Counter-Daesh Campaign: Iraq and Syria

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Boris Johnson]

My hon. Friend, who is a student of military history, will probably agree that a critical moment for this House, and indeed for the west, came in 2013 when we could have taken another path. The military space was effectively filled 18 months ago by the Russians, and indeed by Daesh, and we are now living with the consequences of that failure.

[Andrew Selous]

What are the most hopeful examples of harmonious relations between Sunni and Shi’a that the Foreign Secretary could point to that could best be spread across the middle east?

[Boris Johnson]

My hon. Friend asks a very good question. It goes to the heart of the crisis across the middle east. Everywhere we look, we see people failing to move off their sectarian base and reach out to the opposite community. There is a tragic failure of leadership across the whole region. That is the core of the problem. It requires people to have the imagination, the generosity and the courage to see that they have to be bigger and that they have to reach out to the opposite faction. I very much hope that Prime Minister Abadi and the Iraqi Government are indeed made of such stuff, and I see signs of hope in the co-operation in that Government between Sunni and Shi’a. That is what we have to build on in that area.