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Iraq and the wider Middle East

A year ago, I called for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. I did so because I believed that we had achieved everything that we positively could there. We had already been there for almost three years and therefore—with respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell)—we could not be accused of cutting and running, and things were going to get worse. Now, after almost four years, I have to say that nothing has happened to make me change that view. What I described then as effective civil war is now open sectarian conflict, yet the Government—I listened to the Foreign Secretary today—seem unable to comprehend the implications of the death and devastation that is Iraq today. About 34,000 Iraqi civilians have died over the past 12 months. If that level of attrition is not civil war, I do not know what is. How long will it take before the Prime Minister faces up to the realities and realises that we have no place in a civil war and that there is nothing left to be gained by the UK continuing in this tragedy? I have total admiration for what our armed forces in Iraq have, in the direst of circumstances, achieved, but we owe them more than admiration. We must now confront what we are asking them to continue to fight for and die for—130 have already given their lives—in that troubled land. We, along with the Americans, are increasingly perceived to be complicit in the deteriorating situation. That was noticeable at the time of the execution of Saddam Hussein—nothing to do with us—but the horror of that lapped against our door as well as that of the Iraqi Government. The stark fact is that Iraq has always been a flawed state—indeed, it was an artificially constructed state in the first place—and its tribal and sectarian fault lines have been held together historically only by superior and often external power. The idea that western-style democracy or, even in such an Islamic country, western force could do so was, looking at it now, naive. We are fast becoming recruiting agents for those who parade themselves as the resistance to what they call the occupation. The Foreign Secretary said, ““Ah, but we are there to fight terrorists.”” It is worth reminding the House that before we went there, there were no al-Qaeda members and no terrorists in Iraq. It is time for us to tell our troops that they have, with immense professionalism and courage, done everything that we have asked of them, and more, and that it is now time to come home. The only way to help bring long-term stability to Iraq, as the Baker-Hamilton commission identified, is to involve its neighbours—Iran and Syria, as we have heard today, but I would add Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well. Stubbornly refusing to talk to Iran and Syria or, worse still, threatening them with isolation if they do not comply with western demands is crass. History will judge harshly those world leaders who, for reasons of hubris, turn their faces against such engagement. It needs to be encouraged now—and if America will not do it, we should. What is certain is that the escape from today’s quagmire in Iraq will not to be found in repeating the Vietnam war blunders of naively counting enemy casualties and pouring in more and more troops. That, as many hon. Members have said today, can only make matters worse. I turn now to the middle east, which I have watched over many years. Today, it is like watching a dialogue of those who will not hear. Everyone is talking and no one is listening. The Iraqis and the Syrians are talking to each other—that is a good thing—but even though Syria holds the key to peace in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, the United States and the United Kingdom refuse to enter into open dialogue with her. Voices in Israel call for dialogue with Damascus, but they, too, are apparently blocked by American displeasure. The leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, moves significantly towards a de facto, if not a de jure, recognition of Israel, but no one responds. Lebanon teeters on the brink of turmoil, her Prime Minister’s credibility destroyed by the refusal of our Prime Minister and the American President to accede to his tearful pleas to stop Israel’s bombing of his country last summer. Indeed, military action has served only further to polarise opinion and has made the problem more intractable. The volatility of the whole region is higher than I can ever remember it, and it has the potential to engulf us all. I do not believe that that volatility can be reduced or solved by formula. At the moment, the situation is too grave for that; it is beyond road maps and intricate diplomatic processes. Confidence, which has been destroyed over the past months, needs to be rebuilt, and that, in my view—it may not be a particularly popular view—can be achieved only by dialogue—unthreatening dialogue, exploratory dialogue—across the board and at every level and through every available channel, and I know a bit about exploratory dialogue from my time in Northern Ireland. Behind such dialogue, certain fundamentals must be recognised. Israel has an inalienable right to live within legitimate, universally recognised and secure borders. The Palestinian people have an inalienable right to a viable and—to add to what was said by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind)—a genuinely autonomous state. That cannot happen in practice without the participation of Hamas, which forms a major part of Palestine’s political structure and, indeed, was successful in the recent democratic elections—whatever we may think about that organisation. There can be no secure Israel without agreement with Syria and without a stable Lebanon, and we cannot have a stable Lebanon without the involvement of Hezbollah, which, as I have recently witnessed, forms such a major political element of the Lebanon political structure, as well. All those elements must be engaged, their grievances and aspirations aired, and their lines in the sand identified. There must be no undeliverable preconditions to dialogue. If I learned anything in Northern Ireland, it was that undeliverable preconditions bring peace processes very quickly to an end. Of course, Israel cannot open exploratory dialogue at this time. The security and political situation prevent that. She could, however, discreetly set out her own lines in the sand. That is something that could usefully be done now. If Israel cannot talk, the Quartet can, and if the Quartet cannot talk, the British Government can. For a start, the Foreign Secretary should go to Damascus, not in the offensive, hectoring spirit of the Prime Minister’s recent envoy, but genuinely to explore how to take forward the Baker-Hamilton report on the middle east. Were the Foreign Secretary to talk to her counterpart in Syria, I have reason to believe, from the conversation I recently had with him in Damascus, that she would be pleasantly surprised.