Arms to Syria

Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baron]

I take on board my hon. Friend’s points. With law—international law in particular—one can find lawyers to substantiate both sides of an argument. I therefore tend not to focus too much on international law, although I have a sneaking feeling that we will return to the subject later on.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

Quite right too!

[Mr Baron]

I hear what my right hon. and learned Friend says. That is why I think it is important that we focus on the practical and moral implications of such a policy.

In answer to colleagues’ points about doing nothing, I think that history provides a guide to what we should do. The last decade would suggest that trying to promote democracy and human rights, which is the Government’s stated objective, by force of arms can often be counter-productive. If we look at north Africa and parts of the middle east, we see the seeds of democracy stuttering into life where we have committed relatively few resources. If we look at Iraq and Afghanistan, however, it is not such a rosy picture, despite the huge cost in lives and treasure.

If we wanted to go back further, we could look at our interventions since the second world war. They have had a tendency to have an embedding effect—to reinforce the existing regimes. It is no coincidence, I put it to the House, that communism has survived longest in those countries where the west actually intervened—Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, even China. We have to be careful about our interventions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and echo the apology of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) for missing the opening comments of his speech because of the Intelligence and Security Committee meeting. The right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) began his comments by saying that he had supported the Iraq war but believed that intervention of the kind being considered in Syria would be inappropriate, but I come at this from exactly the other way around. I opposed the Iraq war but I have, over the past year, come to the view that intervention of the kind we are discussing would be not only ethically justified, but politically desirable.

The fact that I have come to that view is not that important. What is particularly significant is that President Obama, who has been hugely reluctant to be involved, in any way, militarily in Syria, has nevertheless been persuaded, with all the advice available to him and with all the analysis that has been made, that the time has come to change position and give military support. The British and French Governments, who have supported the European embargo, have been forced to change their view towards a different position. Governments are often accused of pandering to public opinion—going for votes—but here it is the other way around; public opinion is against supplying weapons in Syria. No votes are to be won by doing this, so it is worth asking why three of the major Governments in the world have gradually come to the view that, far from being an irresponsible act, it may not be a good solution but it is less bad than the alternatives. That is the judgment we are being asked to make.

When we use the terms “rebels” and “Government”, we must remind ourselves that more than 100 members of the United Nations—more than half the UN—have broken ranks with Syria and have recognised the Syrian opposition as the legitimate spokesmen of the Syrian people. The Arab League has expelled the Assad regime and invited the Syrian opposition to take its place. So the term “rebels” is not necessarily as significant as it often is.

[Mr Newmark]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that we must not conflate wishing to support, and supporting, the moderate majority and the Free Syrian Army, with condemning Jabhat al-Nusra and others, who also may condemn the regime?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, because it has been part of Assad’s tactics from the very beginning to try to force his own people and the wider international community to believe that there is a stark choice between the Assad regime and jihadi extremists such as Jabhat al-Nusra and to ignore the fact that the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian secular forces and moderate Islamic forces, represent between them the overwhelming majority of the Syrian public, and to suggest that they are somehow irrelevant to this debate.

Let me share with the House why I changed my view over the past year. I did so for two reasons, the first of which is the humanitarian situation. More than 100,000 people have died so far. We are not talking about soldiers, militia or rebels; the vast majority of them were innocent men, women and children. All the analysis by human rights organisations—by Amnesty International and others—says not that every one of them was killed by the Assad regime, but that the vast majority were killed and slaughtered because of indiscriminate bombing by the Assad regime throughout Syria, particularly in the urban areas, where the opposition was active.

[Mike Gapes]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that it would be much more effective and better to provide a no-fly zone and humanitarian corridor to help the humanitarian situation than to give weaponry to people who might pass it on to other elements of the opposition that we might not wish to have it?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I do not think that a no-fly zone is practical. It could not be legitimised by the Security Council and would involve massive attacks on Syrian air defences, which would essentially mean Britain, America and other countries going to war. That would not be appropriate or justified.

On a humanitarian basis, quite apart from any other argument, the Syrian opposition deserve weapons to protect their own communities. This time next year, 200,000 men, women and children will have been slaughtered in Homs, Aleppo and the various other centres that the Assad regime is trying to recontrol. From that point of view, such an approach is a consideration.

My second point goes straight to the comments made by the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). I hope that we are all agreed that a political solution will ultimately end the conflict, but to have a political solution requires getting people to Geneva who are willing to make the compromises required. On what possible basis should Assad contemplate such an approach when he has refused all along to contemplate not just his own demise but any transitional Government or any new Government involving the Syrian opposition? He has ruled that out entirely. At this moment, he is even less likely to be interested in that argument.

The hon. Gentleman talked about escalating new arms supplies from Russia or Iran, but the one thing the Syrian Government and Assad regime do not need is more arms. They are satiated with arms and they have been supplied with them for the past two years. Assad knows that supply from Russia and Iran will continue for as long as he needs them, but on top of that he has Hezbollah militia fighting with his forces. That is foreign intervention and, incidentally, it shows the weakness of the Assad regime that it could not recapture the small town of Qusair by itself a few weeks ago but had to get several thousand Lebanese Hezbollah militia—

[Mr Baron]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I have given way twice already, I am afraid—[Interruption.] But as it is my hon. Friend, I will give way.

[Mr Baron]

I appreciate the fact that my right hon. and learned Friend is being so accommodating and I shall keep my question short. Can he answer the practical question that the Government have so far been unable to answer? How does one track and trace the weapons going to the rebel cause to stop them falling into the wrong hands? Up to this moment, that answer has not been supplied.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Let me go straight to that point. It is perfectly fair, but I do not think it is as convincing as my hon. Friend clearly believes. First, if we provide the weapons that the Syrian moderate secular opposition want and of which they are desperately short—they are the only people who do not have such weapons as the jihadi nationalist extremists and the Assad regime already have them—on what common- sense grounds should we anticipate that to any significant degree, the Free Syrian Army, for the first time given proper means of defending themselves and advancing their cause, should wish to hand them over to the jihadi nationalists who already have them and are their sworn enemies? Jabhat al-Nusra is not even part of the Syrian National Coalition. Of course, we cannot exclude the possibility that the odd weapon might go in that direction, but to rule out providing them on those grounds alone seems unwise and unreasonable.

The broader point is that if Assad knows that he not only has Hezbollah forces fighting for him, which he needs to advance on Homs and Aleppo, but has been promised Iranian revolutionary guards and if he has the weapons, what possible reason would he have to be prepared to reach a compromise that involves his sharing power, never mind giving it up? When hon. Members who take a different point of view say that we must have a diplomatic solution, I agree. When they say that lots of things can be done on humanitarian grounds and through diplomatic initiatives, I utterly agree. They know as well as I do, however, that in the middle of a civil war, diplomacy by itself will not deliver the results required. Why should it? That happens only when both sides to a civil war realise that they cannot get military victory by themselves and therefore must compromise.

At this moment in the conflict, the Assad regime has no reason to come to such a view. It is not short of weapons and it is not short of fighters from other countries—Lebanon and Iran—so such an approach will not succeed. By all means, let us say that this is not our war and that it is all terribly tragic. By all means, let us accept that events will go on as they have been, but hon. Members must not kid themselves that anything that relies on diplomatic initiatives alone, without the real pressure that strengthening the secular opposition would provide, has even the remotest prospect of bringing peace and preventing the continuing slaughter of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrian men, women and children over the months and years to come.