North Africa and the Near and Middle East

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I am very grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s kind remarks. I should particularly like to credit our ambassador in Yemen, John Wilks, who has done fantastic work in very dangerous—literally physically dangerous—circumstances in the past few months. Last year, there were two very serious attempts on the lives of our diplomats in Yemen. They do an extraordinary job in working there and we have kept our embassy functioning at all times. We will now do all we can to support this process and the work of Vice-President Hadi and the transitional Government. I propose to discuss these things with him soon. We have already provided more than £15 million in UK aid this year alone, but DFID has been restricted in what it can do. This is less than the Budget originally provided because of the very difficult security situation on the ground. We can do more in the development sense in Yemen once security has more widely returned.

As to absolute confidence, it would be a very brave Minister—indeed, a foolhardy one—who expressed absolute confidence in what will happen next in Yemen, after what we have been through in recent years. Nevertheless, the signing of the GCC agreement by the President in the presence of so many regional leaders, including His Majesty the King of Saudi Arabia, is a very big step forward. Now we all have to give every assistance to the process being carried out on the timetable that has been set out.

On Libya, the House will welcome the announcement of a transitional Government, headed by Prime Minister al-Kib. The transitional Government will pave the way for elections to a national congress, a new constitution and elections to a Parliament in 18 months’ time. There are positive signs that the Prime Minister seeks a new Libya built on human rights and the rule of law.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend comment on the report issued by the UN Secretary-General, which says that there are up to 7,000 enemies of the state who have disappeared or are being maltreated and tortured in militia-held prisons? Clearly, we cannot have double standards about this. We went to war to protect human rights. We must go on putting maximum pressure on the new Libyan Government.

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[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) but I shall not go into Tuaregs and Tornados. I shall immediately go into the election that is taking place today in Egypt.

It seems that there is a large turnout for the election, with queues at polling stations. For most Egyptians it must have a similar impact to that of the first democratic elections that took place in South Africa after the end of apartheid—another large African country undergoing a process of transformation—but there are, of course, significant differences. The election in Egypt today is about establishing a constituent assembly, from which 100 people will be chosen to draft a constitution. That will be followed by a presidential election, the date of which has just, reluctantly, under pressure from the streets, been announced by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces—12 March next year.

We will not know the outcome of the elections until they are verified and adjudicated by lawyers, and the result will not be known until January. That is worrying. We saw from what happened in Afghanistan a year ago how legal challenges to elections and disputes about the validity of the vote and about candidatures can lead to great complications when a body is established. We have also seen in other countries disputed elections leading to severe delays. I am worried about that and other difficult processes that Egypt has to go through.

As has already been said, Egypt has a very large young population, high levels of youth unemployment and an economy that is in decline and could go into an even more serious decline because so much of the revenue is built upon tourism and foreign investment that may not come about because of the uncertainty and instability that are developing. At the same time, there are worrying developments in the nature of the political process that has been established.

There was a democratic election in Tunisia under a formula whereby 50% of the candidates had to be women. That led to an elected Parliament in Tunisia which reflects the fact that in Tunisian society under the previous regime women played an important role. There is much greater equality overtly between men and women in that country. Even though the Islamist party Ennahda has come out as the largest political grouping, there are some positive signs about the continuation of women’s role within the political process in Tunisia.

The same cannot be said of the situation that has developed in Egypt. A helpful research paper produced by the Library points out that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in Egypt is distinctly conservative in its approach to women’s representation. Under the old electoral system in Egypt 64 parliamentary seats were reserved for women. That law was abolished by the military regime. In its place is a provision that every party list must include at least one woman. That is an extremely worrying development.

It has also been decided that there will be no requirement for any women’s representation on the committee that will be established to draft the constitution, and there is only one woman in the present Egyptian Cabinet of 28. That raises serious concerns about where Egypt will go after today’s elections and the constituent assembly that is established in future, and what kind of society there will be in the post-Mubarak era.

Further concerns have been expressed by many of the demonstrators in Tahrir square about religious tolerance and what might develop in the future in a country where a significant proportion of the population—more than 10%—are Coptic Christians. There has been a series of attacks on Christian places of worship and on Christian ceremonies. Other worrying developments include statements from some of the more extreme Islamist groups about the kind of society and kind of laws that will emerge and whether minorities will continue to be tolerated in Egyptian society.

The international community must be resolute. We should send clear messages to the newly elected Egyptian political establishment when it is announced and also to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that there are international standards that we expect a democratic Egypt to uphold, and that the international community’s response to the changes in Egypt will be shaped by the treatment of minorities and women in Egyptian society.

[Mr Leigh]

The plight of Christians in the middle east is desperate and many of our actions have made that plight far worse, particularly in Iran. What is happening to the Coptic Christians is very worrying. Does the hon. Gentleman think there is more that we in the west can do? Can a Christian west take more responsibility for the plight of Coptic Christians? What does he think we can realistically do and what pressure can we impose on an Egyptian Government? What is going on there is terrible.

[Mike Gapes]

At this moment we need to give the Egyptians the benefit of the doubt because the process is still developing. We should try to get groups from the United Kingdom and other Western European Union countries reflecting faith forums and diverse groups, including leading British Muslims, to go to Egypt, taking with them Jews and Christians to show diversity and tolerance and how we work together. We also need to talk to countries such as Turkey, where an Islamist-influenced political party, the AK party, is in power in a secular state and where religious minorities are treated with tolerance in Turkish society. I think that we should try to use our influence.

When the Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Erdogan, went to Cairo to give advice, he seems to have been very strongly welcomed. Interestingly, there were large demonstrations in the streets when he arrived, but when he left, having made it clear that he wanted Egypt to remain a secular state rather than adopt an Islamist constitution, even though he was an Islamist, the demonstrations were much more muted. The message he sent the Muslim Brotherhood was not the message it wanted to hear. He said that he wanted a Prime Minister from an Islamist political party, but in a secular state. That was very important, and he should be praised for trying to show that the Turkish model is not just one in which Islamist parties can come to power and that democracy means leaders, after coming to power, having respect for women and minorities rather than imposing an intolerant form of society that does not respect diversity.

I would like to consider the revolutions that have been called the Arab spring. Had they taken place in summer, I suspect that we would refer to the Arab summer, but I am not sure that we would talk of the Arab winter. Nevertheless, the issues are now much more complicated than they appeared to be at the start of the year. We are in a situation in which we can be guided by history, which the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border mentioned in his contribution. Those of us who have studied the history of the 19th century will know that the revolutionary processes that took place in that century and at the end of the 18th century were not easy, were in some cases bloody and often led to years or even decades of turmoil. I suspect that what we are seeing in north Africa and the middle east and what we will see in the Gulf states could be such a period.

It is only 20 years since the transformation of central and eastern Europe after communism was lifted. The political formations that have taken power in some of those countries have at times been difficult to cope with and some very unpleasant organisations have since come out from under the stone. We have seen political parties that are overtly homophobic, racist and authoritarian, and some that are associated with admiration for the Waffen SS have been elected to Parliaments in countries such as Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, yet all those countries have come through the process. They still face difficulties, but because of the European Union they have been able to become democratic, pluralistic countries in which there have been changes of power. Parties that were in power have lost it and oppositions have won power and then lost elections. That is what democracy means. Just because elections are beginning in Egypt does not mean that that country is already a democracy.

Similarly, although there has been an election in Tunisia, it is not yet a democracy. Democracy will be entrenched only when parties that win elections are thrown out of office and when there is respect for diversity, the rule of law and minorities. Some of these countries will have to learn that respect. We have seen the great difficulties in Iraq when the parties that fought the last election came to a standstill and there was no possibility of Mr Maliki and Mr Allawi agreeing on who should be Prime Minister. It took the Iraqis almost as long as the Belgians to form a Government because there was no tradition or understanding of how Government and opposition work within a pluralistic political culture. Ba’athism had destroyed that political culture.

If the revolution comes to Syria and the Ba’athist regime there is forced to leave or is overthrown, there will be an almighty, complicated mess to deal with. It will be extremely hard to achieve stability and a pluralistic society, given the diversity in Syria that has been mentioned, and we will need to be patient. We should not expect these countries rapidly to become models of democracy of the sort we have in this country and elsewhere in the EU.