Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I do not think there is any significant controversy about the moral and legal case for what is proposed, and in five minutes I will not set it out. The world would be a better place if ISIS was destroyed, and Britain would be a safer country without doubt. The legal case for intervention in Iraq is clear with its Government’s inviting us, and I think it is pretty clear in Syria because of the genocide and the humanitarian disasters being inflicted on that country. I do agree that it is artificial to divide the two problems: the Sykes-Picot line is a theoretical line on the map now, and there is absolutely no doubt that ISIS has to be defeated in both countries.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Given that one of the principles of counter-insurgency is to deny the enemy a home base, is it not absolutely essential that we back the American efforts in Syria? Otherwise, we will never defeat ISIS in Iraq. For people to suggest that we cannot go to Syria is actually tying our hands behind our backs.

[Mr Clarke]

I agree with my hon. Friend. President Obama has been quite open that the alliance we are joining is going to launch attacks on ISIS in both Syria and Iraq, and it is unrealistic to proceed on any other basis.

The real debate, to which I would like to contribute briefly, and which is the only issue for the vast majority of people in this House and for the vast majority of our constituents, is: where are we going; what is the long-term purpose; what is the strategy; and how are our foreign policy, our politics and our diplomacy going to be better on this occasion than they have been for the last 15 years?

The disaster of past occasions is not that we attacked pleasant regimes; we attacked evil men when we attacked Hussein, when we got rid of Gaddafi, when we attacked al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and we would have been doing so if we had attacked Assad’s chemical installations last year. It is no good going back. I supported two of those: Libya and Syria last year. I was dubious about one of the others; and I opposed Iraq. That is not the point. What happened in all those cases was that the military deployment produced a situation at least as bad as it had been before and actually largely worse.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

rose—

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Mr Clarke]

No. I have no time; I am sorry.

We did not create extremist jihadism; we did not create these fanatical, fundamentalist pressures, but we made things worse and made it easier for them to spread by some of our interventions. So we all agree that we must not repeat that. We need to be reassured, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on his speech, where he spent a very great deal of his time trying to reassure. I am left with the feeling that certainly I shall support the motion, because some of our best allies are taking part in this intervention, but I still think that we are at the early stages of working out exactly where we are going.

Our participation in these military attacks is almost symbolic. Six aircraft and our intelligence are no doubt valuable to our allies, but we are symbolically joining them. My main hope is that it gives us a positive influence on the diplomacy and the unfolding politics that have to take place to try to get together—again, all sides seem to agree that this is necessary—the widest possible participation and settlement between the great powers of the region, to get what we all want: lasting stability and security in what at the moment is a very dangerous region of the world.

I congratulate those who are responsible—Americans, no doubt—for getting the Sunni allies and the Arab states into what is taking place. That makes a big difference from previous occasions, but all these things have problems. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab states actually support other extremist Islamist, Sunni organisations, and they have to be persuaded not to. ISIS is the worst of the Sunni threats to the region, but it is not the only one, and its enemies include al-Qaeda and other groups as well.

The participation of the Shi’a is even more problematical, because there is no real Shi’a engagement, and that takes us on to the crucial matter of Iran. A lot of what is taking place in the region is a proxy struggle for power between Iran and the Shi’ites and the Saudis and the Sunni, and we revived ancient sectarian warfare that most sensible Muslims—the vast majority—hoped was long since dead.

Iran is a key influence because it is a close patron of Assad in Syria, of Hezbollah and of the Shi’ites in Iraq, including the Shi’ite militia, which is the only effective armed force at the moment for the so-called Iraqi Government. Somebody has got to get the Iranians and the Saudis closer together to support moderation and to decide what stability replaces things.

I am delighted that we have aligned ourselves with the Kurds, but their aim of Kurdistan makes problems for Turkey, and Turkey is a key ally as well if we are to make any progress.

I congratulate the Prime Minister on addressing all these things and on meeting Rouhani for the first time, and I wish him well over the coming several years, because no genius will solve this problem in a very short time.