North Africa and the Near and Middle East

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Yes, that is my understanding. That is why I said that Saif does not have to be extradited to The Hague. I would prefer it if he was, but that has to be decided. However, we do have to be confident that there will be an independent judicial system. The murder of his father by a mob is not a very good precedent. We must also look at some of the other abuses of human rights that are now taking place in Libya, and have some very serious concerns.

We should not say, “Ra, ra, we’ve won,” too often, because there is too much pain and too much suffering, and too many people have already died. I read an interesting article by Franklin Lamb from Sirte in Libya called “Bad moon rising over great Sirte bay.” He supported the TNC and the overthrow of Gaddafi, but he describes what he sees as problems for the future. One of them is relations with Algeria, and he also quotes someone saying about NATO:

“‘They destroyed our country and now they want us to pay them to rebuild it. I wish we could rebuild without one NATO country profiting. It’s like that crazy American woman running for President of your country who wants Iraq to pay for the death of US occupation soldiers who were killed.’”

The article goes on to describe the cynicism with which a great deal of the western involvement in Libya is viewed. I therefore think we should be a bit more cautious and circumspect about this matter.

Egyptians are voting in their elections today. We all hope those elections will be properly run and will turn out an accountable Parliament and Government, but above all we must hope that they bring the military under democratic control. There has never been a time in Egyptian history when the primary power of the state, the armed forces, have been under any kind of democratic control. They might have been very popular at various times, and they might have been very unpopular at certain times, but they have never been subject to the kind of parliamentary control that we, along with most other countries in the world, would see as the norm in respect of our armed forces. If that is not achieved, a constitution might be developed in which the Parliament and Government exist, but only as a kind of parallel power structure—as in Chile under Pinochet, in Indonesia and, to some extent, in Turkey before the more recent reforms—with the army being effectively independent of the democratic process, raising its own funds, existing in any way it wants and able to take control of things in the future.

The people who were in Tahrir square over the weekend, and those who were killed last week by the army and police forces, were demanding accountable Government and democracy. The west should be a little cautious in thinking it can do deals with the military to bring about some kind of solution in Egypt.



Egypt has always been the headquarters of the Arab League. Under Nasser it was also very much the centre of the whole Arab uprising and that period of Arab nationalism. There is a competitor on the horizon, however: the Gulf Co-operation Council, which is beginning to assert itself. The GCC started out as a fairly mild union of Gulf states, but it has now, in some respects, become a kind of rival to the Arab League. Strangely, Morocco has now joined the kingdoms of the Gulf region. The last time I looked at the map, Morocco did not appear to be a Gulf country, but perhaps something has changed. The GCC includes US bases in Bahrain, and it has allowed or encouraged or facilitated—we may choose whichever word we want—Saudi Arabia to occupy Bahrain in order to support the kingdom and condone the many human rights abuses that have gone on in Bahrain not only over the last few weeks but the last few years.

Behind that, we must ask some questions about what is happening in Saudi Arabia at the present time. I was given a note about last week’s

“death of four Shia protestors in Qatif…after clashes with security forces. The government accused outside agents as usual but the crisis is more profound. The Shia have been protesting since March over the detention of political prisoners without trial and asking for an end to discrimination and exclusion.”

It goes on to cite:

“The trial of 17 reformers described by Amnesty International as peaceful activists in Jeddah. They were sentenced to 5-30 years in prison. The case demonstrated how the justice system is under the control of the Ministry of Interior.”

Many issues of human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia have to be examined but, again, Britain’s overwhelming commercial relationship with that country, through arms sales and oil imports, seems to dominate what ought to be genuine concerns about human rights there, about the inability of ordinary people there to express themselves and about the denial to women of any basic or fundamental rights that any other country in the world ought to be able to subscribe and aspire to.

What my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) said about what is happening in Bahrain is absolutely true. I first met human rights activists from Bahrain at a UN conference in Copenhagen in 1986, when they came to see me to talk about the suspension of the constitution, the weakness of the Parliament, the power of the King, and the degree of discrimination and abuses of human rights. Last week, a very lengthy report was published by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, and I shall quote from a small passage about the establishment of the commission by decree in June 2011:

“The commission found that arbitrary arrests—in many cases pre-dawn raids conducted by armed and masked security…forces—showed the ‘existence of an operational plan’ to terrorize protestors and opposition members. It concluded that the arrests and detentions ‘could not have happened without the knowledge of higher echelons of the command structure’ of the security forces, and that failure to investigate rights abuses could implicate not only low-level personnel, but also higher level officials.”

This country has close relations with Bahrain, we have had close military co-operation with Bahrain and we have sold a great deal of equipment to Bahrain, including surveillance equipment that has been used against highly democratic human rights protestors, so we need to be cautious about our double standards.

The last two points that I wish to make concern ever-present, huge threats that exist in the region. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) made a brilliant speech about the situation facing Palestinian people. It was the most moving speech that I have heard for a very long time on that issue, and it was made on the basis of a very recent visit. He and I have been to the west bank and Gaza together on a number of occasions, and I hope that we will be able to go there again.

[Bob Russell]

As we approach the anniversary of the birth of Christ, does the hon. Gentleman agree that today Joseph and Mary would not be able to get to Bethlehem because of the walls, the shepherds would be ethnically cleansed and the three kings would not be allowed into Palestine?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have been through the miserable experience of what ought to be a pleasant, if short, journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. One goes through many checkpoints and then sees the obscenity of the wall around Bethlehem and how it goes through streets and fields and takes people’s land away. Some people cope with it in a witty way. I went to a nice, ordinary Palestinian café in Bethlehem that I had been to before the wall was constructed 3 or 4 metres in front of it. The people there had renamed it “The Wall Café” and painted the menu on the wall. One sat in the café and read the menu off the wall, and everything on it was to do with the wall. One could have wall falafel, wall burgers, wall chips or wall coffee—it was “wall” everything. What a way to have to live! People see their whole communities and societies destroyed by the construction of the wall and the construction of settlements.

Palestinians living in their village on their farm, with their olive groves, oranges or whatever else they grow suddenly find that a wall comes and they have lost access to their land, or a settlement comes and all their water is taken away, or a road is built that they are not allowed to use. There are settler roads and settlements supported by the Israeli army and police forces, who are condoning absolutely the theft of land and the occupation of the best land with the best water supplies. Then they say, “Come on—let’s make peace.” I am sorry, but if they are going to make peace they must start by ending the settlement policy and withdrawing the settlements from the west bank. But we are quite a long way away from that.

Palestine applied for UN membership, and that is to be decided. I hope, although it is probably a very faint hope, that the British Government will vote in support of it. I understand we are going to take the incredibly brave position of abstaining—a really tough decision to make. And what happened when the UNESCO membership went through? Israel withdrew the tax money that should be paid to the Palestinian Authority, which means the authority is rapidly running out of money, and the United States withdrew funding from UNESCO, which means that UNESCO will have a financial problem. Sorry, but for what? Because the Palestinians had the temerity to want to be a member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. That is a truly ridiculous situation.

If we want peace in the middle east, we must recognise the Palestinian people and negotiate with their representatives, whether we like them or not. There are lots of representatives of the Palestinian people: Hamas, Fatah, independents, people who undertake civil disobedience and pacifists. There are people of all descriptions and views, but they are all Palestinians and they all recognise the right to exist as Palestine within that region. Israel seems incapable of deciding what its borders are, yet insists that Palestinians should continue to give up land. I strongly support the right of the Palestinian people to exist and to have their own identity, and putting false barriers in the way will not bring about peace.

Israel, however, is a very powerful country. It is the world’s fourth largest arms exporter and a possessor of nuclear weapons. It has not signed a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but it has signed up to the Mediterranean weapons of mass destruction-free zone. As a nuclear power, Israel must recognise that if we are to bring about peace in the region, it needs to be involved. Last year’s NPT review conference called for a nuclear-free middle east, so Iran as a member of the NPT organisation must obviously be part of that just as Israel, I suspect, should also be part of that process. I do not want anyone having nuclear weapons in the middle east, and I think that the best way to deal with Iran is by consultation and by having as many dealings with it as possible. It is not to condone the human rights abuses or everything that goes on, including the imprisonment of trade unionists and all the other denials of human rights, but to recognise the lessons we have learned from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Are we seriously going to go down the road of having a war in Syria or Iran? I sincerely hope not. I want there to be peace and justice, but I am not convinced that the process of wars and British involvement in those wars have done anything but cost us a great deal of money and brutalised our own country. Nor have they improved our standing around the world. The Department for International Development does a great job in many ways and many places, including Palestine. We seem to be obsessed in this country with the idea that a nation of 65-odd million people on the north-west coast of Europe has the funding, resources and power to have global reach. I am not sure we do. We need to think about these things and start being much more supportive of international institutions, international law, human rights and all the other issues that go with them, rather than turning a blind eye to human rights abuses because it suits our commercial interests at certain times to sell arms, buy oil or whatever else.

Let me conclude with a final thought. I have met a number of former soldiers who have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, some of them can be found in the occupations around London. Tragically, an awful lot of former soldiers can be found as homeless people and others going through a very bad time in their lives. Almost a century ago, Siegfried Sassoon wrote that the

“the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it”.

A statement has been issued by 15 British soldiers and two Royal Marines, supported by four Americans. The first signatory is Joe Glenton, who refused to go to Iraq and has since left the Army. I shall not read it all out because it is quite long, but I shall quote part of it:

“We are veterans, from the British and American Armed Forces, acting on behalf of soldiers and citizens at home. We know that these wars have nothing to do with democracy, security, women’s rights, peace or stability, they are fought for money and power, nothing else. Our comrades’ blood has lubricated the ambitions of a few. The goals could only have been achieved by negotiation and this remains the case.

We have seen and endured the suffering of the soldiers affected by these wars and, unlike those who send them to fight, we know these people at a human level. We have seen and regret the suffering of the innocent people in the countries involved. We are protesting against the conduct of the war and the reasons it was started by the United States and the United Kingdom. We object to the insincerity and imperialistic objectives, for which people continue to be sacrificed, displaced, tortured, imprisoned and wounded.”

It goes on to say that they think 10 years is enough for these wars.

I know that is not a majority view in the House and might not even be a majority view across the whole country. However, people are increasingly questioning our foreign policy and the amount of resources we spend on weapons of mass destruction and our own nuclear weapons while claiming that nobody else should have them. I think we need a bit of a rethink on our foreign policy. We should admire and support those who stand up for democracy, but let us not start another war with Syria or Iran. That is not the right way to go.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I respect and rather like the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), but of course I cannot agree with the last sentiments in his speech. I shall make a short speech as I believe there are two Opposition Members yet to speak. I shall bear that in mind.

I have lived or worked in Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Yemen and Bahrain. The United Kingdom has a traditional and present-day interest in what happens throughout the middle east and north Africa, but that does not give us the right to direct exactly what should happen politically in those countries. Like many hon. Members who have spoken, however, I very much hope that we can influence the direction of their politics in future. I shall confine my remarks to countries in which I have lived or of which I have some experience, starting with Egypt, where I lived for a while in 2005.

The current situation in Egypt is totally unacceptable. The idea that protestors have had to go back to Tahrir square is a dire warning to Field Marshal Tantawi, and the fact that 35 people were killed recently is utterly abhorrent and very worrying. The military will have to stand away from politics but I fear they will find that very difficult to do. Today’s parliamentary elections in Egypt might help. Tantawi has promised to hand over power to civilians, so we will see what happens in that regard. We now have a timeline for that, and a president should be elected by June 2012. Personally, I doubt whether the military will be able to give up their stranglehold on power and privilege as easily as people might think.

I lived in Bahrain as a young man in 1969.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

A young man?

[Bob Stewart]

I was indeed young once—it is almost the start of a song. When I lived in Bahrain it was a very different time to now. I desperately want to see human rights in Bahrain and I am very unhappy about what has happened there recently, particularly about the Saudis coming in with their armed forces. I very much hope that things will get much better.

The final country that I want to talk about is Yemen, where I lived when I was an even younger man between 1954 and 1958. I have always taken a close interest in what has happened to the Aden protectorate. Yemen is a strategic location right at the bottom of the Saudi peninsula and has always been important. It was important to us as a place where our steamers were coaled up for going to India. It was also the home of Osama bin Laden. Let me say how pleased I am with the UK Government’s launch of the Friends of Yemen group.

I will conclude, as I want to keep my comments as short as possible for obvious reasons. Huge changes are taking place in the middle east and north Africa. It is clearly a time of great opportunity for the peoples of the region. I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys), who made points about our business links to the region being part of our foreign policy. That is an extremely good idea and I know that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is doing his very best to combine diplomacy and business.

I am very hopeful that the Arab spring will liberate large numbers of people and change their way of life in the middle east and north Africa, but the danger is that in times of turmoil things can go either way. That is the problem that we face. We must use our limited power—I stress limited power—to influence what happens throughout the region for the better. I very much hope that, this time next year, we will see the peoples of the middle east and north Africa in a much happier place than they are at present. I keep my fingers crossed and I believe the bottle may well be half filled, rather than half empty.