Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 5:13 pm on 29 August 2013.
My Lords, this is an important debate on a very important issue but in many ways it is a bit late. This civil war has been going on, with increasing violence, for the past two years. Perhaps it is right that we should be focusing on it at present after what happened last Wednesday.
I agree with the Government, and with other allied Governments, that there must be a response to the events of
What we do now in response to the atrocity of
Syria is naive, short-sighted and profoundly dangerous. There is a danger that we focus exclusively in this debate on what happened on
Are we really saying, by focusing on this particular atrocity, that Assad can continue with horrifying violence so long as he does not use chemical weapons? Are we, after we strike, then to stand back as Assad with his new friends in Hezbollah mounts a scorched-earth policy against all his opponents? Is the fevered discussion of the past few days forcing us into the corner of saying that chemical weapons are wrong and will lead to severe punishment, but Assad can go on destroying his people and his country and we will have no further response to what he is doing? Jeremy Bowen, the profoundly brave and wise Middle East correspondent and editor of the BBC said in a programme last night that the regime in Syria is now quite ready to take whatever attack will take place and then simply to move on with what it was doing before—and that was bad enough.
To those who say that any action carries the risk of siding with one side in a civil war, I say this, which has not yet been said even by the Government: we have already taken sides. We do not recognise President Assad as the President of Syria. This country and two dozen others recognise the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. We have taken sides. All we have not done is very much about it and it is time that we did, not only by preventing the human catastrophe of another chemical weapons attack, but by helping and supporting—indeed, arming—the anti-Assad forces which we recognise as the legitimate representatives of the people; by creating truly safe areas for refugees, learning all the lessons of what not to do from Bosnia; and by being generous with Jordan and the other countries that are bearing the unbearable burdens of the spillover. We need to make it clear that genocidal killing and ethnic cleansing by artillery, rockets, grenades and guns, as well as poison gas, are at least as evil and need to be treated in the same way.