Claudia Webbe, Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom, gave a speech during the seminar: Post Brexit UK: World role marred by US unilateralism.
“Thank you to everyone at the Gulf Cultural Club for inviting me to this important event, it is a pleasure to join you all. It has never been more important to build connections across the world in the service of peace and justice.
The UK’s contemporary policy in the Gulf and the surrounding areas cannot be separated from the enduring legacy of the British empire, which carved up the region and left a legacy of instability that persists to this day.
Recent military interventions must be seen in this historical context, in which Britain and other western countries still believe that they can act with impunity in a region from which they have violently extracted an obscene amount of resources over the centuries.
I was proud to be elected on a manifesto, which pledged to end the ‘bomb first, talk later’ approach to international security; limit the war powers of the executive; and conduct an audit of the impact of Britain’s colonial legacy so that we can understand our contribution to the violence and insecurity across regions previously under British colonial rule.
This last policy is incredibly important, as this year we have seen an appalling resurgence of the demonisation of refugees and asylum seekers. Yet asylum seekers arriving in Britain are often from countries where the UK has contributed to their disruption — either by arming current conflicts or through the enduring legacy of colonialism.
The time has come for former empires to take seriously the historical debt that they owe to the countries, communities and individuals who endured their cruelty.
Nowhere is this clearer than Afghanistan. The rapidly accelerating crisis has been heart-breaking to witness. Yet even more distressing has been the cruel, ignorant response of the UK government – which has been one of the key architects of the disaster.
The rapid advance of the Taliban and the scenes of widespread suffering and chaos demonstrates the devastating error of the UK’s participation in the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. This was a war without a just cause, underpinned by neo-colonial ambitions, which set in motion a cycle of unimaginable suffering. The crisis in Afghanistan demonstrates that western interventions only serve to create power vacuums that exacerbate the suffering of innocent people.
The economic incentives of these violent adventures also must be considered. An investigation by The Intercept found that defence stocks outperformed the stock market overall by 58 percent during the Afghanistan War. The top five defence contractors – Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics – have profited handsomely from the twenty years of suffering.
Therefore, whilst the war has been an unmitigated failure at a political, moral and military level – it has been a success for a handful of wealthy shareholders. We cannot allow such profiteering from misery and suffering to continue. The tail of the military industrial complex must not be allowed to wag the dog of Western foreign policy.
The defeat of the US and British militaries in Afghanistan means that this intervention joins those in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen as a calamity that has cost tens of thousands of lives and vast resources to no purpose. It is time that these neo-colonial interventions and forever wars are abandoned for good.
Considering the UK’s role in destabilising Afghanistan and the wider region, we now have a unique obligation to welcome as many refugees as possible from the country by providing safe, open passages, rapidly processing asylum claims and supporting existing Afghan asylum seekers in the UK. There is no reason why Afghan asylum seekers should be suffering to this day in immigration deportation centres.
Due to the government’s inadequate support, many Afghan refugees will be forced to try and claim asylum by navigating the unnecessarily onerous system introduced by the appalling Nationalities and Borders Bill.
This is the unforgivable pattern of western neo-colonialism. With one hand the UK drops bombs and creates the conditions that drive the mass displacement of people, and with the other they create unmanageably strict asylum systems that prevent vulnerable people from safely fleeing the chaos that the west has created. It is a cruel, deadly cycle that we cannot allow to continue in our name.
It is also vital that the UK government calls on the international community to put pressure on the new regime in Afghanistan to respect all religious minorities, journalists, trade union leaders and LGBT+ people whilst simultaneously providing safe routes of escape for such groups.
Indeed, it is vital that the UK government is consistent with its condemnation of human rights. It is welcome that the inhumane, discriminatory practices of the Taliban have been widely condemned. Yet this same lofty condemnation cannot be found when it comes to Britain’s geo-political and economic allies such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other gulf oil states who have an equally shocking human rights record.
Neither can it be found when the government introduces legislation – such as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill – that disproportionately impacts UK residents, especially women and African, African-Caribbean, Asian and other racialised communities.
Human rights and equality must become unshakable principles of governance, not reduced to tools of political convenience.
Above all else, the government must learn the lessons of the failed forever wars of intervention and turn to international cooperation as the means of resolving conflict. The ‘War on Terror’ which was only ever a pretext to expand extractive practices abroad and clamp down on civil liberties at home, must now be consigned to the dustbin of history – along with all other neo-colonial projects.
In March 2020, when United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a global ceasefire, many of us hoped that the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic would provide a unique opportunity for peace.
Yet although the UK backed the ceasefire proposal, there is no evidence of any action being taken on the ground. Indeed, the Yemeni conflict has spiked during the pandemic. It has now been over six years since the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen began.
The Yemini conflict is not only the world’s largest current humanitarian crisis but is also one of the worst atrocities of the modern era.
24 million people – a staggering 80% of the population – need aid and protection, whilst two thirds of the population are reliant on food aid to survive. 10 million people are facing severe food insecurity. The conflict has displaced over 4 million people. 20 million people lack reliable access to clean water, making disease prevention almost impossible.
And in November 2020, the United Nations found that over 233,000 Yemeni people have died over the last six years.
It is therefore shameful that Britain is complicit in such an atrocity – especially as the UK is a penholder on Yemen at the UN Security council and should therefore be ensuring the country’s safety not funding its misery.
The UK, alongside the US, have supplies weapons and crucial military support to the Saudi-led coalition, which is responsible for the highest number of reported civilian fatalities.
The UN has verified the deaths of at least 7,700 civilians since 2015 – although some estimates are much higher – and found that 60% of these were due to bombing raids by the Saudi-led coalition.
Exports of British arms to Saudi Arabia were halted by a legal challenge in the summer of 2019. Yet after a court ruling in July 2020, the UK resumed these sales, despite seemingly clear evidence that they will be used against Yemini civilians in violation of international humanitarian law.
Not long after the court ruling, the Ministry of Defence revealed it had logged more than 500 Saudi air raids which are in possible breach of international law in Yemen – an increase of over 200 in just over two and a half years.
This directly contradicts the government’s flimsy justification to resume arms sales on the basis that only isolated war crimes without any pattern have occurred.
The UK has licensed at least £6.7 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since 2015 – with Oxfam estimating the true value to be more than £15 billion. British officials have also provided strategic military advice, including on bombing targets and tactics.
In contrast, at the UN High-Level Pledging Event for the Humanitarian Situation in Yemen on 1st March 2021, the UK Government’s pledge of £87 million was almost half of the £164 million pledged at the same funding conference last year, and a reduction of £131 million since 2019.
This is the real-world impact of cuts to the UK’s aid budget, which the UN Secretary-General described as a “death sentence” for Yemen, and comes just weeks after the UK Government announced £1.36 billion in new arms licences to Saudi Arabia.
Therefore, despite the UK government’s rhetoric, the amount of aid pledged to Yemen last month is a mere 1.3% of the value of arms that the UK has licensed to be used in Yemen since 2015.
The UK government’s duplicity is shameful. With one hand, they sign resolutions and speak of their desire to end the conflict. Yet with the other, they continue to facilitate the suffering of the Yemeni people by providing the weapons which rain down on civilian houses.
Contrast this to America, who have increased their funding contribution and whose new President Joe Biden has signalled an end to US support for the Saudi-led coalition. On the contrary, the UK continues to pour petrol onto this crisis by providing the weapons which are consistently used against civilian targets.
For all of us in the UK, we cannot allow the unimaginable suffering of the Yemini people to continue in our name. British companies must not be allowed to profit from the suffering of the Yemeni people. The UK government must accept its complicity in this humanitarian catastrophe.
And it must follow the lead of countries around the world by ensuring that no weapons made in our country are used in the conflict and by doing all it can on the international stage to bring this horrific war to an end.
I will just finish by saying that the UK government also must follow the realisation laid out by Joe Biden’s recent speech which called for an end to American interventionist wars across the world. I have taken issue with many things that have happened under Joe Biden’s watch, especially the fact that a recent retaliatory drone strike, in response to ISIS-K’s Kabul airport terrorist attack, killed seven Afghan children.
Yet the withdrawal from neo-imperial adventures is a brave policy shift that is deserving, not only of our full support, but of a similar recognition from the UK government. It is time that the fantasies born from a hangover of the British empire are abandoned for good.”
