Yemen

Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

As we have heard, the conflict in Yemen has sometimes been labelled a forgotten conflict. I want to pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who mentioned earlier that it has not been forgotten in this House. I also want to pay tribute to the hon. Members for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) for their excellent contributions to the debate, which I have thoroughly enjoyed. It has given all of us here in Parliament a chance to keep the issue at the forefront of the public debate and to remember those killed and injured as a result of the ongoing violence and those who are starving or stricken with illness as a result of the breakdown of civil society.

We must also remember the UK’s central role in the middle east, and in particular in this conflict. It is our moral and civic duty—and also in our best pragmatic, strategic self-interest—to do all we can to end the conflict and bring peace to Yemen. I think that there is consensus across the Chamber that that is what must happen, first and foremost because the humanitarian suffering in the country has now reached a horrifying tipping point.

I was grateful this week to have the opportunity to host a presentation by a range of aid organisations, setting out the scale and scope of the human suffering we are now seeing in the Yemeni population. We were warned by Oxfam, Christian Aid and the Yemen Safe Passage Group that the dangers of famine in the country are now very real indeed.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend mentioned Oxfam. I have been contacted by a number of constituents who are supporting Oxfam’s Red Line for Yemen campaign. Will she join me in welcoming the campaign and support its call for the Government to uphold the spirit of the arms trade treaty and end any illegal arms sales that could be used to cause further suffering in Yemen?

[Ms Ahmed-Sheikh]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising awareness of that campaign, and I hope that many more people will now sign up to it.

Even before this conflict, Yemen was reliant on imports for between 90% and 95% of its food. By October 2016, the combined effect of a blockade of ports by coalition forces and severe damage to roads and port facilities meant that imported food covered only 40% of demand.

[Graham Jones]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Ahmed-Sheikh]

Ordinarily I would give way, but the hon. Gentleman had 15 minutes to make his speech and I want to make sure that the Minister has time to answer the important questions we have all posed. Please forgive me.

Oxfam has stated that, if the trend of plunging food imports continues unabated, food imports will come to a complete halt in four months’ time. Adding to the spiralling economic problems now facing the country—the central bank has stopped salary payments to Government employees, pension payments to the elderly and welfare payments to the vulnerable—a human tragedy on an almost epic scale is upon us. The estimate of the experts is that, by April or May 2017, there is a high likelihood of a “cataclysmic” famine that would condemn millions to suffering and death.

It is important that we bear in mind that those civilian victims are not a by-product of the conflict. They are the targets of military action, with the lack of food being used as a weapon of war. We have a moral responsibility to our fellow human beings to act now to address this crisis, which is why I welcome the work of aid organisations in Yemen. They have ensured, as best as they possibly can, that aid is delivered to those who need it now. I recognise that the UK Government have contributed more than £100 million-worth of aid to the country, and the Scottish Government have donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s ongoing Yemen crisis appeal, but our charity alone will not avert this tragedy.

What the people of Yemen need now, as much as they need food, is international leadership. I welcome the efforts of the outgoing US Secretary of State, who tried to broker a ceasefire deal at the end of last year, but we know that the incoming Trump Administration are unlikely to take the same view of relations in the region. I fear that the policies of the new White House Administration will instigate a worrying degree of further instability in the middle east, a point also made by the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond).

[Keith Vaz]

Because of the vacuum that has been created—obviously, with a new Administration—Britain holds the pen, as we are told, at the Security Council. There is nothing to stop us hosting a conference that tries to bring all sides together or tabling a resolution, because it will take several months for the new American Administration to get into the right position. Of course, they might take a different view from the Obama Administration.

[Ms Ahmed-Sheikh]

The right hon. Gentleman demonstrates how we can show international leadership on this issue. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), has already been very active in this area, but we need to build on his efforts. We should do so not just because of the humanitarian crisis but because it also makes strategic sense in helping to combat the bastions of al-Qaeda terrorism on the gulf of Aden while de-escalating the tensions caused by what the Foreign Secretary called the “proxy war” between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Before we take on the role of peace broker, we have to face up to our role in the conflict now. If Saudi Arabia and Iran are, in the Foreign Secretary’s words, the “puppeteers” in the conflict, the UK has often acted as the quartermaster. That must end now. The UK has exported £3.3 billion of military equipment to Saudi Arabia since 2015. If we are to be an honest, impartial broker in the conflict, the Government must immediately suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia and facilitate a full, independent, UN-led inquiry into Saudi Arabia’s conduct in the war in Yemen. That has to happen because we now know that, after consistently failing to live up to our moral and legal responsibilities on the use of the now-banned cluster munitions manufactured in the UK and exported to Saudi Arabia, the current approach to arms sales has failed in the case of Yemen. The Yemeni people are the innocent victims.

The Government must show the same leadership shown by the Netherlands and Germany in suspending licences for arms exports to Saudi Arabia. More specifically, at the end of last year the US Government, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) has already said, banned the sale of guided munitions kits to Saudi Arabia. Will the Minister clarify whether the UK Government have granted export licences to Saudi Arabia for any similar weapons manufactured here in the UK? Would the Government be happy to do so in the future? In addition, rather than relying on the Saudis to dispose of the weapons themselves, Ministers should demand that they are turned over to our own personnel for disposal. As signatories to the cluster munitions convention, are we not legally obliged to do everything we can to prevent their use? Decommissioning them ourselves would serve that responsibility, so will Ministers pledge to do so today?

To be the honest broker that the region so desperately needs, we need to be clear about the involvement of UK forces on the ground in Saudi Arabia. When it published its report in September, the Foreign Affairs Committee recommended that the UK Government answer the following questions:

“How many UK personnel are assisting the Saudi Arabian armed forces and in what roles, including BAE Systems employees;

What is the extent of the involvement of each group of UK personnel with the Saudis operations in Yemen; and

How are UK personnel advising the Saudi Arabian armed forces on IHL and what level of understanding do they have of the coalition’s regard for IHL in its operations in Yemen.”

Those answers should also be forthcoming now.

This Government have an opportunity: to show international leadership; to use our power and influence in the middle east to stop violence, not to sell more weapons; and to end the suffering of millions of Yemeni men, women and children. In order to do that, the Government must come clean, with this House and with the country, about our involvement to date and the actions they have taken to put things right. Then, the Government can begin to play their part in consigning this forgotten conflict to history, where it belongs.