Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I oppose the Government’s proposal to send Irish troops onto the Syrian border. Anybody looking at the situation in Syria is appalled and anybody with an ounce of human decency would want to do anything that could be done to try to assist with the growing humanitarian crisis that is developing there. Millions of refugees have led to a crisis that is worse than that in Rwanda. Tens of thousands of ordinary people have been killed and the country is being destroyed in front of our eyes. It is a desperate situation but the first rule in appalling situations such as this is not to make it worse. We must be careful that what we do does not in any way assist in making the situation worse. That is important for our own troops, their well-being and the credibility and reputation of the State. It is also very important for the suffering people of Syria.

I know that any Irish troops deployed in Syria would not in any way wish to make the situation worse and I am well aware of the proud record of our troops in peacekeeping, in particular in Lebanon. This is a dangerous and volatile situation and in order to make an assessment on how or if we should be involved in any deployment of troops in this situation we must understand what is going on, which is difficult to do. The first reason I am concerned about making the decision now is because it requires more debate. Such a decision must not be rushed.

What is happening in Syria is a terrible example of the chickens coming home to roost for the utterly cynical, amoral policies of the big powers in the Middle East. I stress that all of the big powers are involved. In the case of the repulsive regime of Bashar al-Assad, the big culprits are obviously Russia and China who have armed that regime and continue to support it and who are just playing for influence in the region. The reason they are doing that is because the Middle East, which is a strategically important region for reasons of which we are all aware, namely oil, has been a theatre for the competing interests of the big powers where Russia and China back one gang of despots and the western powers back other gangs of despots and tyrants. All of them, when they see crises such as this emerge, seek to play for the advantage of their own interests in the region not the interests of ordinary citizens. That is exactly what is going on now. The people we must support and take into consideration are the ordinary people of Syria who rose up against the rotten al-Assad regime to overthrow it. Those people were inspired directly by the Egyptian revolution, one that continues. It has thrown out one despot and has more recently thrown out another leader who promised change but within a year was acting just like the despot, Mubarak, that he replaced. He cuddled up to the Egyptian military only a year after being brought to power by the people.

The Egyptian people - Copts and other Christians, men, women and the poor - have risen up and shown that they are the power that can challenge despotic and tyrannical regimes.

This is also true in Syria. The ordinary people are the key to the situation. We should not in any way be associated with forces that are cynically manipulating the situation for their own strategic interests. Unfortunately, this is what the US and some of the European powers are doing. They are trying to insinuate their influence by backing certain elements of the opposition to Assad at the expense of other elements that more genuinely represent the ordinary people on the ground.

The situation has become difficult. The real popular movement that opposed Assad did not want to take up arms. It wanted to defeat Assad through peaceful protest, mass action and so on, but the situation was militarised by Assad and Gulf states backed and armed by the West that sent Islamist militants and so forth to push sectarian agendas. The Free Syrian Army is essentially an agent for some of the Western powers. The West wants to arm it at the expense of some of the brigades on the ground that are uniting the ordinary people in a popular movement of resistance against Assad.

It is messy and complicated and we should not pour petrol on the fire. It could damage our reputation. We have a good reputation in the Middle East among ordinary Arabs because we are seen as people who have not taken sides in backing imperial manipulations of or designs on the region. It is important that we not slide into being involved or being perceived to be involved with forces that are not intervening in the best interests of the ordinary citizens.

I oppose this deployment. It is in line with Fine Gael's overall policy of moving away from military neutrality and towards Irish involvement in military alliances, but it is not a direction in which we should be going. It is dangerous for the people of Syria and for our troops.

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