Yemen

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the impact of the conflict on civilians; condemns any breach of international humanitarian law; and calls for an urgent independent investigation into reports of breaches of international humanitarian law on both sides of the conflict.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this very important and timely debate. It is good to see members of all parties in the Chamber. I pay tribute to those who have worked on Yemen for much longer than I have; my interest has arisen over the past year or so, as a result of my role as Chair of the International Development Committee.

I shall focus first on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and then on the specific issue raised in the motion: the alleged violations of international humanitarian law by those on all sides. I shall not address the specific matter of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, as I know that my friend and co-sponsor of the motion, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White)—who chairs the Committees on Arms Export Controls—will address that important issue if he catches your eye, Mr Speaker.

The Yemen conflict began early in 2015, less than two years ago, but it has its roots in the Arab spring of 2011. When Ali Abdullah Saleh was succeeded by President Hadi, the Houthi movement took advantage of the new President’s weakness, took control of parts of northern Yemen and later took the capital, Sana’a. From there the conflict intensified, with the intervention in 2015 of the Saudi Arabian-led coalition, backed by United States, United Kingdom and French intelligence, and on the other side the Houthi rebels, backed by Iran.

Yemen has been called the forgotten crisis—for example, by Amnesty International—but it is a crisis that we surely cannot ignore. The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross has said that the intensity and severity of the fighting in Yemen has left the country looking as Syria did after five years of conflict. It is estimated that since the conflict began nearly 10,000 people have been killed, roughly 4,000 civilians have lost their lives and 37,000 have been injured, which amounts to an average of 75 deaths or injuries on each day of the conflict. Surely, we cannot allow that to continue.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and his Committee for the work that they have done on Yemen, and, indeed, to the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White),

The issue here is not just the scorecard of shame to which my hon. Friend has referred, but the granting of access to those amazing aid organisations. Does he agree that the most important aspect of what we are discussing today is the need for a ceasefire, which will allow the aid to get through?

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

If anyone should be allowed to exceed their six minutes, it is the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who is worth all the minutes he speaks about this important subject. Those who have been in the all-party group on Yemen, which I have chaired for 26 years—almost as long as President Saleh was President of Yemen—recognise that the right hon. Gentleman has always been, both in government and out of it, very aware of the importance of this beautiful country. We are very aware of his personal concern that it is being hurt and it is suffering every single day.

The right hon. Gentleman describes Yemen as the “forgotten war”. I am extremely proud of being a Member of this House, because what has been clear over the past few months is that Yemen is not the forgotten war in this House. At Foreign Office questions on Tuesday, 48 hours ago, 26 minutes of the 45 available were dedicated to some aspect of the situation in Yemen. Along with members of the all-party group—the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond), a fellow Yemeni who was born in Yemen, as I was, and whom I am delighted to see here, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) and the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who could not be here today—I recently hosted Yemen day for the first time in a number of years. At that event, we heard excellent speeches from the two Ministers representing the Government here today, the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), and from Stephen O’Brien.

We were also able to interact with members of the Yemeni community, which is more important, because in all our discussions we must remember that it is the people of Yemen who are suffering. The families of the people of Yemen live in different parts of this country, with some in Liverpool, West Derby—I am not sure whether there are any in Warwick and Leamington, but I am so pleased that the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) has co-sponsored this debate. They are all over the country, but they feel powerless to do what they need to do to bring this matter to the attention of this House and the international community. I am therefore delighted that we are, yet again, having a debate on Yemen and that so many Members are in this House on a Thursday afternoon, when it is not usually this well attended; we probably could have had a much longer debate.

I want to confine my remarks to the urgency and importance of a ceasefire. I welcome what the shadow Foreign Secretary said at Foreign Office questions on Tuesday and the focus of those on the Opposition Front Bench, which is also the focus of the Government. I hate it when we fight over Yemen, be it on party lines, or about the role of Saudi Arabia or what is happening as far as the investigations are concerned. We clearly need investigations, as the motion suggests. I desperately want us to unite behind one concept: the importance of the ceasefire.

A few weeks ago, I was at the UN Security Council. Because of the ability of Matthew Rycroft to get parliamentarians in, I was able, after 30 years in this House, to watch my first live session of the Security Council. Every one of its members wanted to do something in support of a ceasefire—this was unanimous and included all the permanent members. Of course they had little digs at each other and at this country for our role, but the most important thing was that all the countries spoke with one voice. That is why it is so important that the draft resolution, which is really our resolution because we are the penholders, should be tabled before the UN as a matter of urgency. I know that the Minister told the shadow Minister that we table resolutions only when we know they are going to be implemented. I do not have the figures on how many of the UN’s resolutions have actually been implemented, but I know it has got up to about 2,500. The fact is that we need that resolution, because the best way to guarantee that people are focusing on the peace process and a ceasefire is if the UN speaks with one voice. That is why I seek a timetable from the Government today: a timetable to ensure that we get that resolution before the Security Council.

I was delighted by the ceasefire brokered on Syria, where the Russians and the Turks were able to make sure that we had peace in Syria. I know it is a bit wobbly, but it was followed by the UN endorsing that ceasefire. If we can get this in Syria, why can we not have it in Yemen? I am very pleased with the role the Foreign Secretary has played and the honesty with which he has spoken about Yemen. If we take him at his word, the British Foreign Secretary will be working with the new US Secretary of State and with the Russians, who are now the friends of the Americans—or will be after 20 January. The Chinese will go along with the ceasefire—I met the Chinese ambassador recently and asked whether China would support it and he said it would—and the French are on board. As the five permanent members are going to be on board and the other countries are so supportive, I think we can get this through. Will the Minister therefore tell us when that timetable is going to be achieved?

My final point is about the aid agencies. The Chairman of the International Development Committee read out the scorecard of shame: the 3.3 million women and children who are malnourished; the 370,000 children who are in immediate risk of starvation; the 7 million who do not know where their next meal is coming from; the 10 million who have no access to safe drinking water; and the fact that four fifths of the entire population—21 million, which is equivalent to the populations of London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow combined—are in desperate need of urgent assistance. These incredible organisations, ranging from Médecins sans Frontières to Islamic Relief, the World Federation of Khoja Shia Ithna-Asheri Muslim Communities, Oxfam, Save the Children, the Disasters Emergency Committee, are all trying to get the aid in. The hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), another person who knows about Yemen so well, from when he served there, was right to ask: where is the aid going? The aid cannot get in effectively unless the planes land at Sana’a airport and unless the ports are able to accept it. We have to have a ceasefire.

If I am to have a new year’s resolution, and if the House can have a collective new year’s resolution, it should be that by 31 December we will have peace in Yemen and a proper political solution. Until we get that, Members of this House will continue to raise this subject, so that the forgotten war is never forgotten and we can bring peace to what is a beautiful, beautiful country.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) just raised a very good prospect for 2017: peace in Yemen. Would that not be wonderful?

The south-east tip of the Arabian peninsula has been important to us for at least 200 years. The area was crucial to the functioning of the British empire, particularly after 1869, when the Suez canal opened and the route to India was much shortened. When oil came to replace coal, Aden became even more important, and British Petroleum set up refineries there. Time passed and the Aden protectorate became part of our empire. Indeed, the British Government had to rule it through 23 sheikdoms or tribal areas that were not great friends of one another. That remains the case to this day. We cannot just think of them as the Houthis or something; they are all different tribes, which is the problem.

This is where I come in. In the ’50s, the right hon. Gentleman and his sister, the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), were born when I was in Aden—

[Keith Vaz]

We are not related to you, by the way.

[Bob Stewart]

I understand that the right hon. Gentleman was born there, although his sister might not have been. I definitely was not born there: I was a little boy there, as my father was a soldier with the Aden Protectorate Levies.

[Keith Vaz]

The worst thing about my having intervened from a sedentary position is that the hon. Gentleman did not hear what I said. My sister and I were both born there, it is just that he said that we were born when he arrived in Aden, and I was making the point that the two events were not connected. [Laughter.]

[Bob Stewart]

Thank God for that, Madam Deputy Speaker.

My interest in Aden comes from my time there as a little boy. I loved the place: it was a great place to grow up between 1954 and 1957. What a fabulous place to be—if one was on the right side, of course. Since 1990, Yemen has gone from bad to worse. It has essentially become some sort of cockpit that some say is an area of fighting between the two branches of Islam. That may well be the case, but do not think that within that each side is homogeneous—they are not.

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[Ms Ahmed-Sheikh]

Ordinarily I would give way, but the hon. Gentleman had 15 minutes to make his speech and I want to make sure that the Minister has time to answer the important questions we have all posed. Please forgive me.

Oxfam has stated that, if the trend of plunging food imports continues unabated, food imports will come to a complete halt in four months’ time. Adding to the spiralling economic problems now facing the country—the central bank has stopped salary payments to Government employees, pension payments to the elderly and welfare payments to the vulnerable—a human tragedy on an almost epic scale is upon us. The estimate of the experts is that, by April or May 2017, there is a high likelihood of a “cataclysmic” famine that would condemn millions to suffering and death.

It is important that we bear in mind that those civilian victims are not a by-product of the conflict. They are the targets of military action, with the lack of food being used as a weapon of war. We have a moral responsibility to our fellow human beings to act now to address this crisis, which is why I welcome the work of aid organisations in Yemen. They have ensured, as best as they possibly can, that aid is delivered to those who need it now. I recognise that the UK Government have contributed more than £100 million-worth of aid to the country, and the Scottish Government have donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s ongoing Yemen crisis appeal, but our charity alone will not avert this tragedy.

What the people of Yemen need now, as much as they need food, is international leadership. I welcome the efforts of the outgoing US Secretary of State, who tried to broker a ceasefire deal at the end of last year, but we know that the incoming Trump Administration are unlikely to take the same view of relations in the region. I fear that the policies of the new White House Administration will instigate a worrying degree of further instability in the middle east, a point also made by the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond).

[Keith Vaz]

Because of the vacuum that has been created—obviously, with a new Administration—Britain holds the pen, as we are told, at the Security Council. There is nothing to stop us hosting a conference that tries to bring all sides together or tabling a resolution, because it will take several months for the new American Administration to get into the right position. Of course, they might take a different view from the Obama Administration.

[Ms Ahmed-Sheikh]

The right hon. Gentleman demonstrates how we can show international leadership on this issue. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), has already been very active in this area, but we need to build on his efforts. We should do so not just because of the humanitarian crisis but because it also makes strategic sense in helping to combat the bastions of al-Qaeda terrorism on the gulf of Aden while de-escalating the tensions caused by what the Foreign Secretary called the “proxy war” between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Before we take on the role of peace broker, we have to face up to our role in the conflict now. If Saudi Arabia and Iran are, in the Foreign Secretary’s words, the “puppeteers” in the conflict, the UK has often acted as the quartermaster. That must end now. The UK has exported £3.3 billion of military equipment to Saudi Arabia since 2015. If we are to be an honest, impartial broker in the conflict, the Government must immediately suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia and facilitate a full, independent, UN-led inquiry into Saudi Arabia’s conduct in the war in Yemen. That has to happen because we now know that, after consistently failing to live up to our moral and legal responsibilities on the use of the now-banned cluster munitions manufactured in the UK and exported to Saudi Arabia, the current approach to arms sales has failed in the case of Yemen. The Yemeni people are the innocent victims.

The Government must show the same leadership shown by the Netherlands and Germany in suspending licences for arms exports to Saudi Arabia. More specifically, at the end of last year the US Government, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) has already said, banned the sale of guided munitions kits to Saudi Arabia. Will the Minister clarify whether the UK Government have granted export licences to Saudi Arabia for any similar weapons manufactured here in the UK? Would the Government be happy to do so in the future? In addition, rather than relying on the Saudis to dispose of the weapons themselves, Ministers should demand that they are turned over to our own personnel for disposal. As signatories to the cluster munitions convention, are we not legally obliged to do everything we can to prevent their use? Decommissioning them ourselves would serve that responsibility, so will Ministers pledge to do so today?

To be the honest broker that the region so desperately needs, we need to be clear about the involvement of UK forces on the ground in Saudi Arabia. When it published its report in September, the Foreign Affairs Committee recommended that the UK Government answer the following questions:

“How many UK personnel are assisting the Saudi Arabian armed forces and in what roles, including BAE Systems employees;

What is the extent of the involvement of each group of UK personnel with the Saudis operations in Yemen; and

How are UK personnel advising the Saudi Arabian armed forces on IHL and what level of understanding do they have of the coalition’s regard for IHL in its operations in Yemen.”

Those answers should also be forthcoming now.

This Government have an opportunity: to show international leadership; to use our power and influence in the middle east to stop violence, not to sell more weapons; and to end the suffering of millions of Yemeni men, women and children. In order to do that, the Government must come clean, with this House and with the country, about our involvement to date and the actions they have taken to put things right. Then, the Government can begin to play their part in consigning this forgotten conflict to history, where it belongs.

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[Emily Thornberry]

I am very interested to hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and I will listen with some care to his speech. I know that the Government have said on many occasions that the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen is backed by the UN, and that they rely on the same resolution. I would be interested to hear where that is in the resolution, and how it can be claimed that Saudi intervention in Yemen is—[Interruption.]

[Keith Vaz]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Emily Thornberry]

Yes, of course.

[Keith Vaz]

I do not think that there is a huge gap between what my hon. Friend and the Minister are saying. When I was at the Security Council, what was in the draft resolution was certainly common knowledge, and every member of the Security Council spoke in favour of the ceasefire. Given that everyone knows what is in the draft resolution—it is in the public domain—there is no reason why this cannot be tabled.

[Emily Thornberry]

I respectfully agree. For 50 days, we have all known what is in the draft resolution, and we wait and wait for the British to put the resolution on the table. There is support for it, and it has a number of elements in it. During the rest of my speech, I wish to explain why the British are not putting it on the table. I will take interventions as necessary if the Minister wishes to explain.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

I am saddened to hear the comments made from the Opposition Front Bench. I am not sure that they are supported by those who sit behind the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). I am not going to react to anything that she said, other than her final statement: to say that Saudi Arabia is not wanting a ceasefire in the same way that Assad does not want a ceasefire in Syria is absolutely shameful and shows a misunderstanding of what is happening. Let us leave it at that.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg)—let me call him my hon. Friend, as we have known each other for a long time, since the days of being involved in student politics—and my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) on securing the debate. The majority of speeches reflected a growing sense of understanding and expertise, and, without insulting anybody, I would say that we have moved on from the Thursday afternoon armchair generals, who often look at things through a particular prism, to understanding that this is a deeply complicated issue and conflict, and that the solutions are deeply complicated as well.

If I may, I shall start with the causes of the conflict, which many have touched on. In 2014, the Houthi forces and those loyal to former President Saleh overran the capital, Sana’a, and forced out the legitimate Government of President Hadi. Those forces have subsequently attacked Saudi Arabia, shelled border villages and killed Saudi civilians.

In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition of 10 countries started a military occupation to restore the Hadi Government, deter further Houthi aggression—which, otherwise, was likely to have reached the port of Aden—and defend the Saudi border. In April 2015, UN Security Council resolution 2216 condemned the Houthi actions. Paragraph 5 of the resolution called for a cessation of violence. In that context, the UK supports the coalition’s efforts.

UK diplomatic efforts also play an important role here. The Government believe that a political settlement is the only way to find lasting peace in Yemen, and we have been at the forefront of the international diplomatic effort to make progress towards that goal. In July last year, here in London, we brought together the Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the US Secretary of State, to discuss a political way forward and to show support for the role of the UN in mediating a solution to the crisis.

[Keith Vaz]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Ellwood]

If there is time at the end of my speech, I will give way, but I am under pressure from Madam Deputy Speaker as there is another debate after this.

That informal group of key players is known as the Quad, and subsequent meetings have expanded to include the UN special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ahmed, and representatives from other Gulf countries.

The last Quad meeting I attended was in Riyadh on 18 December, and we agreed to urge all the Yemeni parties to engage with the UN process and put the needs of Yemen’s people first. We will continue to engage directly with the parties and with our partners in the region to support the UN’s proposals for peace. I spoke to President Hadi on 6 January—just a week ago—to emphasise the urgent need to find a way forward in the political process. We clearly have a transition, and in America, Rex Tillerson will take over from John Kerry. He is familiar with the area, having lived and worked in Yemen for about three years during his career.