and the idea that retribution should become the going rate for military action in the middle east in circumstances where we are usually trying to counsel the various players and interests in the middle east against their natural impulses for retribution, seems to me to be a very rash proposition.
We have to ask ourselves the questions that the Prime Minister failed to answer today: what then and what when? If we are to see the limited intervention that the Prime Minister seems to expect, will it be some keyhole surgery-type strike which will have no wider implications and leave no wider scars or difficulties? If it does not work, what then? If there is reaction by Assad or by others in the area and there are wider difficulties, what will happen? Does the Prime Minister’s limited intervention—“No, I’m smoking, not inhaling. Our interventions are one thing and we are not involved in anything else”—stand? It will not be able to stand.
9.8 pm
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con): The choice between head in the sand and boots on the ground has always, to my mind, been a false one. In recent days we have heard much about the limits to our influence on events in Syria, but we must not allow ourselves to believe that we can do nothing for the Syrian people. I recently visited a refugee camp near the Syrian border in the Kurdish region of Iraq. It was a harrowing reminder of the brutality of this war and its complexity.
In demographic terms Syria is like a photographic negative of Iraq. Both have large minority populations of Christians and Kurds, but in Syria it is the Sunnis who form the historically oppressed majority. In Iraq, we have seen what happens when a ruling minority is violently deposed. Today, large swathes of Sunni Iraq have all the characteristics of a failed state. My fear is that the envisioned post-Assad Syria would be equally unsustainable. A Sunni-dominated Syria would show no mercy to the defeated Alawites, and would therefore be completely unacceptable to the minorities, whether Alawite, Christian or Kurd, who would undoubtedly rebel with the support of regional powers.
The ever-shifting maze of internal politics and external agendas, and the sheer complexity of the situation, demand that we should be modest about what we hope to achieve. My constituents are deeply concerned about the prospect of another open-ended war in the middle east, and I will not vote for any action that would entangle us in regime change. There can be no more nation-building. We simply do not have the capability to do that; indeed, the most powerful country in the world does not have that capability.
Bob Stewart: Whatever we do, we must be quite precise about it. People talk about an exit strategy, but I have never seen an exit strategy in any other military conflict. I went into Bosnia with no mission whatever, but with just one idea: to save people’s lives. That is what we should be doing: saving the lives of people in Syria if we can.
Nadhim Zahawi: That is right. Any intervention by Britain must have a clear objective and defined limits, and our objective must be to protect civilians, as my hon. Friend has just said.
Michael Ellis: Is my hon. Friend also concerned about those who focus on the United Nations Security Council having absolutely the final say on interventions in humanitarian crises? If a country such as Russia were to oppose intervention in some new holocaust or similar disaster because it was taking place in a satellite country in which it had an interest, would we not be hamstrung and unable to take action?
Nadhim Zahawi: That is right; my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) has also made that point very powerfully.
Our objective is to protect civilians and to preserve the international taboo on the use of terror weapons. In the age of total war, there are virtually no moral limits on what a state might do in pursuit of its military objectives. Where such limits do exist, they must be upheld by responsible members of the international community. The Kurds of Iraq know that only too well. When Saddam bombed Halabja with mustard gas in 1988, the world looked on in horror but did nothing. Our inertia did not prevent further conflict; it made it more likely. With Saddam emboldened, the gassing of Halabja was followed by the invasion of Kuwait. From Munich to Srebrenica, the lesson of history is that one violation of international law leads to another.
On the question of limits, our model for intervention should be not Iraq in 2003 but the no-fly zone established over northern Iraq by the Major Government after the first Gulf war. In 1991, our objective was clear. It was to prevent Saddam’s final attempt to massacre the Kurds and the Shi’a. Crucially, however, the terms of the mission strictly limited our involvement. We were not trying to fix Iraq’s fractured politics; nor did we manage to do so. Let us remember that, with Saddam at bay, the Kurdish factions turned on each other and fought a bloody civil war. The Syrian people have to find their own vision of self-government, as the Kurds eventually did in Iraq.
Political consensus on this vital issue is incredibly important. It will serve only to weaken the United Kingdom if we are divided on foreign policy, which is why I am so disappointed that the Leader of the Opposition has flip-flopped on this issue. We might not be able to stop the killing in Syria, but we might be able to render the situation a little less terrible. If we want to live in a civilised world, some things must be beyond the pale. I will be supporting the motion tonight.
9.13 pm
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab): I have spent a lot of time this summer working with a veterans group in Tyneside called Forward Assist, which works with people who have left the forces and fallen through the cracks in society. Talking to those men and women made me realise what we ask them to do. We do not just ask them to go around the world and to be prepared to die for us; we also ask them to be prepared to kill for us. We ask them to do abnormal things. Most people would run away when someone was firing at them, but we ask those people to run into the gunfire. Those people are our constituents and the husbands, wives, sons and daughters of our constituents. They say to us clearly
that if we are going to commit them to such action
