Daesh in Syria and Iraq

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I apologise to the noble Lord—I could not read my own writing. I mentioned earlier that we are pleased to now be in the position where there will be a trained Sunni police force. It is the first step. Policing is clearly important as, when places are taken from Daesh, people will want to return to them but those places often have been booby-trapped with IEDs and police need to be in place to provide security while any remaining dangers are cleared. It is the only way for a community to be in a place and feel safe to set up its own council and organisations to run itself.

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

I welcome the Minister’s Statement, which was very good. I want to pick up on one aspect, namely the coalition that has been formed by Saudi Arabia. We need Saudi Arabia to defeat Daesh but, at the same time, we must be careful that it is not done on a sectarian basis. The Minister referred earlier to Haider al-Abadi, in the Iraqi Government. Iraq is not part of the coalition formed by Saudi Arabia, nor will it be. There are several other states that have abstained from joining that coalition, including states with a long history of combating terrorism. One example is Algeria, the largest country in the Maghreb, and another is Indonesia, the world’s largest Sunni Muslim state. I urge some caution in backing Saudi efforts for an alliance that is essentially Sunni and not Islamic. After all, what we are fighting for in Iraq and Syria is the preservation of countries with faiths of many denominations.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I agree that it is important that the Islamic military coalition should consider the interests of both Sunnis and Shias, but that should come in any event because there are Shia minorities within the coalition countries. Bahrain, which is a member, has a Shia majority population. The noble Lord is right, however, to sound a word of caution. We welcome the creation of the IMC to fight terrorism and we look forward to hearing further details from the Saudis on the IMC’s intended remit and scope. We want it to be able to work closely alongside the global coalition against Daesh to tackle the terrorist scourge.