Syria — House of Commons, 2018-04-16
Topic: International Affairs
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (Labour, Centre-left): This is a Back-Bench-led debate, so I will be brief to give time for the Prime Minister and, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) to respond This debate should have taken place before action was taken—we made that clear during proceedings on the statement. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South not just on securing the debate, but on the way in which she opened it. She is absolutely right to call on the Government to redouble their efforts to put the interests of civilians in Syria first. I hope that the whole House shares my respect for her demand and for her commitment to that cause, particularly to the cause of refugees from Syria whose lives have been torn asunder and who see ahead of them a future of waste in refugee camps all around the region, or of trying to get to Europe to try to survive. We need to have them at the forefront of our minds and just think what their memory is going to be, decades down the line, of this era in the early part of this century in which they lived in refugee camps while everybody else in the world was getting on with their lives The House has been asked to vote on military action in Syria twice; both times it has been heavily divided. Syria does not suffer from a lack of military action. Multiple actors have committed atrocities—chiefly the Assad Government, but also ISIS and a whole host of different warring groups. In a brief speech that drew on the history of the interventions in Iraq and Syria, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) described the situation in Syria as a choice between "monsters and maniacs". I would not choose those words myself, but the primary forces in that country are indeed totally unpalatable to all of us in the House. Multiple powers are funding and arming groups on the ground, and they have been there ever since the outset of the terrible Syrian civil war seven years ago. Let us not forget, however, that human rights abuses in Syria did not begin seven years ago; it has been a place with an appalling human rights record for a very long time The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) was correct in his analysis that Russia wants to retain a regional ally that allows it to maintain a naval base in the Mediterranean. There is some equally brutal realpolitik on the part of the US in its wanting to diminish an opponent in the region. That agenda is shared by Saudi Arabia, which has also been funding various jihadi groups. Iran fears the outcome and is intervening. Israel fears a greater Iranian influence in the region, so it is intervening, too. Unfortunately, Turkey has grasped the opportunity to attack Kurdish communities across the border in Syria. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) for the visit he made and his support for the Kurdish people’s right to their own identity. Whatever the final outcome in Syria, I hope that the Kurdish people are respected and get the right to their own self-identity, as they deserve We have a grotesque spectacle of what Lord Curzon once described as the "great game" being played out, with the Syrian people treated as expendable by too many sides. I agree with Members who have expressed their will that the Syrian people must be put first. No one pretends that diplomatic efforts are not incredibly difficult, and they are often imperfect, but they have to be an alternative to yet more military action. It is too easy to advocate bombing raids and too easy to be cynical about the potential of diplomatic efforts. We all know that the UN-led Geneva process has stalled and that the talks have collapsed, but we can also remember the limited success that was achieved by John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov, which did indeed lead to the destruction of 600 tonnes of chemical weapons, overseen by the OPCW.