Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I will take just one more intervention for the moment, but I am not leaving the subject of Libya for a while.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

On previous occasions the Foreign Secretary has told us that the Attorney-General is giving advice to the Cabinet. Can he assure us that if there is an increase in the scope and range of the targets that we will hit, that advice will be made available to the House?

[Mr Hague]

I cannot give an assurance that we will provide a running commentary on legal advice, but I can give the assurance that the Attorney-General is always included in such discussions. He is always included in the decisions about targeting, and indeed in our general discussions about policies. The National Security Council on Libya met earlier today to discuss the increased tempo of the military campaign, and the Attorney-General took part in that discussion. Retaining what we have had from the beginning—a clear legal authority to do what we are doing—is very important. However, although the Government can give it consideration, I cannot undertake to give a running commentary on legal advice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley). He and I have served together on the Committees on Arms Export Controls and on the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs for many years, and he speaks a great deal of sense on arms exports issues.

Somebody once said, in the context of British politics, “You can be in office and not in power.” That situation clearly applies in a number of countries around the world, but I wish to focus my remarks, as others have done, on what is happening in Pakistan. The fact that Osama Bin Laden apparently lived in Abbottabad with food and access to information, although not to the internet, and was somehow protected, is a matter of deep concern, but I have no doubt that the Government of President Zardari had no knowledge that that was the case. The question for us, which is highlighted in a very good book that came out this week, “Pakistan: A Hard Country” by Anatol Lieven, is about the relationship between the civil society and the political society in Pakistan and the military and intelligence elite that has run that state.

Anatol Lieven says that:

“the Pakistani national security state…was born chiefly out of fear of, and hostility to, India. This is felt most strongly in the military and, in the ISI, it is a raging monomania.”

That sums up the problem. According to an opinion poll of about two years ago, 85% of the Pakistani population want better relations with India. We find the same thing when we speak to people in the British-Pakistani and British-Indian community—many of whom, including many of my constituents, have roots in the divided Punjab—and when we go, as I did with the Foreign Affairs Committee five years ago, by road from Amritsar to Lahore, through the Wagah crossing. If we leave aside the symbolism of the soldiers on both sides at the ceremony, we also find the interesting sight of the bearers, who, on the one side, carry sacks of onions on their heads for about a mile and half and, on the other side, carry boxes of dried fruit. This is an international border where people cannot trade by means of vehicles passing through; everything has to be unloaded and then loaded again.

Economic co-operation between India and Pakistan would be of great benefit to both countries, especially in dealing with Pakistan’s problems arising from its rapidly growing population: it has 180 million people, and that is on the way to becoming 300 million or 350 million. Massive difficulties are also caused by the fact that a disproportionate amount of money in Pakistan is taken up by the national security structure, and because the obsession with India means that it is a state that has in the past, through its Inter-Services Intelligence, sponsored terrorist organisations and insurgent groups in both Afghanistan and India. The democratic and secular forces—the people, including the late Shahbaz Bhatti, to whom reference has been made, who believe in women’s rights and in protecting minorities, and who stand up for ethical values and global values of human rights—are besieged now in Pakistan because of the international context.

The Pakistani Government and Pakistani politicians can rightly point out that many of the problems they face arise because of the misguided interventions of 25 and 30 years ago, which led to the situation in Afghanistan, where the groups that evolved into the Taliban were developed. However, there was also a Pakistani hand in some of that; they got the money from the United States—from the CIA—it was pushed through the ISI and it went through to people such as Mr Hekmatyar, to what is now the Haqqani network in Afghanistan, and to the Taliban.

That worm has turned, and the Pakistani state faces enormous threats from those organisations, but it also has its own resilience and ability to fight back. In my opinion, it is good news that Osama Bin Laden was killed and is dead, and however critical we might be of the fact that he was in Pakistan, we need to make an assessment and take a clear view. The Government of Pakistan were not shielding that man, nor were the Pakistani people. That was done by certain rogue elements within their society, and it would be completely wrong to do what some in the United States Congress are calling for and punish Pakistan by cutting off economic assistance and ending co-operation.

What Pakistan needs today is our solidarity against the terrorist threat it faces. Its secular politicians need our support and encouragement to rebuild the dialogue with India, to resolve the difficulties over Kashmir and to co-operate against the common threats of terrorism which both those countries are facing. That is not going to be easy—the history and the fact that the pain is so deep on both sides means that it will be very difficult—but the alternative is to play into the hands of the extremist groups that wish to foster a failed state, further conflict and terrorism. That will not only be destructive to all the values of Pakistan and India, but it will blow back into this country because people here have family roots in that part of the world. We owe it to them, as well as to ourselves, to work in co-operation with Pakistan at this time of great difficulty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Gapes]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that one of the important consequences of this agreement is that it allows a programme to go forward for democratic elections, hopefully at the end of this year or the beginning of next, that will then allow the Palestinian people as a whole to elect a new Parliament and a new President? That is vital if we are to get serious negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

I agree that that is very important. I asked the Prime Minister a month or so ago whether he was concerned that when the President of the Palestinian Authority called for elections, Hamas immediately rejected that—Hamas having been a democratically elected organisation that renounced democracy once its mandate had expired. I agree, however, that the notion of bringing democracy back to Hamas would be a welcome change.

Unfortunately, I think there is a risk that in the British Foreign Office the view is that this is a matter of shades of grey as opposed to black and white. For Israel it is not a matter of shades of grey. Israel has been struggling to secure itself and just to exist. When it comes to murdering schoolchildren, which Hamas went in for, that cannot be regarded as shades of grey.