UN Mission in Mali: Armed Forces Deployment

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

I can, and what we aim to do, through a more forward presence of our armed forces around the world, is find ourselves in a position whereby we can more easily respond to the needs of different regions where there are UK interests or where the UK simply needs to be a force for good, alongside friends and allies in the international community. This integrated review gets after exactly the problem my hon. Friend describes, and we are excited about what the opportunities in the IR mean for us to do the right thing in different parts of the world in future.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

Mali is one of the world’s poorest countries, but it seems to be the vast network of small gold mines that is attracting jihadist and other terrorist organisations there. What can be done as part of this international effort to try to get those gold mines put to use in getting the country out of poverty, rather than funding terrorism?

[James Heappey]

If I am honest, the hon. Gentleman raises a point that I have not come across in all the briefings I had before the deployment. I will of course look into that dimension, but I am not sure that those terrorist groups are motivated simply by any pecuniary advantage arising from securing the mines that he mentions. These people are ideologically opposed to any sort of religious freedom or social freedom, and I fear that their determination to disrupt and to be violent would endure irrespective of what natural assets lay beneath the earth, but I will of course go and inform myself on that point.