Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As the Prime Minister pointed out, poison gas was extensively used in battle in the first world war. That led to a revulsion that was formulated by the 1925 Geneva gas protocol, which banned the use of poison gases but did not prevent a country from possessing a stockpile so that it could threaten retaliation if attacked by such gases. That protocol had nothing to do with the fact that poison gas was not used in the second world war—what prevented Hitler from using it was the threat of overwhelming retaliation. Indeed, sarin and tabun were nerve gases that Nazi scientists invented in the 1930s and 1940s. Hitler proposed to use tabun in 1943 but was deterred from doing so by the mistaken belief that the allies had discovered it too, although they had not. Similarly, Churchill thought of using poison gas against the V-weapons in 1944, and decided not to do so on military advice. The gas protocol had nothing to do with it.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

If my hon. Friend is talking about Hitler’s use of gas on soldiers he should not forget that Hitler used poison gas on innocent civilians—6 million Jews to be precise.

[Dr Lewis]

I am delighted to have the extra minute, especially as that was the next point I was going to make, given that a large proportion of members of my family were among those victims who were gassed. Hitler used poison gas against those innocent victims because he did not give a fig for the gas protocol; he cared about whether or not people could hit back. Those victims could not hit back whereas the allies could, and that is why he did not use gas against them.

I do not want to divert too far into that, but it is important to understand the realities of what makes countries use poison gas and what deters them from using it. In my mind, the questions we must consider resolve themselves into two, rather than the four elegantly put forward by the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. My two questions are: first, is it proven beyond reasonable doubt that Assad did it; and secondly, even if Assad or his regime did it, is a military strike sensible?

On the first question, the UN inspectors will not tell us anything about whether or not Assad did it, as I understand it. All they will do is tell us whether or not a sarin gas attack took place, so we cannot look to them to point the finger as to who did it. The Joint Intelligence Committee has been cited and we can all read the summary. That summary is not conclusive and in fact states that the JIC is baffled to find a motive for Assad having done this, as well it might be. If Assad did it—and perhaps he did—it was the height of irrationality for him to do the one thing that might get the west intervening against him.

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[Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Syria’s use of chemical weapons is either a huge mistake or, in my view, a calculated attempt to test the resolve of the west, post Iraq and post Afghanistan. If we look at the possibility that it was a mistake, it could have been an official or a general who gave orders to the relevant Government department for the use of chemical weapons without the direct instruction of Assad; that scenario has been put forward by reports appearing in Foreign Affairs magazine. Alternatively, it could be a test to see whether Syria could get away with the use of weapons of mass destruction, and whether the west would not have the stomach for a challenge. Chemical weapons have been used in Syria earlier, and until the recent red line from Obama the west did not react, other than to threaten a red line.

The weapons inspectors said that they needed another four days to finish their investigations, plus, I am sure, a short time after that for their report to be collated. Many of us believe that the regime is responsible for the attacks, and those attacks are probably authorised from a very senior level—probably Assad himself. But the inspectors need to report back to the UNSC purely and simply to establish due process—something that did not happen through the Iraq conflict and the Iraq war that followed. I was a relatively new MP, sat on the Bench just behind the Prime Minister, in 2003 when we took the decision. We thought we had good intelligence, and that intelligence was later found to be false. One of the lessons of the Iraq war is that we wait for due process to be followed through the UN before action is taken.

Obviously, the resolution tabled by the Prime Minister under chapter VII preceded the weapons inspectors’ report, so we knew full well that the Russians and Chinese would be likely to veto that resolution. Our debate today obviously takes place before the weapons inspectors have finished, because powers elsewhere have decided to go ahead before the Security Council has determined whether the evidence from the inspectors is sufficient to meet the burden of proof required. It is clear that without that Security Council resolution, any military action would, like that of a previous Labour Government, be illegal.

[Mr Newmark]

The hon. Gentleman is putting huge stock in the UN, but the UN will not apportion blame. The only thing that the UN is doing is validating that chemical weapons were indeed used, and we all know that.

[Mark Hendrick]

Yes, we do all know that, but it is a prerequisite of the due process, and the UN procedure, that that is established through the inspectors. That must be the basic building block on which the Security Council makes a decision. In addition to that, as the Prime Minister has said, there must be a lot of intelligence from different intelligence services around the world, and the inspectors’ report will add to that information. So that is just a basic building block; it is not a decision in itself.

Therefore, as I said, action may be illegal, despite the doctrine of responsibility to protect. Despite what the Attorney-General says, I and many others around the world are not convinced that the six criteria required by the doctrine have been met. The unintended consequences of that could be catastrophic, for the following reasons.

By using those weapons, Syria has crossed the red lines set by Obama. Iran is watching, helping to arm the regime and sending its own forces to the regime. The Russians are arming the Syrians to the hilt and wondering whether the west will act against the use of WMD. Iran knows that if Syria can get away with using WMD, its own WMD, as well as its development of nuclear weapons, could well be ignored, and Iran could go on to produce more WMD and nuclear weapons without the intervention or involvement of the west. That may provoke a response, if that were to be allowed, from the Israelis. The Israelis will be looking, at some point short of Iran’s having developed nuclear weapons, to possibly take matters into their own hands. Indeed, if the situation kicks off with the western intervention in Syria, and Iran responds, and if Syria responds with an attack on Israel, that could be the perfect excuse for the Israelis to try and deal, not only with the WMD question and Syria, but also the nuclear question and Iran. We need to take these things into consideration before we decide, as a result of any UNSC deliberations and a UNSC decision, what action we take.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has taken the right decision. Let us go the UNSC route. If Russia and China say no and veto, for political reasons rather than the reasons of the evidence that we all know about, we must make a decision. Only once we have seen the evidence from the inspectors will we be able to decide what that decision shall be.

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[Kate Hoey]

No.

We have had information before that poison gas had been used and Carla Del Ponte, who was the UN commissioner in Syria, pointed out that it was the rebels who had used it. Will the Deputy Prime Minister tell me when he winds up the debate, if, despite what everyone thinks, the weapons inspectors find that it was the rebels or some rogue general who used the chemical weapons last week, the Prime Minister will be saying the things that he did about the use of chemical weapons? The doctrine of prevention, which I had hoped—

[Mr Newmark]

I have huge respect for the hon. Lady. To help her in her thinking, let me point out that Damascus is defended by the president’s brother, Maher. He is responsible for the fourth division and he is ultimately responsible for the heinous chemical attack that took place. Given the industrial scale with which those chemicals hit three, four or five different areas, it would be impossible for the rebels to do it to themselves, besides the fact that it would be incredibly counter-intuitive.

[Kate Hoey]

I do not think that has been proved or that we have any proof that bombing will make things any better or get rid of the chemical weapons, if they are there. We need to remember that once we cross that line of military action, as other Members have said, even if it is a short strike and very few civilians are killed, which is highly unlikely, the result will be that when anyone is killed in future years in Syria, whoever has killed them or whatever the background, the west will be blamed. The United Kingdom will be blamed, as has happened throughout the middle east, and we will see the repercussions on our streets in the form of increased extremism.

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[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), for whom I have huge respect. I want to begin by agreeing with the Foreign Secretary that this is a moment for democratic nations to live up to their values. The use of chemical weapons by President Assad’s regime is a moral outrage that cannot go unchallenged. I will therefore be supporting today’s motion.

Less than 24 hours ago, I was on the Syrian border, where I have spent the past few days meeting Syrian opposition fighters from the Free Syrian Army—the FSA. The brigade commanders and fighters I met were from all backgrounds. Many were doctors, teachers, farmers and engineers; they represented a broad cross-section of Syrian society, including Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, Druze and, yes, Alawites as well. I also had the opportunity to meet General Idris, the head of the FSA, and President Jarba, the head of the Syrian Opposition Council. As colleagues will know, I also met President Assad several times over the five-year period between 2006 and 2011. So I come to this debate fairly well informed on Syria and its people.

The use of chemical weapons in war is particularly abhorrent, as we saw in 1988 when Saddam Hussein gassed 5,000 Kurds in Halabja, and again last week when the Assad regime inflicted a chemical weapons attack on Ghutah, a suburb of Damascus. According to Médecins Sans Frontières, that attack resulted in at least 3,600 casualties. In 1925, in the aftermath of the first world war, the Geneva gas protocol was passed to ban the use of such weapons.

A year ago, a red line on the use of chemical weapons was drawn for the Assad regime, but since then, it has been testing the elasticity of that red line with the repeated small-scale use of such weapons, according to witness statements, video evidence and physiological samples that have been tested here at Porton Down as well as in the US and elsewhere. In fact, last week’s chemical weapons attack was possibly the 14th such attack by the Assad regime on its own people. It was only the fact that it was on such a large scale and took place in the capital itself that led us in the west to decide that enough was enough.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech based on his knowledge of the situation on the ground. What assessment has he made of the size of the chemical weapons arsenal, and of which country might have helped Syria to establish it in the first place?

[Mr Newmark]

That is a very good question, and I suspect that I know my hon. Friend’s direction of travel in asking it. There is no evidence, at least that I am aware of, that the Russians or the Iranians helped Syria to develop that arsenal, although I would not be surprised if they had done so.

Peter Hitchens wrote recently, in support of the Assad regime, that the Syrian Government were not lying and that it made “more sense” for the opposition to poison and kill more than 1,000 of their own people. If that is the case, however absurd, why, if they had nothing to hide, did the Syrian Government and their chief sponsor on the Security Council, Russia, block the United Nations chemical weapons inspectors from going to the site when they were only 15 minutes away? Instead, they continued to bombard the area and to degrade the evidence as much as possible. I find it astounding how this kind of double-think has become common currency among many of those who oppose the war. That includes some Opposition Members who have been retweeting articles along those lines from the Voice of Russia. Frankly, I would rather believe our Government and our intelligence agencies than Russia and President Assad.

That chemical weapons have been used in Syria is in no doubt. The question is whether the regime itself delivered them. My understanding is that the intelligence drawn from eye-witness statements, video footage and electronic intercepts is extremely compelling. This raises another question: do we have any confidence in our intelligence agencies at all? My answer is yes. Just because Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell were economical with the truth about the intelligence that they used to get us into Iraq—through what has become known as the “dodgy dossier”—that should not taint our view of the current evidence that the intelligence services have been collecting on this matter. That evidence puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of Bashar al-Assad and his brother, Maher.

[Bob Stewart]

I was an officer trained in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare, and one of the things that I learned on my course was that only a professional army could manage and use chemical weapons. There is no doubt in my mind that the rebels would not have the capacity or the ability to use such weapons. I am sure that when the report comes back from the United Nations inspectors, it will not be able to identify who threw them or used them but it will perhaps be able to say that they were used. In my mind, however, there is no doubt that only a professional army—and not the rebels—could use chemical weapons.

[Mr Newmark]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his thoughtful intervention.

Those opposing military action say that, notwithstanding the increasing evidence that Assad used chemical weapons, we should let the UN inspectors do their work first. To them I say this: of course, but we should remember that the inspectors’ remit is not to apportion blame for this atrocity; it is merely to confirm that chemical weapons were in fact used. Does any Member in the House doubt that such weapons were used? Of course not. Those opposing military action say that we need a UN resolution to back any action, but we will never get such a resolution while Russia, the Assad regime’s key supporter, remains a member of the Security Council. In fact, Russia has blocked every single move to condemn the Assad regime since this conflict began.

[Dr Huppert]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Newmark]

No, I am afraid I cannot.

The result is that the UN is failing to live up to its mandate to protect. We therefore need to find a coalition of the willing. Why? Because we cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to go unchallenged. As President Jarba said to me earlier this week, western silence and inaction are killing his people. If we do not support today’s motion, and if we do nothing, it will give a green light to the Assad regime to go on slaughtering and gassing its people with impunity. For that reason, I support the motion.