ISIL in Syria

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

There is a group of us on the Labour Benches who are caught between two points: we are not opposed to taking action—indeed, we want to take action—but we do not feel that the strategy is in place.

We are making a decision today based not just on airstrikes, but on an overall strategy. Let me say from the outset that I am under no illusion that there is a perfect strategy, given the complex circumstances of the civil war and insurgency in Syria. There is no certainty in the middle east. We all want to protect our citizens and reduce the threat of Daesh, but I am afraid that a few more airstrikes will not do that. Some of its actions may not even be planned from Syria. We lack an overall strategy to confront ISIS/Daesh, which is established in other countries such as Libya. I want to make it clear again that I am not opposed to military action, but I will support it only if I believe that there is a reasonable chance of success.

I do not believe the argument that bombing Daesh in Syria will somehow greatly increase the chances of a terrorist attack in the UK, nor the argument that the Government are proposing the indiscriminate bombing of Syrians. Those arguments are both wrong.

I understand the argument that we are currently restricted to Iraq, but we were clearly invited into that country by an elected Government and we have forces on the ground. That is not the situation in Syria, which is much more uncertain and complex. We do not have the ground forces in Syria that I believe we should have.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman and I visited Iraq together last year. The fact of the matter is that the Iraqi army is totally destroyed. There were no ground forces in Iraq, leaving aside the peshmerga, any more than there are ground forces in Syria.

[Derek Twigg]

I do not think we can leave aside the peshmerga. The hon. Gentleman may also recall that the Sunnis need arming in Iraq. The Prime Minister keeps agreeing to do that and saying that it is the right thing to do, but we never hear what happens about it. There is therefore a lot more that we could be doing in Iraq. The fact is that there are armed forces that we support, whether the peshmerga or the Iraqi army, on the ground in Iraq when we carry out airstrikes. That is the difference with Syria.

The Prime Minister says that it is important that we stand by our allies. That argument has been stressed to me by some of my colleagues who support the Government’s position. It is a strong point. My response is that doing the right thing must be the primary reason for our decision. Does the strategy proposed by the Government add up? After all, the French, who are an important ally, did not support our decision to go into Iraq. That was a perfectly reasonable position for them to take because they did not think it was the right thing to do. That comes back to my point that we must do the right thing. It is also said that we should not rely on our allies to bomb Syria, but it is not as if we are doing nothing. As I have said, we are doing a lot in Iraq.

On the issue of whether there are 70,000 Syrian opposition fighters on the ground, we know that a large number of those groups are less than moderate and more Islamic, as the Foreign Secretary said yesterday. There remains considerable uncertainty about how reliable they will be in the fight and what they might bring to any peace negotiations or future Government. Many of the moderates are simply fleeing Syria.

The Prime Minister, in his speech last week, set out the progress of the coalition’s actions in Syria. I welcome the fact that there has been progress. There was also progress at the International Syria Support Group meeting in Vienna. The pathway leading to elections, which the Prime Minister set out, is not tied down. It still leaves the question of what to do about Assad.

The Prime Minister’s memorandum to the Foreign Affairs Committee stated that there were “differences to resolve”. Yesterday, I asked the Foreign Secretary what those differences were. By way of example, he said that the Russians want to shore up the Assad regime to take on Daesh. That is a pretty big difference from where we are.

Finally, I come to the issue of ground troops, which some opponents of military action will use as cover for not doing anything. That is certainly not my position. I have been consistent on this matter from the start. It is a major stumbling block to my support for the motion. We should look at the example of Iraq, where a concerted campaign against al-Qaeda using drones and US and UK special forces had considerable success. However, that also involved a surge of tens of thousands of American troops on the ground.

The Government have said that ground troops will be needed, but they do not say when and have ruled out the use of British ground troops. It appears wrong to embark on this strategy without having any ground troops or a coherent explanation of when there will be some, who they will be or how many there will be. What assessment have the Government made of the number of ground troops that will be needed and what other military assets will be needed?

It gets more complicated, because the Government say that there is no military solution and that only a political solution will stop the civil war in Syria. What if Assad refuses to go? Is that realistic? I do not believe that we can have one without the other. I am clear that the UN needs to agree to put a huge coalition force in the hundreds of thousands into Syria to stop the civil war and maintain safe areas, while at the same time putting in place a political strategy that is achievable. Preferably, as many Muslim countries as possible should send in their soldiers. A firm deal with Russia and Iran will be needed.

The Government have not convinced me that there is a wider strategy or that this action has a reasonable chance of success. Instead, I think we will have to gradually up our involvement in a piecemeal way and that we will find ourselves in a much more complex situation even than Iraq. I disagree with those in the Government who argue that we would somehow make ourselves less secure by not taking such action. I would support action if I felt that it was feasible and deliverable. At the same time, the Government have cut our armed forces and our police force, which are important in maintaining our security.

I believe that ISIL/Daesh needs to be confronted. It must be defeated ideologically and militarily. It is therefore essential to our security and that of the middle east that the Prime Minister comes forward with a strategy that has a reasonable chance of success. He has not done so today and he must come back with a better plan.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I have a great deal of sympathy for the way in which the hon. Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) advanced his argument, although I disagree with the conclusion at which he arrived. As he and many in the debate have said, there can be no certainty that the motion we are being asked to vote for will necessarily lead to the result the Government are seeking to achieve. Of course we cannot say that. There are a great many very difficult questions to be asked and they need to be answered.

I am very glad the Defence Committee will address shortly some of the practical questions about how military force will be used. Will our modest eight Tornadoes, even with their magnificent Brimstone missiles, make much difference? We do not know. Who will carry out the ground operations necessary to secure the ultimate destruction of Daesh? There is also the central question: how can we prevent the deaths of innocent civilians? What effect will it all have on security here at home? Will it make it better or worse? There are then the geopolitical questions we have not really addressed very much this afternoon. By fighting in Syria against Daesh, will we be on the same side as President Putin or even Mr Assad? Is our enemy’s enemy our friend? No one has really addressed that question.

Anyone who claims to have straightforward, clear answers to these questions is probably fooling himself. I do not believe that there are straightforward, clear answers. I do not believe that the motion can be supported simply on dogmatic or straightforward grounds. No one can be certain that what we are asking our armed forces to do will necessarily have the right outcome.

By the same token, if we cannot say with any certainty that the motion will achieve the result we seek, nor can we say that doing nothing will have a better outcome. We cannot say that at all. Who, after all, can really ignore Paris? Can we ignore Tunisia and Sharm el-Sheikh? Can we turn a blind eye to women sold into slavery, crucifixions, beheadings and gay people being thrown off buildings? Are we really too timid to react with force to mass rape, genocide and thousands of people being murdered? How will we look our constituents in the eye if doing nothing means an outrage of some kind in the UK? Can we really sit back and let the US, France, Russia and Hezbollah do our job for us?

Doing nothing is a safe option—there is no question about that at all—but action demands much tougher arguments. The fact is that the middle east is a cauldron, a viper’s nest, a maelstrom, and there can be no dogmatic certainty as to what is the best thing to do there. That leads me to three conclusions. First, our vote today cannot be based on certainty or on dogma, and it certainly cannot be based on party allegiance or on some claimed superior knowledge over other hon. Members. It is truly a conscience vote—a vote based on our instincts, on the balance of probabilities, on our feeling for things, on what our constituents said to us and, above all, our hopes for peace in the future.

Secondly, I have a real feeling that the importance of today’s vote is being somewhat over-egged. We are not “going to war with Syria”; we are not going to blast Syria to pieces, as some of my constituents have written to me to suggest. All we are doing is extending the existing campaign. We are going across an invisible line in the desert sand––the Sykes-Picot line invented by the French at some stage in the past, a line that means nothing at all. If we are committed to destroying Daesh, we must do so whether it is in Syria or Iraq.

I have been reasonably consensual up to this moment, but I am now going to jump to an area in which I am confident that I will be the only Member who agrees with me. Given the complexity of the matter and its insignificance in a sort of way, is it really right that all this debate and argument is committed to the outcome we seek this evening? The only war in the history of Great Britain on which we voted was Mr Blair’s illegal war in 2003. I do not think that that vote by the House of Commons provides a very good precedent.

There is a moral argument for saying that the generals, the intelligence chiefs and the Prime Minister should be the people who take these difficult decisions, giving us the opportunity to scrutinise and criticise what they have done. In asking to vote on the motion, we are in fact removing the right to disagree with our leaders subsequently. Surely there is an argument in favour of setting up some kind of structure—perhaps like the War Powers Act in the United States—and returning the royal prerogative. We need some structure by which the Prime Minister and the generals can take these decisions and it is then our right thereafter to criticise them, rather than emasculating ourselves by voting for them.