Middle East

Debate between Rehman Chishti and Roger Mullin

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Roger Mullin]

My concern is about the most innocent and vulnerable people. Of course we want an end to terrorism in the middle east, and this House will have to address—perhaps in a couple of days—the best means of accomplishing that. I suspect that I will disagree with the hon. Gentleman, but in my short speech I hope to set out the scale of the challenge of rebuilding Syria, whenever that can start.

[Rehman Chishti]

In defeating this evil organisation, we must defeat its ideology, appeal and self-proclaimed legitimacy. We must join our ally France in using the correct terminology, and I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman and his party for doing that and for not linking this evil organisation to Islam, which has nothing to do with it. This organisation are evil scum and we must describe them as that.

[Roger Mullin]

They are indeed evil scum. I pay tribute to the many Members who call this scum by their proper name of Daesh. A few weeks ago, Members who did so were few in number, but now there are many more. All those who use the correct terminology in this debate deserve credit. The hon. Gentleman is correct: there are huge ideological and cultural challenges to overcome. I would like to say a few words, however, on the practical challenge relating to infrastructure.

It was estimated recently that the productive capacity of Syria has been so degraded that it is 80% less than it was before the war broke out four years ago. Some 37% of all hospitals in Syria have been completely destroyed and a further 20% are so degraded they are unable to provide anything like the kind of service they provided in the past. There has been a significant destruction of health, education, transport, water, sanitation and energy infrastructure. Indeed, it has reached the stage where some commentators estimate that if the war were to end today and Syria embarked immediately on 5% economic growth—that is highly unlikely—it would take 30 years to return to the economic situation it was in in 2010.

In addition to the destruction of infrastructure, there is the difficulty we will have in entering the area to start to rebuild it. I am the chairman of the all-party group on explosive weapons and I have carried out some investigations into that situation in Syria. As well as the degradation of infrastructure, the Syrian Government have been using both anti-personnel mines, manufactured in Russia, and cluster munitions. Both are deemed illegal under the Ottawa convention. Daesh uses both cluster munitions and improvised explosive devices as landmines. This build-up of the huge detritus of war will have to be cleared before any real development can take place. There is currently no mine action programme in Syria to remove any of it. This is understandable, given that the conflict is still under way. In fact, the situation is so unusual that non-state parties—terrorist groups—have been known to dig up landmines from Israeli minefields along the Golan Heights and attempt to reuse them for their own purposes. The number of victims of explosive weapons, predominantly civilians, is already huge. The conflict in the Falklands 33 years ago was relatively small, yet the UK has still not fully cleared all the landmines from the Falkland Islands. I say that not to condemn the United Kingdom, but to think about the challenge facing Syria given the state of destruction that has already taken place.