Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I will say more about internationalism shortly. Some people will say that the conflict is not our fight, and we should leave it to those who are closer by. For those who feel strongly, it is tempting to offer a counsel of despair and walk away. It is much harder to set about dealing with violent threats in a complicated context where the risks are high. In response, I say that we all want peace, and the only question is how to achieve it. The UK should not dictate the answer to the violence or carelessly interfere, but that does not mean that we should turn our back while the violence persists. In answering the question of whether we should do anything or nothing, we have to ask ourselves what good we can do.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does not my hon. Friend accept that no one is talking about walking away? The only argument is over whether bombing is the way to resolve the long-standing political problems in Iraq and the surrounding region.

[Alison McGovern]

As I have said, in answering the question of whether we should do anything or nothing, we have to ask ourselves what good we can do. Conflict in the middle east seems to invite comparisons, but although we should learn from history, the search for patterns and repetition can be misleading. There is no reason why the future should necessarily be like the past. In fact, our job is to make sure that it is not.

ISIL is a serious and growing force that is wreaking havoc on the Iraqi Government and on innocent people. The Iraqi Government have asked us to help, and we have the capacity to do so. Our Government have made their aims clear, and the Leader of the Opposition has set the right tests. We in this House must offer scrutiny as best we are able and make the success of the operation more likely. A vital factor in that success will be to cut off the financial supply to ISIL, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) has said. A United Nations Security Council resolution on that point was adopted on 14 August, and it would be helpful to know what progress has been made.

There are other facts that matter. We are talking not simply about security, vital though that is, but about politics and development. We need more than a military response. Peace requires not only the absence of violence but the meeting of other needs. Basic needs must be met to keep the vulnerable alive, and all who are affected must be shown a way out of the conflict. In the past, the UK, via the Department for International Development, has put reasonably substantial sums into development-focused assistance for Iraq. That ended in 2012 when the bilateral programme ended. This year, DFID’s budget for Iraq has been more than £25 million, but only £4.3 million has been spent so far. Do we need to increase efforts to ensure that money that has been committed can be spent effectively and soon? In addition, we must question whether that is enough support. By way of comparison, we will spend some £75 million this year in Syria, and a similar sum in Yemen.

I want to make two further points about development, the first of which concerns long-term needs. The budget that I have mentioned is for a single 12-month Iraq emergency humanitarian assistance programme to help 65,000 ordinary Iraqis who are in serious need. It will be used to provide emergency medicines, food and basic shelter, and to reunite families. At what point will Iraq receive longer-term development assistance, rather than simply humanitarian assistance? Instead of emergency aid, such longer-term assistance would support the wider development needs of victims of the conflict. Have the Government discussed that possibility internationally?

Do Ministers know how many children are losing out on their education as a result of the conflict? Schools in the Kurdish region are being used for shelter, which is the right thing to do, but it means that many children are losing out on their chances and hope for the future. In addition, what is the risk to wider health care needs? The Iraqi Government must be supported to maintain not simply the hard infrastructure that the country will need—power, transport and water—but the vital infrastructure of public services. Development assistance must work alongside military answers to ISIL. Is DFID working alongside the military in planning? [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

When it comes to this military intervention in the middle east, we do not have to look in the crystal ball; we can read the book. I am all too familiar with the history of our last military intervention in the region, so I will not support the motion in the Lobby tonight. It is totally disingenuous of colleagues on either side to say that this is a choice between acting and not acting. It is a choice between what sort of action we take—whether we place the emphasis on these military interventions, which are in some ways for show, or on humanitarian and diplomatic work and, above all, on putting pressure on the great powers in the region to step up.

There is something that no one has mentioned: it is quite clear from what ISIL has done in filming the beheadings, putting them on YouTube and ensuring that they have English voice-overs that it is seeking to incite us to bomb. Why does that not give people pause? ISIL wants this to happen because it will make it the heroic Muslim defender against the crusader.

I do not need to repeat that air strikes on their own will not win a war against ISIL. We will need ground forces. We know that the Iraqi army is wholly inadequate. Inevitably, we will get drawn into Syria—the Prime Minister has admitted as much and has even said that he would wrap it up by saying that he was doing it on humanitarian grounds—but I have not heard much about Turkey and the Kurds. I have one of the largest Turkish-Kurdish communities in the country in north-east London, and I know that the Kurdish community has a long-held aspiration for a Kurdish state, which I support, but it would involve dismembering Syria, Turkey and Iraq. That explains some of Turkey’s ambivalence about this issue.

Some people have said that this is not 2003. Sadly, this reminds me too much of 2003. Yes, it is legal, but there is the same rhetoric: national interest, surgical strikes and populations begging to be liberated. I think that it was Walpole who said of another war that the population are ringing the bells today, but they will be wringing their hands tomorrow. We know that the public want something to be done, but as this war wears on and as it drains us of millions and billions of pounds, the public will ask, “What are we doing there? How are we going to get out?” I cannot support this military intervention. I do not see the strategy, and I do not see the endgame.