Iraq

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord whom I have the privilege of following, I, too, support the Motion that the Government have placed before Parliament, but I do so very much with my eyes wide open, as we have been encouraged to do. Last month in Istanbul, I was present when Hadi al-Bahra, the president of the Syrian opposition coalition, tried to persuade members of the US Congress to supply heavy weapons and equipment to the Free Syrian Army and to support US air strikes there. The humanitarian case was compelling, as indeed it is today, but the war-weary US politicians could see no vital US interests and were not persuaded by his answers to the famous question: what then? Today, there is a humanitarian imperative justifying intervention against the threat that ISIL poses to Iraq, and there is a sound legal basis, as we have heard, for intervention in Iraq.

However, the least persuasive argument is that if we do not deal with ISIL in the streets of Iraq, we will have to deal with it in the streets of the UK. The Prime Minister told the United Nations that the United Kingdom has exported 500 jihadists to fight in Syria and Iraq. This problem is already on our streets and, indeed, in our homes. Already we have a serious problem that cannot be dealt by with air strikes anywhere in the Middle East.

I am not given to counsels of despair, but air strikes in Iraq will play into the narrative of ISIL’s propaganda. It will use it to recruit more of our young people to its cause, and air strikes will increase the risk of retaliatory action here. Civilian casualties are inevitable. There are significant downsides to air strikes, and we should agree to them only if we are convinced that they will be effective in achieving the strategic objectives of degrading and eventually destroying ISIL. Recent history of bombing does not suggest that such an objective can be achieved by military means alone, far less by air strikes. They must be part of a coherent political strategy. We must be able to answer the question: what then?

At the root of this problem is a challenge of political legitimacy in both Iraq and Syria. To all intents and purposes, these are two failed states. If we see this challenge otherwise—for example, as only a counterterrorism operation—we will be at it indefinitely. Without legitimate Governments in both states, even if ISIL is killed and buried, it will not stay dead but will rise again. If Nouri al-Maliki was still Prime Minister in Iraq, we would not be having this debate today. It is only the prospect of an inclusive, legitimate Iraqi Government that permits consideration of any military intervention there at all. As long as the Assad regime exists, it will spawn jihadists and other criminals capable of the barbarism that ISIL perpetrates daily. If we have learnt anything from the past, it is surely that we cannot deal with an enemy on one side of a porous border while leaving a safe haven on the other.

As my noble friend Lord Reid said so eloquently, there must be a viable political, military and diplomatic coalition with sufficient traction on the ground to take advantage of any opportunities that we create. The necessary complementary element requires partners who are able and willing to put boots on the ground and who are given all the assistance they need—lethal, non-lethal and humanitarian—as necessary. If we really believe that we have a dog in this fight, we must ensure that that dog is on the winning side. We need to appreciate the long-term nature of our commitment and the requirement to ensure that the new Iraqi Government deliver, and that we have no prospect of success if Syria continues in a state of partition, with the Islamic State on one side and the Assad regime and its Iranian and Hezbollah allies dominating the other, and if we do not effectively lean on the funders of ISIL to cut off their financial support.

We should learn from the mistakes of the past, including the mistake of our intervention in Libya, which suggested that we had no responsibility for the consequences. We will own the consequences of our actions then and this time in Iraq, as we own the consequences of our previous interventions. This is my definition of keeping my eyes wide open.