Iraq

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, 75 years ago, Britain faced up to an evil that was threatening to dominate Europe. Now we are facing an evil of a similar dimension that is afflicting the Middle East. We are reluctant to face up to it, but we must do so. I am sure that, together with our allies, we will have the power to defeat this evil. If it becomes necessary or even advantageous to commit troops to the region, I believe that we should not hesitate to do so. Our forces would need to engage the enemy wherever they might be found.

Seventy-five years ago, the threat was an external one. Those who had sympathised with the fascist ideology had been effectively sidelined and neutralised. Today, the circumstances are different. The jihadist movement has attracted a substantial number of British citizens. At least 500 have joined the movement in Syria and Iraq, and there may be three times that number. It is vital that we should understand the attractions of the ideology and that we should find ways of neutralising it. However, some of the measures that have been proposed of late would surely exacerbate the problem.

It has been proposed by the Prime Minister that British citizens who have travelled to Iraq and Syria to support the jihadist cause should be prevented from returning to this country and that their passports should be confiscated, thereby rendering them stateless. An obvious objection to such a measure is that it would conflict with international law. There are other objections that ought to be considered. There would be a danger of creating a body of stateless persons who would be bound to sustain themselves by acts of terrorism. They would become a global menace. There is also a domestic danger. Many of the jihadists have British relatives who strongly oppose their brutal and alien cause. Nevertheless, these people would also become alienated from our culture if their relatives were summarily deprived of their rights of citizenship.

What should be done to the returning jihadists? The answer is that we should handle them carefully and with discrimination. We should endeavour to distinguish between those who are dangerous to us and those who have been temporarily misled. To achieve that, we need to deploy adequate and appropriate resources within the border agency and elsewhere. The returning jihadists would be thoroughly vetted and debriefed. If they have been only weakly complicit in the activities of insurgents, they should be exonerated. However, if they have committed atrocities, they should be charged with war crimes. In short, they should be treated in much the same manner as the citizens of the defeated German nation were treated at the end of the Second World War.