ISIL in Syria

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, and congratulate him on securing this debate. He has rather surprised me, because I expected his contribution to come from a certain perspective that would go along the lines of, “Russia good, Russian intervention good, and everything else we’re doing is a complete disaster”. He and I are old sparring partners and friends, so I do not think that he will mind me speculating that that is what I expected him to say, and I think he would admit that it would not be entirely without foundation. But the noble Lord asked a number of extremely pertinent questions. I hope that in replying the Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, will be able to touch on them because they are extremely relevant.

My concern about many of the debates on Syria that we have had in this House recently is that a trend seems to be emerging, particularly on government Benches, whereby there is a view that two things have happened which should make us change the strategy that we held in Syria between 2011, when the conflict started, and early in 2015.

The first—rightly—is the rise of ISIL. I cannot say that it was entirely unforeseen. In the numerous debates that I spoke in between 2011 and 2014, I warned that extremism was filling the vacuum that was increasingly existing in Syria. What was unforeseen was the dramatic capturing of territory and the dramatic collapse of the Iraqi forces, which happened so suddenly. Not only did they abandon huge parts of the territory but they left behind huge financial resources, as well as the oil wells and many other aspects of infrastructure, that enabled ISIL to continue to hang on to territory.

The second factor that implies that we need to change our strategy is the entry of Russia into this quagmire. One gets the impression in this House that people are now beginning to say that because Russia is there and because we need to deal with Russia and come to a diplomatic solution to solve the problem of Syria, we can somehow ignore Russia’s malign influence in all other areas of international life. It seems to me that this analysis suffers from a couple of fundamental errors, the first being that the Russian writ does not rule in Damascus. We know that it does not because, when there have been movements towards compromise, and when concessions have been offered about protection, training, arming and other viable alternatives, Assad vetoes even relatively positive Russian influences. So the constructive elements of Russian thought are not necessarily embraced wholescale by President Bashar al-Assad, Russia’s protégé.

The other reason why simply trying to do a deal with Russia will not wash is what I would describe as the very positive turn of developments with Iran. By saying that, I am not trying to suggest that Iran’s influence in Lebanon and Syria is entirely constructive or positive. I would not say that for a second. I think that the House knows well what I think of Hezbollah, Hamas and other organisations that are terrorism-inclined, if not clearly terrorist organisations. But the point I am trying to make is that since we are now in a position where we are co-operating with Iran, the idea that Russia should be the focus of our endeavours is rather misplaced. The focus of our endeavours should be Iran, because Iran has far more authority in Damascus with Assad than the Russians.

I was not able to be in the Chamber, but I read carefully the Statement made by the Home Secretary in the other place and repeated here by the noble Lord, Lord Bates, on Russia’s nuclear terrorism on the streets of United Kingdom. There are also Russia’s malign actions in Crimea and Ukraine, Russia’s record on human rights, Russia’s abandonment of the rule of law, and Russia’s pernicious hostility towards settling many outstanding disputes around energy, security, the Baltics and so on. So allowing Russia too large a space in what is happening in Syria will be counterproductive.

The noble Lord, Lord Truscott, mentioned Russia’s vital strategic interests. I assume that he is referring to the Russian base at Tartus. But besides that, Russia does not have vital strategic interests in Syria. If it did, it would not have stood on the sidelines for as long as it did. If we allow the international community to recognise these vital strategic interests, as they are described, we will be in danger of allowing that country to beat us around the head when its other, plausibly more significant strategic interests, which are nearer to our shores in the case of Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, the Stans, the Baltics and other countries—where we have far greater and clearer obligations in terms of our NATO membership—are imperilled. I am trying to say that we need to be extremely careful about giving Russia too much credibility and too much space in resolving the conflict.

But resolve the conflict we must, and I want to pose some questions to the Government in terms of what will happen in the forthcoming 25 January Geneva talks. It appears that the Assad Government’s strategy in approaching these talks—and I am sceptical about whether they will take place—is simply to brand everyone on the other side as a terrorist group. We know that several of the people who have been vetoed by the Assad Government, Russia on the sidelines or the Saudi Arabians, who are themselves a hugely malign influence in Syria, are not terrorist groups. We also know, as we know from our experience with the IRA—and my God this country knows this better than most others— that when you need to get peace you need to talk to some pretty unpleasant people. The idea that we allow these vetoes to continue to hold imperils any attempt since Geneva in 2012 to get to the end of this crisis. We have had five years of it—we are now approaching the anniversary—and it seems that we will not get anywhere if we do not accelerate a resolution to the conflict.

The noble Lord, Lord Truscott, referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee meeting of 12 January. I also saw the transcript of that and noted that all three experts who spoke on the prospects for progress were profoundly pessimistic, noting that the persistence of the Syrian regime in labelling various groups as terrorists did not bode well for any positive developments or even for attendance.

The Prime Minister made an impassioned defence when he came to the House of Commons of a transitional plan—a peace plan—and said that extending military action into Syria, which he asked the House of Commons to approve last November, had to be accompanied by a political solution. We are now three months down the road. I accept that there has been some success in Iraq—the Iraqis have taken back some of the land mass—but one cannot see evidence of any military success in Syria.

Three months is not a long time and I am perfectly prepared to give the Government some more time on that. But what I would like to hear from the Minister in his concluding comments is an explanation of why only a few months ago the Prime Minister was so optimistic about a transitional plan, a peace process moving forward and involving the UN Security Council and so on, when we do not see any sign of accelerating what was the Vienna process and is now the Geneva process. Also, we are not getting any tangible messages from the Government as to where we are heading in terms of a longer-term strategy in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon—essentially across the whole of the Middle East, which is more or less predicted to be unstable for the foreseeable future, with all the side-effects that that entails.