Middle East

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) for bringing this important debate to the Chamber. I also commend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). I have just returned from a trip to Iraq and Turkey as part of my work on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the teams in both places told me how engaged he was. I believe that he will be making his fourth visit to Iraq very soon. I want to put it on the record that our ambassadors in those places are doing a tremendous job. I hope to describe in detail some of the solutions in Iraq and Syria. I, too, highlight to the House my declarations in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Britain has been deeply involved in the middle east for centuries. The region has occupied our diplomatic and cultural attention for decades. Those close links are the reason I stand here today. Britain was the haven of choice for my family when we fled Saddam in the 1970s.

Today, ISIL captures the news headlines, our nightmares and our imaginations, but it is just a symptom—a potentially fatal symptom—of a deep rift at the heart of the Muslim world. The rift has several parts at different layers and they all matter. For decades, a stricter, puritanical interpretation of Sunni Islam has proliferated across the region. Traditional and more enlightened forms have been rejected, leading to more aggression and intolerance. It has led to the spread of extremism when that interpretation has mixed with other social problems, such as unemployment, corruption and poverty, which are all too common in these countries.

The regional powers of Saudi Arabia and Iran are at a stand-off and undermine each other at every turn, their relationship poisoned by suspicion and fear. They risk tearing apart their neighbours by proxy. Syria and Iraq are vulnerable to that because of their origins as Ottoman provinces fitted together into new kingdoms by the victorious empires of the first world war.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that this is not the first time in the history of the middle east that countries have fought the genuine curse of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s interpretation of Islam, and that when the Ismaili dynasty of Egypt launched one of its great attacks on the Nejd province of Saudi Arabia in the 1800s, it was very much part of that evolution?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is a great scholar and I look forward to his contribution to this debate and, I hope, to the debate on Wednesday.

In Iraq, a Sunni king who was installed to allow the British to dominate was replaced by a Sunni dictator. In Syria, a Shi’a ruling class was created to enable the French to rule. In both instances, it resulted in bitter divisions, as political oppression added to sectarian divide. That settlement, which was maintained only by fear and force, has completely collapsed in the wars.

As we have watched Syria torn apart by the civil war and Iraq stuck in political deadlock and threatened by ISIL’s invasion, it has become clear to us that a new settlement is needed. The one that the US began in 2003 is completely gone. The Iraqi Government that the coalition set up and the army it trained are hollowed out and militias provide much of the manpower against ISIL. Iran dominates politics in Iraq today. I commend the Foreign Secretary for the work that he has done to bring Iran in from the cold.

As we fight to end the war and restore peace, we must recognise that real peace—a peace that lasts and allows people to feel safe and get on with their lives—can only come from self-government, federalism and political reform. That is the aim and it is a noble one, but challenges stand in the way. Syrians and Iraqis may want strong representative Governments, but that may not be what Iran or Saudi Arabia want. That is not what all Shi’a, or indeed all Sunni, in Iraq want, and it is not what Assad and the Shi’a minority in Syria may want. Why? Because all they have ever known is rule by the strongest. Those who are not on top are under the thumb of whoever is on top. People see a protracted fight as preferable to letting down their guard in a compromise that they might not survive. That lesson has been scarred into the region by systematic killing right from the death throes of the Ottoman empire to the murderous regimes of Saddam Hussein and Hafiz and Bashar al-Assad. However, we are not passive on this matter, and it was made clear to me in Iraq last week that we can influence Baghdad—indeed, those who agree with us are crying out for more influence in Baghdad.