Sudan

Lord Ahmed Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Ahmed (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hussain, for securing this timely debate. Undoubtedly some noble Lords will address the threats posed by Islamic militants in the countries that surround Sudan. Its physical location places it at the heart of Africa.

The importance of an ally such as Sudan in the war on terrorism has always been clear. It was Sudan that identified, arrested and extradited Ilich Ramírez Sánchez—Carlos the Jackal—to France in 1994. It is also a matter of record that Sudan offered to arrest and extradite Osama bin Laden to Washington—an offer refused by the Clinton Administration, with disastrous consequences. Sudan has signed and enforced all relevant international anti-terrorist protocols. Sudan has co-operated on counterterrorism issues for two decades. As early as November 2001, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage stated that Sudanese co-operation on counterterrorism was “really terrific”. Sudan’s importance in the war against terrorism has intensified in the past few years. In 2012, Jean-Claude Cousseran, the former head of the French equivalent of MI6, said:

“Africa will be our neighbourhood Afghanistan”.


It is right that we look at the threat posed to Sudan by extremists in the surrounding countries, but we must also address the elephant in the room. We must look at the role played by British foreign policy in enabling the terrorist threat faced by Sudan and other African countries. British foreign policy in this respect has been nothing short of disastrous.

In 2011, the new coalition Government chose to unpick one of the few foreign policy successes of the Blair years—the containment of the Gaddafi Government in Libya, the abandonment of their nuclear programme and Tripoli’s wholehearted co-operation on counter- terrorism. Her Majesty’s Government chose to wage war against the Libyan Government in support of several anti-government Islamist militias with al-Qaeda affiliations.

In an article in the Guardian, I warned at the time that it was a dangerous assumption to believe that the Libyan rebels were all Facebook idealists. In their more candid moments, Western political and military leaders admitted at the time that they knew next to nothing about the gunmen for whom NATO was acting as a de facto air force and whom they were militarily equipping.

As clearly documented in Paul Moorcraft’s 2015 study, The Jihadist Threat, Her Majesty’s Government’s Libya policy demonstrated another clear contradiction. The United Kingdom has some of the most draconian anti-terrorist legislation in the world. While it is illegal for a young Briton of Pakistani descent to as much as look at a jihadist website in his bedroom, the British authorities turned a blind eye to the hundreds of young Britons of Libyan descent travelling from Britain to undergo jihadist military training and political indoctrination in training camps in Libya, Egypt and eastern Tunisia that were no different from those in Afghanistan. Many of those British citizens then went to fight with al-Qaeda-aligned militias against Gaddafi forces. The Daily Mail ran an article with the headline:

“Why do so many Libyan rebels seen on TV speak with British accents?”.


When I asked in a Written Question in mid-2015 whether Her Majesty’s Government were aware of any British Libyans who took part in overthrowing Colonel Gaddafi, and whether any of them had since returned to the United Kingdom, the Government stated that,

“we do not hold any information on this matter”.

The reality is that British foreign policy continues to create and enable not just our enemies but extremist forces that Governments such as that of Sudan will have to confront.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

Can the noble Lord move on so that I can answer the Question?

[Lord Ahmed]

We must learn with regard to British foreign policy toward Syria.