Libya

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Leslie]

My hon. Friend refers to a nursery rhyme; I was going to say that we have a slightly short attention span and in many ways a fairytale view of foreign policy—“It’s all going to be fine and everyone will live happily ever after once we’ve done the nice thing that the Twitterati will approve of.” We are where we are.

We in the west in general—I do not intend to label any one person as responsible—make two mistakes. First, we tend to see situations in a binary way. We are quick to call the good guys the good guys and the bad guys the bad guys. That has led us to be allies with questionable people just because we want to defeat Daesh. Does that really mean that we should align ourselves with Islamists who perhaps have ideas not that different from Daesh? The reason that they are anti-Daesh may be that they see it as a competitor in the region, not that they share our values.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I remember that those who advocated attacking Iraq back in 2003 pointed to an atrocity that Saddam Hussein had undoubtedly perpetrated against the Kurds in Halabja some 15 years or so before as a pretext for launching strikes. Do we not have to be clear that there is an ever-present opportunity in the middle east to make a horrendous situation full of human rights abuses even worse?

[Charlotte Leslie]

Absolutely. A theme that has arisen again and again in this Chamber is the tension between stability and freedoms, and the extent to which we match our concern with alleviating human rights abuses with a concern with maintaining stability. Once stability goes in a country, there are an awful lot more human rights abuses, however many there were beforehand.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I am grateful to my very good and hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) for getting this debate going. I take issue slightly with the comments on the decision in 2011. I felt that we had no choice but to save the people of Benghazi. We did not think of the consequences; we had damn all time to look downstream. I felt that the decision was quite right. My experience of watching people die when there is military inaction was why I supported military operations against Gaddafi.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) raised this matter. It is very sad that, throughout the middle east, stability and safety and a normal society so that children can go to school often seems to require a strong person, normally or even always a man, to be in charge of the country. Democracy such as we have in this country is only a serious long-term wish.

[Alex Chalk]

Is there a lesson from British history? If we go back to a time before there was a civil service, before there were all the organs of the state, it required a strong man in the form of the King to keep the King’s peace. That is a lesson from our own history that we would do well to observe.

[Bob Stewart]

I entirely take that point, which in fact reinforces the point I was making. It seems, therefore, that people such as Saddam and Gaddafi sometimes work for the majority of people in a country. For some, of course, they do not. Libya is seemingly ungovernable at the moment. Some say that there are two Parliaments, and huge numbers—thousands—of militias and generals running around. It is a ghastly place. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne mentioned 1,600 militias—goodness, that is a heck of a lot. However, with apologies to my good and hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West, I shall concentrate on Daesh and what it could do in Libya.

I have no intelligence information on this—it is all open source—but I am told that Daesh started moving into Libya in about 2014, when it was looking for an alternative place. It found that in Sirte. When we talk about Sirte, I, as a military officer, am always reminded of David Stirling and his SAS raids on Sirte airfield, which other hon. Members are nodding about, and the gallant actions of those young men, who were mainly from New Zealand, in those days. [Interruption.] I am so sorry: the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) reminds me that the Irish were there, too. We are always reminded of the Irish, Mr Chope, because they apparently have more Victoria Crosses than the English, the Welsh and the Scots put together. Mind you, I have to say, just to add a lighter note, that I am quite sure they were a bit pickled when they won them.

According to open sources, there are about 4,000 to 6,000 Daesh people operating in Sirte and around there. What is the threat? What threat are these guys going to make against us? I think it is not as bad as it could be. They are stuck in an enclave in Sirte. Perhaps they are being hellish inside it, but if I were a Daesh commander, I would not put my operatives into a leaky boat full of migrants or refugees, with scant chance of making it across the Mediterranean. I am also sure that when they do get to Europe the security forces of the country check them out thoroughly before they get ashore.

I would not take that course of action, so how else do they get into Europe? To the east they would be going into Egypt. President Sisi is adamantly determined to wipe out terrorist groups such as Daesh, and has set the armed forces and security forces firmly against them. Again, he is a strong man in the middle east. Tunisia, after the tragedy of Sousse and Tunis last year, has decided to put up a great barricade across the border. That is being done fairly effectively, although it is not complete. Algeria is 1,000 miles away, but the Algerians too are effective at chasing down Islamists trying to cross into their territory. It is not easy to get into Europe. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West mentioned going south across the Sahara, but that is a pretty dodgy route to try.

I am thinking about the threat to us from the people in question—being a member of the Defence Committee, of course I am thinking in that way. They are holed up, but it is quite clear that we have to eliminate them. We will support anything that helps with their elimination. The objective of eliminating Daesh and other terrorist organisations in Libyan society is crucial, but, as other Members and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West have suggested, Daesh is just one. If it is squashed, it will come out in some other form. Somehow, politically, Libya has to find a way. Whether that involves a strong person or not, I am sure of one thing: it took us 800 years to get to our imperfect democracy, and it cannot be imposed quickly. As others have suggested, there will be a Libyan model. I hope it comes quickly for the sake of the decent, normal people of Libya.