Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Dai Havard Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dai Havard (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

A lot has been said already at this late stage but I agree with the powerful points made by the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), who talked about the context in which individual decisions are being made. Let us be brutally honest. The Americans were not really interested in the middle east; they were going to look to the far east, and Syria was contained in a number of different ways.

We see on television one brutal reality on the ground, but there is another reality that has not come out, because we never really debated properly how we would arm the rebels. The rebels are already being armed. We know about the Saudi and Qatari money; we know about buying Croatian arms and how they pushed through Jordan. We know about a whole series of grading operations, not by official US forces—no, but there is a lot of “brigadier, retired”, “general, retired”, who are there helping to do what the Americans needed to do, which is to try and find out who could and could not be properly armed. There is a lot of mythology about where we are in terms of the reality of how the Syrian conflict has been contained.

Let us look at what has been proposed today. What are we going to do? Apparently we are going to send in a few Tomahawk land attack missiles to give Assad a bit of a spanking because he has used chemical weapons. That is nonsense and a ridiculous proposition that will lead us to the position that a lot of people have already begun to explain. We cannot write Assad a letter and say, “By the way, the TLAM missile was only to give you a spanking over chemical weapons. It didn’t mean that we were interfering in your conflict in any way, shape or form.” Frankly, that is nonsense. We cannot compartmentalise such activities in the way suggested, and there will be an effect. What will that effect be? Well, there is lots of information about why we are trying to do this. “He has used chemical weapons.” Who has used chemical weapons? The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) dealt with that point earlier in a powerful contribution. It could have been a rogue commander. Assad is not necessarily directing. It could be that the regime’s assets are being used, but who is using them?

I remember being involved in all sorts of discussions about Iranians kidnapping British forces when we were in Iraq—hon. Members may remember that exercise. That was not sanctioned by the central regime in Iran— whatever that might look like—but it was a rogue operation by an Iranian guard commander who saw an opportunity when everybody was on holiday to nick the boat. They obviously took advantage of that as best they could—why would they not?—and we got into all sorts of mess. Do not imagine that under such circumstances, and particularly in a war situation, Assad and his people are so monolithic and well-organised that there are no differences among them. This is difficult information to try to grade out and decide who was responsible on any day for any particular activity.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good point. Does he think that if a rogue commander under the Assad regime made use of chemical weapons, the fact that that regime has those detestable and illegal weapons puts responsibility for their use, if they have delegated responsibility, on the Assad regime itself?

[Mr Havard]

I do not disagree. Those responsible should be punished, although I am not sure that sending TLAM missiles is a punishment. People have mentioned the International Criminal Court, and I agree. These people must be held to account for their actions at some point. We do not now have an immediate almost knee-jerk reaction—it was going to be knee-jerk but it is a week late now—to the situation. The strike is apparently “targeted”, but I do not know what that means. It is targeted in the sense that we know where we will throw the missile, but it is hardly a surgical, contained or compartmentalised activity. Will we do that, or will we have a broader constituency of people who can start to prosecute the idea of bringing those people to account at some time or another?

The idea that if we do not do something now for those stated reasons we will not do anything is nonsense. There are lots of other things that can be done that we should probably have been doing for a long time and will have to do now. We must accept one thing: we will not get anywhere towards resolving the problem for the Syrian people unless and until we grapple differently with the question of those terribly difficult Chinese people and them nasty Russkies. We must incentivise the Russians to be involved in a process that caters for some of their needs. Libya has been mentioned several times, and it has often been said that they are smarting from what happened in Libya. Well, I do not know where we will be on Monday—according to certain reports, we might be here on Sunday—and things might have happened that are out of our control. The Americans might have done something. However, unless and until we can say to the Russians, “Okay. We understand some of your concerns,” and incentivise them to be in the plan, we will not resolve the situation. Any American activity now will not resolve the situation. Later, the UN could agree and we might have to take military action. The idea of sending half a dozen aeroplanes to Akrotiri is a good one, because if some of the whizz-bangs go bang at the weekend, we might well be dealing with a situation in the area—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.