Syria: De-escalation Zones Next 26 February 2018
3.39 pm
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
To ask the Foreign Secretary what action the UK Government
are taking on the conflict and humanitarian situation inside de-escalation
zones in Syria following attacks on civilians in the last week.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
(Boris Johnson)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness
(John Woodcock) for raising this vital issue.
In seven years of bloodshed, the war in Syria has claimed
400,000 lives and driven 11 million people from their homes, causing a
humanitarian tragedy on a scale unknown anywhere else in the world. The House
should never forget that the Assad regime, aided and abetted by Russia and Iran,
has inflicted the overwhelming burden of that suffering. Assad’s forces are now
bombarding the enclave of eastern Ghouta, where 393,000 people are living under
siege, enduring what has become a signature tactic of the regime, whereby
civilians are starved and pounded into submission. With bitter irony, Russia
and Iran declared eastern Ghouta to be a “de-escalation area” in May last year
and promised to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid. But the truth is that
Assad’s regime has allowed only one United Nations convoy to enter eastern
Ghouta so far this year and that carried supplies for only a fraction of the
area’s people. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in eastern Ghouta in the
last week alone and the House will have noted the disturbing reports of the use
of chlorine gas. I call for those reports to be fully investigated and for
anyone held responsible for using chemical weapons in Syria to be held
accountable.
Over the weekend I discussed the situation with my Turkish
counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Sa’ad Hariri, the Prime Minister of Lebanon.
Earlier today, I spoke to Sigmar Gabriel, the German Foreign Minister, and I
shall be speaking to other European counterparts and António Guterres, the UN
Secretary-General, in the next few days. Britain has joined with our allies to
mobilise the Security Council to demand a ceasefire across the whole of Syria
and the immediate delivery of emergency aid to all in need. Last Saturday,
after days of prevarication from Russia, the Security Council unanimously
adopted resolution 2401, demanding that
“all parties cease hostilities without delay”
and allow the
“safe, unimpeded and sustained delivery of humanitarian aid”
along with
“medical evacuations of the critically sick and wounded”.
The main armed groups in eastern Ghouta have accepted the
ceasefire, but as of today, the warplanes of the Assad regime are still
reported to be striking targets in the enclave and the UN has been unable to
deliver any aid. I remind the House that hundreds of thousands of civilians are
going hungry in eastern Ghouta only a few miles from UN warehouses in Damascus
that are laden with food. The Assad regime must allow the UN to deliver those
supplies, in compliance with resolution 2401, and we look to Russia and Iran to
make sure this happens, in accordance with their own promises. I have invited
the Russian Ambassador to come to the Foreign Office and give an account of his
country’s plans to implement resolution 2401. I have instructed the UK mission
at the UN to convene another meeting of the Security Council to discuss the
Assad regime’s refusal to respect the will of the UN and implement the
ceasefire without delay.
Only a political settlement in Syria can ensure that the
carnage is brought to an end and I believe that such a settlement is possible
if the will exists. The UN special envoy, Staffan de Mistura, is ready to take
forward the talks in Geneva, and the opposition are ready to negotiate
pragmatically and without preconditions. The international community has united
behind the path to a solution laid out in UN resolution 2254 and Russia has
stated its wish to achieve a political settlement under the auspices of the UN.
Today, only the Assad regime stands in the way of progress. I urge Russia to
use all its influence to bring the Assad regime to the negotiating table and
take the steps towards peace that Syria’s people so desperately need.
John Woodcock
I thank the Foreign Secretary for that response. Last week,
527 people were killed in Ghouta, including 129 children. The bombardment
killed over 250 people in just two days—the deadliest 48 hours in the conflict
since the 2013 gas attack, also on Ghouta. This House failed them then; now
surely we must find the courage to act. Right now, a team led by British surgeon,
David Nott, is ready to evacuate 175 very sick children from Ghouta and 1,000
adults needing life-saving treatment. The UK could take them. Will the
Government commit to doing that?
The EU is today announcing stronger sanctions on regime
officials. Will we also impose sanctions on Russian individuals and companies
involved in the conflict? Will we have the courage to recognise what is
blindingly obvious—that for all the so-called agreement to new resolutions, the
Security Council is broken while one of its permanent members flouts the basic
laws and systems of order that it was created to uphold, and that, in these
dreadful circumstances, being cowed into inaction by this strangulated body is
a greater violation than seeking to act even without its authorisation? Will we
work with any and all nations committed to returning humanity to Syria to
consider the imposition of a no-fly zone over Ghouta, or for peacekeepers to
allow aid to get in, or indeed, for strikes on the forces responsible for these
atrocities, like we failed to authorise in 2013?
The men and women of Ghouta who lie in pieces, deliberately
targeted by Assad’s Russia-enabled bombs, and the dead children whose faces are
altered by the chlorine gas that choked them should not be strewn in the rubble
of eastern Ghouta. Those bodies should be piled up in this Chamber and lain at
the feet of Governments of every single nation that continues to shrug in the
face of this horror.
My final question comes from a doctor in Ghouta who spoke to
a British journalist yesterday, his voice apparently thick with exhaustion and
resignation. He said:
“I have a question for the world. What number of victims
does the world need to show responsibility. Its moral responsibility. Its legal
responsibility. To stop these crimes.”?
Boris Johnson
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the continuing and
campaigning interest that he has shown in this matter. He speaks for many
people in this country in his indignation and outrage at what is taking place.
Let me take some of his points in turn. On the evacuation of
medical cases, particularly children, I know that my right hon. Friend the
Secretary of State for International Development is in discussion about that
very issue with David Nott, to whom the hon. Gentleman rightly alludes. On the
point about holding the perpetrators to account and perhaps even bringing
Russian agents to justice, we will certainly gather what evidence we can,
knowing that the mills of justice may grind slowly, but they grind small. We
will want in the end to bring all those responsible to justice.
On his central point that we in this country and in the west
in the end did not do enough to turn the tide in Syria and that we missed our
opportunity in 2013, no one can conceivably contradict him. We all understand
what took place and the gap that we allowed to be opened up for the Russians
and Iranians to come in and support the Assad regime. We all understand the
failure that took place then, but we also have to recognise that there is no
military solution that we can impose. It is now essential that the Russians
recognise that, just because Assad is in possession of half the territory of
Syria, or perhaps 75% of the population of Syria, does not mean that he has
won. He has come nowhere near to a complete military victory and I do not
believe that it is within his grasp to achieve a complete military victory.
Nobody should be under the illusion that that is what will happen. Nobody should
be under the illusion that the suffering of the people of eastern Ghouta is
simply the sad prerequisite or precursor to an eventual Assad military victory.
I do not believe that that is the case. I believe that it will prove almost
impossible for the Assad regime to achieve a military victory, even with
Russian and Iranian support.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker, and
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) for
securing it.
During the Opposition day debate in the House a month ago, I
warned of the Assad regime’s impending criminal assault on eastern Ghouta.
Sadly, that is exactly what we have seen in recent weeks. Whatever words we use
to describe the assaults, and even if we say, as UNICEF said last week, that
there are simply no adequate words, one thing must be made clear: because of
the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, the targeting of hospitals and
medical centres, the use of starvation as a weapon of war, and the alleged use
of chemical weapons, the assault is simply a war crime and there must be a
reckoning for those responsible.
In the brief time I have, may I ask the Foreign Secretary
three questions? First, all hon. Members welcome the UN Security Council statement
calling for an immediate ceasefire, but it was clear to anyone reading the text
with care that it in fact excluded military action against terrorists. That
will allow Assad and his allies to justify continuing their assault against the
jihadist armies of Jaysh al-Islam and Tahrir al-Islam inside eastern Ghouta. It
will also allow Turkey to justify continuing its assault on Afrin. To stop the
assault on eastern Ghouta, therefore, should the UN not instead be clear that
there must be a temporary cessation of all military action within Syria, and
not the conditional cessation that Assad and his allies are using to justify
continuing their assault?
Secondly, I ask the Foreign Secretary what practical
discussions there have been at the UN and elsewhere about opening a corridor
from eastern Ghouta to Mleiha or Harasta, both to allow access for humanitarian
relief and to allow civilian safe passage out of the city.
Finally, while I appreciate that it is the view of some in
the House that the suffering of eastern Ghouta can be stopped only by yet more
western military intervention, I believe that that would simply prolong and
deepen the war. Ultimately, we can end this dreadful conflict and the suffering
of all the Syrian people only through genuine peace talks involving all
non-jihadi parties and the agreement of a political solution, so may I ask the
Foreign Secretary this: what is Britain doing to drive this process forward?
Boris Johnson
As I am sure the right hon. Lady will appreciate, United
Nations Security Council resolution 2401 was, in fact, a considerable success
of diplomacy, given the position that the Russians had previously taken. I
think that it represents a strong commitment to a ceasefire on the part of the
entire international community. It is now up to the Russians to enforce that
ceasefire, and to get their client state to enforce it as well. That is the
point that we are making, and the point that we will definitely make to
ambassador Yakovenko. As for the issue of humanitarian corridors, I think that
all these ideas are extremely good and we certainly support them, but it will
take the acquiescence of the Assad regime to achieve what we want.
The right hon. Lady asked about the UK Government. The UK
Government have been in the lead in Geneva and the United Nations in driving
the process of holding the Assad regime to account through Security Council
resolutions, and we continue to do that. We are calling again for the Security
Council to meet to discuss the failure to implement resolution 2401 today. As
the right hon. Lady knows, the UK Government are part of the Syria Small Group,
which is working to counterbalance what has turned out to be a doomed—or
perhaps I should say “so far unsuccessful”—Russian venture at Sochi. That is
because we think it is our job to bring the international community together. I
am not talking about the Astana process or the Sochi process. We should bring
the members of the international community together, as one, in Geneva, with a
single political process. That is what the job of the UK Government is, and
that is where we will continue to direct our efforts.
