Idlib

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

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

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the political and humanitarian situation in and around Idlib in Syria.

[The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his urgent question and congratulate him on securing it. The United Kingdom is extremely concerned about the escalating military action by Russia and the Syrian regime, which is putting at risk nearly 3 million civilians who have sought shelter in Idlib and the surrounding area. The past few days have seen dozens of Russian and regime airstrikes against areas of Idlib. Over the weekend we received reports of three hospitals, two White Helmets centres and an ambulance system being attacked and put out of service, leaving thousands with no access to medical care. Civilians, medical facilities and aid workers must be protected; they are not a target.

It is vital that a humanitarian catastrophe is avoided. The UN has been clear that a worst-case scenario in Idlib would

“overwhelm capacities and…create a humanitarian emergency at a scale not yet seen through”

the conflict, with up to 900,000 people displaced. We have therefore been supporting the urgent diplomatic efforts being made by Turkey and the UN. I spoke to my Turkish counterpart on 4 September, and the Prime Minister spoke to President Erdoğan on 27 August to discuss the situation. Of course, the situation is considered by the UN Security Council very frequently.

It is deeply disappointing that Russia and Iran rejected President Erdoğan’s calls for a renewed ceasefire at the Tehran summit last Friday. Russia and the Syrian regime also rejected similar calls by ourselves and others at the UN Security Council on the same day. We urge them to reconsider and instead to find a negotiated way forward to avoid an entirely man-made disaster.

The UK has pledged additional humanitarian assistance and medical support. We are also backing innovative early-warning technology to save lives in communities threatened by airstrikes. Finally, along with the United States and France, we have been clear that we will respond swiftly and appropriately if the Assad regime repeats its appalling use of chemical weapons.

[Stephen Doughty]

I thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and the Minister for responding to it. There is a significant risk in this House that our current focus on Brexit and many other issues means that Parliament, the Government and, indeed, the media pay far too little attention to the horrific scenes and repeated brutal attacks on civilians and humanitarians that we are seeing in places such as Syria and Yemen. In that regard, I commend the efforts of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) to constantly bring to our attention the situation facing Syrian civilians. I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who chairs the International Development Committee, for making an application today for a urgent debate on Yemen, which I support.

As the Minister said, this weekend has sadly seen a further grim descent into violence in and around Idlib, which many of us predicted. Russian and Syrian jets have resumed intensive airstrikes after the failure to agree a ceasefire. It is alleged that on Saturday regime forces carried out attacks with artillery and rocket shelling for over three hours. Yesterday, Syrian army helicopters and Russian air forces conducted 60 strikes for over four hours, including with barrel bombs, typically filled with high explosives and shrapnel, on Habeet, Abdin, Hasraya, Al Zakat and many other villages around Hama and Idlib. It is therefore crucial that we understand what the UK Government’s political, humanitarian and military strategy is, given the breakdown of the talks and the horrific scenes.

The Minister mentioned the work of the White Helmets. In the past few hours, I have seen video footage showing horrific attacks on their brave workers, who are under fire from indiscriminate artillery and cluster bombs. We cannot and must not simply wring our hands and say, “It’s all very difficult.” Millions of civilians are trapped in the province, including people who have been displaced from other parts of Syria by the Assad regime. Hospitals have been targeted, in violation of international law. Schools have been hit, and children have been injured and killed. Barrel bombs have been used, in violation of UN Security Council resolution 2139 and others. We led an international fight against cluster munitions, yet we have seen them used in Syria and Yemen.

With a staggering 5.3 million children in need of assistance across Syria, Save the Children and other agencies have warned that hundreds of thousands of people will be displaced in this initial offensive, piling pressure on an already overstretched humanitarian response. This has been echoed by the UN Secretary General and many of the humanitarian agencies responding to 3.9 million people already living in and around Idlib, with many of the population having fled places such as eastern Ghouta with almost nothing.

I know that the Minister takes these issues very seriously, and he has already set out a number of the steps that the UK Government are taking, but could he answer a few questions? Is he tracking, and will he publish details of, air attacks on civilians from wherever they come? What UK military support could be used to support the maintenance of humanitarian corridors, or to prevent the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and the use of chemical weapons? What will be the consequences for Assad, Putin and other belligerents if these violations of international humanitarian law continue, whether through the use of chemical weapons, barrel bombs or cluster munitions, all of which are equally wrong? What assessment has the Minister made of the potential for such attacks to be carried out? What sanctions have been issued against individual Russians and others who command responsibility for operations in Syria? Will the Minister say a little more about his discussions with the Turkish Government? What discussions have there been about the permissions for NGOs to operate in Turkish-held areas? Many are not registered in Turkey and may need assistance to be able to carry out operations in those areas with one of our allies.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. These are incredibly serious issues. I hope that the whole House and the country will be looking at them very closely.

[Alistair Burt]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and, of course, to others who take a very close interest in this situation. I can assure him that there is no shortage of efforts by the United Kingdom Government on this matter, whether here, in capitals abroad or at the UN.

The hon. Gentleman accurately describes the situation, which has become desperately familiar, regarding the conduct of events in Syria, where civilian populations have been put at risk. We estimate that the Idlib region now has some 3 million inhabitants, many of whom have been displaced from other parts of Syria. The number of extremist fighters is reckoned to be quite small—perhaps 15,000, with maybe a further 25,000 to 35,000 opposition fighters—and that number is dwarfed by the number of people in Idlib itself. As our excellent permanent representative said at the UN last week, there are more babies in Idlib than there are terrorists. That is why we need to concentrate our efforts on humanitarian relief and assistance, and to try to find a negotiated way out of the situation.

To answer the hon. Gentleman’s questions, I am not sure it is technically possible to track every air strike. Certainly we know when they have happened, but I am not sure how we would be able to find out from where they are being directed or anything like that. The obvious nature of the air strikes is very clear: they are from the Russian and the Syrian regimes. No one else is up in the air, so we all know where they are coming from.

The UN is actively considering any measure that might assist civilians. If there are corridors, there are questions to be asked about such things as how they would be made secure and policed, and we will give every consideration to that. No suggestion has been made for any military intervention in relation to that. If it were to be done with United Kingdom involvement, that would be a military intervention on Syrian soil, which would have obvious consequences. That has not yet been contemplated.

In terms of consequences and accountability, sanctions are already in place against Russian entities and that will continue to be the case. Last week at the Security Council, the permanent representative read through details of the units of the Syrian army that were involved in the Idlib operation, together with the names of their commanders, and made it very clear that accountability would follow. I think that that was a bold and necessary step. [Official Report, 12 September 2018, Vol. 646, c. 4MC.]

On the hon. Gentleman’s question about the potential of chemical warfare, the truth is, of course, that we have seen it elsewhere. The permanent representative spoke about the failure to deal with chemical weapons usage, saying last week:

“As of March 2018, the OPCW”—

the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons—

“fact finding mission had confirmed 13 cases of likely chemical weapons use in Syria since it was established in 2014. And in terms of allegations, the fact finding mission have recorded at least 390 allegations. After more than four years of work by the declaration assessment team, the OPCW still is unable to verify that the Syrian declaration is accurate.”

She continued:

“And we’ve heard many times that there are ‘gaps, inconsistencies and discrepancies’ in Syria’s account of its declaration under the CWC.”

We can be fairly clear that those weapons still exist and are available in Syria. Of course, we have seen instances when conventional military action has been followed towards the end by chemical weapons usage. We have made it very clear through the UN and partners that appropriate action would be taken if that were the case. We are all also aware of disinformation campaigns being launched to say that such a chemical weapons attack is being prepared by other sources. There is no credibility to those accounts, they will not be used as a smokescreen should chemical weapons be used, and people will be properly held accountable.