Iraq

Lord Judd Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, the coalition is certainly not an unadulterated embodiment of good against evil. There are disturbing contradictions within it: human rights abuses, torture, ruthless oppression, political prisoners, extrajudicial imprisonment and executions, and corruption. Against that background, we must ask: why does ISIS win new recruits? We must be open and honest about this and confront our partners in the coalition, whoever they are. The real battle, as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop suggested earlier, is about values, about ethics, decency, human rights and democracy. There are no short cuts. It is the battle for hearts and minds that should be central to it all. No matter what the new dangers and provocations, our consistency in that battle here in the UK is crucial to victory, and it is vital in the administration of justice and in every walk of life, not least in the operation or culture of our police and immigration services. It is a huge challenge, but we must not dodge it or be swayed from it.

This is an alliance of necessity to confront the absolute unacceptability of the conduct of ISIS and the terrifying nightmare of extremism, but it is not an untarnished crusade, and it will aid the recruiters of extremists if we drift into pretending that it is. How far is ISIS a product of the conduct of some of those practices that I have described in the coalition itself? The survival of oppressive feudalism and autocratic systems is not in the end viable, and nor should it be. Yes—emphatically yes—we cannot stand idly by, not least because of the contribution to instability that we may well have made by our own interventions in recent decades. But it is essential to be clear about key issues. Will not the so-called mission creep, action in Syria and our services in combat on the ground prove to be inevitable? Therefore, what preparations are the Government making for that? Are the essential hardware and resources being assembled? Do we have an exit strategy? How do we avoid disastrous collateral damage, with all its negative and dangerous consequences? People feel every bit as passionate about women and children being blown to pieces as we do about abhorrent beheadings. Collateral damage too easily plays into the hands of the extremist recruiters. How will we effectively distinguish between ISIS and other militant groups, which may still be winnable to a shared solution? How do we avoid driving those groups into the embrace of ISIS?

In the end, there has to be a political solution. Wide inclusiveness in the process will be essential, as indeed we discovered in our own experiences in Northern Ireland. As we commit ourselves to respond to the request from Iraq, are we certain that it is committed to such a political solution and has a convincing plan to move towards it? If it dos not, we will be sucked into a black hole.