Syria: UK Military Action

Lord Oates Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, remarked earlier, deploying the RAF to attack Daesh in Syria is in some ways a relatively simple decision. We are already attacking it in Iraq and providing surveillance and refuelling to our allies over Syria. I support that action. Daesh is a monstrous organisation that poses a direct threat to our citizens. We have every legal and moral right to respond to that threat. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Ashdown said, the UN resolution places an obligation on us to act. However, the reason that this is also such a complicated decision is that we will not simply be attacking Daesh. We will be entering into a multipronged civil war, a religious war and a proxy regional war, not as a disinterested party determined only to destroy Daesh but as a protagonist committed to regime change by our preconditions regarding President Assad, but without any credible strategy to bring it about.

It would be tempting, given these complexities, to wash our hands of the whole thing but, as many noble Lords have said, inaction is not without cost. That cost is being paid in the towns and cities of Syria and Iraq every day. It was paid just a few weeks ago on the streets of Ankara, Beirut and Paris. What we need is action that can defeat Daesh and bring peace. Without peace, even if we do defeat them, we will soon find another vile incarnation filling the vacuum. The Prime Minister said, in his response to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, that,

“our objective would not be to attack the Syrian regime”.

Yet regime change is the stated intention of the Prime Minister; indeed, the UK is involved in training the armed opposition to the Syrian Government. How does that fit with the wise stricture of the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, that we must seek peace, not victory?

Before we proceed, we surely need, as a minimum, an agreement between those countries participating in armed action as to how they will end the fighting once Daesh is defeated. In the absence of such agreement, even if we can defeat Daesh without our own ground forces, what will prevent the Syrian Arab Army turning its fire on the moderate forces, with the backing of Russian air power? What would be the response of the western allies in such circumstances? Would the Russians have international law on their side? What would the legal position of the allies then be?

President Assad is using brutal force to suppress his people. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, said in her powerful speech, we cannot allow an obsession with Assad to paralyse the chances of peace as it has done to date. It was foolish of the American President to set this precondition, and foolish of the Prime Minister to repeat it. It is time to set it aside. The longer we make it a precondition, the less likely it is to be achieved and the more people who will be killed in the mean time. If Assad going is the precondition for peace, there will be no peace—that is the brutal truth.

Our closest neighbour and ally has suffered a terrible attack and has asked for our assistance. We cannot easily stand aside in such circumstances, but we urgently need a more compelling strategy than the Government have presented to date. If we are to embark on action, we must have no preconditions to peace; our only objectives must be to defeat Daesh, halt the conflict, and secure a political settlement that will allow the people of Syria to live in peace and security once more.