ISIL in Syria

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baron]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. There are many Members on both sides of the House who oppose the Government on the extension of military strikes and who believe that that is the case. We should not forget that some of us supported the initial deployment to Afghanistan in 2001, on the basis that there was a clearly laid out strategy. I do not see such a strategy in this plan, and that is why we have to ask these questions and try to get some answers.

Perhaps the most damning accusation against those of us who say that we do not want to support the extension of military airstrikes is that we are sitting on our hands. They say that we do not want to do anything and want to stick our heads in the sand. Many of us believe in the need for military action to take on terrorists. Many of us supported that initial deployment to Afghanistan in 2001, and we succeeded very quickly—within a couple of years. Where we had trouble with Afghanistan is when the mission morphed into one of nation building, when we did not realise what we were getting into and did not have the resources to back it up.

We need a long-term strategy, so what should that be? What should it include? It is no good saying we need one if we have no idea what it should be. Let me give some examples. Let us talk about the non-military aspect. We have been talking in this place about disrupting Daesh’s financial flows and business interests for at least a year, if not 18 months. There has been no noticeable disruption of those business interests or financial flows. We have command of the skies in Syria. Why are we not disrupting those business and financial interests? There has never been a real answer to that. Why are we not doing more to disrupt Daesh’s prominence on social media? Again, we have talked about it in this place many times, but I do not see any evidence that that prominence is being disrupted. That is something we should tackle.

Above all, we should be tackling the ideology and the sectarianism that feed the extremism that these groups, including Daesh, feed off. That is a long-term strategy—we cannot do it overnight—but again, I do not see much evidence of it. Where are those awkward questions to our allies in the region about feeding this extremism? We are not getting that message across.

I come back to a point that has been raised before, courtesy of the Foreign Affairs Committee’s recent visit to the middle east. We managed to get back only on Thursday morning, in time for the Prime Minister’s statement. I refer to the mythical 70,000 troops. We all know, and all accept, that ISIL cannot be bombed out of existence through airstrikes alone. It will take ground forces, but everybody is having trouble identifying what those ground forces should be and who should supply them.

We visited various capitals—Tehran, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi—and spoke to a lot of experts across a wide range of fields. The point that kept coming across was the belief that there are very few moderates remaining in Syria after five years of civil war. But even if we believed the 70,000 figure, even if we believed they were all moderates, what the strategy does not address—I have asked this question before and I have not had an answer—is this: once these moderates have somehow been told miraculously to swing round, stop fighting Assad and take on Daesh, what is stopping them splintering into 100 or even 1,000 militias, as we saw in Libya? We ignore the lessons of Libya at our cost. What we were being told on the ground only last week is that this is not a homogenous group by any stretch of the imagination, and that those troops are just as liable to turn on each other as on an enemy, if they are set on doing so.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Baron]

I am sorry. I have allowed two interventions and I must now crack on. We should also draw the lessons from Iraq. We are struggling to defeat Daesh in Iraq, and that is with 800,000 or 900,000—estimates vary—security forces on our payroll. One strategy we could employ is to finish the job in Iraq before we start thinking about any long-term strategy in Syria, but again, we are struggling. That is one of the fundamental differences between Iraq and Syria.

On the issue of sitting at the top table, this was a strong message when we were visiting the middle east. We are already at the top table. China does not intend to intervene, yet it sits at the top table in Vienna as a member of the P5. We would do so also, and it is clear that we are showing solidarity with our partners.

In conclusion, the short-term effects of British airstrikes will be marginal. Most people accept that, but as we intervene more we become more responsible for events on the ground and lay ourselves open to the unintended consequences of the fog of war. Without a comprehensive strategy, airstrikes will simply reinforce the west’s long-term failure in the region generally at a time when there are already too many aircraft chasing too few targets. Just as in previous ill-advised western interventions, a strong pattern emerges: time and again the Executive make a convincing case, often with supporting intelligence sources, and time and again they turn out to be wrong.

Just a few weeks ago, the Foreign Affairs Committee produced a very reasonable, reasoned and thoughtful report arguing against airstrikes in Syria in the absence of a comprehensive long-term strategy. Returning from my travels, I, like other colleagues, still hold to that view. It was the decision of the Committee last night that the Prime Minister had not adequately answered or addressed our concerns. So I will oppose this military action and intend to move the amendment in my name and that of other hon. Members. We have stood at this very point before. We should have no excuse for repeating our errors and setting out on the same tragic, misguided path once more.

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[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who spoke with great integrity.

The Prime Minister has been plausible in public, but graceless in private. I and other colleagues who will vote against his motion tonight are not “terrorist sympathisers”. He was wrong to say that we are. The Prime Minister wants us to take action, but he is not prepared to take action that, in my view, is adequate to the task. The House is being presented with a false choice. The Prime Minister wants us to believe that the choice is between taking the inadequate action proposed by the Government and taking no action. That is vacuous. I want effective, comprehensive action that will ensure an adequate ground force, under United Nations authority, made up not of western countries, whose presence can only inflame the situation, but of predominantly Islamic countries, particularly Sunni countries.

The Prime Minister’s statement and the Government response to the Foreign Affairs Committee talked repeatedly of the moderate opposition, but the opposition in Syria is neither unitary nor moderate. It is wrong of the Government to try to present it as being otherwise.

The Prime Minister knows that the United States had a programme to train and equip Syrian rebels to fight against Daesh. It was so unsuccessful in identifying any capable, trustworthy allies in action against Daesh that it was abandoned in September. Every single expert witness to the Select Committee said that there are “thousands” of disparate groups; allegiances are like shifting sands, and there are few moderates left.

In September the US announced that, instead of training people, it would focus on distributing weapons and ammunition to existing groups. The House may consider that distributing arms to groups whose members are increasingly radicalised and defecting to Daesh is a very foolish strategy indeed that risks doing more to strengthen Daesh than to eradicate it.

[Imran Hussain]

Does my hon. Friend agree that a number of individuals who trained on that programme ended up joining al-Qaeda?

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and simply reinforces my point. I want to eradicate Daesh. Doing so requires an effective ground force that can co-ordinate with the existing allied airstrikes in Syria—airstrikes that, in the words of Lieutenant General Sir Simon Mayall, are

“not a war-winning…campaign”.

Airstrikes can create a temporary opportunity for territorial gain, but in default of a competent ground force, that opportunity is squandered—and at what cost?

The population of Raqqa who are subjugated under Daesh will not be allowed into the tunnels. They will not be whisked out of the city in armoured jeeps with Daesh commanders. They will remain in the city and wait for British bombs. All military action comes with the risk that innocent lives will be lost; I understand that. Sometimes that risk must be accepted, but only when the military and diplomatic strategy that is put forward is coherent and comprehensive and has a reasonable chance of achieving its objective. The Government’s motion does not.

The Government have argued that it makes no military sense to curtail our pilots at an arbitrary border. They correctly point out that we are already engaged in military action. That is in itself a reasonable argument about the efficient use of military resources—I accept that—but the Government cannot also try to argue that by voting against today’s motion, we are voting to do nothing. We are still engaged in Iraq, where the Kurdish peshmerga and the Iraqi army can provide a limited but credible ground force. The Government have also argued—it is a powerful argument—that in the face of a request from our allies, we should respond. Of course we should, but we should not respond by doing just anything. We should respond by doing something that is effective, and what the Government propose is not. I will vote against the motion tonight.

Finally, Mr Speaker, I applaud the fact that you have spent the entirety of this debate in the Chair. I also admire your bladder.

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[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

Although I share the Government’s objectives, I am afraid I have strong and deeply held reservations about supporting an extension of the bombing campaign without a longer-term strategy. Indeed, my concerns were admirably summed up by the Chairman of the Defence Committee—my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis)—and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie). I am not opposed to a bombing campaign per se, but as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has himself acknowledged—and across the House there seems to be total agreement—a bombing campaign alone cannot succeed; it can only be a prelude to a ground campaign.

The motion before us specifically excludes UK ground forces, and so we are to fall back on the 70,000 members of the Free Syrian Army. Whether this figure is accurate, I do not know, but I am very prepared to accept the Government’s acknowledgement that it is. However, it is a disparate group, and so we are asked to believe that this disparate group is capable of bringing order out of chaos. Maintaining order in a war-torn country with so many different factions is a massive challenge, as we have seen elsewhere. So we have a vacuum, and as we know, vacuums will always be filled.

[Imran Hussain]

On top of the points that have already been made and that the hon. Gentleman makes, does he agree that those 70,000 opposition forces are in the south-west of Syria while Daesh is in the north-east, so there are logistical issues as well?

[Martin Vickers]

I have no direct evidence of what the hon. Gentleman says, but I am very prepared to accept that that may well be the case.

As I say, vacuums will always be filled. How are we to assume that the Free Syrian Army will respect human rights and maintain law and order until a legitimate new regime acceptable to a majority of the Syrian people emerges? How, indeed, would we assess whether a new regime was acceptable to the Syrian people? Who will install this new regime? I want to be convinced of a way forward, but sadly I am not yet convinced of this one.

We want to help and support our French neighbours because, unlike the suffering that we often see on our TV screens in, say, Gaza, Yemen or Mali, which tend to be distant places, we can readily identify with them. They have a Christian heritage and the eternal values associated with that. Many of us have perhaps even been to the same Parisian cafés and walked along the same streets, which are only a short train journey away from here. In fact, they are a shorter journey away than from here to my constituency, and to many others. We desperately want to help, as we wanted to help our American allies, quite rightly, when we were shown TV pictures of beheadings, crucifixions and other unspeakable crimes. Now we see exactly the same pictures from a different location supposedly carried out by a different group, and again, of course, we want to go and help. But sometimes helping our friends and allies can mean putting a hand on their shoulder and saying, “Perhaps this is not the time to be doing what you are doing.” Of course, that was the case with our French allies at the time of the 2003 Iraq situation, when President Bush and Mr Blair were planning their particular adventure in the middle east.

I want to support the Government’s aims and objectives, but I feel that a longer-term strategy has not yet been sufficiently put forward. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) said that if we are undecided we should perhaps fall back on our instincts. My instinct is to say to the Government, “Hold back at this stage.” ISIL/Daesh is an evil force that must be overcome, but I am not yet convinced that what is being proposed is the way to achieve that.

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[Imran Hussain]

Does my hon. Friend agree that many British Sunni Muslims and other British Muslims would agree with her sentiments on this evil sect of Daesh?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I agree with that point and believe that, on this matter, I am able to speak for the wider British Muslim and British Sunni community.

What of Russia? It, too, is acting against ISIL, but it is also bombing the very moderates that the Government will rely on to hold the ground following the airstrikes. I think back to the decision regarding Syria in 2013, when I feared that action against Assad without a more comprehensive strategy would create a vacuum that would lead to more militancy, for which we would be responsible. Now I believe that an ISIL-first strategy risks strengthening Assad and creating another deeper crisis, for which we would also be responsible.

As for our own security, my instinct tells me that the threat to us will probably be the same whether we act or do not act. ISIL will not give us a free pass if we vote against action, but we will not be any more in its sights if we vote in favour of it.

It has been suggested in the last day or so that when the time for the apportionment of blame comes, those who vote in favour of the motion will have to step forward and there will be nowhere to hide. The implication is that if Members vote against it, as I will, they can avoid the blame. To those who think that way, I say this: if only the world were that simple. There will be consequences and innocent people will die from action or inaction. Whatever we decide tonight, we will all bear a measure of responsibility.