Aleppo/Syria: International Action

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

I would like to start with a quote from a constituent’s letter. Dr Amer Masri left Damascus a few years ago and now works as a researcher in Edinburgh. He says:

“It is a shame for the free world to see the massacres and mass executions happening to the civilians that are trying to flee Aleppo right now and no action is being taken.

I am very, very disappointed and heartbroken that the free world has left civilians who chanted the values the west believes in like freedom, democracy and dignity, and they are left starving and facing the Russian, Iranian and Assad regime brutality alone. We are left alone.

I urge the UK not to bomb Syria but we need aid drops. It is not too late. There are besieged areas in Damascus suburbs, besieged areas all over Syria. Use these planes to create safe corridors to protect the civilians—not to bomb them.”

I cannot add to the many comments that have been made on both sides of the House that sum up the despair and frustration that people in this country and others feel about the situation in Aleppo. However, I want to reflect on the fact that it is just over a year since we had a vote in this House on whether to join military action in Syria. Those of us on the SNP Benches opposed that motion, yet we were assured that if we voted to join that military action, we would cut off the head of ISIS, provide air support for 70,000 ground troops and be part of co-ordinated military action that would lead to and enhance a political solution. It is now terrifyingly obvious that none of those things has come to pass.

Another thing suggested was that joining that military action would give this country and this Government greater leverage in trying to influence events as they unfolded in Syria. It seems terrifyingly obvious that that is not the case either, and I am sure that there are many in this House, and many throughout the country watching their television screens, whose main feeling is one of frustration at the apparent impotence of our Government when it comes to getting involved and doing anything.

I think that some people—perhaps not those sitting on the Government Front Bench, but certainly some people in the Foreign Office—need to go on an assertiveness training course. They need to speak a lot more loudly and more emphatically than they have thus far. I would like to see this country leading, not following; not being a bystander watching the discussions of others, but getting involved, getting our hands dirty and trying to sort the problem out. After all, if this problem was not caused by France and our own country, whose problem is it? We have a responsibility to the world to show leadership, and I hope very much that we will do that.

Along with many in this House, I am very angry at, and opposed to, the actions that Russia has taken militarily in recent months. However, I would say this to the House: the way forward is not going to be to demonise President Putin, to try to move to a new cold war or to try to pretend that Russia does not have legitimate interests in the region. I would like to see firm but emphatic engagement with the Russian authorities and an insistence from this Government that they need to be part of the equation and part of the plan.

We should call Russia to account and insist that humanitarian aid is prioritised and that corridors are allowed so that it can be delivered. We should stand up and be seen to be doing that. Let us get on the planes. Let us have the shuttle diplomacy. Let us be seen to speak out for the people of this country, to lead international opinion and to put pressure on the Russians and others who are trying to make a bad situation worse.

We also need to call out the Turkish Government on their actions in this affair, because they have been none too helpful. Turkey’s support for the al-Nusra front has created a fig leaf of credibility for the Russian military’s excuse that the people of eastern Aleppo are somehow in a terrorist enclave that needs to be liquidated. That is unhelpful, as is the hostility of the Turkish Government to pretty much any sentiment expressed by the Kurdish population in the region.

So, let us take action now to deliver the humanitarian aid, to make sure there is a ceasefire that can be policed and, most of all, to make sure that war crimes, if they have been committed, will be recorded and that those responsible will be brought to book in the future.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

rose—