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A cockpit of a Russian air force plane during an airstrike on Isis targets in Syria.
A cockpit of a Russian air force plane during an airstrike on Isis targets in Syria. Photograph: Itar-Tass/Corbis
A cockpit of a Russian air force plane during an airstrike on Isis targets in Syria. Photograph: Itar-Tass/Corbis

British military operations in Syria: an important step forward

This article is more than 8 years old
Crispin Blunt

We need to untangle the mess of foreign interests that has been tearing Syria apart

A month ago, the House of Commons foreign affairs committee agreed the conditions we believed needed to be satisfied before parliament should be asked to endorse British military operations in Syria against Islamic State. Given parliament’s refusal to support a previous request in 2013, albeit around a different objective, our analysis received unusual prominence. In the course of the next week or so the prime minister is expected to give his personal reply to make the case that those conditions are satisfied. That the prime minister is undertaking this himself shows the seriousness of the issues at stake.

At one level, this has been presented as being about the military common sense of attacking Isis across the Iraqi-Syrian border, when our enemy recognises no such border. For the committee, the issues at stake go well beyond this rather narrow military point. When the air forces of the US, Russia, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others are already engaged with Isis in Syria, it’s a shortage of targets rather than of aircraft that is the coalition’s principal military constraint. For the committee, it’s the fact that aircraft can’t occupy, hold and administer territory – thus defeat Isis – which is our principal concern. Whose ground forces would accomplish this actual defeat of Isis in Syria, by taking the territory they currently control, was, and is, one of our conditions.

For the government, there is the frustration of not being a full part of the anti-Isis coalition. For ministers to have their position restrained by our parliament is an embarrassment with their international colleagues. If in return for that temporary embarrassment we can get them to focus the minds of our international partners on what is required to actually win this conflict, then we might have achieved something much more significant.

A month ago, we did not believe the conditions we set could be met. I now do. It remains for the prime minister to demonstrate that our government is properly focused on how.

There have been dramatic changes. The key changes predate the downing of the Russian airliner and the Paris outrage. However, those massacres of the innocent have concentrated minds and put urgency and steel behind key international actors who have until now had irreconcilable positions on the future of Syria.

Russia, having by the end of September got herself practically committed to the indefinite support of Assad’s government, now needs a transition out of that commitment. Furthermore, there is now a blood price to settle with Isis, who are sustained by many Chechen fighters, who are a profound danger to Putin’s Russia. At the same time, our leaders noticeably softened their rhetoric around Assad’s immediate future. Our precondition that had prevented peace talks at Geneva 2 getting going has been quietly dropped.

Most significantly, the progress made in two rounds of multilateral talks in Vienna between international stakeholders has provided us with light at the end of the long tunnel of the Syrian civil war. The Vienna process is the necessary first stage. Finally all the required international actors are around the table. That Iran and Saudi Arabia are both party to the conclusions is even more remarkable than the energetic leadership of John Kerry being flanked by a committed Sergei Lavrov.

The final joint statement on 14 November included the surprisingly candid pledge for all members as “supporters of various belligerents to take all possible steps to require adherence to the ceasefire by these groups or individuals they support, supply or influence”. Such agreement to begin reining in respective proxies is necessary in the process of untangling the mess of foreign interests that has been tearing Syria apart for the last five years.

This very important diplomatic agreement is not yet a strategy. That’s what we now need to be presented by the prime minister.

In delivering the agreed objective of a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process, the removal of Isis from its territory in Syria by Syrian forces, the Syrian army and the Syrian Free Army fighting alongside each other is an opportunity to bind wounds. Indeed, it could lay the founding story of the new Syrian republic, as it leads the battle against this lethal international sickness in the global body politic.

Here is our probable ground force. It is infinitely the best option that it would be Syrians liberating Syria from this evil. Less good but acceptable would be local Sunni nations providing the ground forces as it should be Sunni forces defeating this corruption of their branch of the Islamic faith. Having western, Russian or Iranian forces providing the ground defeat of Isis would certainly work militarily, but would be the least attractive option as it might help reinforce the Isis myth. However, the necessity of depriving these ideas of a safe haven would in the end require it, if other options proved impractical. Steeling the countries around the table at Vienna for these options should be our leaders’ priority.

Defeating the poisonous ideology that underpins Isis’s murderous barbarism and lies at the heart of the threat to us all is not a battle that is confined to the plains of eastern Syria. This will be a societal and generational struggle. Let’s aim to start the process knowing we can achieve our first goal of depriving that entity of its territory.

Nobody can fail to recognise the unmistakable anxiety to do something in the face of the threat we face. It is at such time that proper scrutiny is essential. Our hearts go out to all the victims of Isis’s terror, be they in Paris, Beirut, Baghdad, or beyond. But this is a decision that must be made with our heads. The urge to do something is perfectly understandable as we struggle to come to terms with the darkness that is consuming even our fellow citizens. This urge can be our motivation, but proper scrutiny is required to ensure our action is going to achieve its aim.

Crispin Blunt is chair of the foreign affairs committee

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