Syria and the Middle East

Lord Risby Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Risby]

It is always a great pleasure to hear from the noble Lord, given his considerable experience of the Middle East and of Syria in particular. I join all those who have spoken today in applauding the Minister for the comprehensive way in which she set out her speech today.

This debate is indeed timely as we grapple with the horrors of Syria, the instability in the Middle East and the Maghreb and a feeling that something must be done. However, in common with the citizens of France, the United States and others, there is a widespread revulsion in this country against any kind of involvement. Young British lives have been lost in Afghanistan and Iraq because of some poor political and logistical judgments that have dismayed the British people, and we have seen an echo of these problems on our streets.

My first visit to Syria was after leaving university in the 1970s. In 2000, President Hafez al-Assad died and the then Foreign Secretary asked me to join him to attend the funeral of the President in Damascus and to meet his son, Bashar, who had become President because of the death of his brother. It is worth remembering that there was a mood of optimism at the time that this young man, who had worked as an ophthalmologist in London, who was secular and married to a British-born wife, could somehow transform and modernise his country. Indeed, there were substantial improvements in the economy and rising prosperity—to a large extent Syria is self-sufficient in food—and, as the noble Lord has just pointed out, there remained the extraordinary and unique ability of the different communities to co-exist happily there, as Gertrude Bell observed 100 years ago. It is worth reminding ourselves of the tragedy of the two archbishops, by contrast, who have been kidnapped—one of whom is a long-standing friend of mine—and the Syrian Catholic priest who, in the most grotesque circumstances, was killed only last week.

I subsequently became a director of the British Syrian Society and so visited the country often and met President Assad many times. However, when the protests there started more than two years ago and the Syrian Government reacted appallingly, I immediately resigned, and I have been active in trying to assist in humanitarian efforts to that tragic country ever since.

Put simply, we have a weak man trying to be tough. His father, who really was a tough man, would never have landed the country in this tragic situation. Unless the situation in Syria is contained, the consequences are potentially horrendous for other countries.

Let me deal with some of the external aspects, which have been touched on a number of times today. The stability of our good friend Jordan is now clearly at risk; it is fragile at the best of times. There are perhaps more than 1 million Syrian refugees out of a population of 13.2 million. It is a small country lacking in resources, notably water. Most refugees are concentrated in the north. Syrians are competing—this is very difficult—with Jordanians for low-paid jobs, school places and healthcare. Rents have gone up but tourism has collapsed. The financial and humanitarian situation is dire for Jordan and its very existence is under pressure. It would be a great loss to the stability of the region.

As the noble Lord, Lord Williams, so graphically pointed out, the situation in Lebanon is, if anything, worse, with perhaps 1 million refugees comprising a sizeable proportion of the population. There will be no traditional Arab tourism this summer. The country has suffered in living memory, as we all recall, from a grotesque civil war, an Israeli invasion and in effect a Syrian occupation. Having gone through all this, intercommunal tensions and violence are now tearing at the country’s delicate social fabric. Turkey, of course, has a huge problem too with numbers, and that grows every day.

However, over-reaching this, as the noble Lords, Lord Ashdown and Lord Sheikh, said, are the daily eruptions of violence and murder between Sunni and Shi’ite—as spillover in part from what is happening in Syria—in Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon. The social fabric of Lebanon and Jordan directly, and the coherence of other countries in the region, are now at risk because of these splits of a ferocious religious variety.

I simply pose this question: whatever the difficulties, are the risks of supplying selected weaponry and training to chosen anti-Assad rebel groups greater than the potential immolation of the entire region—because that is what we are seeing? One hundred thousand have already been killed, millions have been displaced, either internally or externally, and Iran and Russia continue to supply sophisticated weaponry. My right honourable friend William Hague and my honourable friend Alistair Burt have worked tirelessly to find a way forward, as has the Prime Minister. We have been energetic in humanitarian relief and other support. However, we have the obvious situation—there is no point in being in denial about this—that again and again President Assad has simply refused to consider a political track, whether it has been initiated by the United Nations or the Arab League. For him it is quite simply regime and personal survival. That will not change if he thinks his superior weaponry will prevail.

We all hope for a Geneva II—our Government are certainly helping actively in this pursuit—and that it can provide an opportunity for the new Iranian President to be road tested. However, what really needs to emerge is a blueprint—at least in embryonic form at first—that gives some assurance to the Syrian people that their rights, and particularly their minority rights, will be constitutionally protected as part of this process of dialogue, and that if necessary there will be an international force to oversee this. I perfectly accept that it is counterproductive to call for President Assad to go now, ahead of any possible dialogue, whatever the justification—and there certainly is a great deal of that.

In a totally imperfect situation, the risks of declining to consider the supply of sophisticated weaponry and even additional basic equipment such as body armour will actually make the dialogue less likely, and some sort of declaration of constitutional intent should be formulated. The alternative that is now evolving before our eyes risks the collapse of at least two of the neighbouring countries right next door to Syria and a religious war of medieval proportions.