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Iraq and the wider Middle East

The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) has made an interesting contribution about the situation in Afghanistan, and I urge the House to ponder his words. I intend to confine my remarks to Iraq. Like him, I opposed the invasion, and I voted against it. We cannot address the problems faced by Iraq today by saying that we should not have started as we did. All of us, including those of us who opposed the invasion of Iraq, have a responsibility to address the current situation and consider how best to improve matters. At last there is consensus that the situation in Iraq is horrendous. Throughout last year we were told that the coalition was winning—it was just that we were winning more slowly than expected. Earlier this month, President Bush finally made a public acknowledgement that the situation in Iraq was unacceptable, and that existing policies had failed. More than 2,600 coalition troops have been killed in hostilities since the end of the war, and 130 British personnel have lost their lives. In addition, many soldiers have been injured, some very seriously. A colossal number of civilians have been killed; there was a discussion of that during the speech by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. Estimates of the number of civilians killed in the violence that has taken place since the war range from 19,500 to 70,000. The Leader of the Opposition and the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) both accept last week’s estimate by the UN that more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the past year alone. Basic utilities in Iraq are still unavailable or unreliable, and prospects for sustained improvement are poor while the security situation remains dire. Fear has led hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to flee their homes, and they have gone to other parts of the country or left it altogether. Aid workers warn of a crisis for refugees who have left Iraq as conditions deteriorate. Two weeks ago today, having finally acknowledged that current policies are not working, President Bush announced the new Iraq strategy in his address to the nation. Extra US troops are being sent to work with the Iraqi army and police brigades, and are to be deployed in Baghdad. President Bush advised that they were to clear, secure and hold neighbourhoods. Extra troops will be sent to Anbar province, too. In parallel, he announced that the US would hold the Iraqi Government to meeting certain benchmarks on security, sharing oil revenues, reconstruction, constitutional change procedures, provincial elections and the reform of de-Ba’athification laws. That requirement was echoed in even starker terms by Condoleezza Rice. If events do not take a positive course, his words may prove significant in determining the US’s next steps. The new policy of the US Administration aims to achieve a reduction in violence, and to bring stability and security and an improvement in the Iraqi people’s quality of life. We all support those objectives and would like them to be achieved. The Prime Minister signalled his support for the new US policy, but what happens if the new policy is not a success and the current violence continues? The situation in Iraq deteriorated for three and a half years before there was official recognition that the previous policies were not working. We cannot allow such a drift in policy to happen again. Do the Government have any benchmarks against which to judge the success of the new strategy, and if so, what time scale will be used? Of course, we cannot isolate ourselves from the effects of US policy. It has been suggested that the new policy will result in a more difficult situation for UK forces in the southern provinces. What is the Government’s assessment of the impact that the new US policy will have on the situation in those provinces? The new policy put forward by President Bush was not the only option available. Members will be aware of the conclusions of the Iraq Study Group; indeed, a considerable number of right hon. and hon. Members have referred to it. The group called for a change in the primary mission of US forces in Iraq, and for new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts, most notably with Iran and Syria. President Bush flatly rejected the recommendation to engage with Iran and Syria. We have to ask whether that was wise, or whether it would have been beneficial for the leaderships of all countries in the region to work towards common objectives. We must consider, too, whether there could be a role for the UK Government, as we have not placed ourselves in quite as tight a corner as the US Administration have. It is certainly not helpful that some militias in Iraq view themselves as implicitly supported by the Iranian regime. The UK must be prepared to play a distinctive role in resolving the problem, and in preparing for a situation in which there are no US or UK forces in Iraq. The Baker report stated boldly that the US would not be able to achieve its goals in the middle east unless the US dealt directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict. I turn to the conditions faced by our armed forces personnel serving in Iraq and elsewhere—an issue that I have raised on a number of occasions in the House in recent years. My concerns about the way in which we treat our forces stem from conversations that I have had in the Edinburgh area with serving soldiers and their families. I have on previous occasions raised in the Chamber cases of soldiers having to go to Edinburgh’s shops to get decent footwear to take to Iraq. I am also deeply concerned by the fact that, on occasion, soldiers will return from Iraq only to be sent back within an unacceptably short time. In my view, it is regrettable that a soldier who has served in Iraq should have to go back at all. The lack of time between tours of duty is disturbing. Three years ago, I drew attention to the fact that some members of the Royal Scots Regiment had been away from home for four Christmases in a row. Soldiers require a lengthy period in which to recover, spend time with their families and retrain.