Iraq

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, it was against a background of extraordinary danger and profound crisis in the Middle East that it was heartening to see one important diplomatic breakthrough this week: the meeting in New York on Wednesday in the margins of the UN between Prime Minister David Cameron and President Rouhani of Iran—the first high-level meeting involving heads of government of our two countries since the revolution of 1979, some 35 years ago. The Prime Minister is to be applauded for that initiative. Any enduring solution to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq will be impossible without Iran’s involvement. More urgently, we must explore what assistance Iran can lend in the battle ahead of us with ISIS, and in the long run in finding a solution to Syria’s bitter civil war, now in its fourth year. I should be grateful if the Minister could shed any further light on the Prime Minister’s meeting in New York. We need more diplomacy, not less diplomacy.

The Motion under debate in the other House—preparing for possible military action against ISIS—is certainly one that I can support. However, it specifically does not endorse air strikes in Syria, even though the threat from ISIS ignores national boundaries, and the United States and six Arab countries have already been engaged in military action in both Iraq and Syria for several days. Moreover, it is above all in Syria where ISIS poses the most immediate danger. It was in Syria that a British hostage, as well as two US hostages, were murdered.

Last Saturday, 20 September, some 67,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees fled Syria because of attacks from ISIS—in one day. By Monday, that number had reached 150,000. It is clear then that ISIS is carrying out the same ethnic cleansing in Syria that it undertook earlier in Iraq when it removed Christians and Yazidis from villages where they had been settled for centuries. It is also in Syria that the United States has publicly identified a new terrorist threat, which it has referred to as the Khorasan group. I would welcome a comment from the Minister on that.

In truth of course it is impossible to separate the actions of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. This debate is entitled, “The developments in Iraq”. In truth, it should be, “The developments with regard to ISIS”, wherever ISIS exists. While the actions of Gulf countries in supporting military action are to be commended, it is equally true, as President Obama suggested in his speech in New York on Wednesday, that the funding supporting ISIS needs to be cut off. Ironically, as he hinted, much of that funding is coming from the very same countries now involved in military action. Difficult though it is, they must be encouraged through very active diplomacy by the UK, the US and others to take drastic action if we are to eliminate ISIS.

We also need to recognise that much of the alienation of the Sunnis of Iraq stems from their treatment by the highly sectarian regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. I know that there is now a new Government but I think that Sunni Arabs are keeping a judgment on that Government. In Syria and Iraq, ruthless dictatorships have given way to a new tyranny which does not recognise national borders and which, through its active recruitment among some British Muslims, poses a direct threat to the security of this country. Given that this is unlikely to dissipate in the near future, can the Minister—here I echo the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—indicate where this leaves the Government’s Prevent strategy?

For today, the issue before us is military action with regard to Iraq, but for the future of the Middle East, and indeed our country, we must be looking more and more to diplomatic and political actions which will complement the military action that will be before us.