Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Arbuthnot]

I want to come to the Attorney-General’s advice. My right hon. and learned Friend is an exceptional lawyer, and therefore I have the temerity to question one aspect of what he says. The third of his conditions to be met for humanitarian action is that

“the proposed use of force must be necessary and proportionate to the aim of relief of humanitarian need”.

I believe that he needed to spell out an additional point that there must be a reasonable chance of success. Therefore, the legality of this action, in my view, depends entirely on the precise action proposed, and that we do not yet know. That is why the Prime Minister is absolutely right to say that we need to have a further vote in the House once it is clearer what action is proposed.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman’s concern about a possible new doctrine of war as punishment informed by the fact that senior American political sources only last weekend talked in terms of retribution as the basis for taking action against Syria, and that was repeated by a Minister here as well? If the international community takes action on Syria on the basis of retribution as the defining motive, does that not send a very dangerous message and set a dubious standard for the wider middle east?

[Mr Arbuthnot]

Well, possibly, although there is a question, if there is a new doctrine, about how far it extends. Why was it not used with Mugabe? Why was it not used with Pol Pot earlier? That is why I question the Attorney-General’s advice, with temerity and diffidence, as I say.

What are the objectives of any military strike? My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that the objective was to deter and degrade future chemical weapons use. As I understand it, a country that can make a non-stick frying pan can make chemical weapons. Personally, I have found it very difficult to find any country that can make a non-stick frying pan. Nevertheless, if Syria could simply recreate any weapons that we destroy, where would we have got by attacking the chemical weapons? What is the risk of collateral damage? What is the risk of hitting the chemical weapons that we are trying to prevent from being deployed? We need further information on that.

Next is the evidence. I am certainly in a minority in this country and probably in a minority in the House in saying that I personally believed Tony Blair when he said that he believed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I am certainly in a minority in the country when I say that I still believe that he was telling the truth as he believed it to be, but I think that he exaggerated the influence of—[Interruption.] I know, I am naive and a silly young thing, but I still believe that he exaggerated the influence and importance of intelligence. I do not think that we have yet got to the bottom of the precise limitations of what intelligence can tell us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

“Full stop, end of story.” Those five glib words were the best assurance that the Prime Minister was able to offer the House today against all the concerns being expressed about the risks of wider consequences of rash military intervention. It might be okay for the Prime Minister to negotiate the sophistry of the different sensitivities and anxieties in this House about whether or not there is a precise legal justification for military intervention in the current situation, but it certainly will not answer the exigencies of the situation that will open up once the machinations of intervention commence and once the exigencies of conflict are engaged, not just within Syria but potentially in the wider middle east.

Nor will that answer the serious issues that will arise—the Prime Minister seemed to comfort himself with that—potentially radicalising a whole new generation of Muslims, not just here but in other parts of the world, as they see again a western-driven intervention in this situation, but the west failing to act on continuing excesses and violations against the Palestinians, including the use of chemical weapons, which everybody knows were used. The opposition then came in the form of US vetoes, which many people in this House seemed complicit and comfortable with. Today we are hearing the rightful indignant condemnation of Russian and Chinese vetoes that have already been exercised in relation to Syria and more of which we are expecting soon.

The Prime Minister told us that he and the National Security Council are assured that research shows that the Muslim population here will not be antagonised, because they will understand the precise legal justification—that intervention was purely a response to this use of chemical weapons and nothing else. Even if people believe that that is the mood of many people now, will it remain the mood once the wider difficulties are created, and once the military intervention finds itself embedded in an ever more difficult and ever-changing situation?

It is all very well for the Prime Minister to say that the intervention is purely on the basis of the use of chemical weapons, not to impact upon the wider civil war in Syria and not to get involved in any other complications in the wider middle east. The fact is that our rightful outrage which might motivate military intervention does not excuse us from having moral responsibility for any outcomes that might flow from that intervention.

[Naomi Long]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that part of the problem is that the legal justification is the humanitarian crisis? Even without chemical weapons, there is still a humanitarian crisis. How would we justify stopping action?

[Mark Durkan]

I thank my hon. colleague for that point. Those of us who have concerns about the Government’s position are not saying that there should be no action. Clearly, action is needed on a humanitarian basis, but the idea that that can best be expressed in military intervention in support of the headlong rush that is coming from the States in the name of retribution, and the idea that retribution should become the going rate for military action in the middle east in circumstances where we are usually trying to counsel the various players and interests in the middle east against their natural impulses for retribution, seems to me to be a very rash proposition.

We have to ask ourselves the questions that the Prime Minister failed to answer today: what then and what when? If we are to see the limited intervention that the Prime Minister seems to expect, will it be some keyhole surgery-type strike which will have no wider implications and leave no wider scars or difficulties? If it does not work, what then? If there is reaction by Assad or by others in the area and there are wider difficulties, what will happen? Does the Prime Minister’s limited intervention—“No, I’m smoking, not inhaling. Our interventions are one thing and we are not involved in anything else”—stand? It will not be able to stand.