- 5:25 pm
- Mr Speaker, with permission, I will update the House on the campaign against Daesh, one of the most brutal and depraved terrorist organisations the world has ever seen. Since Daesh’s reign of terror started, investigators from the United Nations have discovered more than 200 mass graves in areas of Iraq once held by the terrorists, containing between 6,000 and 12,000 corpses. The UN has concluded that Daesh’s onslaught against the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq amounted to the crime of genocide, as testimony from remarkably brave individuals, such as the Nobel peace prize winner Nadia Murad, makes clear.Daesh once imposed its rule of terror on an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom, but has now been driven back to an isolated enclave in eastern Syria. However, the House should not mistake territorial defeat for final defeat. Military action by many nations, including the UK, has broken Daesh’s grip on thousands of square miles of Syria and Iraq—and we can draw encouragement from that success, at the same time as we salute the extraordinary courage of the coalition of armed forces that made it possible—yet as we drive Daesh out of territorial strongholds we are seeing its operatives turning to guerrilla tactics and forming more conventional terrorist networks. So we must press on with the military campaign, even as we employ every diplomatic and humanitarian lever to address the conditions that led to the birth of Daesh in the first place.Today, I will outline the measures that Britain is taking to guard against the re-emergence of Daesh in the middle east and to protect our people at home. I turn first to the current situation. The Syrian Democratic Forces have cleared Daesh from large areas of the Euphrates valley, expelling its fighters from significant population centres and confining them to a small area near the frontier with Iraq. Their action, alongside the armed forces of all the countries from the global coalition, has liberated millions from tyranny. Of course we take particular pride in the courage and professionalism of the men and women of the British armed services, and the whole House will want to congratulate Flight Lieutenant Thomas Hansford, a Typhoon pilot from 1 Squadron, who was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross in November after destroying four Daesh truck bombs during a single mission over Syria.On 19 December, President Trump announced the impending withdrawal of American troops from eastern Syria, where about 2,000 US personnel have been deployed. Contrary to what many anticipated at the time, there has been no hasty or precipitate departure. As the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, confirmed to me when I met him in Washington last month, the US Administration recognise the importance of conducting the withdrawal in a way that allows the immense progress achieved against Daesh in Syria to be maintained. We must also do everything within our power to address the conditions that allowed the rise of Daesh, to which I now turn.The central requirement is for political progress in Iraq and Syria. The new Iraqi Government, under President Salih and Prime Minister Abdul Mahdi, are seized of the importance of winning the peace through democratic politics and economic reform, and the UK will do everything possible to help them. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister visited Iraq in November 2017 and proposed an enduring security partnership. My right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Defence and the Minister for the Armed Forces have since visited Iraq to take forward that pledge, and in January my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East visited Baghdad, where he met the President and the Prime Minister and announced a new £30 million funding package. The UK has helped to train nearly 90,000 members of the Iraqi security forces. We will press ahead with this essential work, including at the re-established military academy.In Syria, the civil war that gave Daesh its great opportunity has been raging for almost eight years. The House knows the history of this terrible conflict. From the beginning, we have done our best to promote a political settlement, but our efforts have collided with Assad’s determination to subjugate his country at whatever cost and by the most brutal methods. We will continue to work to advance a peaceful settlement. In the meantime, we have mounted our largest ever response to a single humanitarian crisis. The Government have committed more than £2.7 billion of humanitarian aid to the Syrian crisis, providing more than 27 million food rations and 10 million vaccines since 2012. Now that Daesh has been cleared from large areas of Syria, there is an urgent need for humanitarian assistance in those regions. On behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, I can announce that UK Aid has provided another £20 million of help for areas of Syria recaptured from Daesh, including Raqqa, bringing the total to more than £40 million in this financial year.The Government continue to believe that Daesh poses the single greatest terrorist threat to this country, so finally I turn to the measures that we are taking to keep our people safe here in the UK. We are using a range of tools to reduce the threat posed by fighters returning from Iraq and Syria. Those who do come back to the UK should expect to face investigation and, where appropriate, prosecution. Those fighters detained by partner forces in the region must also expect to be brought to justice for any offences, in accordance with due legal process, regardless of nationality.In the internet age, Daesh has no need to control territory in order to spread poisonous propaganda. Supporters around the world increasingly produce their own propaganda, as well as sharing content from the terrorist group’s outlets. The Foreign Office hosts the global coalition’s strategic communications cell, which works with international partners to counter Daesh’s propaganda. The Government have also mounted extensive cyber operations to destroy Daesh’s online capabilities.When Britain joined the campaign against Daesh, we knew that we were embarking on a protracted struggle against a movement dedicated to medieval, obscurantist barbarism. Although we can take heart from the crushing territorial defeats meted out to Daesh, the struggle to combat its ideology will take much longer and is far from over. Until then, we must be vigilant, and the Government will continue to fulfil their first duty by doing whatever is necessary to protect the British people. I commend this statement to the House.
- 5:33 pm
- May I say that our first thoughts are with the members of our armed forces who are involved in the campaign against Daesh and who every day put their lives on the line in the service of their country? We also recognise the heroism of Flight Lieutenant Thomas Hansford. We owe them all a very great debt.I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement for this, the first supposed quarterly update on Daesh since 3 July, almost seven months ago. That is all the proof we need—if we need it—that this truly is a Government who do not know their quarters from their halves or their halves from their elbows. There is a serious point, though, because the commitment to provide Parliament with quarterly updates on the campaign against Daesh was included in the motion on which this House voted when it authorised intervention in Syria. It is not acceptable that we have had to wait for more than half a year for this statement, and I hope the Foreign Secretary will apologise for that failure to comply with the terms of the 2015 motion.In the time I have, I wish to ask the Foreign Secretary to address a much more serious and profound issue regarding the status of the 2015 motion. As the whole House will recall, that motion stated explicitly that it was designed to“eradicate the safe haven”—that ISIL had—“established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria”.—[Official Report, 2 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 323.]During the debate in December 2015, the former Prime Minister repeatedly made it clear that the motion had been worded in that way explicitly to address the concerns of Members that this military action should not lead to a wider open-ended intervention in Syria. That was the rationale on which many Members supported the motion, and now we are in a position where we have been told that that rationale no longer exists by the President of the United States himself, who claims that Daesh has been all but destroyed and that, as a result, US troops will be withdrawn within a matter of weeks.
- First, I thank the shadow Foreign Secretary for the tone of her questions. I will do my best to answer them as clearly as I can. I apologise for the fact that we did not keep the House updated as frequently as we promised and that this statement is long overdue, so she has my apology without reservation for that. We did lay a written statement just before Christmas, but that is not good enough; the commitment was to verbal statements.The right hon. Lady is correct in what she said about the 2015 motion. There is a very important matter that we need to address in my response to her comments. The motion did talk about eradicating safe havens, but it is very important to say that the territorial defeat of Daesh does not mean the defeat of Daesh. The President of the United States has talked about a territorial defeat. Daesh now holds just a few square kilometres of the Middle Euphrates valley, so its territory has come down massively from an area nearly the size of the United Kingdom, and it is possible that it will lose that even this week, according to some of the comments that the President has made. But that does not mean that it will be defeated. However, it also does not mean that we are saying to the House that our commitment to a military campaign is indeterminate. The right hon. Lady used the phrase “open-ended military commitment” and that it is not. We are committed to the defeat of Daesh in Syria. That is what the mandate is and we will stick to that mandate.The right hon. Lady talked about the Kurdish SDF fighters. I want to put on record to this House the incredible courage of those fighters. I stand in the House today to report what I think most Members would consider to be an extraordinary and—dare I say it—rare success in foreign policy, whereby it is possible to see an evil organisation a shadow of its former self. That would not have been possible without the incredible courage of the SDF fighters. It would absolutely not be acceptable to this House, the Government or the country were there to be adverse consequences to those fighters from other regional powers. I had that discussion with the United States when I visited there on 24 January, and it shares that view. Indeed, Turkey also knows our opinion on that issue. The SDF plays an important role for us right now, because it holds a number of foreign fighters captive and is responsible for looking after them, so its role will continue to be extremely important for some time.
- Does my right hon. Friend agree that, although there can be no guarantee of a peaceful future for Iraq, interventions such as that by the coalition can indeed be successful if the fighting is done by local rather than foreign troops, if airstrikes are conducted according to the strictest rules of engagement, and if the military campaign is properly underpinned by a political process of reconciliation and reform that tackles some of the root causes of the insurgency?
- My right hon. Friend of course speaks with great wisdom on this because he was responsible for a lot of the training of overseas armies that makes precisely that strategy possible. We have now trained 70,000 Iraqi forces as a result of the programme that I think he may even have set up when he was Secretary of State for Defence.[Official Report, 14 February 2019, Vol. 654, c. 10MC.] He is absolutely right that coupling that with a programme of political reconciliation is the key. I would go further and say that that is really the key lesson from what happened in the original Iraq conflict, which ended up so much more problematically than anyone in this House was hoping for at the time. Local boots on the ground and proper political reconciliation is the way to make progress.
- I, too, thank the Secretary of State for early sight of the statement. I join him in recognising the risks faced by and the capabilities of members of the armed forces. As someone who comes from a forces family who served in Iraq, and also Afghanistan, I know of the risk that they put themselves in in fulfilling their duties.The Iraq Government have stated that they need £88 billion to rebuild the country following the prolonged conflict. While, as the Secretary of State said, Daesh’s state-building may be close to defeat, the organisation still holds a powerful sway in many parts of the world, including the Philippines and Somalia. He talked about reconciliation. At the heart of reconstruction, there is a lack of truth and reconciliation for a new Iraq, and that could possibly allow for a resurgence of Daesh. Does he recognise that with less than half of the sums required for reconstruction being available, if we fail to invest adequately in Iraq, that runs the risk of allowing Daesh to regain a foothold?Will the Secretary of State expand slightly more on what we have learned in this process to enable us to combat fanaticism in this region and beyond?Finally, does the Secretary of State recognise that more work is required to be done through truth and reconciliation, especially if Iraq is to be fully reintegrated, and that that includes the innocent women and children whose Daesh husbands and fathers cast them aside for the sake of fanaticism—an issue that was most recently given steam in The New Yorker by journalist Ben Taub?
- I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He speaks of some very important issues.The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that reconciliation has to be central. Sometimes that costs money. In this country, we can be proud of the fact that we have put £2.7 billion into that process, which has had a huge humanitarian impact.[Official Report, 14 February 2019, Vol. 654, c. 10MC.] But part of reconciliation in this case, which is a specific case different from the original Iraq war, is the need for justice against the perpetrators of the genocide that Daesh was responsible for. On 17 January, I had the privilege of meeting Nadia Murad, the Nobel prize-winning Yazidi campaigner against sexual violence in conflict. In her book, she talks about the perpetrators of sexual violence against her who have still not faced justice and are still in the region somewhere. She says that for someone like her, there will be no closure until those people face justice. Part of that process of closure is justice, but part of it is also for people like her to be able to go back to the villages near Mount Sinjar that they were driven out of, at a time when many of their family members had been murdered. That is beginning to happen. All these things matter.I think we have learned a number of things, but probably the most significant has been the need to engage in cyberspace as well as with boots on the ground, because it was the dissemination of propaganda that probably allowed Daesh to grow much further than we anticipated in the early days.
- I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s proper tribute to the fight of the Syrian Democratic Forces in our interests, noting that they have sacrificed 8,000 soldiers, including men and women, with 5,000 permanently disabled. The Foreign Secretary says that, having liberated all that territory from ISIS and then taken into custody thousands of foreigners, they are responsible for the investigation of those people. Surely the states from which those people come must bear the burden of investigating and prosecuting their own citizens who are being looked after. When will the Foreign Secretary instruct his officials to negotiate with the forces of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria the repatriation to the United Kingdom and the proper investigation and prosecution of British citizens who will range from the wholly innocent to the rather eccentric to the downright murderously dangerous, who need to be put in British custody as soon as reasonably practical?
- I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. First, in terms of the courage of people who have been fighting in Syria, there is one group that we have not mentioned so far, and that is the White Helmets, who did an extraordinary job in Syria—not so much in the particular conflict against Daesh, but we can be proud that this country has resettled 29 families of White Helmets and was instrumental in getting about 400 White Helmets out of Syria towards the end of last year.[Official Report, 14 February 2019, Vol. 654, c. 11MC.]The issue that my hon. Friend raises—I will not pretend to him; he speaks with huge knowledge of the region—is immensely complicated. The complicating factor is not that we do not want to take responsibility for these individuals, although frankly we would be happy if they never came back, because they have gone to fight for enemy forces who have been committing the most appalling atrocities. The issue we have is ensuring that they face justice, and sometimes that is not as easy as simply bringing them back here. That is why we are working through this as quickly as we can to try to find the right solution, to ensure that we can look the victims who have suffered in the face and say that we have brought the perpetrators of these atrocities to justice.
- Given what the people of Iraq and Syria faced when ISIS/Daesh suddenly acquired control of large parts of territory, what has been achieved in the years since is really quite remarkable. I am sure the whole House will want to join the Foreign Secretary and the shadow Foreign Secretary in welcoming the near-final defeat on the battlefield, if not in ideology, of this bunch of fascists.The Foreign Secretary referred to the mass graves that have been uncovered. Since the UN report in November, further graves have been found in places such as Tabqa and Palmyra. Who is taking responsibility for collecting forensic evidence, so that those who have committed these crimes can be brought to justice? Given the difficulties that he just referred to in working out who will take that responsibility, does he think there is any potential for the United Nations to agree to an international tribunal where these cases may ultimately be brought, so that the individuals who murdered people in cold blood and raped and tortured them can finally face the justice that they deserve?
- I thank the right hon. Gentleman for asking that question. He is right that unless we are able to demonstrate justice for these atrocities, we will not persuade people that as a world, we have sat up and taken notice of what has happened. The Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), recently met Karim Khan of UNITAD, which is the United Nations investigation body, and we are strongly supporting its work. The UK strongly supported the international, impartial and independent mechanism, to ensure that we have a proper mechanism for investigating these people, and we brought forward Security Council resolution 2379, which sets up an independent investigatory body. It is none the less not easy. Finding evidence that can be traced back to an individual perpetrator in whichever part of the world is extremely challenging, but that does not mean that we should leave any stone unturned in this process.
- Having given evidence in war crimes trials, it is my understanding that people charged with genocide or crimes against humanity should be brought to book in the country in which they have carried out their crimes. Will those who have carried out genocide against the Yazidis be tried in Iraq, or will the International Criminal Court have some responsibility for dealing with that matter?
- My hon. Friend is right; our first intention is that they should be tried in Iraq if it is possible to get justice for them in Iraq, and there is no reason why it should not be, with the new Government in Iraq. Of course, there are cases in which it is not possible for people to get justice in the country where the atrocity happened. That is when the ICC has a role, and that is why we support the ICC. It has a very important role to play internationally, despite a number of challenges that it currently faces.
- The Secretary of State is right; the defeat on the battlefield is to be welcomed, but the ideology continues to grow. The fact that they have been defeated on the battlefield does not mean that they are not planning and are not capable of carrying out further attacks. Can he say a bit about what we are doing to track the money that is laundered to fund such attacks? The crucial thing that we need to do is cut off access to the money.
- Absolutely. We have taken a number of measures to try to find out what is happening with that money and cut off access to it, including the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, the Criminal Finances Act 2017 and the Proceeds of Crime Act, which I think became law in 2010; I cannot remember which party was responsible for it. We can always go further, and for that we need to work with not only UK-based banks but Crown dependencies.