Relations with the Arab World

Debate between Keith Vaz and George Galloway

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[George Galloway]

I agree wholeheartedly. The Christians in Iraq have effectively been wiped off the map of Iraq. Most of them are in Syria, where they live in daily terror for their churches and of their clergy and devotees being slaughtered by the hand-chopping and throat-cutting al-Qaeda elements to whom we are giving money.

However, the hon. Gentleman is wrong—we are already giving them weapons, and we are giving them money, which is the same as giving them weapons. If we give al-Qaeda money, what do we think they buy with that money? Are they buying Elastoplasts and other medical supplies? No, they are buying weapons with which to terrorise not just Christians, but Muslims and other ethnicities—Kurdish people, for example—on a daily basis. The Minister and the Foreign Office know that, and they must give an answer, if not to me, then to the British people.

What are the differences between the jihadists we are killing in Mali and the jihadists we are financing in Syria? I know why the Prime Minister did not answer my question; there can surely be no logical answer to it, for there are no differences. Al-Qaeda is al-Qaeda, and the al-Qaeda mindset is the al-Qaeda mindset wherever it is found.

I demand an answer to that question. The people in this country deserve an answer—after all, it is their money that is being given. I put a question to the Prime Minister:

“Has the Prime Minister read ‘Frankenstein’, and did he read it to the end?”—[Official Report, 30 January 2013; Vol. 557, c. 906.]

Does he not know that Dr Frankenstein’s monster broke free and out of control, which is why it is called a monster?

As a case of projection, the Prime Minister’s response is pretty difficult to beat. In The Guardian, an American journalist by the name of Glenn Greenwald—the day after, if not the day after that—wrote:

“Cameron’s attack on George Galloway reflects the west’s self-delusions. In an act of supreme projection, the British PM accuses a critic of lending support ‘wherever there is a brutal…dictator’: the core policy of the US and UK”.

Who can doubt that?

The Prime Minister has travelled with his sales bag and a retinue of arms salesmen to one brutal Arab dictatorship after another. I do not know where he is today, but it will be a red letter day if he is not trying to sell weapons to a brutal Arab dictator. Saudi Arabia is our best friend in the middle east. We sell billions—tens of billions—of pounds of weaponry to the Saudi dictatorship, some of which is used in other countries. In 2009, the Saudi air force used UK-supplied Tornado fighter bombers in attacks in Yemen, which killed hundreds or possibly thousands of civilians.

The Saudi army is in occupation of its neighbour, Bahrain, where the democracy protesters are daily being gunned down with guns bought from us, by soldiers trained by us. We have a military training mission in Saudi Arabia, the darkest tyranny in the entire middle east. The most brutal dictatorship in the entire middle east is in occupation of its neighbour, killing people because they demand the right to vote.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Yemen. Does he agree that it is important that we work with the Government of Yemen to defeat al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, where it is causing so much damage and harm to people?

[George Galloway]

It is important that we work with the Government of Yemen, who came to power as a result of a popular revolution against a dictatorship supported by British Governments—this one and the last one.

Before I leave the subject of Saudi Arabia, I should say that we have sold it £15 billion of weapons a year. According to a report I have, Saudi Arabia, with which we want to broaden and deepen our relationship—the UK-Saudi relationship is already very broad and deep—is the UK’s largest trading partner in the middle east, with annual trade worth £15 billion. How does the Minister think people in Syria feel when they are told that we are giving weapons to jihadists to bring democracy in Syria, given that our best friend in the region is the darkest tyranny of them all?

I will close on the tragicomic, the absurd—the subject of brutal dictatorships. I never met Muammar al-Gaddafi, and I have never met any of his grisly family. I had nothing to do with Gaddafi or his regime, but the British Government did. First he was a mad dog, then he was our new best friend. The then Prime Minister of Britain kissed him several times in the tent. The LSE or Libyan School of Economics—the London School of Economics—was encouraged to take large sums of money from the Gaddafi dictatorship. Gaddafi’s son had help from No. 10 Downing street to complete his PhD thesis, so that he could become Dr Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi.

We had the closest possible relationship with Gaddafi’s brutal dictatorship. We sold Libya £100 million of weapons. Worse than that, we sent it dissidents to be tortured on Gaddafi’s torture tables. It was not me who sent them; it was the then British Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), as the courts will soon decide—though perhaps in secret, if the Government get away with their secret courts legislation.

The letters are there: the man who was tortured discovered them in the British embassy, with their gloating at his safe delivery to Gaddafi’s torture tables. It was the British Government who trained Gaddafi’s secret police and his military officers at Sandhurst. It is the British Government who support dictatorship in the middle east, not me.

I wish I had more time for this debate, but I do not want to cheat a Minister whom I personally respect by leaving him too little time to reply. I close with this: Britain’s relationship with the middle east stinks to high heaven. Indeed, in the Muslim world—1.7 billion-strong —we are seen as hypocrites, as occupiers and as people who support and prop up brutal dictators with weapons, with money if they need it, and with diplomatic and political support if they do not. It is a pity that this Foreign Office Minister, fine man as he is, has done nothing to better that reputation; instead, his tenure has seen that reputation get steadily worse.