Middle East and North Africa

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Friday 11th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford for securing this debate and ensuring that we have a good period of time in which to explore a complex but very critical area of foreign policy for our country. Yesterday, noble Lords will recall, we addressed the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. NATO came into being because of a threat to our country and those of our allies from the Soviet Union. It was remarkably successful, and one might actually say that NATO, along with developments in the European Union, won out in the end. A generation or so ago, the Soviet Union began to dissolve and the whole situation began to change. Like other liberally minded people, I can well recall the tremendous excitement and rejoicing there was at the success of NATO and the European Union in the dissolution and collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of democracy in eastern Europe. But those of us from a psychological background have a rather morose view of humanity at times, and I remember writing that I was concerned that our need always to maintain an enemy might well provoke us to find confrontation, and that the most likely groups with which we would find that confrontation were the largely Muslim states in the southern part of Russia and into the Middle East.

Some look at the developments taking place and are considering the domino effect, or tipping point, which may or may not be reached in the whole region across North Africa and the wider Middle East. They see an analogy with what happened in the 1980s in eastern Europe. Indeed, there may be some common features, but there are one or two important differences from our country’s point of view. At the time when central and eastern Europe began to change, there was no doubt whatever in the minds of the people of those countries that the West in general, this country and the United States in particular, was firmly opposed to the authoritarian regimes and therefore strongly backed the vast majority of people who were looking for freedom. That is not the case in the Middle East where many people, even those who are not antipathetic to the United Kingdom or the United States on principle, not unreasonably view us as those who have supported many authoritarian regimes, and indeed have been their allies. I cite as an example the case of Egypt, which is so much on our minds at the moment. We have poured colossal amounts of money and military aid into the maintenance of what is clearly an authoritarian regime. That is a very important difference.

We cannot quickly and deftly turn and support another approach politically and hope that we will be immediately believed. I remember well during the run-up to the elections in Gaza and the West Bank trying to encourage Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness to go to meet people in Hamas to try to persuade them that the best future was down the road of democratic politics and peace. Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness were not prepared to do that because their historic relationship had been with Fatah, and so they did not go. But after the elections, which Hamas won, they realised that the situation had changed and Mr Adams sought to go out to Gaza to meet with the Hamas leaders. He found that they were not interested in meeting with him because he had supported those whom they regarded as the opposition. So it is not possible for us deftly to set history to one side. We have supported authoritarian regimes which have been, and in some cases still are, our strong allies. We have to recognise that and be a little humble because we have not, perhaps, handled things as wisely as we might have done.

In addition, we have had the military adventures in the wider Middle East over the past number of years. While we may have largely withdrawn from Iraq from a military point of view, the memory of it remains. Noble Lords will know that I and my colleagues were not just wary but very critical of that military intervention; we thought it ill advised. I do not want to return to that, but I will say that it has always been my view that it is not enough just to criticise something that you do not agree with, you have to provide some kind of alternative. At the time, I was the president of Liberal International, a global organisation of over 100 liberal political parties. I challenged my colleagues and said that it was not enough to say that we did not agree with the Iraq military engagement. We did not support Saddam Hussein, although of course the West did support him when he was at war with Iran, and we did not accept the view of those who were saying that military intervention was the only alternative. We said that we would have to engage.

Supported by Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung fur die Freiheit, the German Liberal Foundation, I began an initiative to create a network of Arab liberal political parties. We had networks in Europe, of course, but also in Asia, Africa and Latin America, but we did not have such a network of Arab political activists and parties. So, in July 2006 in Cairo, we offered people like Ayman Nour, Mr Hariri’s party from Lebanon, three of the political parties in Morocco, social and liberal democrats from Tunisia, and others from Lebanon and Jordan the possibility of meeting together. All these people did then meet and go on to form the Network of Arab Liberals, a group committed to democracy. These people were clearly educated and thoughtful intellectuals, and in some cases with political parties behind them. Many were avowedly middle-class people.

The poor in countries like Egypt are not very politically involved because they have to strive too hard just to survive from day to day in that country. So although I agree absolutely with the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, that there are enormous social problems in the form of unemployment, poverty to the point of virtual starvation, very poor healthcare and so on, it is not the people who are suffering most in those ways who are appearing at the demonstrations. The young executive with Google who started the Facebook page celebrating Khaled Said, the young man who was killed last year in Alexandria, and who was himself recently imprisoned and then released, is of course a very well educated and technically capable young man. Indeed, the vast majority of the people congregating in Tahrir Square are people of that kind. What they are demanding is freedom and democracy while also being concerned about all the other social and economic questions.

But here we come to the problem. If we go down the road of democracy in our country or any other country, we have to accept the results from the ballot box. We have not always been prepared to accept the results of elections in the Middle East even when they were clearly free and fair, as was the case in Gaza and the West Bank. Not only did we not accept those elections or engage in a Government of national unity, despite the fact that the previous Government had indicated at the most senior levels that they would be prepared to do that, we accepted those results being set aside and covert military operations being put in place by others to undermine them.

Democracy is very problematic, but it is even more problematic to allow authoritarian regimes to continue to resist democratic pressure from moderate and liberally minded people, because the longer that that is resisted, the more it builds up the strength of those more maligned forces who say, “You’re wasting your time on democracy. The West will never accept it anyway. These authoritarian regimes will not accept it. The only thing they understand is violence”. It strengthens the hands of those who are not democrats and who want to burn rather than change the system.

On Egypt, for example, we have heard the West say, “Well, you know, my goodness, if we have democracy tomorrow, the alternatives may be Mubarak on the one side and the Muslim Brotherhood on the other”. This is nonsense. The Muslim Brotherhood is not a strong organisation. It has some 100,000 adherents in a population of 80 million. People say, “Ah, but look at all the things that they do, like Hezbollah, in terms of welfare and so on. They’re winning hearts and minds”. That is true of Hezbollah in Lebanon, with which we find ourselves having to engage because it is part of the Government and will be part of any future Government—I am very glad that the UK Government have changed their position on that and have in the past year or two been prepared to engage, albeit rather tepidly, with Hezbollah. However, the Muslin Brotherhood does not have anything of the kind. It has some six or eight clinics in Cairo, in a population of 18 million. It is lukewarm in its organisation. Indeed, Ayman al- Zawahiri's, the former head of Islamic Jihad and a leading strategist in al-Qaeda, has criticised it precisely for that; he regards it as a co-operator with the Crusaders, ignoring the importance of Sharia. We should be very careful that we do not create our own bogeymen, fight against them and then find that we have something much worse in their place.

I said a long time ago that we would end up talking with Hezbollah because it would be part of the Government, and we have. I say again that, however unappealing it may be, we will end up talking with Hamas, as will the Israeli Government. To those who say that the quartet position must be maintained, I say that the Russians have been talking with Hamas all through the period when the quartet position was in place. I do not expect my noble friend the Minister to indicate in today’s debate a dramatic change of position by Her Majesty's Government, but I think that we have got to be much more realistic in our approach. If we press for democracy, and the people express their view in a free and fair election, we must engage. I understand all the concerns about chaos ensuing if Mr Mubarak were to step down immediately. I understand wholly, too, what my noble friend Lord Trimble said about how long we took to get round to things in Northern Ireland, but we had there the containing factor of the British Government prepared to pay endlessly, it seemed, to maintain stability. We had also the relationship with the Irish Government and the European context. We had the luxury of being contained in that while we struggled to find a way forward. That is not the case in Egypt and in other countries in the Middle East. There is therefore a degree of urgency. It is hugely important for us to engage—not just demand that others engage, but engage ourselves in our own national interest.

I have discovered in conversations with a number of the Governments in the Middle East that, while they find it hugely difficult to engage on some of the hard political questions, they are prepared to do so on some of the important social and economic questions. I must pay tribute to the Swiss, Swedish and Norwegian Governments, who assisted me and a number of my colleagues in trying to help countries in the region look at water, energy and the environment—the report which comes from that work will be launched in the Lords in a few weeks. After the Second World War, we in Europe found that we could turn coal and steel, which had been used to create the instruments of war, into subjects for co-operation. Much good has come from that and at our peril do we dismiss it.

Water and energy could become the focus of violence and war in the Middle East, but they can be turned into subjects for international co-operation. A number of countries in the region, such as Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, are prepared to engage together in a network. We should engage with them and encourage them. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will do that.

I am encouraged by what I perceive to be a new approach to foreign policy on the part of the coalition Government and by the right honourable Foreign Secretary. It is hugely important that we as a country maintain our principles and our concern for our national interest, but that we do not find ourselves on the wrong side of history because of a failure to understand and engage with a changing world.

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[Lord Alderdice]

Both the noble Lord and I know that the situation in Iraq, both before and subsequent to the election, was substantially more complex than the way in which he has described it.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, as I know from replying to one or two debates on Iraq, Iraq is incredibly complex, so I accept that point. I am just saying that we cannot be selective about the outcomes of elections in arguing the point about history. An election produces a result, and the result is the result.

Another quick point that I want to make is that there is obviously a lot that we can do in the area of culture, including through university exchanges—ensuring that students and academics from the region come to our universities—and exchanges in sport. I had some familiarity with such exchange in the Football Association, which did a lot of work training both Israeli and West Bank referees together. They found it much more interesting to talk about the state of English football than about the things that might otherwise appear to divide them. There are lots of cultural things that we can do, not least of which is that we really ought to look at how we support the British Council and the World Service. I wholly support what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said about DfID money in that regard. It is astonishing to me that, having gone to such lengths to set up Arab and Farsi TV services, within months we cut the resources for one of our best advocates of soft power. That is just completely astonishing.

Finally, I know that whatever the difficulties of today and the past few weeks, and however difficult the negotiations at Camp David or in Washington, in my humble judgment—and this is my humble judgment; I do not say that as a matter of form—it is important to know when the tide is going to turn, what events might precipitate a favourable turn in the tide as well as those that precipitate unfavourable turns in the tide. That is why I have gone through the issues that I have, because we must be ready to catch any favourable tide available. Even in unpromising circumstances, we must be ready. For those reasons, the FCO faces a great challenge; its political skills are its decisive assets, on these occasions possibly more important than any other asset that it has, although I do not exclude the importance of generating good business with people around the world. Bringing people together, helping to find the common ground, and doing that—as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, wholly rightly said—with our own national interests at the forefront of our minds must be among the things that we focus on through these next days and weeks.

Once again, I thank all noble Lords, especially the opening speakers from the two Front Benches, for speaking in difficult circumstances on a difficult day but on an issue that, whatever its difficulties, needed this ventilation.