Liberation of Mosul

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has experience of chairing the Foreign Affairs Committee in previous Parliaments. He is right: horrors are being perpetrated every day in Mosul, and that was the case long before the liberation and the assault started. We should not forget that some of these horrors have been perpetrated on our own citizens—on the hostages taken back in 2014—and others have been subject to atrocities ever since. It is important that the world does not forget just how evil Daesh has been in the extremes to which they have gone in punishing or killing those who happen not to accept the perversion they believe in.

[Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Militias have been relied on to help defeat the death cult Daesh, but concerns have been raised about the involvement of Shi’a militias in liberating Mosul, based on the atrocities witnessed by Sunni residents during Falluja’s liberation from Daesh. What assurances has my right hon. Friend received that the very sectarian tensions that facilitated the rise of Daesh in the first place will not be stoked by Shi’a militias in Mosul?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

It is a very legitimate concern, rooted not just in some of the earlier operations but in earlier conflicts. Those were assurances that I pressed for, and examined very closely, on my recent visit. There are red lines drawn on which units are allowed to go where as the encirclement operation begins. All I can say to my hon. Friend is that everybody in Baghdad and in Erbil—the Sunni and Shi’a members of the Iraqi Government—is very much aware of the need to do this operation, in what is essentially a Sunni city, but not entirely a Sunni city, in a way that gives the majority Sunni population of Mosul the confidence to return to their city in the knowledge that they will be able to live safely there thereafter.