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Middle East and Afghanistan

My Lords, we are all very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, for setting out how the Government see the situation in the Middle East and Afghanistan. However, it may not be entirely the way the rest of us now see it. It is, as the Minister says, one of great danger. He speaks of ““a critical juncture””, which is, indeed, the point we have reached. Iraq is, again in the Minister’s words, ““riven by violence””. The situation is fast-changing and the world is looking for new approaches. The question now is whether we the British, our Government and our allies, have the resilience to offer that new approach. Frankly, there is widespread feeling in this country that our foreign policy has begun to lose its way. As I said in the debate on the gracious Speech and now reaffirm, the direction and purpose of our national policy in this dangerous world now seem, through no fault of the Minister, to be in limbo. The Prime Minister has called for a ““whole Middle East”” strategy and the Minister repeated that call, but what is the content of that strategy? It seems that we are condemned to wait. We must wait for the Congress of the United States, through its Iraq Study Group, chaired by James Baker III, to declare what that means. It will do so very shortly, maybe even tomorrow. Meanwhile, we wait and listen, while in Iraq that brave claim of ““mission accomplished”” has, as everyone now recognises, become ““mission in chaos””. That is unsatisfactory. The Prime Minister has given evidence to this congressional inquiry by videolink. It is worrying that our own Parliament should apparently be barred, for the moment, from asking the same questions. No one wants in any way to disturb or undermine the bravery and courage of our troops, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else, but questions need to be asked and issues need to be examined. It is interesting that the Congress of the United States apparently feels ready to do that, so why don’t we? The time has come for bold, independent and creative thinking about the next steps in the Middle East—we all know that. Our allies and friends, with whom, together, we can make the biggest contribution, should be not just the great American republic, much as we admire America, and not just our European neighbours, but also our true and real friends in the Commonwealth and Asia. There power and influence are growing—this seems not to be recognised as it should be—while, sadly, pax Americana slithers into tragic decline. If that sounds like a party preposition or deliberate criticism from the Opposition, let me say that I am very much fortified in these views by, for example, the recent speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon. The other day in Cardiff, he said that, "““the recreation of British foreign policy is no exaggeration of our need. Worst of all, the worldwide stock of sympathy and good will towards the United States has largely disappeared—along with earlier longstanding respect for the wisdom of British policy towards the problems of the Middle East—which had once prevailed almost throughout that region””." I may not share even my noble and learned friend’s complete faith in the capacity of the united European Union to solve all these problems, but I know that when someone like my noble and learned friend Lord Howe—one of our most thoughtful Foreign Secretaries of modern times—speaks like that, it really is time even for the Prime Minister and his colleagues to stop, listen and think about changing course. In a way, the elements of this ““whole Middle East”” strategy, which we are all searching for, are becoming easier to set out as the situation worsens—I shall try to do so in a moment—although it is very far from easy to take forward. What are they? First, a federal Iraq, with a carefully phased withdrawal of foreign troops, including the American armoured brigades, is, of course, something that people want. Perhaps it should begin next year—perhaps the Iraq Survey Group will recommend it and it will take place province by province—in the hope that there will be an Iraqi Government and authority strong enough to replace it. We should hang on to that concept because a united Iraq remains totally in the interests of all the neighbouring powers and not just the western ones—not just the United States and Britain but Turkey, Iran, Syria and Jordan. Indeed, that is why we have to bring those countries together with ourselves. Frankly—this needs to be said—that will not be done by threats. I heard the words of the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, and I heard the Prime Minister the other day, and it seems to me that the tone is wrong. When we are not in a strong position or are not the victors—there has been no victory—we will not get these countries to co-operate unless it is done in the proper way. That is the first requirement of the new whole-strategy. Secondly, obviously we want a fully independent Palestine with—I know that this is a long shot—world-backed security guarantees as far as possible for the Israeli people. My impression is that an increasing number of people in Israel see that this is the only future, even if some people in Washington do not yet see that. Perhaps there will be a change, and that is the ray of light to which the Minister referred. Thirdly, there has to be some kind of nuclear bargain which includes letting Iran have its civil nuclear power, which it is well on the way to getting, and faces the difficult issue of persuading Israel—again, in exchange for guarantees—to give up its nuclear weapons and Iran to hold back from its drive for full nuclear military weaponry. It may be that here, too, new thinking is required and that the proposals for building on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty with a concept of an international nuclear fuel bank—an idea being developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, which I visited the other day—are the way forward. I do not know, but certainly new thinking is required, which the UN and the IAEA seem to recognise. Iran really wants the respect that it feels should be accorded to a major regional power. It has a common interest, along with the rest of us, in wanting Iraq to stay in one piece. So does Syria, whose current regime also, understandably, wants some guarantee of its own continued existence. As we all know, it operates through a minority inside Syria. That is all right, but unfortunately Syria also wants to re-establish its dominance of Lebanon. The noble Lord did not mention that, but I fear that that is where the whole idea of a grand bargain or a successful regional conference could begin to unravel, because that dominance is the one thing that Syria cannot have. At the moment it is straining every sinew to disrupt Lebanon. I do not know whether it was implicated in the latest assassination, the murder of Pierre Gemayel—none of us knows the murky reality behind that—but Syria is at the moment organising ersatz rallies with heavy payments to rent-a-crowd, flag-waving attendees, largely imported by bus every day from Syria. The ever-gullible BBC duly reports those gatherings as bigger and livelier than that of the quiet Christian crowds the other day at Gemayel’s funeral—hardly surprising given that it was a funeral. I raise that because it is in little Lebanon that all the attempts to bring the Middle East nations to their common senses and achieve some unity of approach could fail; that could be the spark. As someone said the other day, if it is possible to compare a country to a canary in a mineshaft, that is it. We see all the signs of a possibly far greater conflagration throughout the area, with several civil wars breaking out at once. If Hezbollah is allowed to satisfy its power lust through street violence and demonstrations and to extend the sway of its paymasters, Iran and Syria, then stability, sanity and justice will have lost out in the Middle East and every remaining nation will be directly threatened, from Jordan to Saudi Arabia and from the Gulf states to Egypt. That is why we need more than rhetoric to back the Siniora Government, whom the Minister mentioned. That should come not just from the West but also from the new great powers, Russia, India, China and Japan. There is everything to be said for American policy taking a back seat in these matters, which is why we must be very careful about poking at Russia with constant criticism, tempting as it is with all the funny goings-on about which we have been reading in London and the talk of spying. I urge those who would listen that we must not allow that to dominate our thinking about our relations with Russia. Mr Putin is not an enemy of the West. A responsible Russia is an essential part of the equation in stopping the whole Middle East region from slipping into anarchy. We have to keep that in mind. I have said very little about the other aspect of the debate, Afghanistan. At the end of the debate my noble friend Lady Rawlings will have many more detailed observations to make on the challenges there. Suffice it to note that I believe that things in Afghanistan are probably not nearly as bad as the media tell us. We also have to remember that Afghanistan is a collection of tribes rather than a nation, as it always has been. Anyone who reads the first five pages of any book on Afghanistan, from Lord Roberts onwards down the decades, will know that perfectly well. A choice must be made by the outside powers, including NATO, either to deploy an infinitely greater military and politically intricate effort than anything we have seen so far, including skills to deal with the tribes, as well as the ceaseless incursions from Pakistan and the support of the Pashtun. Incidentally, we used to have those skills but we seem to have lost them. It is either that, a much bigger commitment, or a military exit. There is no middle solution and we know that perfectly well. Like the Russians before us, and our forefathers, we all know that perfectly well and have painfully discovered it. There must now be that degree of reality. We are coming to a critical juncture in our relations with the rest of the world. I have my own solutions on choosing allies and friends in the days ahead, and how to radically reduce our dependence on the dangerous Middle East for oil and energy, but I shall not weary the House with those now; we can debate them another time. We all know perfectly well that the present policies have failed and that new dynamism and imaginative vigour are required in our approach to the eternally complex Middle East and its neighbours if the present slide to worse chaos is to be checked. Of that vigour and imagination I see very little sign in Her Majesty’s Government.