Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Bob Stewart

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

The choice between head in the sand and boots on the ground has always, to my mind, been a false one. In recent days we have heard much about the limits to our influence on events in Syria, but we must not allow ourselves to believe that we can do nothing for the Syrian people. I recently visited a refugee camp near the Syrian border in the Kurdish region of Iraq. It was a harrowing reminder of the brutality of this war and its complexity.

In demographic terms Syria is like a photographic negative of Iraq. Both have large minority populations of Christians and Kurds, but in Syria it is the Sunnis who form the historically oppressed majority. In Iraq, we have seen what happens when a ruling minority is violently deposed. Today, large swathes of Sunni Iraq have all the characteristics of a failed state. My fear is that the envisioned post-Assad Syria would be equally unsustainable. A Sunni-dominated Syria would show no mercy to the defeated Alawites, and would therefore be completely unacceptable to the minorities, whether Alawite, Christian or Kurd, who would undoubtedly rebel with the support of regional powers.

The ever-shifting maze of internal politics and external agendas, and the sheer complexity of the situation, demand that we should be modest about what we hope to achieve. My constituents are deeply concerned about the prospect of another open-ended war in the middle east, and I will not vote for any action that would entangle us in regime change. There can be no more nation-building. We simply do not have the capability to do that; indeed, the most powerful country in the world does not have that capability.

[Bob Stewart]

Whatever we do, we must be quite precise about it. People talk about an exit strategy, but I have never seen an exit strategy in any other military conflict. I went into Bosnia with no mission whatever, but with just one idea: to save people’s lives. That is what we should be doing: saving the lives of people in Syria if we can.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

That is right. Any intervention by Britain must have a clear objective and defined limits, and our objective must be to protect civilians, as my hon. Friend has just said.