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Horn of Africa

One of the great benefits of the Westminster Hall forum is that one can come and listen to colleagues who know an awful lot about a subject either because they themselves have visited a particular country or because they have populations in their constituency who are from the country that they are talking about and they have worked with those populations, so that over a period of time they have really begun to understand the issues affecting that country. Consequently it is great for Front Benchers to be able to listen to that experience and knowledge. It is particularly good that the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) has brought this issue to the attention of colleagues today. That is because, as we think about Yemen this week with the conference on the country taking place in London, we should be worried about other areas where there is a potential for the "virus" that the hon. Gentleman described to take hold, so that those areas become a breeding ground for terrorists who not only threaten the people in those areas but security across the globe. Therefore the hon. Gentleman is quite right to warn about that threat and to talk about the dangers of false Islam. However, I slightly want to play devil's advocate with him. No doubt he will be able to quote facts and figures against the sort of reading that I have done in my preparation for this debate, but I have come across the suggestion that the Islamic movements that we see in some parts of the horn of Africa are quite dynamic movements, which are changing all the time and which are not necessarily part of some sort of global jihad movement. There may well be some actors who fit that description, but equally there are many other actors who would not recognise any affiliation to some sort of global ideology in the way that the hon. Gentleman described. Indeed, quite a lot of people who are in the Islamic movement in Somalia or elsewhere in the horn of Africa are much more focused on trying to win power nationally. They are often part of a nationalist movement, involved in local disputes in their areas, and their links to al-Qaeda and that form of dangerous Islam are tenuous at best. For example, I read a little of what has been written by one of the Chatham House experts on Somalia, Roger Middleton. He has said:""Shabaab and Hizbul-Islam are nationalist movements first and foremost. The commanders are fighting to control Somalia. Their agenda is local, not global."" That is not to say that those groups may not find links to other groups elsewhere, as the hon. Gentleman has described. However, trying to understand the intricacies of this Islamic movement is important as we debate the right policies to deal with the threat that it presents.