APPG Kurdistan

The following letter appears in the Times.

The world must condemn any chemical weapons attacks in Syria — the Kurdish people in Iraq know the effects only too well

Sir, The Foreign Secretary must follow through on his statement that the international community should hold the Assad regime to account for its use of chemical weapons in Syria (report, Apr 16). The evidence that chemical weapons have been used appears to be mounting. The world must show that such barbaric attacks will not be tolerated.

The Kurdish people in Iraq know what it is like to be attacked with chemical weapons. In Halabja, in March 1988, 5,000 people were gassed to death and many more were injured.

We urge the Government to formally recognise the Kurdish genocide. We said “never again”, but on the 25th anniversary of the attack on Halabja, we are discussing such weapons being used again — by Assad.

This is why the genocide against the Kurds must be recognised internationally, as only then can we stop it happening again elsewhere.

Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman
High Representative to the UK, Kurdistan Regional Government

Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan is now once again increasingly known because Saddam Hussein committed his worst crime against humanity there. His forces rained down mustard gas and nerve agents on the town, murdered 5,000 people in minutes and permanently maimed many thousands more in March 1988.

But Halabja could come to be associated with something much more positive – the health-enhancing pomegranate. For Halabja is the source of some of the best varieties of this prized fruit which can be eaten, drunk by itself or mixed with other drinks and reduce cholesterol.

It could be a massive symbol of change if Halabja were to become known worldwide for pomegranates rather than weapons of mass destruction. Fortunately, the land wasn’t contaminated around Halabja.

It would also help to kick-start the renewal of agriculture in Kurdistan, originally the bread basket of Iraq and where agriculture was itself founded centuries ago.

Agriculture was a major victim of Saddam’s genocide against the Kurds. The countryside was turned into a free fire zone and all living things were shot on sight. Thousands of villages were destroyed, not partially but completely to the last brick. Wells were capped. Thousands were forced into concentration camps and men and boys of battle age were carted off to mass graves.

The damage was compounded by a badly mismanaged UN Oil-for-Food programme, which encouraged imports of cheap, low quality produce instead of supporting local production.

Decades later most Kurds have no farming skills. Over the last 40 years, the region has turned from being largely self-sufficient to one that imports around 90% of its food, although that is changing.

Kurdistan’s plentiful oil and gas will provide a decent living for most but such resources are finite while agriculture is permanent. The Kurdistan Regional Government believes that the economic and productive development of the agrifood industry is strategically important to its food security and part of diversifying the economy.

Kurdistan is maybe the fifth largest producer of pomegranates. They are not the only foods that the Region can produce. It is also endowed with over 80 varieties of grapes, fine mountain flower honey, apples, pears, okra and other fruits and vegetables. Few or no pesticides are used and only organic fertilizer is applied.

Some of this was displayed at successive World Fruit and Vegetable shows in London, where it was greeted with enthusiasm. The quality of its pomegranates sparked much interest and there have been efforts to create a viable supply chain.

It would do a power of good for Halabja itself which lags behind the rest of the Region in the development of its infrastructure. A booming pomegranate trade could also help revive its fine old agricultural college where, if the obvious enthusiasm of its staff and students were matched by decent funding, an agricultural renaissance could occur.

Kurdish pomegranates in our supermarkets and in our diet would do so much to rebrand Kurdistan as a coming place rather than one associated with barbarism.

Gary Kent

The vast energy assets of my country, Iraq, were long abused to fund regional conflicts and instruments of internal repression. No one knows that better than the Kurds, who were the target of a brutal campaign of genocide that culminated in the chemical bombardment of Halabja in the late 1980s. Today, thanks to the American actions in liberating Iraq, our oil and gas resources can become a source of stability for us, and provide dependable security of supply to the global energy market.

The question now is how Iraq recovers and takes its place in the modern world. In achieving this, we value the support of our many friends, especially in the U.S. We believe the energy interests of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the federal government of Iraq and the U.S. are the same; the priority is to increase production across Iraq and to maximize exports. The KRG’s common-sense approach is to help stabilize oil markets through increased production at a moment of significant international tension.

The KRG has built a new energy sector from scratch in just five years with help from American and European companies, as well as others. The federal constitution makes clear the KRG’s right to manage the resources. The export and marketing of Iraq’s energy is not the monopoly of any single entity, provided revenues are shared fairly among the Iraqi people. This year, the KRG could export at least 250,000 barrels of oil per day, which would raise more than $8 billion for Iraq’s treasury. We are on track to turn this into one million barrels per day by 2015 and two million barrels per day by 2019 with new discoveries.

Thanks to our prudent management of natural resources, our region enjoys near round-the-clock electricity. We are also providing power to hard-pressed neighboring provinces in the north of Iraq such as Kirkuk and Nineveh, helping to underpin their economic revival.

However, some are unjustifiably concerned that when the Kurds ask for their fair share and their rights that they seek independence. We wish to remain part of a democratic and federal Iraq, but given the country’s troubled history of authoritarian rule, we believe a decentralized oil policy and the sharing of power and wealth is essential to Iraq’s unity. The tragic lessons of the past teach us that Iraq cannot be governed by force, only through cooperation and consensus. Economic growth undermines geopolitical extremism and conflict.

We need to get oil from the Kurdistan region — and more widely from northern Iraq — to market. By 2019, over three million barrels per day of oil could flow through Iraq’s northern energy corridor to Turkey and the international market. Export infrastructure must be built, but this requires tackling bottlenecks through additional feeder and export pipelines.

The KRG’s relationship with America’s NATO ally Turkey over energy should not be a concern to our U.S. partners. Iraq’s unity and upholding the federal constitution are central to all discussions with Turkey, which will not encourage separatism as it seeks to negotiate a new status for the Kurds in its own country. We are sure that achieving lasting stability in Iraq is also an approach shared by Ankara.

Those who unjustifiably suspect our motives perhaps forget that Iraq’s unity is already at risk because of the non-adherence to the constitution by the current federal administration in Baghdad. The KRG believes that Washington’s approach to Iraq’s energy challenge can help Iraq shepherd through a new deal on energy that will benefit all its people in accordance with the constitution and advance stability and economic wellbeing in the wider region.

The KRG is entitled to and can make the oil and gas exports happen, and prefers to do this with Baghdad. But sadly, those in charge there refuse to honor agreements and negotiate based on the constitution.
In this light, the KRG seeks constructive dialogue with Baghdad to resolve all outstanding oil and gas issues based on the federal constitution as the only viable foundation for Iraq’s unity.

Dr. Ashti Hawrami is Minister of Natural Resources for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq.

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2013/04/14/a_decentralized_oil_policy_is_key_to_iraqs_unity.html

The KRG High Representative to the UK, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman reflects on Anfal Day.

Iraqi Kurds today mark the genocide carried out by Saddam Hussein in which 182,000 perished over a few months in 1987-88.

We are not a people that wallow in the past but we need our friends to understand the still heavy weight of genocide on our society.

We are grateful for the support of British troops who were part of Operation Provide Comfort in 1991 and later enforced a no-fly-zone over Kurdistan to protect us from the Butcher of Baghdad. If these steps hadn’t been taken by Britain, America and other allies, Saddam would have continued his campaign of death.

Iraqi Kurdistan is relatively small – about the size and population of Scotland. In almost any Kurdish gathering, half were affected directly and the other half indirectly by the genocide.

Saddam’s genocide campaign in 1987-88 was an industrialised effort to eliminate us. It was planned and executed systematically. Chemical weapons killed women and children; boys and men ‘of battle age’ were rounded up and ‘disappeared’. We are finding them in mass graves, 25 years later. This operation of death and destruction was called the Anfal by Saddam, meaning the spoils of war.

But Saddam’s brutality went beyond the Anfal. His most notorious act was a poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja where a chemical bombardment killed 5,000 people in one fell swoop and left thousands more permanently maimed.

Before this, untolled numbers of Kurds were butchered over many decades. Thousands of our villages were systematically razed to the ground. They were the backbone of our society as was
agriculture which was wiped out. We used to be self-sufficient and were the bread basket of Iraq. We now have to import most of our food. But we want to feed ourselves and are encouraging British and other companies to help kick-start our agriculture into life again.

The perhaps deeper damage is psychological. Many widows do not know for certain if their husband, brother, son, grandfather or uncle could still be alive rather than buried in an unmarked mass grave somewhere in Iraq. They wait forlornly and cannot easily live a normal life.

The survivors in Kurdistan do their best but it is undeniable that whatever we do for them it is too little as it cannot bring back their loved ones or repair the deep physical and psychological wounds they carry still. But their pain can be helped by the world acknowledging what the British Government calls the unique suffering of the Kurds.

That is why we have organised a global campaign to urge governments to formally recognise the genocide. The Swedish, Norwegian and British parliaments have formally recognised the genocide. We are confident that other parliaments will follow.

We are also very pleased that the British Government and the Labour Opposition have pledged to work together and with us to find a legal pathway to formal recognition by the British Government.

Marking the Kurdish genocide could become as regular and deep as the commemoration of the Holocaust. And for the same reason. Unacknowledged crimes become easier to repeat. Bearing witness is not merely moral but makes other genocides, atrocities and war crimes harder to carry out.

We have many friends who opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and we respect their sincerely held views. One of our best friends is the Labour MP Dave Anderson, who opposed the intervention in 2003, but who now thinks, thanks to his dialogue with Kurdish unions and others, that the intervention should have taken place before the worst of the genocide was inflicted on us.

This illustrates a new theme in international relations which seeks to go beyond making dictators accountable for their crimes after the act to seeking, under the Responsibility to Protect doctrine of the UN, to prevent such atrocities.

Sadly, the international community has been slow on the uptake concerning Syria where maybe 100,000 people have been slaughtered in the last two years and where chemical weapons could yet be used against civilians. The parallel is very close to our hearts given that Syria is our neighbour and is ruled by another Ba’athist regime like that of Saddam. One Halabja and one Anfal is enough for the world.

Clare Short
Chair, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative

6 April 2013

Dear Clare

I am writing on behalf of the APPG on the Kurdistan Region to ask you to take action in relation to the oddly censored section on the Kurdistan Region that should have appeared in the recently released EITI report, which you helped launch in Baghdad.

The decision, in 2008, by the then federal deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, that Iraq wished to comply with the EITI to embrace transparency concerning the flows of oil and money was a major breakthrough, as I am sure you will agree.

You will also recognise that commitment to the goals and principles of EITI is enshrined in the Kurdistan Region’s Oil & Gas Law of 2007.
Sadly, the first annual EITI report on Iraq in 2011, covering revenues for 2009, excluded production and export revenues generated in the Kurdistan Region, including oil exported via the state-owned oil marketing outfit, Somo.

I understand that with the support of the World Bank and the international EITI secretariat, the KRG agreed to work with the EITI Iraq branch (IEITI) to produce a report covering revenues for 2010 that reflected the legal, fiscal and structural realities of the oil, gas and mining sectors in Iraq.

It was agreed with EITI by all parties (including representatives of the federal Ministry of Oil and Somo) that a separate chapter on the KRG would be included in the main Iraq report.
The reporting team led by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the KRG Office for Government Integrity became fully engaged, and despite the lack of EITI guidance or training — and working under severe time constraints — it produced a comprehensive chapter covering the activities of the Kurdistan oil and gas sector in 2010. It was the first time such a report had been produced.

The KRG’s contribution to this transparency process was vital to the EITI Board’s designation of Iraq as EITI Compliant on 12 December 2012. Eddie Rich, EITI’s deputy head and regional director of Southern and Eastern Africa and Middle East, wrote to the KRG praising its contribution to the 2010 report. “The commitment of the KRG to publish and participate was very important in this decision. You too are to be congratulated. I hope the 2010 report will give the fuller picture.”

In its decision, the EITI Board, comprising members from governments, companies and civil society, reminded IEITI that: “In accordance with the EITI Rules, Iraq is required to include all material revenue payments in their EITI reporting… To this end, the Board requires the inclusion of oil and gas production in the Kurdistan Region and sales revenue to the Kurdish Regional Government to be addressed in the 2010 EITI report.”

In addition, the KRG made a strong but unsuccessful recommendation for the report to include details of Iraq’s domestic refining and fuel consumption.
However, at the launch of the report in Baghdad yesterday (to which neither the KRG nor the senior supervising World Bank official was invited) the IEITI council presented a document from which the figures on the Kurdistan Region had been unilaterally removed.

I agree with the KRG in arguing that this underhand tactic has set back the cause of transparency for the Iraqi people. It has also damaged the reputation of EITI for not ensuring impartiality in the revenue reporting process.

Regrettably, it appears that a process supposed to promote transparency has been lost in the fog of political manipulation by some officials in Baghdad.

The KRG tells me that it remains committed to the goals and principles of EITI and in the cause of full transparency has decided to publish the deleted chapter on its website.

The KRG believes the issues surrounding transparency in Iraq’s petroleum and mining sector are too important to be left in the hands of politically motivated individuals.

I am pleased that the KRG has decided, to ensure no such repetition of this unfortunate incident occurs, that it will seek to engage a reputable third-party organization to engage with stakeholders in Kurdistan Region and oversee the production of a full and uncensored KRG oil and gas transparency report that will bear scrutiny under the guiding principles of EITI.

In the meantime, I would be very grateful if you could explain how the EITI has allowed this to happen and to urge you to take action to ensure that it is not repeated.

Yours sincerely

Nadhim Zahawi MP
Co-Chair APPG Kurdistan Region

On Tuesday 26 March 2013, the 25th anniversary of Halabja chemical attacks and Anfal Campaign against Kurds has been commemorated in the European Parliament (EP) by an exhibition organized by the KRG and UNPO.

On the occasion of the Halabja/Anfal anniversary, a three-day Halabja Exhibition has been opened in the EP. The event was organized in cooperation with Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) as part of the KRG’s global campaign for recognition of the Kurdish Genocide. The exhibition is supported by the deputy chair of the EP Subcommittee on Human Rights, MEP Joanna Senyszyn. Members of the European Parliament from different political groups attended the opening of the exhibition, among them Hans-Gert Pöttering, former EP President, Ana Gomes, Socialists and Democrats Foreign Affairs Coordinator, Struan Stevenson, Chair of the EP-Iraq Delegation, Jürgen Klute, Chair of the EP-Kurdish Friendship Group and MEP Jim Higgings. Many diplomats, representatives of European and Kurdish NGOs and political parties were also present.

The event was opened by MEP Senyszyn who welcomed the guests and shared her feelings of honour and pride to host the Kurdish exhibition. The Head of KRG Mission to EU, Delaver Ajgeiy presented shortly the historical context of Halabja gas attack and Anfal campaign: “The people of Kurdistan have been victims of internationally recognized crimes committed by the former Iraqi regime and in particular by the Baath regime leaded by Saddam Hussein. At the beginning of the 70s, the Iraqi government carried out an ethnic cleansing programme in Kirkuk, Khaneqin and Sindjar and other areas inhabited by Kurds, Turkmen and other minorities to change the demographic structure of these areas. This annihilation programme continued until 2003. In 80s the Iraqi government was responsible for some ten thousands Feyli Kurds who disappeared without trace. To this day it is not known, but it is believed that they were executed by the Iraqi government. In 1983 the Iraqi government took some 8.000 men and boys from the Barzani tribes. 22 years after their disappearance it has been discovered that they were imprisoned in concentration camps in the south of Iraq, executed and buried in mass graves. At least one hundred eighty two thousand (182.000) people from Kurdistan were killed by the Iraqi regime in the 70s and 80s. The majority of these people were killed from 1978 to 1989 in the genocide campaign that the regime officially called Anfal. During these campaign the Iraqi government abducted and executed tens of thousands of civilians, including large number of woman and children and destroyed our 5 000 of villages”.

Mr. Ajgeiy described the tragic events on 15 March 1988: “The Iraqi military bombarded the town of Halabja with chemical weapons killing at least 5000 civilian, men, women, children, animal, including anything living. The Iraqi military bombarded with chemical weapons many other villages in Kurdistan. In conducting this genocide campaign the Iraqi government destroyed much of the civilian and infrastructure in areas inhabited by Kurds and damaged the environment of Kurdistan. However, this inhuman act has not been taken seriously by the international public opinion and it failed to prevent such acts in the world after Halabja”.

In conclusion of his speech and on behalf of Kurdistan Government, Mr. Ajgeiy urged the European Parliament to recognize formally the Genocide against the people of Iraqi Kurdistan and called the United Nations to do likewise:“We also ask our friends in the European Parliament and other international organisations to play a stronger role in the international recognition of the genocide against Kurds. Kurdistan Region needs resources, as well as help from the international community to deal with the consequences of this genocide. On behalf of the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Kurdish people I would like to thank you all to be here today and a special thanks to all those who have worked hard for this event”.

http://www.araratnews.com/nuce.php?aid=684

Iraqi Kurds, roughly estimated at five million, have stunningly rebuilt a dirt-poor and traumatised society from scratch since they gained their autonomy in 1991. This report at the BBC outlines progress in Iraqi Kurdistan – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21900576

Westminster MPs from the all-party parliamentary group together with British activists from the three main political parties and writers recently joined many others from across the world to attend the international conference on the Genocide in Erbil and the international civic ceremony in Halabja.

These 25th anniversary events also garnered valuable messages of support. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair sent his warm and full support and said that “Halabja was one of the world’s greatest crimes, the first time a Government used chemical weapons against a civilian population. It should always be remembered and marked.”

The official American message honored the victims of Halabja and the Anfal as part of US efforts to prevent future atrocities and help ensure that perpetrators of such crimes are held accountable.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan sent a very important message which saluted the KRG authorities for organizing the conference in Erbil and Halabja as “a testimony to the deep wound opened in the conscience of humanity that is still bleeding even after 25 years.”

He recalled how Turkey had received “Iraqi Kurdish brothers fleeing from the Halabja massacre with open arms, mobilising every resource at its disposal.” He added that Turkey will continue to work with utmost determination so that tragedies such as Halabja never happen again, and so that peace and brotherhood prevail in the region.

He cited massacres and bombardments by the murderous regime in Syria, and how Turkey has “opened its doors to the aggrieved Syrian people and embraced our Syrian brothers in its arms, as we did 25 years ago for our Kurdish brothers struggling for their lives under the oppression of Saddam.”

The message pointedly added that the peoples of the region should be ruled by “leaders who will not resort to cruelty or point guns at them, and that a culture of harmony, tolerance, coexistence and cooperation among different ethnic and sectarian groups prevails.” Baghdad and Syria should take note.

The UK Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, Alistair Burt, described Halabja as a terrible symbol of inhumanity. His Labour shadow Ian Lucas cited “the dreadful suffering of Iraqi Kurds” and said that we must remember always the attack and respect the loss of its victims which must remain “a continuing lesson for us all.”

Officers of the all-party group have tabled a Commons motion backing the decision of Burt and Lucas to work together and with KRG representatives to try to overcome legal obstacles and find a suitable pathway for recognition by the British Government.

The British Parliament’s official recognition of the Kurdish Genocide was highlighted in speeches by British MPs Nadhim Zahawi and Robert Halfon and seems to have put the continuing global campaign on a new footing. The British Parliament wasn’t the first in the field – that honour rightly lies with the Swedes and the Norwegians – but it is the first major Parliament to do so. This may have started what the Norwegian Deputy Speaker Akhtar Chaudrya told me is a “snowball effect” with parliamentarians elsewhere seeing the need to follow the North European example.

A member of the Scottish Parliament, Hanzala Malik, who was part of a previous all-party delegation, has already tabled a motion which urges the devolved Scottish Government to “consider what support it can give to a growing and global campaign to mark the Kurdish genocide and bring comfort to the people of the Kurdistan region in Iraq, which has many similarities to Scotland and whose people and society continue to suffer the devastating impact of the genocide.” There is a debate on Halabja in the Scottish Parliament this week.

Former French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner also pledged to help persuade the French National Assembly to follow the British example. There is also talk of the German Parliament embracing recognition.

The Iraqi Human Rights Minister also suggested at the Erbil conference that Iraq should ask the UN to set a day for worldwide commemoration of the Genocide. It would be highly symbolic for Baghdad to make that move.

I am no lawyer but acknowledge that there are legal complexities for governments. Important issues of reparations and prosecutions could flow from recognition by governments. But moral and political recognition also has many dividends.

If we don’t remember what happened in the past then it is more likely to happen again. The old slogan, often applied to the Holocaust and anti-fascist causes, is “Never Again.” It’s a fine sentiment but hollow if it doesn’t involve action in real time to prevent such events. The more countries that mark the Kurdish genocide, through parliaments, governments, towns, civic groups, school talks and visits the better. There is a handful of memorials in Britain. There should be more. The 25th anniversary of Halabja has helped develop an international momentum that puts the past Kurdish Genocide and the future of the Kurdish people firmly on the map.