UN Mission in Mali: Armed Forces Deployment

John Healey Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. It was good to have the written statement last Thursday, as troops began to arrive in Mali; it is better still to have his oral statement today, with the Minister ready to answer the range of questions that arise from this new deployment.

Let me say at the outset, as I said to the House on Monday, that Labour strongly supports this commitment of UK troops to the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, and we do so with our eyes wide open to the risks they face. The public expect Ministers to be open about this too, so I hope the Minister will undertake to give regular reports on progress to Parliament during this deployment.

The Minister rightly said today that deploying “to MINUSMA does not come without risk.” The UN has described this as its most dangerous mission, with 227 personnel killed since 2013, so what assessment has he made of these risks and what specific steps have been taken to reduce them? Last week the French base in Mali at Gao was attacked; where will our troops be stationed and how secure will the British base be?

The Defence Secretary has told us:

“This deployment reflects our continued commitment to multilateralism and international peace and security”.—[Official Report, 3 December 2020; Vol. 685, c. 14W.]

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Britain does have this special responsibility, which we in Labour also take seriously; too often, however, there has been a view that, somehow, peacekeeping is beneath Britain, so I hope to see confirmation in the integrated review that this has changed as part of the Government’s plans for a post-Brexit global Britain.

Certainly, as with Mali, where Britain has special military skills we should step up, and the Light Dragoons and the Royal Anglian Regiment are filling a capability gap in Mali as long-range reconnaissance specialists. Since the Government first announced the intention to deploy these troops in July 2019, however, Mali has become more complex, less stable, more violent. This deployment is rightly limited; what measures must be met for the Government to judge it a success, are there circumstances in which the Government would widen the scope or increase the size of this UK military mission, and could troops in this UN deployment also serve in the distinct and complementary French-led Barkhane mission?

The Government have said that

“it is stepping up its engagement in the Sahel across the development, diplomacy and defence pillars”.

The Minister says that there is, rightly, very significant development interest in Mali, with 6.8 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. There are also significant security concerns, with drugs cartels, arms traffickers, and al-Qaeda and Islamic State terror groups all active in the region. When co-ordinated action and help are clearly needed, the deep cuts made in the spending review to the conflict, stability and security fund could not have come at a worse time for the Sahel. Will the costs of this Mali deployment be met from that fund? How much in development aid is planned for Mali and the other Sahel countries over the three-year period of this military deployment, and how are Britain’s development, diplomatic and defence activities being co-ordinated within Government?

Finally, Britain’s responsibilities as a leading UN member are being met with this Mali mission, alongside our continuing commitment to peacekeeping operations in eight other countries around the world. I pay tribute to our armed forces personnel who serve in these missions. They will, as the Minister says, continue to make the UK proud.

[James Heappey]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his positive response to the statement. As we were saying in the Remembrance Day debate a few weeks ago, as people deploy on missions such as this it matters enormously to see support on both sides of the House for what they are going out to do. He rightly asked some questions that I will do my best to answer, starting with, of course, an intent to regularly update the House either verbally—although that met with no support from my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—or otherwise on the progress of the mission and the threat as it evolves.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to pick up on the line in my statement that says that this mission is not without risk. This is a dangerous part of the world in which to be operating. It is because it is such a dangerous part of the world that the case for being there as part of a peacekeeping force is so easily made. We should be clear that, despite all the training, all the equipment and all the mitigations that we will put in place—I will explain some of those in a second—our troops are accepting a risk to life and limb in serving in the Sahel, and we thank them for that. We genuinely believe that it is in the interests of the UK and the people of Mali that we contribute to that mission.

We have recognised that in previous deployments perhaps there has been a gung-ho willingness to expand the mission quickly and get on with things without fully understanding the realities of the threat on the ground and how that manifests itself in relation to military operations. In this first rotation—the first six months—we will be expecting the Light Dragoons battle group to deploy and to find its way in the immediate vicinity of Gao, the city in which the UN camp where they will be based is. If, over time, we come to understand that they can operate at range, we will consider that on its merits, depending on the mission design from the UN force commander. Our intention is to find our way slowly, to build our confidence and our understanding, and then to grow the mission, within the confines of MINUSMA. It is important to stress that there is no UK agency in being able just to decide what we do; we are under the command of the UN force commander.

The right hon. Gentleman asked me about the camp. It is a brand-new camp, and it is indeed in the UN super-camp at Gao. That camp is protected by a German early warning system called MANTIS—the modular, automatic and network capable targeting and interception system—which picks up the IDF, or indirect fire attack, which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned in his reply. That allows people in the camp to take cover and adopt all of their drills when there is incoming indirect fire. Sadly, as a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, I know that that is just the reality of being in camps in those places, but these early warning systems give people great confidence that they can find cover before the rounds start landing.

This is, indeed, a complex mission. The UN’s mission is made all the more challenging as a consequence of the changing political tides in Mali—there was a coup only four months ago—and that means that the military mission, as designed by the UN force commander, and the political mission have some work to do to evolve and to react to those new political realities in Mali, hence our caution over the speed at which we unleashed the Light Dragoons on their mission. We want to see how things develop, and we will update the right hon. Gentleman and colleagues as that happens.

There is no scope to widen the size of our force; we are limited by what the UN requires of us. There is also no scope for us to decide unilaterally, as the United Kingdom, that we want to do more; we are within the UN’s mission. MINUSMA and Operation Barkhane are entirely separate; there is no opportunity to flex one from the other, as to do so would be to break the rules on UN peacekeeping contingents. In any case, the missions are so different; Barkhane is a more offensive, counter-terrorism operation, chasing both JNIM—Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin—and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara around not only Mali, but Burkina Faso and Niger. MINUSMA is a Mali-only peacekeeping operation led by the UN.

Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked me about funding. We are talking about £80 million over three years, which is indeed funded by the conflict, stability and security fund. It will matter enormously to people deploying on this operation to see the tone of these exchanges. Our intention is to keep the House informed as best as we can. This is a dangerous mission, but our people are well-trained and well-equipped. They are ready and they are up for it, and I wish them a good tour.