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Horn of Africa

I have no doubt that what the hon. Gentleman says is absolutely right. However, I just say to him that when people have looked at the Taliban in Afghanistan in much greater detail and read the comments of some of those people who have gone to Afghanistan and talked to the Taliban in all the different provinces of the country, as some of us have begun to do, the message that comes out is that the Taliban is not some sort of homogenous group, with a unified command structure, that works together with one shared aim. Instead, the message that comes out is that the Taliban is a very mixed, incredibly heterogeneous movement and I would guess that it is the same for al-Shabaab. I bow to the hon. Gentleman's greater understanding of this issue, but the fact that there may be one or two people, a group of people or a small militia going over to Yemen from Somalia does not necessarily mean that all the people who are behind that movement in Somalia subscribe to some sort of al-Qaeda network. That is the only point that I am making and I am not even sure if I am absolutely right to do so. I will be frank; I have been reading what others who have spent their lives thinking about this issue are saying. A recent report from the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point in the United States said that al-Qaeda had not found a promising base in Somalia and that, if anything, coastal Kenya had been a more fertile territory. It stated:""At one point, Al-Qaida operatives were so frustrated that they listed going after clan leaders as the second priority for jihad after expelling Western forces."" Another author concluded:""In Somalia, al-Qaeda members faced the same challenges that plague western interventions (extortion, betrayal, clan conflicts, xenophobia, a security vacuum and logistical constraints)."" So that is not to deny that we should be concerned and worried about the points that the hon. Gentleman made. All I am saying is that as it may be quite a mixed picture, we need to understand that, because if we do, we are more likely to be able to deal with the problem. As the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) said, if we engage with the groups that do not have the virus, that are not contaminated, we are much more likely to be able to build up the civic society, the coalitions and the groups that can eventually take power and prevent the people whom we jointly are concerned about from having the effects on our security that we all fear. This is always a case of trying to get a detailed understanding. My knowledge of Somalis in this country is that they have a very different approach to Islam from, say, Pakistanis, Iraqis or other Muslims whom I meet. Their main approach is the Sufi tradition, which is not exactly strict in its doctrinal beliefs, to say the least, and has a mystical orientation. It is very different from the sort of Islam that we see elsewhere. Again, it is important to understand those differences, so that we analyse the intelligence effectively for our policy. Colleagues have talked about a number of issues within the horn and rightly made it clear how those all interlock. We cannot view one dispute in isolation; they all interlink, which is one reason why the situation has been so complex over the years. Inevitably, however, we do focus on individual disputes, and one major issue that has been talked about this morning is the border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Past decisions have not been implemented, there appears to be a stalemate, and the way forward is unclear. It seemed at times that the hon. Members for The Wrekin and for Islington, North were representing slightly different points of view on that, and that is exactly as it should be. There may well be different tensions about who is to blame. Is it the Eritrean Government looking at their own people domestically and allowing the dispute to perpetuate because it suits their domestic political agenda, or is it the Ethiopians? I do not know. What I do know is that the external powers, although they often have not been as helpful as they should be in their interventions, may have a role to play in this matter. Obviously, President Clinton had a bad experience in respect of Somalia when he was President, but I understand that he had a role in the finalisation of the Algiers agreement. Perhaps there is an external, world-renowned leader—it may be an African leader—who, through the AU or the UN, could take more initiative on the dispute, because although there are tensions preventing it from being reconciled, many of the people whose comments I have read for the debate suggest that should we get a resolution of the border dispute, many other benefits would flow from that. It is not just the border dispute that would be solved, but many other issues.