Middle East and North Africa

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, would like to be associated with the tributes paid to my noble friend Lord Brooke. In cricketing terms, he has carried his bat and scored a century in his last innings.

My speech is not about the plight of refugees, which I recognise, but about how to stop the war, eradicate ISIL and make it possible for the people to return and live in peace. During the Recess, I decided to study Saladin, guided by a book recently written by John Man. Saladin faced not dissimilar problems to the ones we do today. His answer was to provide single-minded leadership that united Sunni and Shia factions, with the objective of throwing out the Franks—that is, the West. His methods were a combination of force and soft diplomacy, which succeeded only because they involved—I emphasise this—Sunni and Shia. The challenge is not just a Middle Eastern one. It affects much of the world including China, India and Russia, all of whom face the danger of this radical, fanatical, vicious and fundamental Muslim sect. We need, I suggest, to analyse dispassionately the context.

First, in relation to Syria, this is the fourth Sunni-Shia war. Assad and his Government will not collapse because they are supported by Iran, Hezbollah and other Shia factions, plus the Russians; that is the reality. Secondly, we in the UK have to admit that we made some errors. We made a fatal error on 20 November 2012, arising out of the Doha conference, in recognising what we thought was a pro-western, modern Sunni faction opposed to Assad when we had no idea who they really were. We really should be ashamed at our total diplomatic failure to anticipate this. In fact, it turned out that the vast majority were Sunni jihadists, with some ISIL and a few western-educated Syrians. Thirdly, it does us good to reflect on our own disastrous Arab spring policy: in Libya, where we managed to destroy all law and order; in Egypt, where our interference nearly resulted in the Brotherhood fanatics taking over; and, sadly, even in the Maldives, which I know well, where having promoted a UK-educated Maldivian we have ended up with a jihadist threat there as well.

Why do we not reflect for a minute on what happened in the Second World War? It cannot have been easy for Churchill to decide to sit down to discuss how to attack Germany and deal with Nazism, when we know from history that there was very little rapport between him and Stalin. However, they worked jointly to defeat the common evil. That common evil is now ISIL, and it is on ISIL alone that we should all be focusing. That includes using Assad’s Syrian forces. All of us—Sunni, Shia, Turks, Kurds, Russia, the Western powers, China and India—must eradicate ISIL. It can be done. The House will know that I have been deeply involved in Sri Lanka for some 50 years. In May 2009, what was then the worst terrorist group in the world, the Tamil Tigers, was obliterated there. If we do not do this, the world will suffer; in particular, the West will suffer. So we must think again about Assad and the Shias. We need them all. We need to reflect on what Churchill faced and how he acted. We need to involve the great powers of Russia, India and China. We need to listen to those of our noble friends who have detailed experience of Syria and that part of the world. The noble Lords, Lord Wright, Lord Kerr and Lord Green of Deddington, know that area of the Middle East in depth.

We need to switch off the engine of publicity, particularly in the West. We need to be brave enough to ban any marches in favour of ISIL. It is a proscribed group, and therefore every flag-waving ISIL supporter is flouting the proscription and we must not be weak, but act. Defeat ISIL and the refugee problem will fade away as people return and rebuild, ideally helped by what I hope will be the equivalent of a modern Marshall plan.

The real question is: who will provide the leadership and soft power diplomacy to bring together Sunni and Shia Muslims to make the eradication of ISIL happen? In my view, somehow or other, that leadership must come from the Muslim world and a rapprochement between Sunni and Shia.