Security in the Western Balkans

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Bob Stewart

Thursday 2nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Everyone is grateful for the service that my right hon. Friend gave to the world. He experienced and witnessed trauma to try to bring about that peace and, in doing so, had to deal with many areas of corruption. Does he believe that a drift away from the big stick has allowed the undermining of the very issues that he says need to be addressed?

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my right hon. Friend.

There has been drift. We had the most wonderful high representative Paddy Ashdown, who really did wield the big stick—and it worked. His name is still revered and he was a friend of mine—he remains one, although he is gone. We need a high representative with more power, and we need the situation to be sorted out so that people do not get away with criminal acts. The mafia are still rampant. When I was in Bosnia, I had to deal with three sides militarily and with the mafia, who were appalling. I do not want to go into how to deal with the mafia, because that is not the purpose of this debate, but they are always there and they are the people who do not want change. [Interruption.] I have slightly lost my place; I knew I should not have written my speech!

Corruption and cronyism remain and are largely supported by the system. Last year, when I visited Tuzla, in the north of Bosnia, I met a highly qualified young lady who was desperate to go to medical school and become a doctor. She had all the qualifications but she told me that she could not go because she was not a member of a certain political party and, more importantly, because she did not have enough money to bribe the officials to put her on a list to go to a medical school. She was in despair and felt that the only future for her and her friends lay in leaving the country.

Our country has put a lot of effort into supporting peace and stability in Bosnia. We have done so on many levels: politically; socially; economically—a lot of economic work has gone on in Bosnia; and of course militarily. I really believe that our efforts have been worth it; we have saved many lives, and nothing is more important than to save someone’s life. We have to continue to do that. We have to do all we can to help the Muslim, Serb and Croat people of Bosnia. All that the vast majority of them want is a decent life—one that we are lucky enough to have—where their children go to school, where they can get jobs and where they do not need to worry too much about law and order. We are lucky to live in this country; there but for the grace of God go all of us. We could have been born Bosnian.

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[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, for securing this debate at such a critical time.

In November, I was in Sarajevo with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly for a Rose-Roth seminar, which involved a series of lectures and presentations. We got to hear about what was going on from many angles, which led me to the conclusion that I could make one statement saying one thing and another saying the complete opposite. There is a paradox in the country, and the truth of it all depends on one’s perspective. For example, people will say that basically nothing has happened since 2017, and that the country is in a stalemate and is not moving forward in many of the areas my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) mentioned. In the same breath, they say that the country is moving forward, building more solid foundations, and becoming a more trusted partner of international institutions. Where the truth lies between those statements is what we are exploring in today’s debate, but we know that corruption is still rife, and there are too many self-serving interests.

In the interests of time, I will not repeat the examples given by my right hon. Friend. He outlined them perfectly, especially the example of the young girl who wanted to start a medical career. The reality is that if someone is not a member of a political party, or cannot pay certain people, they can be caught in a trap. Corruption, electoral fraud, the state of law—these are all things that the Government are trying to work on in Bosnia with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, but they are not taking major steps forward. There are, however, politicians and parties that are trying to break away from the established corrupt institutions. We will watch the elections with interest over the coming years, especially in Sarajevo, as anti-corruption candidates start to stand. We have a responsibility to support those processes, through organisations that we support, such as the OSCE.

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: brain drain is a massive issue for Bosnia. A country cannot survive and have an economic future if what remains is just the retired population, and those who would serve its best interests are leaving. In 2021, 182,000 people out of a population of 3.2 million left. Ten years ago, there were 300 vacancies in the military, which 7,000 people applied for. Last year, there were 300 applications for 1,000 vacancies. That is a stark change in a decade. Military investment in Bosnia and Herzegovina has stalled at 1% for a decade. That is not enough to maintain the equipment, let alone a force. We then start to see those with corrupt and criminal interests able to get a foothold again—and, more fundamentally, not being worried about any consequences.

There is a way that we can turn that around and support Bosnia. It is about, in words that I have used already, the big stick. My right hon. Friend described Paddy Ashdown using that big stick. I think my right hon. Friend was a little shy about his role in the country, doing what he could to keep criminality under control. The blunt truth is that too many politicians are playing a very dangerous game in Bosnia, in Republika Srpska and the surrounding area. When it looks as if democracy will threaten their position, they launch into nationalist fervour and push that forward. That is exactly what Dodik did in Republika Srpska: he moved to a relatively moderate position, until it looked as though his position was under threat, and then became far more extreme.

It is easy in such a debate to discuss where we are and where things are going. We say that what we did in the war was 30 years ago. I think that sanitises things slightly. I remember watching—it has to be 25 years ago—the BBC drama “Warriors”. I only watched it once, and I was traumatised by it. It was an excellent drama.

[Bob Stewart]

“Warriors” was based on my infantry battalion, and it demonstrated how brilliant, well trained and decent our servicemen are in such situations. I am very proud that “Warriors” won the Montreux golden rose for its production.

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[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am more than grateful to my right hon. and gallant Friend for making that point. He is held in high esteem in this House, in Parliament and in the outside world for the role that he played in that operation.

I was coming on to say that the reason why I have never been able to watch that programme again is that it was horrific. I was not in the services, and I did not go out to Bosnia. I watched that drama in my very early 20s, and I found it so horrific that even though it has been repeated since, and even though it is excellent, I have not been able to watch it. That must not be forgotten. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) outlined some of the horrific scenes that took place—the butchery, the savagery, the hatred that led decent people and neighbours to carry out those acts. We have to recognise them in this House and never forget.

I had the privilege of being the international chairman of the Conservative party for a period. We did a lot of work with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, a body through which Labour, Liberals and Conservatives work with their sister parties to help build democracies. It was set up after the Cold War. I am proud that I was able to work with three factions from the centre right in Bosnia, to get those right-wing parties around the table, talking and working towards developing a better future. I used to say, “I don’t know whether this will have any long-term effect, but at least I can one day look my maker in the eye and say that I tried.” I had a very tiny part in trying to make peace last, because that is what we have to do.

Tragically, in my opinion, Republika Srpska representatives did not turn up to the Rose-Roth seminar of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in November, apart from one person who very bravely did and got a hell of a lot of pushback for it. Its representatives have been disengaging. That is what I mean when I talk about the dangerous path that they are on. Take the history of the second world war. By about the 1960s, German society started to teach about the holocaust. That was a very important moment; it turned to education to make sure that history could not repeat itself. In Bosnia, however, not only are people not talking about some of the crimes against humanity that took place during the war, but in some of the schools in Republika Srpska, they are actually saying, “It’s lies—it didn’t happen. This the problem. We’ve got to separate out.” We should be highly concerned about that.

What lies behind all that is the arm of Russia. I have heard that Russia is not directly involved. It is not supplying arms; it is not doing some of the things that it has done in other parts of the world, such as Syria and Ukraine. However, the hand of Russia is there, politically and disruptively, and we do not have to look very far to see it. This is a critical moment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton and my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham used the word “deterrent”. One thing we could do today is take a British battalion, in a NATO-led operation, to those areas, and act as a deterrent. I do not want any forces to have to try to stop the slaughter of innocent civilians. We now have an opportunity, in that the Minister is here to take these points back to the Foreign Office. I know that Ministers are always constrained in what they can and cannot say at the Dispatch Box, but we have to send a clear message in this debate.

History does not have to repeat itself. We do not have to have programmes that I have only ever been able to watch once in my life because I found them too horrific for me, let alone for the many Members of this House who served in Bosnia, or those now in the other place who were Ministers at the time, and had to deal with the consequences. There is ongoing trauma. I have met service personnel, some of whom served under my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham, and I have heard and seen the deep distress that they live with to this day, having tried to protect innocent civilians. That does not have to happen again. We can, and we need to, take action this day. That is the responsibility of the developed western world. It has responsibility for managing its military, and for the ethics that we apply to stop those who, purely as part of power-grabbing political games, play the nationalistic card, which will lead to murdered civilians. We see that today in Ukraine because we did nothing after Crimea.

[Bob Stewart]

If we deployed a British battalion in Bosnia under the very small NATO headquarters there, it would show that we meant real business, and aimed to stop things this time. It would, by its presence, demonstrate power, but hopefully it would not have to use force. Battalions from other countries could help, too. My goodness, Minister, this is a time when taking a little action would have a huge dividend.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am bringing my comments to a close, and my right hon. Friend has absolutely summarised the point that I am trying to make. I am on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I am the chairman of its Defence and Security Committee and I lead the UK delegation. What do we talk about more than anything else? The word “deterrent.” Deterrence has to be better than going in to try stopping a war. We can do this today. My right hon. Friend’s intervention has absolutely summed it up. Minister, if there is one message to take away at the conclusion of the debate, it is that we can prevent horror that could happen very soon—maybe as soon as the end of this week.

Russia’s Grand Strategy

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Bob Stewart

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Following on from my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), it is worth saying that the Kiev International Institute of Sociology did a poll in eastern Ukraine and found that support for Russia had halved from 80% to 40% since Donbass was effectively invaded by Russia.

Nobody in today’s debate has stood up and said that Ukraine should join NATO. I accept my right hon. Friend’s argument that others have suggested it. NATO is one argument—my right hon. Friend says that is music to President Putin’s ears and he can exploit that—but this country is also a signatory to the 1994 Budapest agreement, which allowed Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal and have its borders protected by Russia, by us and by other countries, so I argue that we have a responsibility to Ukraine that falls outside our membership of NATO.

It is also worth putting on the record in the House that there are many reports of the ethnic cleansing of Tatars in Crimea. There are reports that 25,000 people have disappeared. There is a complete lockdown on the verification by outside international media of what is taking place in Crimea. To follow the comment by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) about the population of Crimea, I do not think we can simply dismiss the matter by saying that the people of Crimea want to remain in Russia, because there are many aspects to it.

One thing that has been overlooked in today’s debate so far is that we have talked about the geopolitical consequences of the grand strategy but we have not spoken about the consequences of the murder that is happening on the ground in various areas where Russia has a malign influence, whether that is Crimea, the Donbass, Georgia, Armenia or other regions. We should be careful not to soften how we describe the situation today.

[Bob Stewart]

This is just a quick point: the 1994 Budapest accord referred not just to Ukraine but to Kazakhstan, and today Russians have gone into Kazakhstan. If we look at the accord, we see that we have guaranteed the sovereign integrity of Kazakhstan.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, because he reinforces the point that I am trying to make: this is not just about whether Ukraine should join NATO and whether we should support Ukraine. We have committed ourselves to other countries, but today’s debate seems to be saying, “Well, tough luck. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

On the grand strategy, if we try to summarise what Russia is trying to achieve overall, let us look at the EAEC—the Eurasian Economic Community—which was formed in 2000 and is now known as the Eurasian Economic Union, which Putin holds dear. The analysis is that it needs 250 million people to work as a viable internal trading bloc that could then challenge other areas. To achieve that, the union needs the 43 million Ukrainians and their powerful agricultural output to succeed. When we look at the countries Moscow wants to bring into that pact, we see that it is in effect a neo-USSR. As has been said many times today, we have to stand up to the idea that Russia can come to the table saying, in effect, “Troops must be withdrawn from all the east European NATO countries; otherwise, we are going to invade.”

My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) made an important point about the political situation in the USA. Let us not forget that then Vice-President Biden had an enormous fallout with President Obama about the surge into Iraq. He was always opposed to a lot of the interventions that took place. If we in this House know that, we can be damned sure that President Putin, sat in Moscow, knows that and he will be making that analysis.

I come back to where this all started: in the summer of 2013, when President Obama had said, “If you drop chemical weapons in Syria, that is a red line that we will not tolerate.” They dropped chemical weapons in Syria and President Obama pretty much just wrote a stiff letter to The Washington Post. We can track exactly what happened from that point: in less than a year President Putin walked into Crimea. Again, what did we do? Nothing. We did not do anything.