Syria

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend will know that a no-bombing zone was precisely one of the policies that Jo campaigned for when she was in this House.

This is why I will use my time today discussing what I feel we need to consider in beginning a new road map for Syria here in the UK. We need to start from a simple question: what can be done to save human life not on the basis of our simple short-term interests, but on the basis of the humanitarian principle? I know that some in the House will be sceptical. They will say, “We’ve seen this all before.” They will say that my humanitarian principle is just words. Well, in some ways they are right, because we should always be judged by our actions and not just our words.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)]

After seeing the horrific pictures of suffering children, one with an oxygen mask over them, does the hon. Lady agree that had we not taken action over the weekend, it would have been more likely that more chemical weapons would have been used against the population of Syria?

[Alison McGovern]

We do not know, and we should not engage in crystal ball gazing over matters that are so serious.

Whatever actions we choose, we ought to do so in a way that promotes humanitarian principles in this country and everywhere else in the world. While actions taken in the name of humanitarian principles have not always been perfect, and we must always know and understand our own history, we cannot drive looking only in the rear-view mirror. We have to face what is in front of us and try to apply humanitarian principles in the most careful way that we can, with the benefit of past experience, rather than in an attempt to address issues passed. I ask all Members for the next three hours, whatever their view, to just focus on Syria. Do not the Syrian people deserve that from us?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) on securing this debate.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) recalled the dreadful events in the battle of Ypres in 1915, which led in 1925 to the Geneva protocol, under which no country was allowed to use chemical weapons.

In 2013, Syria signed up to the chemical weapons convention. In 2014, the Russians signed an agreement with the OPCW that guaranteed that all Syria’s chemical weapons would be destroyed. Russia has vetoed resolutions in the Security Council 12 times since 2011, so I agree with the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) that the UN resolution mechanism is not working.

Syria is one of the most persecuted countries on the planet. It will be one of the worst human catastrophes in the world in the 21st century. If the world does not stand up to the use of chemical weapons, as foreshadowed by the battle of Ypres, the world will have lost its moral compass. If we allow one or two dictators with warped minds to continue to use chemical weapons, the world will be a much poorer place. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was therefore absolutely right to send a signal with our allies last weekend by taking part in joint actions.

As I said, Syria is one of the most persecuted countries on the planet. The good Samaritan, all those centuries ago, did not walk by; he stopped to help that persecuted person. The world should be helping Syria; it has 6.3 million internally displaced people and 4.8 million externally displaced people. I have been to Nizip 2 refugee camp, and it is a pitiful sight.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

I have seen Syrian children being educated in the Lebanon, and I have seen Syrian children looking absolutely bewildered in camps in Jordan by what they have witnessed. Does my hon. Friend not agree that the international community should be stepping up to ensure that more money is made available to assist these Syrian refugees?

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He, like me, has been to refugee camps—he in Jordan, I in Turkey—and we have seen the very difficult conditions these refugees live in. I am proud that our country and our Government, under the excellent leadership of our Prime Minister, is one of the largest donors in the world, helping make life just a little better in these camps.

In the last bit of my speech, I want to focus on one issue. A lot of people in this debate have said, “Well, we should do something,” but nobody has actually come up with what we should be doing. If the United Nations system is not working, we have to find another mechanism, and it seems to me that the only other mechanism at the moment is the Geneva peace process. The problem with the Geneva peace process, which has been going for at least five years and probably longer, is that the Americans, the Europeans and the west in general cannot make up their minds whether they want to see Assad continue in power or whether they want to see Assad go—whether he should be part of an interim Government or whether he should not.

We should learn the lessons of Iraq. We deposed Saddam Hussein and all the Ba’athists who knew how to govern Iraq. We must not make the same mistake in Syria. If we depose Bashar al-Assad, we must not get rid of the Alawites. If we do, we will lose the ability of those who know how to govern this very difficult country, which is composed of a lot of ethnic minorities. If it is to succeed and we are to come up with any sort of peaceful solution, the Alawites have to be a part of it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

This is a Back-Bench-led debate, so I will be brief to give time for the Prime Minister and, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) to respond.

This debate should have taken place before action was taken—we made that clear during proceedings on the statement. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South not just on securing the debate, but on the way in which she opened it. She is absolutely right to call on the Government to redouble their efforts to put the interests of civilians in Syria first. I hope that the whole House shares my respect for her demand and for her commitment to that cause, particularly to the cause of refugees from Syria whose lives have been torn asunder and who see ahead of them a future of waste in refugee camps all around the region, or of trying to get to Europe to try to survive. We need to have them at the forefront of our minds and just think what their memory is going to be, decades down the line, of this era in the early part of this century in which they lived in refugee camps while everybody else in the world was getting on with their lives.

The House has been asked to vote on military action in Syria twice; both times it has been heavily divided. Syria does not suffer from a lack of military action. Multiple actors have committed atrocities—chiefly the Assad Government, but also ISIS and a whole host of different warring groups. In a brief speech that drew on the history of the interventions in Iraq and Syria, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) described the situation in Syria as a choice between “monsters and maniacs”. I would not choose those words myself, but the primary forces in that country are indeed totally unpalatable to all of us in the House. Multiple powers are funding and arming groups on the ground, and they have been there ever since the outset of the terrible Syrian civil war seven years ago. Let us not forget, however, that human rights abuses in Syria did not begin seven years ago; it has been a place with an appalling human rights record for a very long time.

The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) was correct in his analysis that Russia wants to retain a regional ally that allows it to maintain a naval base in the Mediterranean. There is some equally brutal realpolitik on the part of the US in its wanting to diminish an opponent in the region. That agenda is shared by Saudi Arabia, which has also been funding various jihadi groups. Iran fears the outcome and is intervening. Israel fears a greater Iranian influence in the region, so it is intervening, too. Unfortunately, Turkey has grasped the opportunity to attack Kurdish communities across the border in Syria. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) for the visit he made and his support for the Kurdish people’s right to their own identity. Whatever the final outcome in Syria, I hope that the Kurdish people are respected and get the right to their own self-identity, as they deserve.

We have a grotesque spectacle of what Lord Curzon once described as the “great game” being played out, with the Syrian people treated as expendable by too many sides. I agree with Members who have expressed their will that the Syrian people must be put first. No one pretends that diplomatic efforts are not incredibly difficult, and they are often imperfect, but they have to be an alternative to yet more military action. It is too easy to advocate bombing raids and too easy to be cynical about the potential of diplomatic efforts. We all know that the UN-led Geneva process has stalled and that the talks have collapsed, but we can also remember the limited success that was achieved by John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov, which did indeed lead to the destruction of 600 tonnes of chemical weapons, overseen by the OPCW.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

rose—

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am not giving way as there is not much time.

Everyone knows that the United Nations has to be the central part of bringing about long-term peace in the region. It is the only body capable of securing that peace. Let me be clear: we all deplore the vetoes by Russia that have prevented the process from going ahead. But let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Preserving a rules-based international system through the United Nations is in all our best interests. As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres said:

“There’s an obligation, particularly when dealing with matters of peace and security, to act consistently with the Charter of the United Nations and with international law in general. The UN Charter is very clear on these issues…I urge the Security Council to assume its responsibilities and fill this gap. I will continue to engage with Member States to help achieve this objective.”

Indeed, the Government’s own “National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015” identifies

“the erosion of the rules-based international order”

as a particular challenge that is likely to

“drive UK security priorities for the coming decade”,

and one that would make it

“harder to build consensus and tackle global threats.”

There are dangers in arrogating to ourselves the right to take action selectively under the doctrine of humanitarian intervention. For example, there is a crisis in Yemen, and there have been vetoes at the UN Security Council by other parties, and indeed by the UK, to prevent even moderate criticism of the pernicious role played by Saudi Arabia in that conflict. When three agencies call Yemen the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, does that give a green light to other countries to intervene on humanitarian grounds and under a right to protect? I argue that it does not.

In October 2016, the Government floated a draft resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire in that country to allow for immediate humanitarian relief and talks on a political solution, yet, seven months on, that draft resolution has still not been formally presented to the Security Council. Ironically, there is a danger that selective interventions can undermine an international legal process.

I pay tribute to many who have spoken in this debate, including my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who talked about the refugees and demanded that the British Government make a greater contribution. One should consider the impact on Lebanon and Turkey. Those countries are far poorer than our own, but both are hosting more than a million refugees. The impact on Greece is enormous. Germany, to its credit, has taken a very large number of refugees. We should consider the future of those children growing up in refugee camps. We have a humanitarian obligation to support refugees and children, and to offer a place of refuge to them. I ask this question: have the Government done enough? Have they done enough to support refugees and have they taken enough into this country? I argue that they have not.

The chemical weapons attacks were unbelievably disgusting, illegal and wrong. We all know that, at the end of the day, the only solution in Syria has to be condemnation and the resumption of a political process. The appalling use of chemical weapons has at least drawn the attention of the House to a crisis in which 400,000 have died, 500,000 have been made refugees, and 13 million people are in need of support. I urge the Government to do all that they can to reconvene the Geneva process and to encourage a political process that will eventually bring peace to the people of Syria.

This debate has, for the most part, been conducted with calm and dignity. We have listened with interest to what everyone has said. Let us make the call from this House that we want to see peace in Syria, and that is best brought about by a political process. Let us make our energies available to bring about that process.