Middle East

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is always a pleasure to speak on these issues, and this is an important and highly topical debate. We are all aware of the terrible events in Paris in the past couple of weeks, as the problems that developed in the middle east spilled over on to the streets of Paris. We are also aware of our key role in developments in the middle east, as well as the global problems that often arise.

The key debate on the middle east at this time is about how we tackle Daesh and how we can respond in a positive fashion. I want to note the strategic interests of four countries at the fringes of Europe, on the borders of the eastern Mediterranean: Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and Israel. They all face a similar strategic predicament. Although they are located near the west and are western in many ways, they are adjacent to a region of great turmoil. Regimes in several nearby countries are supporting terror, acquiring long-range missiles and developing weapons of mass destruction, which means that these four countries cannot fully enjoy the advantages of regional stability, as their fellow western states can, as they are susceptible to threats and other forms of aggressive behaviour. Other Members have mentioned the dispersal of Christians throughout the middle east, and we are all aware of the hundreds of thousands who have been dispersed from Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

The quartet of countries that I have mentioned can best address their common problem by enhancing strategic co-operation among themselves and perhaps even forging an eastern Mediterranean alliance. Such a step would have implications for western interests as well as for the middle east, and I believe that the UK Government should promote it. The main block to such co-operation or alliance is the tense relationship between Greece and Turkey that arises primarily from the division of Cyprus, which is the issue that most needs addressing.

We need to strike the right balance, of course, as we cannot be seen to be interfering in another nation’s sovereignty, but we must work more closely alongside those eastern European nations, particularly Cyprus. We are fortunate to have the RAF, Navy and Army bases in Cyprus, which former Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ministers and Governments had the foresight and vision to ensure that we had, and they have a key part to play in any NATO or UK operations against Daesh in the future.

Our role in the middle east should not be confined to the already destabilised regions. We should be working more closely with all our allies in the region so that our influence there is complemented by having such strong relationships. Since the crumbling of the Berlin wall in November 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet bloc two years later, the west has enlarged and moved its influence eastward in several ways. The European Union opened its doors to several countries that were once in the Soviet orbit. NATO accepted the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary as members, and the Bosnian and Kosovar crises have encouraged it to expand its security space to the south and intervene militarily in that region. Thus have the boundaries of the west moved eastwards and south-eastwards, with the expansion to the eastern Mediterranean running parallel to expansion in eastern Europe. That could further western security, including our own security in the United Kingdom. Let us look at the bigger picture: Cyprus, Greece and Israel all have a strategic part to play.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Is there not a problem in the eastern Mediterranean, as the Greek Prime Minister has attacked his Turkish counterpart on Twitter after the downing of a Russian plane, and there are regular air incursions by each country into the other? There have even been descriptions of dog fights between the two. That is no way for anyone to behave when we are facing the likes of ISIS.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr MacNeil]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It has come to my attention, through BuzzFeed and Twitter, that the Prime Minister will make a statement on Syria after 7 pm. It seems that the statement will be on television, rather than in the House of Commons. Surely we are living in a parliamentary democracy, not a presidential system.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether anything that has gone out on social media is correct, so I have no idea whether what he says is true—although, I am quite sure that he would not have raised the point of order had he not seen something to that effect. All that I can say to him, and to the House, is that if the Prime Minister has something of importance to say to the nation about Syria, or indeed about any other vitally important issue, I have every confidence that he will come first to this House to say it. I am quite sure that he will do so in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will try to fill the 10 minutes that you have now made available to me, although I have prepared a speech to last for seven minutes. We will see how it goes.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who is no longer in his place, on securing this debate. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

In recent years, we have witnessed the ascent of a brutal and destructive form of Islamic fundamentalism across the region. Mosul’s nearly 2,000-year-old Christian population has been purged, the Yazidis have endured what is arguably a genocide, ancient cultural heritage has been destroyed and once stable countries have descended into chaos.

It is without question that the terrorist attacks in Paris were a direct assault on our way of life, just like, in their own way, the attacks on British citizens in Tunisia. Political leaders and the public alike are now coming to the realisation that this is not a problem in some far-flung region of the world that we can simply will away. Sadly, it has taken the tragedy of Paris to open our eyes to the fact that this is a problem that we cannot afford to ignore any longer. If ISIL is allowed to fester, we will see a continuation of the ethnic cleansing, the indoctrination of future generations in ISIL-held territory and thousands more displaced Syrians and Iraqis. I therefore welcome the fact that the Government will, I hope, put the question of British intervention in Syria to the vote in the House this week.

Let us note also that ISIL is but one manifestation of the evil of radical Islam. It would be unwise now to cast similarly reprehensible groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, Hezbollah, Hamas and others in a different or, indeed, a better light. They have all actively participated in Islamist-driven violence, destroying lives across many communities in the middle east and beyond. It is important to recognise that there are democratic forces in many countries in the region and Britain should take the lead in supporting them wherever possible. The majority of citizens in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere want to live their lives in normality without the daily interruption of car bombs and gun attacks. The Arab spring surely demonstrated a desire for change and for democracy.

In this conflict, we have the advantage of military superiority, but this alone is not enough to win and it is not what is being proposed. When ISIL is eventually defeated, unless we are careful and can also target the cause, which is the ideology, and not only the effect, which can be seen in the actions of ISIL, another group will re-emerge under a different name. Some, such as the Foreign Minister of Sweden, have relayed the misguided notion that the prolonged Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root of the current turmoil in the middle east and that once it is resolved the blight of Islamist radicalism will end. That is simply not the case. In fact, part of the reason we are in this current state is that too much focus rather than too little has been placed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of other conflicts in the region.

I was at a dinner last week at which a somewhat left-wing Canadian journalist made a speech with which I happened completely to agree. He said that when he first went to Israel, he pointed out that in his news office there were a huge number of journalists concentrating on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of the whole of the region. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at best a minor sideshow. The wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere have raged on, yet just last week the UN decided to pass six resolutions against Israel, the only stable democracy in the region.

To suggest that the existence of Israel is at the root of the entire middle east’s turbulence today is to overlook the sectarian divisions in the region that have existed for centuries. It also ignores the large part played by certain countries, most notably Saudi Arabia, that have spent billions to fund the toxic and destructive spread of Wahabist ideology across Muslim communities worldwide. It is imperative that Britain and the whole civilised world does whatever is necessary to combat that ideology and stop its spread.

[Mr MacNeil]

I understand from the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee that the UK has eight planes in Iraq, of which two are active. If the UK is going to intervene in Syria, is it going to lessen its efforts against ISIS in Iraq or is it not? Or is it not bombing ISIS in Iraq intensely enough? We are only talking about one or two planes that will go in to Syria.

[John Howell]

That is a debate we can have on Wednesday, I am not going to answer that question now.

We need to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to stop exporting its radical ideology worldwide, despite our geopolitical alliances. I ask the Minister perhaps to write to me in reply to the question of what steps the Government will take to ensure that the Wahabist ideology does not spread further across the middle east.

Before I finish, I want to highlight another important country in the region that has been consumed by a less violent but equally destructive Islamist threat. The AKP Government in Turkey have increasingly eroded democracy by arresting dozens of prominent journalists, turning to authoritarianism and reigniting the conflict with the Kurdish PKK to seal their power. The same Government are a vocal supporter of the terrorist group Hamas, which has masterminded deadly attacks against Israelis from its Istanbul headquarters. In our approach to Turkey, as is too often the case, realpolitik has taken precedence over human values, ignoring the fact that democracy is not only about having an election.

In addition, despite their latent arrests of ISIL suspects, the AKP Government in Turkey have turned a blind eye to ISIL terrorists, instead prioritising fighting Kurdish forces in Syria, the very people making the largest territorial gains from ISIL. The erratic actions of Turkey, especially taking into consideration last week’s developments with Russia, give us increasing cause for concern. I ask the Secretary of State to join me in condemning the Turkish Government’s undermining of the freedom of press in the country and to explain how we can expect ISIL and other jihadists to be dislodged from their territory in Syria when Turkey is bombing the Kurdish YPG.