Lord Avebury "One way
would be to encourage the AU to recognise
Somaliland, so that it would"
“If the AU cannot persuade member
states to reinforce AMISOM and the Security Council ignores the
problem, the AU should consider how at least to protect Somaliland,
which has been de facto independent for the past 18 years, now under
a democratically elected Government. The Minister told me in a
Written Answer that we were reassessing the situation in Somaliland
to see how we can implement our programmes of assistance and
opportunities of enhancing our support. One way would be to
encourage the AU to recognise Somaliland, so that it would have the
backing of international law against any attempt by Mr Aweys to
occupy it, and to stabilise it against further acts of terrorism.
Somalia is already a haven for terrorists and pirates, and we should
at least seek international agreement to prevent them extending
their control over a law-abiding neighbour. ” Lord Eric Avebury
Lord Avebury: My Lords, a few hours ago the Minister said that we
invaded Afghanistan to prevent it becoming a haven for international
terrorism. She did not remind your Lordships that that was also one
of the excuses given for the invasion of Iraq, which, as President
Mubarak said at the time, was likely to create 100 bin Ladens. He
was probably out by a factor of 10, but that has happened. It has
also involved us, as the noble Baroness said, in a £700 million
contribution so far towards reconstruction, has placed huge burdens
on our Armed Forces, and is an ingredient in the motivation of
terrorists across the world.
Although there might be questions about the precise identity of the
persons who committed the atrocities in Mumbai, they share the
mindset of those who attacked the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es
Salaam in the 1990s, and the perpetrators of 9/11, Madrid and the
bombing of hotels in Jakarta and Islamabad, right up to the latest
strikes on Indian hotels. All these acts are motivated by a
particular aberrant Islamic worldview inspired by the fundamentalist
ideologues of Qutb and Maudoodi. Apart from a need to bring the
perpetrators of the offences to justice, we should address the
problem of the hate ideology that damns the whole world of what they
call Dar al Harb as wholly evil and corrupt.
It is a losing battle to deal with individual acts of terrorism
while ignoring the hatred and violence that is, as the noble Lord,
Lord Howell, said, spewed out
4 Dec 2008 : Column 109
by thousands of madrassahs, which, I may add, are funded by oil
money, and which churn out graduates indoctrinated with loathing for
Governments and people who do not conform with their ideas of Sunni
orthodoxy.
Therefore, the Foreign Secretary says that we must prevent
Afghanistan again becoming an incubator for international terrorism.
However, neither in the blog of his visit nor his interview with the
“Today” programme, nor in the Prime Minister’s recent meeting with
President Karzai, nor, indeed, in the noble Baroness’s speech this
morning is there any recognition of the fact that military solutions
alone, which ignore the underlying ideology, are doomed to failure.
My noble friend Lord Ashdown rightly said that winning in
Afghanistan is not a military operation. With a huge effort, the
Taliban may be contained, but unless we confront its underlying
philosophy of loathing which not only spurs the Taliban but also
al-Qaeda and other organisations like Lashkar-e-Toiba, it will
simply be reincarnated in another form or another part of the world.
At the same time we need to address, as has been said by several
noble Lords, the genuine grievances of Islamic populations
throughout the world, and particularly the failure to arrive at a
proper solution for the sufferings of the Palestinian people and to
implement the declared intention of the international community to
assist in creating a two-state solution.
In Somalia, we seem to have no idea what to do about the security
vacuum that will be heightened by the departure of the Ethiopian
forces at the end of the year. It spells the end for President
Abdullahi Yusuf, and, as I suggested several years ago to the noble
Lord, Lord Triesman, when he was a Minister, we put too many eggs in
the basket of the TFG without having a plan B.
The Secretary-General’s last-minute development of the concept of an
international stabilisation force was not pursued by the Security
Council’s November resolution, so that 3,000 AMISOM troops who had
been hanging on in the hope of being reinforced are also certain to
be withdrawn. They had been helping the Ethiopians to protect the
two major cities of Mogadishu and Baidoa, leaving the rest of the
country to the extreme faction of the Alliance for the Re-liberation
of Somalia, under Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is in fact on the
UN list of terrorist associates. It is only a matter of time before
these terrorists take control of the capital, making it impossible
for the international community to continue its recognition of the
TFG. The moderate Islamist leader of an ARS faction, Sharif Ahmed,
who signed a new deal with a faction of the TFG last week, appears
to control no territory at all. What does the Minister think that
the international community should do at the end of this month, when
all these things arise?
Eritrea’s involvement in Somalia, which includes hosting Mr Aweys’s
base in Asmara and probably giving him logistical help, may have
been one way of its retaliating against Ethiopia for Meles’s
prevarication over the boundary commission determination of April
2002. I remind your Lordships that, under the distinguished
chairmanship of the British jurist Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, the
commission tried to get agreement on physical delimitation but
finally had to admit defeat
4 Dec 2008 : Column 110
in September 2006, contenting itself with expressing the border in
terms of its co-ordinates. If the UN had been much firmer since then
with Addis Ababa in calling for unconditional acceptance of the
commission’s determination, for removal of their troops from
Eritrean territory and for demilitarisation of the legal boundary,
it would have allowed both countries to divert enormous amounts of
money and manpower lavished on their armed forces over the last six
and half years into peaceful development. It would have meant that
both countries might have been co-operating in the development of a
peaceful political settlement for Somalia.
If the AU cannot persuade member states to reinforce AMISOM and the
Security Council ignores the problem, the AU should consider how at
least to protect Somaliland, which has been de facto independent for
the past 18 years, now under a democratically elected Government.
The Minister told me in a Written Answer that we were reassessing
the situation in Somaliland to see how we can implement our
programmes of assistance and opportunities of enhancing our support.
One way would be to encourage the AU to recognise Somaliland, so
that it would have the backing of international law against any
attempt by Mr Aweys to occupy it, and to stabilise it against
further acts of terrorism. Somalia is already a haven for terrorists
and pirates, and we should at least seek international agreement to
prevent them extending their control over a law-abiding neighbour.
The UN is already overstretched, and member states are having
difficulty meeting requests for contributions to peacekeeping forces
elsewhere in Africa. The Security Council decided on a Chapter VII
mandate for Darfur as long ago as August 2006, but the hybrid UN/AU
force deployment timetable has slipped yet again, as has already
been mentioned, to reach 80 per cent of its final strength in March
2009. That has dire consequences for the region as a whole, as the
noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, has said. There has been deterioration in
the security situation, including deadly attacks on peacekeepers.
Their freedom of movement is undermined repeatedly by
government-imposed restrictions. UN helicopters have come under fire
several times and, although the Government say that they are
committed to a ceasefire, they bombed villages in November, and, in
the previous month, their militias attacked dozens of villages,
killing 40 innocent civilians.
The long history of broken promises has not yet come to an end. The
Security Council should insist that all aggressive operations by the
armed forces of the country should cease and that the persistent
obstruction of humanitarian agencies should also come to an end. One
of the items on the “to do” list of Mr Djibril Bassolé, the UN chief
mediator, should be to get agreement on independent international
monitoring of ceasefire violations to resolve the arguments about
responsibility that arise whenever civilians are killed or injured.
It would be useful to know whether that has been discussed with
Khartoum.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldhansrd/text/81204-0011.htm
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