Syria and Iraq: Airspace

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, in considering that question we need to remember that Assad is a man who has barrel-bombed his own civilians and caused untold suffering among the Syrian population. He cannot form part of any eventual permanent solution to the conflict, and for that reason we cannot countenance taking any action which might serve to strengthen the current Syrian regime.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, following the comments of the noble Lord, Lord West, which I broadly support, can my noble friend say what steps we or the coalition are taking to reinforce the efforts of Jordan to establish two buffer zones north of Jordan in areas presently held by ISIL and establish a safe haven area or two? Is this not a very important first step towards meeting the challenge of the source of the problem: namely, the poisonous ISIL movement itself, from which all our problems stem?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, this idea has obvious immediate appeal. But when one drills down into the practicalities one soon realises that there are serious obstacles to creating so-called safe havens or buffer zones in any part of Syria. Those zones would need to be policed and reinforced. If they were not, we would see a repeat of what we had in Bosnia with the Srebrenica massacre, and the sheer effort of putting men on the ground to ensure that those safe areas really were safe would be enormous.