Iraq: Future Strategic Relationship

I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for a fine speech, which reminded us how a democratic and prosperous Iraq can become a source of stability and good sense in a region cursed by instability and the lack of sustainable democracy. I also thank the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) for his fine speech, highlighting a number of issues that I, too, hope to deal with briefly. As the hon. Gentleman reminded us, Iraq has a long way to go to attain stability and prosperity. He mentioned the problem of the forthcoming elections, especially those that will eventually happen in Kirkuk. For a long time, that whole region has been particularly cursed by attempts at ethnic cleansing by resettlement under the Saddam regime and all manner of evils. There is also the wider problem of reconstructing proper and peaceful relationships that should obtain between Sunni, Shi'a, Kurds and Christians. We have heard very little today about the Christian community in Iraq, which has suffered greatly in recent years. It is good to know that the subject is now being openly debated in the Iraqi media. I think that we should welcome that, but none the less keep a very close eye on the issue, as we should be very concerned about it. As I say, the disputed lands around Kirkuk remain a particular problem. I welcome the huge amount of diplomatic energy going into the task of resolving the issues of ethnicity, property, language and, most importantly, the administrative demarcation in that area. I would like to deal briefly with the developing economy of Iraq, as I believe that many of the problems faced in the great cities of Iraq—Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk and Irbil—are a consequence of the chronic high levels of unemployment. As I have heard many times and as we should remind ourselves, it is often said in the middle east that the Egyptians write the books, the Lebanese publish them and the Iraqis read them. That is a coded way of saying that the Iraqi people are among the most talented in the middle east, and we should never forget that. The Iraqi diaspora has been a consequence of a series of dreadful Governments and dictators; it has resulted in Iraqi doctors, surgeons, scientists, engineers, architects and a whole host of professionals moving all around the world—living proof that Saddam's regime resulted not only in the murder and torture of tens of thousands of his own citizens, but in the stunting and destruction of the huge potential of the country's talented people, whether they be Shi'a, Sunni, Kurd, Christian or people of no religion. You do not have to be a scientist, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to realise that the most obvious and probably the easiest way to kick-start the economy is to help the Iraqis to reconstruct their oil and gas industries. We heard from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Woodspring about the size of those reserves, and in a little while I will talk briefly about the nature of them. I saw on a number of visits to the south, the centre and the north of Iraq how its oil and gas industries were run down and pillaged by a combination of Saddam Hussein's corrupt regime and collaborators such as President Chirac's France, which grew fat on busting the sanctions imposed by the UN and from the disastrous and even more corrupt oil-for-food programme. People tend to forget that the duplicitous and lying statements of the Chirac regime in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq were designed to protect the disgraceful but enormously profitable relationship that he had built up with Saddam Hussein over the previous 20 years. Most disgraceful were the brazen sanctions-busting scams that France was part of, making itself and Saddam richer, and allowing Saddam to fund his appalling brutal regime. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) is regarded as a queen of Kurdistan; I have heard her described as that myself. She knows full well what those sanctions did—not the sanctions themselves, but the way in which regimes such as Chirac's, corrupt as they were, colluded with Saddam to destroy, for example, much of the Iraqi agricultural economy. I was in Irbil quite recently and saw and heard for myself how people will not go back to working on the land because they are used to getting their boxes of food every week. That continues to this day, and a huge part of one of the most fertile places on the face of the earth lies fallow as a consequence. Yet I heard opponents of the war at the time say, ““No, no. Sanctions are the proper way forward””, when sanctions were being busted, when people were making fortunes out of them and when, most important of all, the Iraqi people were being destroyed by them. We should learn from that. It is very important. People have called for inquiries, and we have had inquiries and will have an inquiry in the future. The most important thing that we should learn from that is why we have dual standards and hear people say, ““It was quite wrong to remove Saddam Hussein, but we should be thinking about removing Robert Mugabe or intervening militarily in Darfur or the Congo.”” It is interesting. I am not quite sure what gives rise to it. I suspect that it is something to do with anti-Americanism. There seems to be a rabid belief that anything that is led by the Americans must therefore be wrong. It amazes me how often I hear that stuff. The barmiest of the criticisms are the ones that say that we invaded Iraq for its oil. If we wanted to get Iraqi oil, we could have done exactly as the French, Germans and so many others did. We could have done deals with Saddam Hussein that would have got us that oil and got it cheap, but we did not. We faced up to what was a very, very difficult decision. I watched carefully at that time how the Security Council was manipulated by France, Russia and China. They did not want to upset their cosy relationship with Saddam Hussein; they were making too much money out of it. The French wanted to build nuclear reactors, and indeed did build two. Someone properly said—I am not sure who; it might have been the hon. Member for Woodspring—that the war did not start with that invasion of Iraq, but much earlier. We should never forgot that, because it is very important. I know that the nationalists, who have left their seats, have a penchant for supporting dictators. They say, ““Who supported Saddam Hussein in the early days?””, as if that is an excuse for not doing something about him when he is murdering his own citizens. I am not sure that we have really learned those lessons, and we need to. Tens of thousands of Kurds, Shi'ites and other enemies of Saddam were raped, murdered and tortured by a regime that had been courted and armed by France and, I have to say, by Governments in this country in the past because Iraq was seen as a strategic counterbalance to Iran and Shi'ite nationalism. Those are very dangerous games to play. I was glad to hear the Front-Bench spokesmen on both sides of the House say that the way forward is to help the Iraqis to reconstruct their industry so that the area is one of prosperity and stability. That is what we have to do. Both opening statements were tremendous in the way in which they spoke of some of the schemes that are up and running. We did not talk about the work that the British Army did in and around Basra. The great date plantations and the reconstruction of Basra's water supply system were tremendous achievements, set up and built under very difficult circumstances. I know from personal experience how difficult things are in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is easy to say that we can send our aid agencies there to work, but they can only do that if they are secure—if our young people are not murdered when they try to reconstruct water supply systems, agricultural canals and so on. I was glad that there were no facile statements about that. It is a bit rich when people come out and say, ““Saddam Hussein was only one of a number of dictators. Why pick on him?”” I was brought up to believe that wherever there were dictators, we should try to drag them down and help wherever we can to liberate people who are suppressed by tyrants. I hope that as a country we will consider how we might be able to do that better. I will tell you how we will not do it: on our own. I notice that in Hillary Clinton's appearance before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations yesterday she said:"““Now, in 2009, the clear lesson of the last twenty years is that we must both combat the threats and seize the opportunities of our interdependence””" with other countries,"““and to be effective in doing so we must build a world with more partners and fewer adversaries. America cannot solve the most pressing problems on our own, and the world cannot solve them without America. The best way to advance America's interest in reducing global threats and seizing global opportunities is to design and implement global solutions. This isn't a philosophical point. This is our reality.””" I am glad to hear that. It is very true and reflects what both Front-Bench spokesmen said. We have to do this work in partnership with other countries. We have to recognise who can help us. Most importantly of all, we have to recognise that the people who are going to change Iraq most fundamentally are going to be Iraqis themselves.