Somalia

Lord Hague of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of how to build a stable and peaceful Somalia.

At the encouragement of Mr Speaker I shall say a word about the Maldives, at the other end of the Indian ocean, before I turn to Somalia. I know that some hon. Members have been asking about it, and I am assured by Mr Speaker that I ought to address it since there have been developments there this week and it has not been possible for colleagues to ask questions.

I wish to register our concern about developments in the Maldives, in particular the reports of attacks on members and supporters of the Maldivian Democratic party. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who is responsible for the middle east, has spoken to both former President Nasheed and the new President and expressed those concerns. It is for the new leadership to establish its legitimacy with its own people and the international community, with an independent review, we hope, of the circumstances that led to what happened earlier this week. We hope that it will demonstrate its respect for the rule of law, including peaceful demonstrations. I welcome the call for calm and order made by former President Nasheed to all his supporters. My hon. Friend will be delighted to discuss with hon. Members the situation in the Maldives, with which he is in close touch, if they wish.

As the House will well know, Somalia today is not stable or peaceful, and that is the matter that we are going to consider today. It presents the most acute symptoms of state failure seen anywhere on the globe, even relative to Afghanistan, which we have just been discussing. It has had no properly functioning central Government for 20 years now, and it is the scene of some of the worst humanitarian suffering that the modern world has known. I will say more about that shortly, but I start with the single heart-rending, staggering and deplorable fact that between 50,000 and 100,000 people starved to death in Somalia last year, half of them children. Somalia’s problems present a growing threat to its own people, its neighbours and the security of Britain and our allies around the world.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

What the Foreign Secretary says about the situation in Somalia is absolutely true, and his interest in it is greatly appreciated not only in this country but, I am sure, worldwide. Will he take the opportunity to clarify the situation with regard to Somaliland, about which there is sometimes misunderstanding? As he said, there has been no effective central Government in the former Somalia for more than 20 years, but there has been a very effective Government in Somaliland, albeit that it has not been recognised as a separate state. Will he take the opportunity to acknowledge that difference between the situation in the north and the south?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hague]

Yes, of course. The right hon. Gentleman has been a great expert on, and friend of, Somaliland for a long time, and we can indeed make that distinction. I spoke to the President of Somaliland last week to encourage him to come to the London conference, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has visited Somaliland. We give it a lot of assistance in many ways and welcome the fact that it has become a more stable area within Somalia, and we will welcome its participation at the London conference. I will come back to Somaliland later. I have been giving a general introduction to Somalia as a whole, but the right hon. Gentleman is certainly right to make that distinction.

Somalia as a whole not only cries out for compassion but is a point of great weakness in the long-term security and prosperity of the wider world. The people of Somalia deserve their country to be more stable and peaceful, and we in this country need it to be so. For reasons of national interest and our common humanity, we need to help Somalia get on its feet. We need to do so to reduce our vulnerability to terrorist attacks, to maintain the free flow of trade on which our economy depends, to limit our exposure to the effects of uncontrolled migration, to increase the support that we can give to education and economic development in Somalia and to support the stability of a part of Africa where our country has a great many interests and our nationals have been shown to be vulnerable.

Nearly $1 trillion of trade to and from Europe travelled through the gulf of Aden last year. Some 20,000 British nationals live next door to Somalia in Kenya, and a further 200,000 travel there every year. They would be deeply affected if the violence in Somalia spread to its neighbours.

All those interests are undoubtedly threatened by many factors in Somalia, including piracy and terrorism. The House will be familiar with many of the risks, so I will not list them in detail, but just one aspect of the crisis in Somalia brings home the problem dramatically. Large parts of south central Somalia are still controlled by the group known as al-Shabaab, which until recently occupied Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab has publicly declared sympathy for al-Qaeda’s aims and methods, and elements of its leadership welcome foreign fighters and sympathisers from around the world who have swelled its ranks and coffers and used Somalia as a base for terrorism.

Attack planning linked to extremist networks in Somalia has been thwarted from Sweden to Australia, and the Kampala bombings of July 2010, which killed 74 people, were planned and executed by individuals with links to Somalia. Al-Shabaab’s violent tactics inflict suffering on Somalis, including through its known forced recruitment of children, and its embrace of al-Qaeda imposes a concept of global jihad and violent extremism that is alien to most Somalis, highly damaging to their country and dangerous to us.

In the face of such threats, our Government contend, as did the previous Government, that we do not have the option of disengaging from the problems of Somalia. We cannot afford simply to continue to treat the symptoms of those problems without addressing the underlying causes such as the fundamental lack of governance and security across most of Somalia. We believe that a stronger and more united international approach is needed if we are to achieve a stable and peaceful Somalia over time that combines political will with practical measures to boost security and development. We also judge that recent positive developments in Somalia mean that the time is right for a new international effort. This moment of opportunity is why, in two weeks’ time, we will host the London conference on Somalia, bringing together 50 countries and organisations.

[Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

I very much welcome the conference on Somalia, but is there a danger that the country’s humanitarian needs will be sidelined if there is too much emphasis on political and security concerns?

[Mr Hague]

There would be such a danger if we constructed the conference in the wrong way. I am talking about security concerns, but the UK makes a huge contribution to addressing humanitarian concerns —we were the second-largest bilateral donor in the recent humanitarian crisis. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development will host, alongside the conference, an event to discuss humanitarian needs. As I will describe, one of the conclusions that we hope for from the conference is to highlight those humanitarian needs.

This is about much more than security, as I will describe.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

I very much welcome the conference in London, but how will it differ from the one that is being held in Turkey? What are the differences between the objectives of the Turkish conference and the UK-based one?

[Mr Hague]

They will be integrated. I have discussed that a couple of times with my Turkish counterpart. In recognition of our conference in February, the Turks have moved their conference back a little to later in the year. Both Turkey and the UK hope that that will follow on from the progress we make in London. The conference in London is largely at Head of State level—it will be hosted by the Prime Minister, and many Heads of State and Heads of Government will be coming—and will address the whole range of issues affecting Somalia. It is therefore one of the most ambitious conferences that has been held internationally on Somalia. I believe it will help to establish momentum for all the conferences that will follow, including the one in Istanbul.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for giving way on that point and I welcome the conference and all discussions that take place on Somalia. It is past time that there was detailed involvement. Can he envisage a day when a conference on the future of Somalia will be held in Somalia, which would show real movement and a real advance?

[Mr Hague]

I can envisage that day, but we are not there yet. As the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) said, there are stable areas in Somalia and some stable regional and local Governments. Based on what I saw on my visit last week, I would not say that the conditions are right to hold an international conference there yet, but the improvement has been great in the last year—I could not have visited at all a year ago. I can envisage that time if we do all the things that I shall describe.

It is because of that moment of opportunity that I mentioned that we have appointed a new ambassador to Somalia for the first time since 1991—I took him to present his credentials to the President of Somalia last week—and we are working to reopen our embassy in Mogadishu. All of that is consistent with our interests in Somalia and the increased emphasis that we place on conflict prevention as a priority in British foreign policy.

We do not take on that task lightly or without humility. The international community has not succeeded in turning Somalia around, but that is not for a lack of effort by other Governments and this one in recent years. We supported the important initiatives of the previous Labour Government, but we have not succeeded so far largely because the problems are so vast and complex, and because international policy is fragmented.

We must always be clear-sighted and realistic in setting our expectations for what we can achieve. We cannot transform any of Somalia’s problems overnight or impose a political solution on it. Britain cannot achieve any of the goals I am discussing without working with a broad range of countries across the world and Somalis themselves, but we can aim for the long-term goal of a Somalia that is more stable; that is able to meet the basic needs of its population; that can begin to build its economy with international support; that is able to govern its territory; and that can work with us to prevent terrorism flourishing on its soil. To do that we must try to change the dynamic in Somalia, from the trends of recent years of inexorable decline to an upwards trajectory of gradually increasing stability and security.

To achieve even that is an immense challenge. Our recent experiences of rebuilding states after conflict are that the international community has a tendency to set unrealistic goals that are not fulfilled, disappointing the expectations of the people we are trying to help and weakening the impact of our efforts. We must not make the same mistake with Somalia. We have a responsibility to match ambition with resources, our expectations with a good understanding of realities, and our hopes for quick results with the likely need for patient and long-term engagement.

Somalia today is a nation still at war with itself and without a sustainable peace. Its conflict has taken many forms over the past 20 years, from clan-based regional insurgencies, which overthrew the ruling regime in 1991, through warlordism, to the current violent insurgency of al-Shabaab. There have been 14 peace processes in that time, culminating in the current UN-led Djibouti peace process. Somalia’s problems are compounded and fuelled by geography, such as the fact that it has the longest coastline in Africa—it is more than 3,000 km long—and yet has no functioning coastguard or navy.

The scale of the human suffering is unimaginable and the number of victims so large as to be hard to fathom by people in this country. To put it in terms that would hit home here in Britain, more people in Somalia are dependent on emergency assistance than the entire populations of Edinburgh, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Liverpool put together; the number of people displaced in Somalia is seven times the population of Nottingham; and the average life expectancy in the 21st century is 48, which is roughly the same as life expectancy in Britain in 1880. An entire generation of children in Somalia has grown up with guns, not school books, knowing nothing other than insecurity and deprivation.

Even against that sober background, however, we can see a glimmer of hope for Somalia today. There are three compelling reasons why the time is right for a major push on Somalia, the first of which is that Mogadishu has been liberated by African Union Mission in Somalia forces, thanks to the skill and courage of the Ugandan and Burundian troops that form the backbone of the African Union contingent in Somalia. I saw that myself when I visited Mogadishu a week ago today. It was encouraging to see people going to the shops and markets. The road to the airport was crowded and some were looking forward to going to the beach on Friday. Those are semblances of normal life compared with what they have experienced in the past few years.

Nevertheless, it is hard to see many buildings that have no bullet holes in them, or that are not scarred by the effect of war. Today, almost all of Mogadishu is controlled by AMISOM and the transitional federal Government forces, and other regions are more stable, making it possible to make progress on Somali governance. Djibouti has sent troops further to strengthen AMISOM, and Sierra Leone is expected to provide a battalion in July, making further progress a possibility.

The second reason for optimism is that those operations and successful counter-terrorism work are putting pressure on al-Shabaab. We need to seize the opportunity to intensify that pressure and not allow al-Shabaab to regroup. Its guerrilla tactics inflict huge suffering on ordinary Somalis and it harbours foreign extremists, as I have described.

Related to that, the international community has made progress in diminishing the pirate activity that is a symptom of, and contributor to, Somalia’s conflict. There have been no successful hijacks in the gulf of Aden since November 2010. The number of vessels and crews currently held by pirate groups is at its lowest since 2009. Twenty-two ships were hijacked off the coast of Somalia between November 2010 and January 2011, but in the same period in the past year only two ships were hijacked.

The third reason for optimism is that there is an opportunity to create a broader and more representative political arrangement when the transitional federal Government’s mandate expires this summer. That gives an opening to launch a broader political process that embraces all Somalis, and that places emphasis on supporting regional governance as well as better and more representative government from the centre.

I pay tribute to the Governments and parties that have played a part in bringing that about; to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, who has made two visits to Somalia this year; and to staff from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development, who have all played an important role.

Those changes on the ground give the international community a window of opportunity to unite behind a clear strategy; to support a new political process that has greater legitimacy in the eyes of the Somali people than the current elite does; to help people to return to Mogadishu and rebuild their lives there; to strengthen the African Union forces in Somalia; to put in place a plan to build up Somalia’s own security and justice sectors; to introduce more effective arrangements to tackle piracy and terrorism; and to work better to support the pockets of stability that are now emerging in parts of the country.

That is what the Somalia conference will aim to do. We have invited Government and multilateral organisations that are active and influential on Somalia; representatives from Somalia, including the transitional federal institutions; the Presidents of Puntland and Galmudug; and representatives of Aluh Sunnah wal Jamaah. We welcome the participation of the President of Somaliland, with the experience that Somaliland can provide of peacebuilding in the region.

We have secured senior attendance from the region, including from Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, as well as from the United States, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Sweden, the United Nations, the African Union and the European Union. I am delighted to say that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will attend the conference.

We hope to agree practical measures in seven key areas, all of which I discussed on my visit to Mogadishu and Kenya last week, and which are the subject of extensive discussion with our partners all around the world ahead of the conference.

On the political track, the current transitional institutions in Mogadishu run out in August. They must not be extended. The Somali political process must become broader and more representative. That might involve a constitutional assembly drawn from all of Somalia’s communities.

On security, African Union forces have pushed al-Shabaab out of Mogadishu to create political space there, and Kenyan action has put al-Shabaab on the back foot. However, African forces have insufficient funding for UN Security Council-mandated actions. We therefore hope that the conference will consider how funding can be made sustainable for African troops willing to put their lives on the line.

The success stories in Somalia are in the regions. Puntland and Galmudug have established local peace deals and set up administrations. The conference should agree a co-ordinated international package of support to Somalia’s regions that complements work on peace and stability at the national level.

Piracy off the Somali coast is the affront to the rule of international law that I described. We must break the piracy business cycle. We hope the conference will strengthen arrangements to catch, try and imprison pirates, and continue to develop regional maritime capacity in Somalia and across the region.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

As one knows from the UN court in Sierra Leone, imprisoning people is quite expensive. Does my right hon. Friend or DFID have any suggestions for how the international community can ensure that sufficient prisons are built to hold these pirates and make sure they do not disappear? Secondly, and related to that, one argument put forward to explain this piracy is that too many of the fisheries have been taken. What can we do to enhance fisheries protection off Somalia?

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[Mr Hague]

The United Kingdom is very active on the provision of increased prison places in the country and the region. The Department for International Development is helping to fund the construction of three prisons; in fact, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has been to see the construction of one of them, so we are involved in that.

My hon. Friend is right about the fishing issue. The Minister for Africa—the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham)—and I have been engaged in encouraging the transitional federal Government in Mogadishu to claim their exclusive economic zone, and we will encourage their successors do the same, because that will give them the necessary rights to the waters off Somalia. They will, of course, then need a coastguard, naval and maritime capability of some kind to enforce those rights, but, as I mentioned earlier, that is one of the issues we also want to address. These things are therefore part of the longer-term solution to piracy, and my hon. Friend is quite right to ask about them.

I was just listing some of the aims of our conference. We intend to make it harder for terrorists to operate in and out of Somalia. We hope the conference will agree the areas we need to develop to disrupt terrorism across the region, including stopping the movement of terrorists to and from Somalia, disrupting the flow of their finances and supporting the Somali criminal justice sector so that it can detain and prosecute terrorists in a human rights-compliant manner.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

There are disturbing reports that about 50 British nationals are involved with al-Shabaab. Has my right hon. Friend heard such reports, and are they justified?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, they are justified. It would, of course, be difficult to put a precise number on these things, but we are concerned about foreign fighters, in general, going to Somalia, and there is certainly evidence that they include British fighters. Wherever that occurs, and wherever we are aware of it, we work in various ways with the authorities in the region, including in neighbouring countries, and with the emerging authorities in Somalia to try to contain that threat. That is why the defeat of terrorism in the area is an important national objective for the United Kingdom.

On the humanitarian front, the conference provides an opportunity to highlight the need for donors to continue to respond generously and on the basis of needs, to invest more in livelihoods and basic social services, to increase the resilience of households in Somalia to future economic shocks and to help reduce the likelihood of future famines.

We want London to be the start, not the end, of a new process—the process I have described. We want the conference to agree on how we handle Somali issues in future, on a revitalised international contact group, on UN and African leadership and on more countries deploying diplomats and staff into Somalia, not just basing themselves in Kenya, as many, including ourselves, have had to do in recent years. Those are all practical but meaningful steps that will have an impact on the ground.

We hope to emerge from the London conference with a stronger common understanding of the way forward and a renewed political commitment for the long haul. Beyond the conference itself, we will continue to be an active member of international groups on Somalia, including the international contact group on Somalia and the contact group on piracy off the coast of Somalia, and we will maintain our strong bilateral engagement.

Through the Department for International Development, Britain is providing substantial development support over the next four years, working on longer-term programmes to address the underlying causes of poverty and conflict and helping Somalis to take control of their lives and rebuild their communities and livelihoods. That involves working with local and regional governments in areas such as Puntland, which the Development Secretary visited last month, where we will help build democratic institutions that can respond to the needs of their citizens, help the police and justice systems work so that people can feel more secure, and increase access to health care, education and jobs, which are absolutely critical to Somalis and to breaking the cycle of piracy.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Will the conference look at giving people in Somalia access to humanitarian aid, which has been blocked by al-Shabaab? One million people were being supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross and others. Secondly, what steps have been taken to involve and engage the British Somali diaspora, which has many members in my constituency and elsewhere, as part of the discussions and the build-up to the conference?

[Mr Hague]

Humanitarian access is a critical issue that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has pursued for a long time. Part of our objective in doing most of the things I have described is to improve humanitarian access and the ability to encourage sound development across parts of Somalia, including those that are currently under the control of al-Shabaab.

The diaspora in this country has an important role to play. Yesterday, Chatham House held an excellent conference with many leading figures from the Somali diaspora in the United Kingdom. I spoke to the conference to set out the objectives of the London conference in two weeks’ time, and my hon. Friend the Minister for Africa spent many hours there. The views expressed at the conference are now being fed into our preparations for the London conference. We look to Somalis in this country to assist as actively as they can with engagement with Somalia. Somalia is partly dependent on the remittances it receives from the diaspora overseas; in fact, those remittances amount to more than $1 billion a year, which is more than the total assistance from foreign Governments. The diaspora therefore plays a crucial role in the future of its country, and we recognise that in the preparations we are making for the conference.

We want to help ensure that last year’s tragic humanitarian crisis is never repeated. Britain has been one of the most generous donors to the relief effort, having provided £128 million to the relief effort across the horn of Africa since July, including £57 million for Somalia alone, in addition to our main development programme and on top of the £72 million raised by the Disasters Emergency Committee from concerned people in this country. British aid has reached more than 1 million vulnerable people, saved the lives of thousands and contributed to lifting 750,000 people out of famine and the risk of imminent death.

We are proud of the role that we play and the example we set to others. The UK also contributes 14% of all European Union spending in and on Somalia, including on development and humanitarian aid, and we actively support all three international naval operations in the waters around Somalia, including by providing the operational commander and the headquarters in Northwood near London for the EU naval mission Operation Atalanta. All that work will continue beyond the London conference on Somalia, because it is only through such a sustained and co-ordinated effort that we can play our part in helping to build a stable and peaceful Somalia.

That will be the Government’s approach. We will pursue a policy that is realistic, based on our national interests as well as our international obligations, conscious of the enormity of the problems and aware that only Somalis can resolve their political differences. It is a policy based on partnership with other nations, because it is only by working with others that we can address the scale and international dimensions of the conflict in Somalia, and it is a policy that is broad and comprehensive, that recognises that it is not enough to treat the symptoms of the problem without addressing its underlying causes, and that encompasses development, human security and the rule of law, human rights and political participation, as well as counter-terrorism and counter-piracy. That is the approach that we will urge the international community to maintain, through the London conference, and which I hope will have the full support of the House.