Middle East — House of Commons, 2015-11-30
Topic: International Affairs
Seema Louise Ghiassi Kennedy (Conservative, Centre-right): I begin by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) for securing this important debate, and by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it to take place We meet a time when Britain’s role in the middle east is on the front pages for the reason of war, but the same could be said of almost any day in the last 100 years. If we want to have an effective role in the middle east, which I believe we can have, we need to learn from the past, consider the present and look to the future The majority of right hon. and hon. Members have understandably touched on Syria and our role in the coming days and months, but I would like to consider a broader theme. I want to speak directly to those in this place and outside it who say that we should insulate ourselves, turn away and "leave them to it." To them, I would say quite simply that the links between Britain—or, as it then was, England and Scotland—did not begin with the invasion of Iraq, with Sykes-Picot or the crusades. The Judaeo-Christian underpinnings of our nation were born between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and the fact that Indo-European languages are spoken as far east as Afghanistan shows our common and shared history. That is something we cannot ignore The debate is often framed in terms of trade, and how we can benefit from it, and war, but the links are deeper and more complex, to do with culture, religion and family. I am not the only Member of this place, or indeed of the other House, to have family links with the region Britain has centuries of diplomatic and scholarly understanding of the middle east. It needs to use that understanding to support stability, with the aim of eventually building a region in which democracy will thrive, and to help our most important ally, the United States, to understand the whole area. I would caution, however, that this will not be the work of one Parliament or of two. It will be the work of centuries The immediate threat, which is on all our minds this week, comes from the sadistic cult known as ISIL/Daesh. The origins of ISIL, al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab are complex, but I believe that one reason for the fact that they have survived and thrived is the existence of dysfunctional economies in most of the middle east. Where there is corruption, where there are monopolies and raging youth unemployment, there is an ideal recruiting ground for jihadi fighters. I want to elaborate on that a little, particularly in relation to Iran, which is the country in the region that I know best After the war, the Ba’athist, socialist command economies of Syria and Iraq, much of the Levant, and north Africa were unable to compete with the far east, which had much nimbler markets, and growth and per capita income declined in relative terms. The petroleum-rich nations of the region are only now reaching the conclusion that they must diversify their economies in order to become more resilient, and to build a wider base for employment People often forget that the 1979 revolution in Iran was as much socialist as it was Islamic. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) referred to central control by the conservative leadership, and, indeed, many of the cronies of the conservative leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps now hold much of the country’s economic power. In 1979, there were 105 rials to the dollar. Now there are 30,000. In 1976, Iran’s growth rate was 16.9%, but, according to the International Monetary Fund, it is likely to fall to 0.6%. I am not suggesting that the picture was uniformly rosy under the Shah, because by the end he had definitely become too dependent on oil revenues, but at least there was a thriving private sector During the revolution, 80% of all industry was nationalised, including the spinning mill that my father built from scratch and ran between 1971 and 1980. During that period, 380 men worked at the mill, and every day they produced 14.5 tonnes of top-quality yarn. It was sequestered by the Islamic regime in 1980, after which it employed twice as many people and produced half as much yarn, which was of such low quality that it could not be sold on the domestic market, let alone exported. The mill closed in 1992, and every single job was lost As we know, unemployment in Iran and, indeed, all over the region is sky-high, particularly among young people. Ahmadinejad propped up the companies of his cronies with $26 billion of cheap debts, which will never be paid off because they were given to flabby, uncompetitive firms. It was the youth of Iran who took to the streets in 1999 and 2009. Rouhani was elected on a mandate of providing sound finances, but the IMF estimates that it will take $10 billion of investment to achieve the 10% growth that is needed to lower the country’s chronic unemployment I think that we may be betting a little bit too much on the success of the nuclear deal, and on its inevitably improving the economy. The picture is not so simple. Countries throughout the middle east need fundamental internal economic reform.