Yemen

Leo Docherty Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

I am of course aware of the court case, and the hon. Lady is right that that process will move forward. She is right, too, that on paper we have some of the strongest and most robust controls in the world, but the test is in the reality of what we do, and our country has not been turning down licences for the members of the Saudi-led coalition, unlike other countries. That raises concern about the practice, as distinct from the theory, of our robust approach to arms control in this country.

[Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for calling this debate. Does he not agree that in considering our support for the coalition, it is important to understand that it is also fighting against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula? Should we not commend the efforts of Emirati troops who have liberated Mukalla, which is a common security benefit for us all?

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. This conflict is multifaceted; it is not simply two-sided. AQAP is a security challenge that predates the Yemen conflict and there is a further element to which I will refer in a moment: the north-south element of this conflict. However, all of us will of course agree that the defeat of al-Qaeda is of absolutely crucial importance.

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[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak here this afternoon on this important subject, and I pay huge tribute to my colleague and friend, the Chair of the International Development Committee, who has done an awful lot of work on this challenge, not just today but over many, many months. I also pay a huge tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) who speaks with a fluency that comes only from experience.

I am not going to double over what has been said, nor the appalling abuses that we have seen, but if I may, I shall use this opportunity to address our friends in the region—to recognise the challenges that face them, to recognise the assault that is coming to them, and yet to try to persuade them gently that they could think again, and that we, their friends, could help them to do so. There could be no finer advocate of that process than the Minister for the Middle East, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). He has developed a bond of friendship with many people around the world whose trust stems not just from his post but from his character, which makes him such a powerful advocate, not just for the United Kingdom, but for the interests of our friends and allies around the world.

Perhaps I may start by paying a huge personal tribute to the armed forces of the Emirates, alongside whom I served, as did many others in this House, in Afghanistan. I pay huge tribute to the professionalism that they have demonstrated in other conflicts and to the commitment that they have maintained to the rule of law and to human rights, in a region that is not always famous for those two important values.

I also pay tribute to the reforms that Mohammad bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, appears to be starting. I encourage him, as I know many across this House do, and indeed Her Majesty’s Government have been very clear in doing, to push down that road with the speed that he thinks is possible—his judgment on this is better than ours. That speed should allow us to see that that great country liberates its people, particularly those who have been oppressed for so long, such as the women, who were liberated in many ways before the Wahhabi revolution closed the doors.

I urge them—those two countries, those two partners, those two allies of ours—to look very carefully at what they are doing in Yemen and to realise that what they are doing is not just damaging them; it is damaging their friends, their allies and their interests. The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) spoke clearly and well when she explained the tragedies that we are seeing. My right hon. Friend the Chair of the International Development Committee put it extremely powerfully when he outlined the humanitarian disaster, the price in humanitarian terms, not in financial terms, of the collapsing rial, and what that would mean for the economies of so many. But please allow me, if I may, to move away from the emotional, which we must not forget, and to remember the strategic.

What we are seeing in Yemen today is the danger of the destruction of one of the main points of entry—in fact, the point of entry—to the Red sea. That important seaway, through which much of our commerce travels, is reliant on the peaceful coasts and the control of the Bab el-Mandeb. Today, we are seeing that being put at severe risk. We are seeing the assault on Hodeidah, putting at risk hundreds of thousands of people. We are seeing the danger of that assault tying down armies that are simply not prepared for it.

Mr Speaker, I can assure you that the preparation required to govern a city is something that was even—I say this with no great pride—beyond the British Army in 2003. The arrival in Basra, the effort required, the difficulty of that initial government, was extraordinary, and one that even we did not expect. The idea that the Saudi armed forces or the Emirati armed forces are prepared to take on the civilian government of Hodeidah is simply not true. That is not to impugn the professionalism of their armed forces, their integrity or their honour; it is simply a fact that governing cities is not what armies are trained for. It is a challenge that would be beyond most.

[Leo Docherty]

My hon. and gallant Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that, aside from the logistical challenge of a conflict environment, we know all too well from painful experience in Iraq and Afghanistan about civilian casualties following airstrikes? That perhaps puts us in a stronger position to help our allies prevent the same.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend, alongside whom I served in Helmand and Afghanistan well over 10 years ago. We both had more hair at the time. The truth is that I am setting out this situation not to call into question the integrity or honour of the armed forces of our friends and allies, but to highlight the difficulty and danger they are entering into and the problems they face and to urge that they change tone.

We, too, have made mistakes. I remember mistakes that have happened in units that I have been connected with in which civilians have either been hurt or killed. I have seen the effects of so-called collateral damage, which, let us be honest, is a rather clinical way of talking about the death of innocents. I have seen the impact on lives. I have felt it when I have been to villages and talked to communities with whom we have been trying to work. I have seen the consequences that last, not for hours, days or months, but, rightly and understandably, for generations, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield made extremely clear. The cost to us all is enormous.

I urge my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench to talk to our allies. They should go to Riyadh and the Emirates, speak clearly and say to our friends, “This is not in your interest. You are beginning to lose the support of the Senate in the United States. You are beginning to lose the support of people in this country. You have already lost the support of many in Germany, Spain and other parts. If you are to maintain support and defend yourself against the serious threats that you face and against which you have the right to defend yourself, you need to reform the way you act. That means several things.”

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[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman demonstrates why he was such an appropriate choice for chairmanship of the Committee on Arms Export Controls. His knowledge and expertise are second to none. He makes a clear point, and he is absolutely right: it is not one side “wrong” and one side “good”; two sides are behaving abominably. Iran’s proxies in Hezbollah, who we see fighting today in Syria, are murdering thousands. We see them fighting alongside Russian forces today, seeking to bring death to hundreds of thousands in Idlib. We also see them fighting in Yemen, trying to slaughter others and trying to further the deaths of innocents.

I return to the point I will dwell upon and hammer home, because it is the one that fundamentally matters, not only to us, as representatives of the British people, but to others, as representatives of their own peoples seeking a peaceful outcome for the conflicts we see today in the middle east. The point is that this war must end, but before it ends and as it ends, it must be conducted legitimately. Does that mean we need to ensure that Saudi Arabia has the missile defence system to resist the rocket attacks that the hon. Gentleman spoke about so clearly? Yes, it does. It means we must recognise that the Saudi Government have a right to self-defence and weaponry that secures that self-defence. Does it mean we should ban them from buying anything? No, it does not. They have the right to defend themselves in the north, where they are facing very serious threats and the possibility of even more serious threats sponsored by Iran through Iraq and Syria. What does it mean for Saudi Arabia and the Emirates? As I have said time and again, they are friends, allies and partners of ours, on whose economies much of our business is based. Let us not forget that energy underpins our economy. It matters to us all.

What is it that we need to do? My friend the Chair of the International Development Committee has been clear, and he is absolutely right. We need to encourage Saudi Arabia and the Emirates to reach out to the international community, the United Nations and the lawful bodies to conduct the investigations that we would demand of ourselves in similar circumstances. We must call upon them to think hard about their targeting strategies. We must call upon them to think about that awful phrase “collateral damage” not just in purely legal terms—the Geneva convention is actually not as clear on it as some say—but in moral terms. What is the end state? What is the effect in military terms that they are trying to achieve by the conduct of these military operations?

[Leo Docherty]

In considering the endgame, it is very clear from my experience that the coalition wants out, but what does my hon. Friend think could be the motivation of the Iranians and their Houthi allies for coming to the table?

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend touches on the point to which I was reaching: what is the effect that the Saudis, the Emirates and indeed Britain are trying to have in the region? That effect is clear: it is that Yemen goes from being a land of war to what the Romans called Arabia Felix—happy Arabia. At the moment, that is not possible, but what is true is that it demands that others play their part, particularly the theocracy in Tehran. That means that we must cut it off. We must be very clear that we close down its avenues of manoeuvre and we close down its routes to political support. It means that we must shun it; we must shun its TV stations and its radios. We must refuse its money and close off its businesses, because that is having an effect. We are seeing that today in Tehran, and we are seeing it across the country. I am talking about the rising up of many people against those theocrats—those mullahs—who have murdered thousands, and whose regime of terror forces women into a form of servile second-rate citizenship. That regime denies other religions; denies homosexuals; denies any form of opponent to its theocracy; and denies the legitimacy, the dignity, and the status even of being a human being. That is where our enemy is focused, not in Yemen. To achieve the effect that we need in Yemen, we need to focus on the head of the snake, and not on its tail.

I call on my right hon. Friend the Minister to redouble his efforts, to continue the pressure, to lend Army lawyers and judges, to talk to the United Nations, to lend all the support that we can to help close down the errors that are happening now, to help investigate the tragedies that we have heard so much about, and, most importantly, to change the strategy of two countries that have a glorious future in a happy and peaceful peninsula, but only if they can make sure that they do not sow the seeds of hate in a land that has borne so much culture, so much history and now so much sadness.

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[Keith Vaz]

Yes, there is a pattern, but in difficult and complex problems it is always difficult to get people round the peace table. My hon. Friend knows; he is a politician who perseveres, no matter whether people say that he cannot do something. He carries on and is determined to achieve what he wants to achieve, and that is what we have to do.

The former Foreign Secretary was asked by the all-party parliamentary group on so many occasions why the Quint had not been called together in London. The Minister is one of the most—if not the most—liked Ministers and Members of this House. He is hugely respected and liked. Whenever there is a reshuffle and he is forgotten, there is a huge groundswell of opinion and the Prime Minister has to relent and give him back the job. This is his chance to become Alistair the peacemaker. This is an opportunity that he must follow; I urge him to do it.

We parliamentarians are not going to stand by and wait for Governments. We have identified a number of parliamentarians in Parliaments of Europe—Norway, Sweden, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands—and Congressmen and Congresswomen in the United States, some of whom were mentioned by the Chair of the Select Committee, who are willing to join a parliamentary coalition of peace. On 8 November in Paris, the all-party group will be co-hosting an international parliamentary conference on Yemen, alongside the French National Assembly’s France-Yemen friendship group. President Macron at least tried to seize the initiative by holding a humanitarian conference in Paris. I know that our Prime Minister is incredibly busy, but I hope that the Minister will urge her to take the lead as President Macron has done to ensure that we have a conference here on Yemen.

I thank Sébastien Nadot, the Member of the French Assembly for Haute-Garonne, and Fabien Gouttefarde, the chair of the France-Yemen friendship group and a representative of his country, for agreeing to work with the all-party parliamentary group. If Governments are too slow, we in Parliament must move this forward.

[Leo Docherty]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an eloquent and powerful speech. How does he think that Iran and the Houthis can be compelled to attend such peace talks? Unless there is a compulsion, they will not attend, when—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said—they have so cheaply bought such chaos in Yemen?

[Keith Vaz]

I did not think that I would say this, but if President Trump can meet the leader of North Korea, which I never believed was possible, it is possible for others to sit down at a table. We just have to make them sit down together. This is the art of diplomacy. It is 17 or 18 years since I was a Foreign Office Minister, so I cannot remember how it is done, but it is possible; and the British Foreign Office is the best at it. If anyone is going to do it, the Foreign Office is. And that is what we need to do.

Let me end by mentioning the horrifying image of the bus attack last month that can be seen on the internet—the haunting image of children, most of whom were under the age of 10, singing and clapping as they went to school. The second film shows the agony of dozens of tiny, bloodied UNICEF backpacks strewn in the aftermath of the destruction. In a conflict that has led to unconscionable destruction and death across Yemen, this incident, which has been highlighted by every single speaker in this debate—and, Mr Speaker, which I hope was one of the reasons that you granted this emergency debate—will live with us for ever.

When the Minister comes to the Dispatch Box, will he please announce a new round of peace talks? I long to return to Aden—that beautiful city. I actually want to end my life there; I want my last days to be in the beautiful city of Aden, where I was born. Every time I think of the country, what it has been through in the last few years and what we have failed to do, it brings me to tears. Now we see a whole generation being wiped out. Before that, there is a whole generation who are going to hate those who have rained bombs upon them. Britain’s task as a leader in world affairs is to convene these peace talks. I beg the Minister to do so.

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[Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) for securing it. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which shows that I have travelled across the Arabian peninsula a number of times, following my long-term interest in the region.

The first and most important point to make in my brief remarks is that the intervention by the coalition in Yemen is fundamentally legitimate, and it is not legitimate just because of technicalities such as UN Security Council resolution 2216, which encapsulates the fact that the coalition intends to restore the Hadi Government. It is about the coalition defending their strategic national security interests. This was all brought about by the fall of Sana’a in late 2014. The fall of Sana’a to the Sunnis precipitated the start of this conflict. It started for a reason, and that was an urgent military reason, for which the Saudis felt compelled to act.

If anyone has any doubt of the grave national security threat that the situation in Yemen poses to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, they should visit the border region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, as I have done, to take a look at the extraordinary damage done by ballistic missiles and other munitions fired across the border by Houthis into the kingdom. Earlier this year, I visited Jizan and Najran, close to the border of Yemen, where munitions of all shapes and sizes can be seen, from the smallest rounds fired by cross-border skirmishing parties, to Katyusha rockets, up to full-scale Scud variant Qaher missiles, which are manufactured by Iran, dismantled and then reassembled inside Yemen, with the help of Lebanese Hezbollah. I have seen the remnants of the Scud ballistic missiles on the border region, which have threatened not just Riyadh but other cities across Saudi Arabia. The threat is very real, and in Jizan and Najran provinces, hundreds of Saudi civilians have been killed and thousands have been displaced. We must analyse the conflict in that context.

We must also ask what is at stake in this conflict, and when we do, we must understand a little more deeply the true nature of the Houthi militia group. The Houthis have not only practised such depravities as using child soldiers, indiscriminately using landmines, weaponising food aid and using suicide and drone boats, but they practise a form of Hezbollah-type radical extremism that poses a regional threat to not just Saudi Arabia but the middle east region and, by extension, our own security.

When I was in the Saudi-Yemen border area, I inspected a number of the munitions that had been seized by a Saudi patrol from a skirmishing band of Houthi militiamen. Attached to one weapon was a sticker with the Houthi battle cry on it, which is attached to a lot of Houthi material, whether munitions or public relations output. The translation from Arabic of the Houthi war cry, which others may have seen in the media, is, “God is greatest. Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse the Jews. Victory to Islam.” We need to be very clear about the true nature of the Houthi group. We must be clear that they are not some sort of civic uprising seeking to better represent under-represented civilians in Yemen. They are a military group backed and resourced by Iran that pose a strategic threat to the interests of our allies and us. That is more important when we consider the proximity of the Bab al-Mandab, the strategic waterway between the bottom of the Arabian peninsula and the Red sea, through which some 4% of global oil supplies passes. This is a strategic issue as well as one of domestic importance.

When it comes to the UK’s role, we can be very proud of the tremendous activity that this Government have afforded. First, in terms of humanitarian help, £400 million has been spent on the ground in critical life-saving areas since 2015 to support the people of Yemen. We must, however, acknowledge that the coalition countries themselves have spent several billion dollars on humanitarian supplies. We should also acknowledge that while of course no one wants to be in this situation—no war is ever a good idea—we have to support our allies, now that they find themselves in this tough spot, to fight their way out of this war better than they would otherwise do. To be blunt, it is certainly the case that British involvement—our strategic relationship, our security relationship, the way in which we mentor Saudi military personnel and the doctrine we provide—does indeed achieve a better outcome when it comes to avoiding civilian casualties.

The whole House would of course express nothing but horror at the appalling tragedy on 9 August. However, having visited the military joint command targeting centre in Riyadh, in which the Saudi military assesses and allocates its targets, and having seen the NATO-like doctrine and processes that they use, because of the close military association that we have had with the Saudis over decades, I am confident that our influence is a highly positive one. I am convinced that our influence helps the Saudis fight this war better, and that is extremely important.

When it comes to the end game, the coalition countries of course want out of it: they do not want to prolong the war any more than it has to be prolonged. What they will not accept, however, is a Hezbollah-type proxy in the form of the Houthis dominating the country of Yemen even though they are only 5% of the population. They would not accept a Houthi Hezbollah-type Government who would continue to threaten their strategic interests and have a malign regional impact on such a strategically important part of the world.

The politics—the political process—will come, and we know from our own experience in the Arabian peninsula that extracting military forces from Yemen, which we did in 1967, is a very untidy business that will require a great deal of patience and determination. When we consider the diplomatic process, which the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) described so eloquently, we must recognise that unless the Houthis and their Iranian backers are compelled to attend through military pressure or otherwise—but let us be frank that it will probably be military pressure that brings them to the table—the political process will not move forward. It is our duty as a long-standing ally of our friends in Saudi Arabia and in the UAE to help bring about such a peaceful resolution.

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[Alistair Burt]

Conveniently, I hope I can do so.

[Leo Docherty]

Will the Minister give way?

[Alistair Burt]

Let me at least answer the previous intervention first.

Her Majesty’s Government are not opposing calls for an international independent investigation, but first and foremost we want the Saudis to investigate allegations of breaches of international humanitarian law that are attributed to them and for those investigations to be thorough and conclusive.

In relation to the HRC, the UN report further underlines the deeply concerning human rights situation in Yemen and the importance of reaching a political solution. We believe it is important to give the group of eminent experts more time to examine the conflict fully and to ensure that their conclusions in future reporting accurately reflect the conduct of all parties, because we are not completely convinced of that so far. The UK joined the consensus on the resolution that established the group of eminent experts last year and we hope the UN HRC will renew its mandate this year.