Middle East

Adam Afriyie Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Very much so. When one travels throughout the middle east, time and again people highlight the fact that they see us as an impartial and honourable interlocutor and as people who can facilitate dialogue to try to dissipate some of the tension in the region.

We recently saw the extraordinary strength of British diplomacy, particularly over the nuclear agreement with Iran. If we cast our minds back to the extraordinary tensions with that country—by the way, during our visit we spent time at the British embassy, which had previously been trashed by students—we can see the great accomplishment of that painstaking British diplomacy. I pay tribute to our Foreign Secretary for playing a substantial role in the agreement. It shows what British diplomacy can achieve. I therefore do not believe that it is naive or unrealistic to expect that the United Kingdom could and ought to be trying to secure better dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

It is, however, essential that the Government are probed on strategy and planning in the run-up to a potential bombing of Syria. I spent quite a lot of time on that delegation to the middle east with my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). He wrote an article in The Mail on Sunday yesterday outlining the case against bombing in Syria, and he is the only one among the entire Conservative parliamentary party who voted against the bombing campaign in Libya. That was an extremely courageous thing to do—to ignore the rest of the Conservative parliamentary party and go into the opposite Lobby. I pay tribute to him—he is a former soldier—for the tremendous courage that he displayed at that time.

I recall from those deliberations how the Opposition, the Liberal Democrats and the Government all rushed to support the bombing of Gaddafi. It was a highly emotional time for us. He promised to instigate a bloodbath in Benghazi and, as has been said, we wanted to do something so we sanctioned the bombing of his military capability. Getting rid of a dictator is easy. What is more challenging is the planning that has to take place in order to ensure that the country is then administered properly, and that those important seeds of a democratic society are allowed to germinate before we pass on responsibility to local politicians.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for making an exceedingly insightful point. Does he share my concern that when it comes to Syria and the bombing of ISIS within Syria, our relationship with Russia must be very carefully managed to ensure that we do not end up with a conflict that we are not looking for, particularly in the reconstruction?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I very much agree, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. I will refer to Syria later in my speech, if I have time.

The lack of planning for boots on the ground in Libya has led so tragically to the continued instability in that country and the civil war that is raging there. The Minister will know about those difficulties, particularly the fact that ISIS has managed to take root in certain parts of the country. Indeed, some reports have identified ISIS in Libya as being the most radical and cruel in the region. One question that I want to pose is this: why at this moment do we want to bomb ISIS in Syria, but not in Libya?

The bar has to be raised that much higher, given the difficulties in Libya, to ensure that, for those of us who support the Government on the issue, adequate time is spent on the Floor of the House and some of the difficult questions that Ministers might not want to hear are asked, so that the Government are better prepared in Syria than they were in Libya.

Of all the interventions I heard at that time, the one made by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who now chairs the Defence Committee, was the most prescient. He challenged the figure of 70,000 moderates with whom we could work. It is extremely important that the Government listen to him and debate where that figure came from and of what those forces consist.