---

Iraq and the wider Middle East

This has been an important and poignant debate, not least because of the passionate speech that we have just listened to. However, I must say that the debate should not have been held on a motion to adjourn. The issue it addresses is crucial, and the Government should table a motion on it explaining their policy and pointing a way forward, for all parties and Members to take a position on. We will undoubtedly return to this issue in the near future, and I hope that when we do it will not be in an Adjournment debate, but that the issue will be treated with the utter seriousness that it deserves. There has been a good deal of comment on the most recent twist in US policy, but the tragedy for Iraq in respect of the latest US troop surge is that extra troops are no answer to a crisis whose solution is political but for which there is currently no political solution in sight. That policy will certainly greatly increase American casualties, and there will be even more Iraqi civilian casualties, especially if Sadr city is barricaded off, but there is no reason to believe that it will fare any better than the last attempt to shore up authority in Baghdad—““Operation Forward Together””—which collapsed bloodily last year because extra troops did not make any difference. What is particularly horrifying about the new policy is that it is less about securing any realistic, positive, long-term solution than it is about avoiding the perceived humiliation of the Baker-Hamilton, Iraq Study Group proposals—and it is also, I suspect, about the desperate hope in the mind of President Bush of being able to hand on to the next President the final ignominy of defeat and withdrawal. Once again, we seem to be following at least the spirit of President Bush’s line—judging by the pro-war foreign policy speech that the Prime Minister gave aboard HMS Albion in Plymouth a fortnight ago. I must say that one cannot have it both ways by making overtly bellicose speeches in support of an embattled US President while expecting to be treated seriously in trying to fulfil the role of peacemaker by kick-starting the long-suffering middle east peace plan. It is not, however, only the military strategy that is misconceived. There are also questions to be asked about the infrastructure. Some people, including Kofi Annan recently, have said that the fundamentals of life, such as water, electricity, health, education and domestic security, are incomparably worse now than they were under Saddam Hussein. It is also immensely important and significant that—my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) rightly drew attention to this—a new draft law is about to be pushed through the fledgling Iraqi Parliament by the United States that will set up contracts to allow major US and British oil companies to extract substantial parts of the oil profits for a period of up to 30 years. No other middle eastern producer-country has ever offered such hugely lucrative concessions to the big oil companies. OPEC—the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries—has, of course, always run its oil business on the basis of there being tightly controlled state companies. Only Iraq in its current dire situation, with US troops propping up its Government—without them the Government would not survive—lacks the bargaining capacity to be able to resist. If this new draft law is conceded by the Iraqis under the intense pressure that is being put on them, it will lock the country into a degree of weakness and dependence for decades ahead. The neo cons may have lost the war, but my goodness, they are still negotiating to win the biggest chunk of the peace, when and if it ever comes.