Libya

Debate between Charlotte Leslie and Daniel Kawczynski

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Leslie]

Absolutely. A theme that has arisen again and again in this Chamber is the tension between stability and freedoms, and the extent to which we match our concern with alleviating human rights abuses with a concern with maintaining stability. Once stability goes in a country, there are an awful lot more human rights abuses, however many there were beforehand.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My hon. Friend was far too modest in her analysis of her abstention in 2011 when she was a new MP. I was not aware that she had abstained; I focused on my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who voted against the no-fly zone. I pay tribute to her for effectively scrutinising the situation. Does she agree that we must learn from the mistake of the speed with which we reacted to the crisis and intervened in the country at that time?

[Charlotte Leslie]

I thank my hon. Friend for his very kind intervention. Yes, we must learn lessons, but we do that not by sitting in this Chamber saying that we will learn lessons, but by doing things better, starting from today.

The second mistake that we often make, which feeds into the reference by my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne to nursery rhymes and fairytales, is that we forget that the middle east is not Tunbridge Wells, if hon. Members will forgive me for labelling that area of the country. The models of democracy and methods that would work in the home counties will not work in the middle east. It is a very different scenario. We seem constantly to make the mistake of putting ideology and our own ideals of how the world should be ahead of how it actually is.

I have just a few questions for the Minister that are based on observations. I am not an expert on this subject at all, but it seems to me that pursuing a 100% inclusive settlement for a Libyan Parliament is fantasy. It will not happen. I worry that, in failing to realise that, we risk making the best the enemy of the good. How possible does the Minister think it is for a sustainable majority to be gathered to govern—I am talking about bringing in recalcitrant Islamists and those in Misrata—such that Britain can then engage in maintaining the human rights of the minorities that are left outside?

It seems very hard to play the active role that we want to play in helping to reconstruct Libya if we have our diplomatic service based in Tunis but making forays—flying visits—into an occupied Tripoli. Is the Minister looking at putting an expeditionary diplomatic presence back on the ground in Tripoli, so that we actually have skin in the game, and so that we can perhaps stand alongside a Libyan Parliament in the same way as we did early in 2011, which is what we should do if we really want to see it gain traction and force?

What assessment has the Minister made of the effects of our efforts to displace Daesh from Sirte on the wider political situation in Libya? Has he made any assessment of the risk of our efforts on the ground boosting one side—the Misratan militias—and the potential effect of that, if it is happening, on the Parliament and the army? It would be a shame if unintended consequences from our efforts to displace Daesh from Sirte contributed to the destabilising situation that gave birth to it in the first place.

I am aware that we have limited time, but in the absence of clear and effective practical leadership in the country, I would value the Minister’s thoughts on our relationship with General Haftar. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne rightly said that we cannot just ignore him and airbrush him from the picture because he does not fit in with our ideal of a GNA-led democracy. Whatever we think of General Haftar, he is really the only man who has managed to keep the army in one piece against an array of Islamist attacks. As my hon. Friend said, he is a controversial figure, but I struggle to think of any figure who has maintained any stability in the middle east who is not controversial. If we are looking for an uncontroversial leader to provide stability, we may have a very long wait.

To start to wrap up, I will borrow words reported to me by the former head of the British embassy office in Benghazi, Mr Joseph Walker-Cousins. He recalled words uttered by Salwa Bugaighis, a leading Libyan human rights lawyer. She had represented Islamists oppressed under the Gaddafi regime and had previously disagreed that Islamists posed a significant threat to Libya. Mr Walker-Cousins recalled how, shortly before she was assassinated by the Islamist militia group Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi on the day of the general election in June 2014, she said of Haftar: “I hate that man. I hate everything he stands for. However, I have come to understand that he is the only one capable of containing and then destroying the extremists.”

Under threat of death, Salwa Bugaighis returned to Benghazi to take part in the elections and tweeted a picture of herself with an inked finger at the polling station. Her last tweet was of a convoy of Ansar al-Sharia breaching the gates of her villa compound. She was found the next day murdered in her kitchen, and her husband, a leading pro-democracy politician in Benghazi who was in line to be elected leader of the Benghazi local council the next day, was missing, presumed dead.

I ask the Minister what our vision is for Britain’s role in Libya. Will we regain skin in the game back on the ground with expeditionary diplomatic engagement and perhaps push for UN pro-consul level international engagement? Will we seek to work with General Haftar and the army, which are realities on the ground that we cannot ignore, or will we seek to step aside and create space for Russia to step in and start making decisions in Libya in the same way as it is now calling the shots in Syria? I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on that.

I will finish with a quote attributed to Churchill:

“United wishes and goodwill cannot overcome brute fact”.