Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Frank Dobson Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

The one thing that is certain is that no one in this House or anywhere else can be certain that the policies we are being asked to endorse will succeed. If we look at the track record of the interventions of the French, British and Americans in the middle east since the collapse of the Ottoman empire, we see that the odds look as though we will not succeed, because everything else has gone wrong. And yet I find that I am probably going to vote for the motion tonight. This is my argument for doing so.

The situation that we face is different from previous ones. Clearly, what has happened is a threat to international peace and security, and therefore entitles the world powers and the Government of Iraq to invite support to try to protect them against their invaders. It may not be an invading army, but it is certainly an invasion that Iraq has suffered, and Iraq is entitled to call upon the rest of us. And it is faced with a genocidal outfit. Genocide consists of killing people because of who they are, and that is exactly what ISIS is doing.

In any war, some prisoners will be murdered; in many wars, some women will be raped. It is usually the product of indiscipline. In the case of ISIS, it is part of its military strategy to terrorise people, and it is organised: organised murder, organised abduction of women and organised rape of Muslim women. That is not western propaganda, which is its usual excuse; it is parading proudly what it is doing. It is showing on social media the murder of prisoners, the carting off and abduction of women.

[Mr Sheerman]

I agree with everything that my right hon. Friend has said, but does he agree that when we use drone missiles and attack from the air, that is not—it cannot be—precision, and when we get into this, if we start killing children, and schools and hospitals are drawn in, public support will go away very quickly?

[Frank Dobson]

That may be true, but it must be said that without the American intervention from the air, the chances are that ISIS would now be in control of Baghdad. They had to be stopped militarily and one function of the air attacks is to deprive them of their use of heavy weaponry, to give those who are opposed to them a better chance of defeating them. It is necessary, therefore, it seems to me, to provide an opportunity for the ground forces to get their act together and take them on, and if what we are doing can weaken their opponents during that time, that is all the better.

The effort that everyone agrees is necessary—to encourage political activity, to effect political reconciliation, to bring people together, to unite the people of Iraq against their common enemy—can be successful only if we help the Iraqis to keep the common enemy at bay until they have got themselves sorted out. That is why, on balance, I shall support the motion.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

The point that the right hon. Gentleman rightly made about the brutality of ISIS, especially towards women, could apply equally to other organisations, such as Boko Haram in northern Nigeria. Does he agree that that determination to support the moderates against the extremists and to use all our soft power needs to be looked at far more widely than the middle east alone?

[Frank Dobson]

It is certainly true that part of our tradition—which we sometimes fall short of, and have done in the past—is to promote decency and democracy worldwide. We have an obligation to help all those countries who are trying to maintain democracy or to establish it in the face of extremism. But in this case there was not just the possibility but the likelihood that Iraq as a sovereign state would disappear, and unless we keep up the pressure, there is still a possibility of its disappearing.

However, I am concerned about the ease with which, when some people talk, they slip seamlessly from Iraq to Syria. In Iraq, there are two existing groups fighting on the same side against ISIS. They hope to get further military support on the ground to help them. That is fairly straightforward. But when people talk about getting involved in Syria, they are talking about sending young people from our country to a place where they will not have the faintest idea who they are supposed to be fighting, and people who they might have been allied with this week become enemies next week, or this week’s enemies become allies next week. We owe it to our people, if we are going to send them abroad on our behalf and risk their lives, to try to ensure that they are faced with a fairly straightforward function in war. War is nasty and complex enough as it is without pushing them into somewhere like Syria.

When I first entered the House, they used to talk about senior figures. People talk about senior figures now, but when I first entered the House “senior figures” included Denis Healey and one or two others. They had a bit of a down on sending young people to war, and that was because they had been sent. We should always remember to be very, very careful about sending anybody else’s children to fight for us, particularly if we try to send them in a cause that is not clear, and against an enemy that cannot be easily identified.