Yemen

Alistair Burt Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I much appreciate your introduction, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), the Chair of the International Development Committee, and his colleagues on both Committees for their thorough report. I also thank him for the way he introduced this difficult and complex situation. I also welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), and the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). We will listen carefully to their responses.

I was Minister with responsibility for the middle east between 2010 and 2013, and I also had departmental responsibility for arms control, so I have some background and feel for these difficult and complex issues. I do not want to spend a huge amount of time on the humanitarian statistics, simply because we are well aware of them—the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby got the statistics into the public domain quite effectively. I thank the Library of the House of Commons for producing yet another excellent background briefing. I am sure we all also want to thank Stephen O’Brien for his remarkable work through the UN relief agencies. To put one quotation in Hansard, he said of the recent attack on a funeral:

“This attack took place against the backdrop of a desperately worsening humanitarian situation across Yemen, with four out of every five of Yemen’s 28 million people in real and immediate need of assistance.

I was in Sana’a only last week and saw the relentless heart-breaking situation for myself: medical facilities with no medicines to treat basic conditions; parents struggling to put food in the mouths of their children even once a day; and entire communities terrifyingly affected by conflict and without access to basic services or livelihoods.”

The issue before us, as always, is not simply the relief of humanitarian pressures. We can do more on that, but it does not solve the problem.

I will talk about the elements of the motion that address the conflict, the impact on civilians and how the conflict can be resolved, because that is the most important thing. If the humanitarian crisis is to be ended, it will not be through more aid but through an end to the conflict.

I am exceptionally fond of Yemen. My visits between 2010 and 2013 introduced me to some of the country’s leaders, whose despair as events evolved was obvious. In 2011, I met some of the young people and women in the squares of Sana’a who helped to start changing the country. Things have not gone well, and the people of Yemen have been betrayed once again by those in their country who have responsibility for them, but I hope the spark of reform that was there with the youth and the women is not lost in the Yemen of the future. I hope that the political settlement, which will eventually come, includes those who were not included in the past—those people have a role to play.

We have this conflict because of that past betrayal, because of the manipulation by Ali Abdullah Saleh of all sides in the various conflicts over a lengthy time, because aid money that went into the country was used for the wrong purposes, and because there was a failure of governance and a failure in the process to deal with internal grievances, including those of the Houthis. All that led to a situation where it suits some to continue the conflict internally, but the cost is borne by the people of Yemen. It is essential that we recognise and understand that.

From the outside, it is understandable that we focus on the humanitarian crisis and that, to a degree, we focus overmuch on the role of Saudi Arabia—I will come to that in a second—but it is essential to recognise that, if we want to make a difference, we have to look at and understand why the conflict has persisted as long as it has. The conflict exists on the back of the civil strife that has been going on in Yemen for a long time. It exists because Yemen is genuinely important. Yemen matters, and this should not be a forgotten war in a forgotten country.

First, in a basic human sense, Yemen is a country of art, culture and music. It is a country of gentle people who have given a great deal to the world, and it is terrible that in our time we associate Yemen with conflict. Secondly, Yemen overlooks important sea lanes, and the Houthis have already attacked ships in the area. Thirdly, Yemen is ungoverned space. It matters to us if there is instability in the region. Yemen may be a faraway place of which many people know not very much, but it matters. Accordingly, Yemen’s location and the ability of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to exploit that ungoverned space mean that AQAP’s ability to direct attacks towards us and others in the west has increasingly become a matter of concern and importance for us. None of us in this House needs further information on the general instability in the region.

Understanding all that gives us an understanding of why the coalition came together, of why there is a UN resolution and of why the United Kingdom has an involvement. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is directly affected by instability in Yemen. It can be, and has been, physically attacked. Between 2015 and 2016, some 37 ballistic missiles were fired by Houthi rebels towards Saudi Arabia, inflicting damage. It is important that that is known, because sometimes the conflict is considered purely to be an internal issue in Yemen. The Houthis are sometimes not considered to be well armed, or anything else, but they are.

[Graham Jones]

The missiles supplied by North Korea in the 1990s, Scud-Bs, have a range of 300 to 500 km and are being shot down by Patriot defence missile systems procured by Saudi Arabia from the United States.

[Alistair Burt]

As the hon. Gentleman indicates, there are serious armaments in the area, which causes concern to all sides. That is a reason why the coalition is there, and I maintain that it is in the United Kingdom’s interest to continue supporting the coalition, to continue supporting the partners in the coalition and to recognise what is being challenged in Yemen—it is not only the loss of the democratically supported Government of President Hadi but, as has already been mentioned, the degree of Iranian influence. The Iranians have said publicly that they see Sana’a as yet another capital that they hold, and the risk and danger of that is that Iran is a regime with a clear intent to destabilise the region, to use terrorism to do so and to threaten stability in other areas. The consequence of that, not only in an unstable region but for those outside, is that the degree of risk to the United Kingdom and others has increased. Accordingly, it is not in the United Kingdom’s interests if the outcome of the conflict is that the Iranians are successful and terrorism is successful.

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

The hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) mentioned the fewer than 20 Scud strikes, which should be deplored, but coalition air forces are engaging in 150 air strikes, and more, a day. There is a disproportionality here that everyone in this House should recognise.

[Alistair Burt]

It is very easy for us on these comfortable Benches here in Westminster to talk about disproportionality in a conflict far away. My point is that the United Kingdom has focused on the activities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia without truly understanding why it is engaged, why the coalition is there and why the United Kingdom has an interest. I simply want to put that on the record. That is not, in any way, to minimise the reason and need for humanitarian law to be respected and for the activities of those who engage in warfare to conduct it according to the rules, but it does raise the rarely made argument about why on earth we are engaged in this and why the outcome matters to the United Kingdom.

[Stephen Twigg]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Alistair Burt]

I will just this once, as I am running short of time.

[Stephen Twigg]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I have enormous respect for him and his experience, and I am listening carefully to what he has to say. For me, the crucial issue is respect for international humanitarian law. What is his answer to the point I raised: at what point would it be right to look at these matters independently, rather than leaving it to the Saudis to lead the investigation?

[Alistair Burt]

That point comes when the United Kingdom Government are not satisfied that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can fulfil its obligations, but I do not believe that position has been reached. I am sure the Minister will talk about the nature of our engagement with Saudi Arabia and how, as he says, it affects a group of states, through the Gulf Co-operation Council, that are engaged in a conflict in a manner they have not been before. There is an important point here: if we want and expect people in other parts of the world to be responsible for their own defence and security, they are going to have to get on with it and they are learning some of the processes. That is happening at the moment.

Secondly, on the nature of our engagement, I refer all colleagues to the very good report by the BBC’s Frank Gardner just before Christmas that is on the BBC website. Most of us recognise that Frank Gardner is a pretty independent voice, and he has looked at the nature of engagement. The openness of the Saudi authorities in dealing with him and explaining what they do, and the openness of the Saudi Foreign Minister in coming to this House, with any Member of this Chamber having access to talk about these issues and question in a manner not done before, is an important step forward. We know that everything is by no means perfect or clear, but the steps that have been taken by the British Government to encourage full disclosure have been important.

I must close on this next point, because Madam Deputy Speaker was very generous. We are beginning to learn that the importance of ending a conflict is paramount to the people who are affected by it, but there are good outcomes and less than good outcomes. Sometimes unless we are involved we can see outcomes to conflict that are not in our long-term interest and not in the interest of stability in the area. That is why we should continue to support our allies, who are working through the Gulf coalition. We should continue to be engaged fully with them, but recognise that our interests lie in a situation that does not create a terrorist cell in Sana’a and does not result in a Hezbollah-type operation active in Yemen. We must recognise that those states that oppose such situations are right to consider that their long-term stability and ours is best satisfied by a solution that ends the conflict, and puts in place a democratic Government supported by Yemenis and a Yemeni political process, not the outside interference of Iran.