Declare the actions of ISIS in Syria as genocide.

Declare the actions of ISIS in Syria as genocide.
3 December 2015

Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB):

My Lords, the just war tradition insists that war must always be a last
resort-a necessary evil in an imperfect world. Measured against the just
war criteria, the Government’s case is undoubtedly strong but there are
legitimate questions to ask. Let us take two of the criteria: a just
cause and prospects of success. Is the cause just? Self-evidently,
ISIS’s barbaric ideology is the antithesis of everything that a free
society upholds and stands for. We will need a full-spectrum strategy to
deal with it, and I welcome the references in the Commons Motion to
non-military action.

But how can we entrench in the popular imagination the justice of
military action and the justice of the cause?

For months in your Lordships’ House I have pressed the Government to
formally declare the actions of ISIS in Syria as genocide. Our
obligations are set out in the preamble to the sixth recital of the 1998
Rome statute of the International Criminal Court, which recalls that,

“it is the duty of every State to exercise its criminal jurisdiction
over those responsible for international crimes”,

while the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide states that the obligation each state thus has to prevent
and to punish the crime of genocide is not territorially limited by the
convention.

I recently chaired a meeting in Parliament attended by Syrians and the
Archbishop of Aleppo. We were told how, in a village outside Aleppo,
ISIS cut the tops off the fingers of a 14 year-old boy because his
Christian father refused to convert. They then crucified the boy and
killed the father. At the weekend, a mass grave of Yazidis was uncovered
near Sinjar. Months ago, a former Yazidi MP, speaking here, said that
she could not understand why the West had not declared these events a
genocide.

In the battle of ideas, the rule of law is the best antidote to ISIS.
Capturing and holding those responsible for these atrocities-whether in
Syria, Paris, Tunisia, the Sinai or elsewhere-would underline the
justice of our actions, and the declaration of genocide should have
preceded further military action. We should name this for what it is.

My other question concerns the probability of success.

Drones and Tornados have never captured anyone. I regret the phrase in
the Government Motion in the Commons ruling out the use of ground
forces.

Without a commitment to an international ground force, as in Kuwait or
the Balkans, I remain unconvinced about the probability of success and
disturbed that Parliament is being asked to believe a Panglossian figure
of 70,000 so-called moderate fighters in Syria.

This is no army: it represents a kaleidoscope of opinions, objectives
and capability; they are split into a hundred factions and are
geographically spread across Syria. Unlike the Peshmerga and SDF
alliance, made up of Kurds, Arabs and Syriacs, which has taken 1,300
square kilometres from ISIS and which I have repeatedly pressed the
Government to support-and do so again today-this dodgy figure of 70,000
will not provide a ground force capable of ensuring success. When the
Minister comes to reply, I hope that he will tell us what additional
support will be given to the SDF.

Western air strikes in Syria cannot succeed without ground forces.

In a Question that I tabled yesterday, I asked the Minister to give us
his assessment of the statement by General Sir Richard Shirreff that
even a force of that size-of 70,000-would be incapable of liberating a
city of 350,000 people such as Raqqa. On this question hangs the just
war principle of “probability of success.” It also begs the post-Iraq
question which hangs over the debate: what plan is in place for the
aftermath once the bombing is over? What is the end game? I ask the
Minister to address these specific questions.

To express doubt or scepticism is not to be confused with either
appeasement or an unwillingness to fight.

6.22 pm