Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

The threats that ISIL poses are very clear. The humanitarian outrages that it has already perpetrated have been on our television screens and in our newspapers. ISIL threatens the destabilisation of the region and an all-out religious war. It will be a global exporter of jihad if we allow it to be. Therefore, the question of whether to act or not is a relatively simple one. However, in choosing to act, we must do so politically, economically and militarily, all in concert. Politically, we need greater regional support even than we have had until now. That includes Turkey, which is a key player in the region and a strong NATO ally. We also need a clear view from the regional powers on exactly what political shape they want to achieve in the region. If anything, the lesson we learned from Iraq is that military victory, where it is possible, is only the beginning of a much more difficult process.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that countries, including Turkey, Cyprus and others, in the region need to do much more to disrupt the flow of fighters from Europe and elsewhere to Iraq and Syria and indeed back here, if possible?

[Dr Fox]

It is the duty of all those who wish to see international order maintained to do everything in their power to disrupt the flow of such people.

All conflicts are ideological and this conflict is no different. We require political and religious leaders in the region to be much more vocal about the fact that this has nothing to do with Islam, that it is a cruel, barbaric, mediaeval and misogynistic creed, and that it is not religion but a political perversion. We also need to make those messages clear to those young, impressionable individuals in Britain who may be considering becoming involved in such an enterprise. Those who are already there need to understand that they are not welcome back in this country and that the full force of the law will be applied should they come back. They cannot take a jihad gap year and come back to the UK with impunity.

The question of oil has been mentioned but, through the international financial system, we also need to stop financial flows to ISIS. It is very well funded and we must stop groups in the region playing a double-game, publicly decrying ISIS but providing it with the funding it requires.

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[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate today. I will support the motion before the House, but I do so with deep concern and real worry about the future. That is not because I do not want ISIL to be destroyed—I do—but because I believe that our history in Iraq, with the war of 2003, has eroded trust, created suspicion about our motives for getting involved and perhaps caused some of the factors that has led us to where we are today. Without genuine, prolonged efforts to achieve a political settlement, I have fears about where this may ultimately end. I am deeply concerned about the potential scale of civilian deaths that may occur, bearing in mind the scale of those that have already occurred and that are occurring even as we speak. Such decisions are deeply difficult—I often feel that we have to choose between the lesser of two evils—but a political solution is the only way to ensure that peace can be won and, in the end, that it can be a lasting peace.

The starting point for making my decision is that those in ISIL are fanatics and monsters; they are not Muslims. They have hijacked the name of Islam, the religion that I, as well as tens of thousands of my constituents and hundreds of thousands of British Muslims, follow and practice, and which we all love. They have hijacked and dishonoured the name of our religion. I am a Sunni Muslim, like the majority of British Muslims, and like them I abhor and am repulsed by the fact that those in ISIL describe themselves as true Sunni Muslims: they are not, and we reject them utterly.

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend is making a crucial point. Will she join me in welcoming the fact that in Cardiff, as well as in many communities throughout the UK, Muslim leaders from across the Muslim spectrum and leaders from other communities and faiths have come together to condemn ISIL’s activities not only in Iraq and Syria, but in recruiting and perverting young people in this country?