National Security Situation

Lord Glasman Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Glasman (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Ministers for brokering this debate. It is always an honour to participate in a debate in this House. I say particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, that I think last week’s attacks were Chilcot-compliant, and that is a very important thing to bear in mind.

I mentioned on Monday that I had been to Syria. I came back 10 days ago. I was in the north-eastern part of Syria for five days as a guest of what they call the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, and in order to get there I had to go via Baghdad. I want to share some of my reflections and observations with the House because I think they are pertinent. On arrival in Baghdad, it is impossible to escape the fact that the Shia have won; the city is festooned with tower-high luminous green posters of Ali and Hussein and in miniature form they are on every soldier’s heart, including sayings about people being prepared to die for Hussein and Ali. I was driven by a driver through a very congested area at 140 kilometres an hour so it was not a really calm reflection, but there are now high concrete barricades keeping the Sunni Arab community in their areas. Baghdad is now 65% Sunni. I met Ministers and MPs from the ruling al-Dawa party, and they left me under no illusion that, having had more than 1,000 years of living under the Sunni Arab yoke, as they put it, this was now their time and they were not going to relinquish that easily.

I will share with the House a golden political rule that I was taught. In order to get to the world as it should be—and I think we can all agree what that is: reconciliation between divided communities, democracy and the rule of law—you have to begin with a sober analysis of the world as it is. So, however difficult it is to digest, in the world as it is in relation to Iraq, the Shia have won nationally, Iran has won regionally and Russia has won globally. We have to begin our analysis from that realistic point. When I was preparing this speech, I went through the Hansard of the debates on the Iraq war in 2002-03 but I could not find any analysis that presented that outcome, so I suggest that we proceed with some humility in this reflection.

A kind of mirage or delusion governed our foreign policy: that there would be some form of moderate Sunni Arab force that we could ally with, but that did not exist in Iraq and it certainly does not in Syria. According to what I saw in Syria, we seem to be in alliance with the Free Syrian Army, whose troops are overwhelmingly constituted by al-Qaeda, al-Nusra and defeated ISIS forces. Russia and Assad—again, we are talking about the presence of Russia—have fought against ISIS, and it seems that they are ultimately going to win that conflict.

Any national security strategy requires an analysis of the primary enemy. It is important to look at the latest research on how ISIS—Daesh, as it is known over there—ruled. It was based on the systematic rape and subjugation of women. I spoke to women in Syria and Iraq who were sold in cages in public markets. That was the mode of life. Equally important, the property of the Shia, Christians, Yazidis and Kurds was immediately confiscated and then sold legally, through a ministry, to the Sunni Arabs—this in a land where those people had been living together for more than a millennium.

The tragedy for us is that a third force did and does exist in Syria that is not Assad on the one hand or Daesh on the other. It is not too strong to say that we have betrayed that force. I am talking about the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, which hosted me. They are made up of Kurds, Yazidis, Christians—I met the Syrian Christian communities that were participating—and Sunni Arabs. They went to the city of Kabani, where Daesh/ISIS was first resisted and beaten. When I met their families, I honoured the very young soldiers who had died there. I met the YPJ, the women’s forces, whom our troops fought alongside all the way, ultimately, from Kabani to Raqqa; we had a very close military relationship with them. They fought fearlessly and heroically.

The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, who opened the debate, mentioned that there is a British initiative to encourage the participation of women and girls in the reconstruction of Syria. We have a huge amount to learn from them. I saw a very deeply embedded democratic system. I have coined an unusual phrase to try to describe it: try to imagine a “parish commune” system. It is a very local form of democracy, involving the participation of all the different communities in local assemblies, with only one rule: there has to be a minimum of 40% female participation for that to hold.

So we had allies we fought alongside who were upholding democracy and the participation of women, and who were winning, but we did not stand by them. A very important part of this debate about national security is a reflection on Turkey. I am very reluctant to dissent in any way from the noble Lord, Lord Owen, but in this regard we have to take very seriously the idea that the Turkish state is not a reliable ally at the moment. Not only has it arrested and imprisoned a record number of journalists and sacked more than 100,000 public sector workers, under this very curious combination of Ataturk and the Muslim Brotherhood—a certain Islamist nationalism—but it has invaded its friend Syria. It has conducted 58 consecutive days of bombing using 78 aircraft, so a NATO partner has invaded Syria. The relentless bombing has led to the displacement of the population, so we can talk without any exaggeration of a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing. It has also paid al-Nusra, al-Qaeda and their Daesh forces to do the actual local fighting on the ground to displace the local population.

So the first question to the noble Earl is: whose side are we on in this? Why are we not being much more resolute in supporting our allies, whom we have fought alongside consistently over the past two years? Why have we stood back? Secondly, we have forces in Manbij, and there are American forces there. There is every indication that Turkey will extend its annexation and invasion to the east. What commitment can he give that the British forces will stay there, because I imagine that Turkey would be reluctant to bomb a fellow NATO partner? That is very important. To what extent are we trying to rebuild and renew our relationship with the PYD and the YPG, which we have fought alongside, and what humanitarian assistance are we giving to the 100,000 refugees who have been displaced from the home they have lived in for 4,000 years?