North and West Africa (UK Response)

Richard Ottaway Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to have this important debate under your chairmanship, Mr Amess.

Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister warned against the threats posed by extremists fighting in Iraq and Syria. He said:

“The most important intervention of all is to ensure that those Governments are fully representative of the people who live in their countries, that they close down the ungoverned space and that they remove the support for the extremists. We must do that not only in Syria, but in Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria and Mali, because these problems will come back and hit us at home if we do not.”—[Official Report, 18 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 1108.]

Those words remind me of the Prime Minister’s statement in January 2013, just after the al-Qaeda-linked attack on the In Amenas gas facility in Algeria in which 39 foreign workers, including six Britons, lost their lives. The terrorists hit Algeria a couple of days after France intervened in Mali in order to push back Islamists. At that time, the Prime Minister said:

“Those who believe that there is a terrorist, extremist al-Qaeda problem in parts of north Africa, but that it is a problem for those places and we can somehow back off and ignore it, are profoundly wrong. This is a problem for those places and for us.”—[Official Report, 18 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 1167.]

He warned that those terrorists posed an existential threat.

That threat, and the spread of jihadist extremism in Africa’s western Sahel-Sahara region, was considered by the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, which I have the privilege of chairing, and we published a report entitled “The UK’s response to extremism and instability in north and west Africa”. We considered three case studies: the French intervention in Mali, the In Amenas gas facility attack and the emergence of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria. Crises in Mali, Algeria, the Central African Republic or even Libya do not ring a bell with much of UK public opinion. The abduction of more than 200 Nigerian girls by Boko Haram is an exception, but only due to the global social media campaign and international press coverage. Sadly, the girls have not yet been rescued, and, worse, the kidnappings continue.

The situation in north and west Africa is serious. The region has become a new front line in the contest with Islamist extremism and terrorism, and those threats must be addressed, not only by regional powers but by the west. African problems will not be fixed only with African solutions—not yet, anyway. The African Union and its affiliated regional bodies do not yet seem able effectively to impose peace on a troubled area. Latent or open clashes can suddenly turn into far-reaching conflicts that can result in general instability, kidnappings, sexual violence, the imposition of sharia law, humanitarian crises and even mass killings.

As we look back over the events of the past 12 to 18 months, what is striking is the speed with which things change and how new groups appear. According to the United Nations, terrorist acts in the Sahel and the Maghreb increased by 60% in 2013 compared with 2012, reaching the region’s highest annual total for the past 12 years. This is not a criticism but an observation: the UK and other western countries seem to have been caught out by the eruption of successive conflicts in Africa’s western Sahel-Sahara region. The region has always been subject to local ethnic rivalries and power plays between states, and now it has become a powder keg. Jihadists and drug smugglers have taken advantage of its marginalised areas and porous borders and have capitalised on economic misery, chronic unemployment, weak state security and popular anger with corrupt governing elites.

The downfall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya has only worsened the situation. The western military intervention was a success in that it stopped Gaddafi bombing his own people and thus averted a humanitarian disaster in Libya, but international powers, including the United Kingdom, failed to foresee and mitigate the regional fallout. The former regime’s arms have spread all over the region, old mercenaries have made alliances with jihadists and extremists have settled in southern Libya. Libya has also become the busiest transit route for illegal immigration from Africa to Europe.

On the UK’s role in the situation, the UK Government pledged in January last year to increase their political security and economic engagement in north and west Africa, but in all honesty, since then, their actions have not matched their ambitions. The evidence points to a mismatch between the Government’s rhetoric and the UK’s scant diplomatic resources in the region. If the Government want to engage more effectively in the region, they must accumulate deeper specialist expertise and knowledge about the western Sahel-Sahara, and they must expand their diplomatic network in the francophone part of the region. Here the UK’s soft and hard power could be of great help, but the UK cannot do it on its own; it must co-operate closely with other western powers.

We as a Committee advocate that the UK should press for an international accord aimed at bringing security and stability to the region. The prime responsibility for implementing that agreement should rest with the tripartite leadership of France, the UK and the United States, assisted by the European External Action Service. This is a golden opportunity for the EEAS to get its teeth into something and come up with a solution. The three powers have already worked together, when France sent its troops to Mali; both the UK and the US supported Paris with logistics and technical assistance. Although Operation Serval has routed the jihadists from their northern stronghold, the fight is not yet over. Recent events in the city of Kidal, where the Malian army was humiliated by Tuareg separatists, have forced France to prolong its military mission in the country.

Obviously, the UK must co-operate with regional powers on foreign security and military policies. Algeria and Morocco, two stable countries in the region, are key to delivering stability there. They are natural partners for the UK and other western countries. However, the issue of western Sahara still divides them, and its resolution should always be on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office agenda. The same goes for Nigeria: the UK should assist Nigeria in its battle against Boko Haram, and it is rightly doing so. However, we should never forget that country’s poor record on human rights, its lack of leadership and widespread corruption and the brutality of its security forces.

A new opportunity for military co-operation will open by the end of the year, following the final withdrawal of UK troops from Afghanistan. I think I am right in saying that it will be the first time for many decades that we have not had an overseas deployment. We thought that the suggestion made by the previous Chief of the Defence Staff—that we should seriously consider the possibility of sending some of those well-skilled soldiers to training missions in Africa—was a good one, and I am pleased that the Minister, in his evidence to us, confirmed that the CDS was not just flying a kite. The UK is already providing military training to Kenya, Mali and Somalia, and it would assist the security and stability of fragile states, which could lead to assistance with good governance. Once stability was achieved, we could move on to economic aid packages. I think that that would contribute a lot to providing stability and security in the region.

Aid development is an issue that needs to be reviewed. All the evidence points to the fact that in some places, international aid development programmes may have become part of the problem instead of the solution. That is not to decry the good intentions of the aid providers, but in Mali the Committee was concerned to note that western help may have inadvertently inhibited the development of responsive and responsible government and entrenched corruption in the country’s political culture. We also believe—this is an old chestnut, but it is highly relevant—that development assistance should be redefined. At present, the OECD describes development assistance as

“promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries”.

We believe that in a rapidly changing world, security assistance should be included in that definition. Such an enhanced definition would guarantee financing for the security of inland borders, as well as funding for training and non-lethal equipment.

Illegal immigration facing southern Europe is another pressing issue. Despite the family planning programmes that the UK is now funding, there are unsustainable levels of population growth right across the Sahel. Millions of young men and women are being born into an economic desert, with little or no economic prospects, which is leading to increased political instability, organised crime and the spread of radical views. It also pushes people to risk their lives to find a safer place to live. Unfortunately, that often turns into human exploitation and sometimes death. Only last week, the Italian navy rescued more than 5,000 migrants who were trying to cross from north Africa. On one boat carrying 600 people, the navy discovered 30 bodies. That has echoes of the incident off Lampedusa last winter, when hundreds of dead people were found in a boat of migrants.

Illegal immigration and human trafficking from north Africa into Europe is a growing problem facing more and more EU countries. What really bothers us is the fact that the European Union does not seem to have a clear strategy for dealing with it. My question to the Minister—it was posed in our report, but I am afraid that the Foreign Office did not really take it up in its response—is this. If a boatload of refugees is found in the middle of the Mediterranean, is the policy to shepherd them to safety or to encourage them to turn back to the port they have come from? That is a fairly straightforward question.

We need quick action. Islamic extremism is a dynamic phenomenon. All eyes are now on advances in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, but we should not forget the spread of extremism in north and west Africa. Concerted and quick action is a must, so I urge the Government to outline soon their strategy for dealing with the regional insecurity and crawling terrorism that are blighting a continent with which Britain has had so many connections over the centuries.