. We have been brought up in a very comfortable environment, but we all know how even quite small events from our childhood can have a traumatic effect later on. Imagine a child in a conflict situation witnessing their mother being raped or their brother being dragged off as a child soldier or witnessing murders or the appalling scenes that have happened in Syria. That trauma will live with those children for ever.

Children are targeted in conflict situations for sexual attacks. Girls and boys make up more than half the rape cases in such conflicts and that is an appalling statistic. Imagine the appalling emotional trauma of that. Children are also targeted by military groups that are keen to expand their ranks quickly and we have seen that in particular over the years in Congo. As I know from my visit to the Congo and as we all know, it is appalling to talk to former child soldiers who have been dragged into these events. They have committed terrible things and terrible things have happened to them, sometimes when they are just 13 or 14-years-old.

War destroys livelihoods, and children are often seen as a way for distressed families to get income. Girls can be married early for a price or used as sex workers and boys can be sent out to work in fields and factories or to collect rubbish from the streets. I occasionally visit the middle east, and we see the desperate struggle for survival, particularly for Syrian refugees in Lebanon or Jordan when there is no social security available to any significant extent. In conflict situations, families are desperate to survive, and we all know that children have to be used as part of that.

The point I want to stress and focus on for the rest of my speech is that it is children and not adults who lose their opportunity for education. Once that opportunity is lost, it is lost for ever and can never be repeated. Education is essential for children and particularly for children in conflict areas. It is a life chance that comes only once and a reasonable level of education is even more important for children who will be expected to build a peaceful recovery from conflict. Education keeps children safe. Obviously, if a child is in a school or in an educational environment, it is less likely that they will be married early, raped, abducted or recruited by armed groups. All that is much more unlikely when schools are open.

Actually, education is prioritised by families in conflict areas. We have seen on television, such as during the Iraq conflicts, and from our own experience how families that are often desperate and have nothing—owning nothing, surviving on nothing—still make the effort to dress their children in immaculate uniforms to walk through bombed-out streets to get school. Education is extraordinarily important for them.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling case based on his experiences in Africa. It is deeply humbling when we go to developing countries in parts of Africa and elsewhere and see children who have walked miles and miles and miles to attend a classroom where they have no seats, but may have rocks to sit on, if they are lucky, and which have corrugated iron roofs. Their parents have made a contribution out of what limited resources they have, because they absolutely value education as the way out of poverty and conflict. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is deeply humbling for those of us here who take education for granted?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

My hon. Friend has made that point very movingly. We live in such a comfortable environment here where education is, frankly, of a fantastically high standard and is free—paid for by the taxpayer—that we simply do not appreciate the appalling sacrifices made in places where education is not free by parents who have nothing. They make that huge effort to try to educate their children, because they know, as we know, that education is everything.

We can establish a case that education is absolutely vital, therefore, in terms of taking children out of conflict situations and giving them life chances. So, having made that case, we would expect it to be prioritised by humanitarian agencies and Governments, but analysis of the 2013 United Nations appeal tracking data shows that only 1.9% of UN humanitarian appeal funds went to education. That seems to me to be very low, and I was surprised when I saw that. I cannot believe that the figure is so low, but that is what I have been told. Donors simply did not prioritise that part of the UN appeals.

Finance Bill

Debate between Tim Loughton and Edward Leigh

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend allow me?

[Tim Loughton]

I briefly give way to my hon. Friend, who has been a great champion of this measure for many years.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Not just the Prime Minister in a faraway place, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in my own home, not 300 yards away, in front of 40 MPs, gave a solemn pledge that this was going to be brought in before the general election. This will and must happen.

[Tim Loughton]

So the mystery is why on earth it is not happening and the Prime Minister has not been able to say, “We back this amendment.” However, I trust what he has said. Those I do not trust are those who oppose the amendment, because those who oppose it as some sort of 1950s throwback are the ones who are being judgmental about how certain people choose to live their relationships. That view has been endorsed on many Labour party members’ blogs. Disgracefully, they seek, in effect, to pit working mums or dads against stay at home mums or dads, who are of course no less, and often more, hard-working.

My support for a transferable married couples tax allowance has never been based on some moral stance on types of relationship. My concern, as might be expected, is based on what is best for children. That is why I have suggested that it is limited in the first instance to families with children under the age of five. Two statistics say why. For a 15-year-old living at home with both birth parents, there is a 97% chance that those parents are married. For a five-year-old with parents at home, there is a one in 10 chance of those parents splitting up if they are married, but a one in three chance if they are not married. The cost of family breakdown is £46 billion and rising. That is what we need to attack.

Marriage accounts for 54% of births but only 20% of break-ups among families with children under five. We must recognise that in the tax system and we do not. That is what this modest amendment seeks to put in statute as a starting point to appreciate that.