Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Steve Barclay Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alexander]

I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman’s point about former Prime Minister Maliki. I had the opportunity to speak to President Barzani of the Kurdistan Regional Government a matter of weeks ago by video conference. He could not have been clearer about the destructive effect of the sectarian approach that was taken by the Maliki Government, both in corrupting the chain of command in the Iraqi army and destabilising the politics of the country. Our friends and colleagues in the United States were entirely right in holding out the need for Maliki to go, given the profound damage that he did to the fabric of society and the process of governance in Iraq. The challenge, however, is not to look backwards, but to look forwards to see whether the new Prime Minister is in a position to make the progress that many of us wish Maliki had been able to make.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) is making, and with which many of us agree, is that the Government and the Opposition seem to have an unachievable aim. It is slightly ironic that we are offering devo-max after 300 years of union, while at the same time we think there can be a unified Iraq, even though it has a Kurdish state that has its own Prime Minister, President and armed forces; the Saudis are not content to allow Iran to dominate the country; and the Iranians do not want 10 million barrels of oil a day to be pumped from a unified Iraq. That seems to be an unrealistic aim on the basis of which to have UK air strikes.

[Mr Alexander]

It ill behoves the hon. Gentleman to suggest that there is any meaningful comparison between what we are witnessing in Scotland and what is taking place in Iraq. When he has had the opportunity to reflect on the wisdom and sense of the remarks that he has made, I hope he will think again. There are unique and specific challenges facing Iraq that are wholly different from those we are facing in the United Kingdom. They reflect the particular circumstances of that country and the challenges that it faces today. If his point is that we need to find a way for a more inclusive approach to be taken to the politics within Iraq, I think we can agree with each other. I am not sure that I can go much further than that.

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[Sir Menzies Campbell]

I must make some progress, if my hon. Friend will excuse me.

The second speech by which I was considerably influenced was that of the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border, who talked in realistic terms about resources, in particular the resources available to the Foreign Office. I would like to say a few words about the resources available to the three security services, which as it happens are giving evidence to the Intelligence and Security Committee today.

If the threat is increasing and if the analysis is that there is a greater risk of terrorist activity in this country as a result of returning jihadists, one way to begin to seek to meet that threat is by ensuring that those who are on the front line of seeking to disturb or prevent such actions from taking place are properly resourced. That means investing money—and, yes, it means taking money away from other things. We should never forget that the primary duty of any Government is the defence and the security of their own citizens.

[Stephen Barclay]

Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman suggesting that we should perhaps take money from DFID’s budget, which is often justified in terms of soft power? Last year, for example, it spent £4 million on a Spice Girl-style band in Ethiopia. Should we not be spending that sort of funding on serious diplomatic and intelligence capability?

[Sir Menzies Campbell]

I am something of a fan of the Spice Girls myself.

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[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am most grateful—and my head will not get through the double-doors if my hon. Friend carries on like that.

From Mosul to Raqqa, ISIL, at its root, has filled a void, both literally, in terms of governance, and philosophically, in terms of leadership. Here, it has thrived, and while it is our indisputable enemy—a primary security threat to our interests at home and abroad, as we have heard from many Members—a narrow focus on the tactical military solutions for defeating ISIL ignores the fact that the inherent problem is, at its heart, strategic.

We have heard a lot about the need for an inclusive political settlement in Iraq, but what does this really look like? We have been there before. During the Petraeus surge in 2007 we successfully mobilized Sunni tribes to purge al-Qaeda from their midst, but then we abandoned them to Nouri al-Malaki’s extreme sectarianism. How can we support Prime Minister Abadi to make things different this time around? While it is critical that “power sharing” no longer means the carving up of Government ministries into de facto sectarian fiefdoms, as happened under Maliki, or the centralisation of control in Baghdad—again, as Malaki did—ultimately the structure of governance has to give the Sunni tribes, the people on the ground, a personal investment in how they live. The new Cabinet has six new Sunni Ministers—possibly seven, including the Defence Minister—but do they truly represent wider constituencies of Sunnis? We must be mindful that the same faces keep reappearing.

It was positive to hear last night’s announcement of the formation of national guard units that will allow communities to secure their local areas. Such functional federalism and empowerment will be vital in reducing the lure of ISIL. Prime Minister Abadi must go further, however. He must consider having greater local autonomy and a fair political settlement that addresses the constitutional issues that have plagued Iraq since 2005. He must consider revenue sharing, a hydrocarbon law and a referendum on the disputed territories—including, of course, Kirkuk. Given former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s legacy, restoring trust will not be easy or quick, but if Prime Minister Abadi can bring about a genuinely inclusive political settlement with the Kurds and the Sunnis, half the battle will already have been won. Without such a settlement, however, a unified Iraq will be an impossibility.

We must also recognize that ISIL cannot be defeated in Iraq alone. Syria, the regional safe haven for ISIL over the past three years, is the centre of gravity in this conflict, and it is there that a new push for peace is vital. Having said that, there are ways to do that and ways not to do it, and I can assure the House that aligning with Assad is most certainly not the way to do it. As in Iraq, the solution will be a new inclusive Government who ultimately reduce the appeal of Sunni extremism and who protect minorities, including the Alawites, the Kurds and the Christians of Syria.

To achieve that, the regional actors—including, dare I say it, Iran—must take the lead. We are all aware of the roles that different middle eastern countries have played in directly fuelling conflicts in the region, but the threat posed by ISIL and the unprecedented extent of shared interests between once-mortal enemies can only reinforce the need for the region to move beyond the zero-sum politics that have characterised it for so long. The motivations and limitations of the regional actors will no doubt determine the role that they play in the push-back against this poisonous ideology, but play a role they must. That is not to say that we should not be front and centre in helping them along. Undoubtedly the region looks to us, and to the United States, for leadership and delivery. Twenty years on, John Major is still held in the highest esteem by the Shi’a community and the Kurds for creating the safe haven policy and the no-fly zones.

Crucially, we must act with realism and humility. We must do all we can to support the delicate diplomacy needed to bring in regional partners without alienating others, and to facilitate Iranian and Saudi co-operation with a nuanced understanding of the dynamics and stakes involved.

[Stephen Barclay]

Does my hon. Friend agree that such leverage could be used in some of the existing disputes between the Baghdad Government and the Kurds?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the things that Iran could bring to bear on Prime Minister Abadi’s Government in Baghdad is the resolution of such issues. The Kurds have not had their budgets since January, and they are struggling to keep their economy going while running the peshmerga campaign against ISIL. That situation could be resolved immediately. We should be playing a part by saying to Iran, “If your intentions are good and you want to behave differently, and if you want us to loosen the sanctions, show us your good intentions in Iraq and in Syria. Then maybe we will be able to take things further with you.”

There will be everything to play for, and there must be co-operation between these regional powers. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) mentioned our NATO allies. Turkey plays a major role in the region, as do partners such as Jordan. I commend His Majesty the King of Jordan for his attempts to bring all the parties together. He did that at the NATO conference as well. Foreign policy is often represented as a choice between instant reaction and quiet passivity, but that is a false dichotomy. We will always act on a spectrum as the environment evolves.

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[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

In his remarks to the House on Monday, the Prime Minister spoke of the opportunity offered by the new Government in Baghdad. There is a certain tension between that remark and those of the Foreign Secretary when he spoke of taking stronger action on the financing of Islamic State. IS has been in place for three years and is now largely self-financing. It has got money from Mosul, where it had a significant windfall, and it controls areas of Syria. On the issue of its financing, the horse has bolted.

There is urgency with the arrival of the new Government, and I hope that one response will be for the Foreign Secretary to visit them personally in Baghdad. I hope that he will also go to Kurdistan, where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) correctly identified, the UK Government have leverage, not least because of the record of Sir John Major and the 1991 no-fly zones.

What has come out of contributions from all parts of the House today is a desire for greater clarity about the UK Government’s objectives. On Syria, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) queried what our objective was in relation to Assad—what do we see replacing him, and how is that consistent with the Iranian view? What will the territory look like once Assad has gone? Likewise, it seems a step beyond a long shot for us to expect a unified Iraq, given the Sunni legacy concerns about Baghdad and the fact that the Kurdish state now has a Prime Minister, a President, its own armed forces, its own legitimate demands and its people dying in the field. I would be keen to see the more realistic objective of a federal structure set.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) said, the resources need to be in place for intelligence and a diplomatic capability, but the political masters also need to listen that intelligence. The sense is often that advice from those at the sharp end is not taken on board.

Finally, we need to be clearer in our expectations. Before we commit UK military resource, we should challenge the Sunni Gulf states that we have supplied arms to and that have deep pockets. It will help us address the issue of radicalisation in the UK if the fight against odious regimes is led by fellow Sunnis rather than western intervention.