ISIL in Syria

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

It is certainly true that there have been well documented cases of such weapons ending up in the hands of Daesh, although I would not wish to tar the entire Free Syrian Army with what some of its factions might have done, or in fact have done, as the hon. Lady rightly suggests.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Lewis]

In a moment.

In an attempt to try to establish the facts about the 70,000, I made inquiries of two people whose expert opinion I much admire. One is the writer and journalist Patrick Cockburn, who is one of Britain’s leading commentators on Syria and Iraq and who was one of the first to write about the threat from what was then called ISIS, long before it captured Mosul. This is what he tells me:

“Unfortunately, the belief that there are 70,000 moderate opposition fighters on the ground in Syria is wishful thinking. The armed opposition is dominated by Isis or al-Qaeda type organisations. There are many small and highly fragmented groups of opposition fighters who do not like Assad or Isis and could be described as non-extremist, but they are generally men from a single clan, tribe or village. They are often guns for hire and operate under licence from the al-Qaeda affiliate, the al-Nusra Front, or its near equivalent, Ahrar al-Sham. Many of these groups seek to present a moderate face abroad but remain violently sectarian and intolerant inside Syria.”

[Dr Lewis]

No, I am sorry—I promised to give way to the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham).

[Mr Cunningham]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is a ridiculous situation where on the one hand the Government praise the Kurds, but on the other hand the Government’s ally, Turkey, is attacking the Kurds? How much more ridiculous can you get?

[Dr Lewis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. It is not only ridiculous but highly dangerous. I will insert at this point something I was going to leave out, and say in passing that to have separate conflicts going on within the same battlespace, without reaching a proper agreement, can lead us into all sorts of nasty confrontations—the worst of which would be if we ended up eyeball to eyeball with the Russians when they and we share the same common enemy in ISIL/Daesh.

The second expert I consulted was our former ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, who describes the Free Syrian Army as

“a ragbag of 58 factions (at the last count) united mainly by a desire to use the FSA appellation in order to secure Gulf, Turkish and Western funding…most of the factions, which are extremely locally based, have no interest whatsoever in being drawn into battles against groups which basically share their sectarian agenda hundreds of miles away in areas with which they are unfamiliar.”

So instead of having dodgy dossiers we now have bogus battalions of moderate fighters.

Once Daesh has been driven out, as it must be driven out—if, eventually, we get an overall military strategy together, which adding a few bombing raids does not comprise—there arises the question of the occupying power, because an occupying power will have to remain in control for many years to come if other Islamists are not going to take over from Daesh. That occupying force must be a Muslim one, and only the Syrian Government army is likely to provide it. Indeed, as the Prime Minister himself acknowledged in the Commons,

“in time the best ground troops should be the Syrian army”.—[Official Report, 26 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1501.]

Airstrikes alone are a dangerous diversion and distraction. What is needed is a grand military alliance involving not only the west but Russia and, yes, its Syrian Government clients too. We need—