APPG Kurdistan

What happens in the Middle East rarely stays there and, in an ever smaller world, our fates are intertwined. Yes, because turmoil affects oil prices on which our economy depends. But also because nihilistic extremism attracts some gullible and fanatical young people to the self-declared Islamic State which plans operations such as that in Tunisia, where 30 British citizens including a woman from Blaydon were massacred. And more atrocities are likely.

But in the debate about what the West should do, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 clearly makes us wary of intervention. Hopefully, Sir John Chilcot will soon release his report on the invasion so we can properly learn lessons but one major beneficiary of overthrowing Saddam Hussein was certainly the Kurdish people of Iraq.

For decades they endured brutality which culminated in a genocidal effort to erase them. Thousands of villages were razed, people in the countryside were moved to urban concentration camps and nearly 200,000 men, women and children were murdered. Saddam used weapons of mass destruction against them, most infamously in a chemical weapons attack on Halabja in 1988.

The Iraqi Kurds then rose against Saddam and evicted him from their homeland and were protected by RAF jets for a further 12 years until Saddam was ousted. They then won official recognition as an autonomous region of Iraq and have built fledgling democratic institutions, universities and achieved greater prosperity by developing long-neglected and huge energy reserves.

Things changed for the worst in June 2014 when Isis swept into Mosul and overnight established a 650 mile border with the Kurdistan Region. Isis then turned on the Kurds and came within thirty miles of the capital. Again, RAF and US war planes have been essential in halting Isis and making the Kurds safer. The Kurds in Syria delivered a massive psychological defeat on Isis when it took back the town of Kobane.

But they face a determined enemy with masses of sophisticated American equipment captured from the Iraqi Army. Isis suicide bombers drive heavily armoured American Humvees and tankers filled with explosives at the Kurds whose light machine guns cannot stop them in time. The Kurds have been asking the West for heavy machine guns and missiles to stop these attacks in their tracks. Britain has given 40 such weapons. But it is not enough and I have joined with others in Parliament to pressurise the government to send more supplies.

I recently attended a Commons briefing with the Kurdish Ambassador here and his British counterpart in Kurdistan. The Ambassador told us that the federal government in Baghdad has been obstructive although the normally 5 million strong Kurdistan Region has taken in nearly two million refugees, mainly Arabs and Christians, who fled for their lives from Isis. Last year, Kurdish budget payments from Baghdad were cut altogether and they are currently receiving less than half of their constitutional entitlements. They cannot pay their Peshmerga soldiers and civil servants and their economy has stalled. I am glad that Turkey has finally joined the fight against Isis but it has combined this with attacking Turkish-Kurdish forces for domestic reasons. The Kurds deserve much better than this.

The British envoy in Kurdistan told us about British companies and public institutions working in Kurdistan, in line with Kurdish wishes for quality British products and interests. The Kurds have a deep affection for the British – English is the second language – and I hope that more British and North East companies make their way there in due course.

The Kurds are also a beacon of religious pluralism that can counter the fascism of Isis. We need all the allies we can get in the Middle East and the Kurds could show the way in building a peaceful and dynamic country. Their success is a vital part of defeating Isis, which helps us and the whole world. We should back the Iraqi Kurds.

Mary Glindon is the Labour MP for North Tyneside

This article originally appeared in the Newcastle Journal on 4 August 2015.

The Queen’s Birthday Party at the poolside of a classy hotel in the simmering summer heat attracted business and political leaders as well as Arab, Iranian, European and American diplomats. What made it different was we were in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan and just 25 miles from fierce fighting between the Islamic State and the Peshmerga. A diplomat at another such party once accidentally toasted the President of the Kurdish Republic but that slip of the tongue may prove prescient. Nearly a century after failing to achieve nationhood in the post-Versailles period, the Kurds are now on the move. A greater Kurdistani nation-state taken from the four countries where Kurds are minorities is improbable, although greater autonomy is growing within Turkey and Syria if not Iran, and an independent Iraqi Kurdistan is becoming more likely by the day.

The advance of the Kurds has taken many years. When I started visiting Kurdistan in 2006 most people had never heard of it. They would ask if I meant Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan but shake their heads and wish me luck when I mentioned Iraq. Two years ago my family and I toured mountain resorts, randomly stopped at roadside cafes for kebabs and walked without fear in a lively cosmopolitan city. There had been just seven jihadist attacks in Kurdistan in ten years with under 200 killed and most on one terrible day in 2004.

But things began to change in late 2013 when Kurdish leaders began to issue urgent warnings about a then little known group called ISIS. Last June the sum of all their fears became real as a small convoy of ISIS fighters captured Mosul, the second biggest city in Iraq a year. The onslaught was like a knife cutting through butter – and flesh. The fear of their barbarism spread like wildfire. Shia soldiers with no dog in the game in Sunni areas fled, leaving the keys in 1500 American armoured Humvees, while Sunnis who had been persecuted by a sectarian government in Iraq chose ISIS over Baghdad or fled to Iraqi Kurdistan. This was also a high point of Kurdistani nationalism. The army of Iraq – I Ran Away Quickly? – was unfavourably compared to the Peshmerga, now facing ISIS along a 1,000 km border. The historic Kurdistani city of Kirkuk was reinforced overnight when the Iraqi Army ‘disappeared in a puff of smoke’ as the Governor told me last June. Violence in the ethnically mixed Kirkuk province has since dropped dramatically and tight security in the rest of Kurdistan means there have been just three ISIS suicide bombs in Erbil in the past 18 months.

The common assumption that Kurdistan would be ignored by ISIS was wrong, however, and they turned on the Kurds in August. ISIS came within artillery range of Erbil but the Americans stepped in and air-strikes saved the city. The traditional mountain Peshmerga fighters’ extended supply lines and insufficient weapons, ammunition and experience in facing a frontal assault on the plains forced a temporary retreat. The Peshmerga also needs modern weapons, including tanks, APCs and helicopters. Most of the 1300 Peshmerga fatalities is because their AK47s cannot stop heavily armoured Mad Max suicide vehicle bombs barreling towards their lines, or because they cannot counter IEDs with which ISIS seeds villages they leave after massacring everyone. Battlefield medical care is inadequate and they lack basics such as night vision goggles and body armour. Many countries have armed the Kurds. Britain provided 40 heavy machine guns while Germany broke its taboo on exporting many more weapons and their Milan anti-armour guns stop truck bombs at distance.

The need for more arms was raised directly with President Obama by a KRG delegation led by President Barzani, whose Chief of Staff and a participant in the talks, Dr Fuad Hussein told me in Erbil: ‘we said we would be happy to receive arms directly. But some countries have difficulties because we are not yet independent. But anyhow we [told the Americans] that the main question is do we need these weapons – yes or no, of course we do. Can we get them from you? If you send them to us we will be happy. If Iraq delays, you are responsible so you can talk to them. We understood from the American side that until now Iraq has not rejected weapons so let’s continue but [the Americans say] “you will get the right weapons.” Now that the British election is over it is time for the British to do more to support the Kurds.’

The sudden Isis advance was also a wake-up call for the Peshmerga to up its game and become a national institution answerable to the state rather, as do most of its soldiers, to the two historic parties. Dlawer al Alaadin, a former Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Higher Education minister who now heads Kurdistan’s major independent think-tank, the Middle East Research Institute, told me that his organisation is ‘a bridge between external expertise and the Peshmerga in finding a home made solution.’ He concedes that reform should have been undertaken earlier and ‘Kurdistan is beginning to make the most of its international support but the Kurds need to be more efficient in putting our own house in order.’ He argues that the reason for the political division of the Peshmerga – mutual suspicion between the two main parties – no longer holds with young people.

Wider reform is needed. It sometimes seems to me that the Kurds have no word with the urgency of manana but they have managed major changes. Back in 2006, there was no oil and gas industry and 100,000 Turkish troops were poised to invade. The energy sector became the world’s final frontier and oil production could reach a million barrels per day next year. Kurdistani oil is piped to Turkey which is becoming a significant energy hub and needs Kurdistani energy. The Turkish invasion took the form of 100,000 businessmen and workers in Kurdistan making Turkey the single biggest trading partner for Iraqi Kurdistan.

Yet the Kurds now face new crises. The Syrian war sent 250,000 mainly Kurdish refugees into Kurdistan in 2013 but they were welcomed warmly and there was then plenty of work for them. The capture of Mosul propelled over a million displaced people, mainly Arab Iraqis and Christians, into Kurdistan. The Kurds, who have often been refugees themselves, have been extraordinarily generous but the strain on services is immense. Baghdad, which is the responsible government, is less than helpful. Nearly 200,000 people who fled when Ramadi was captured by ISIS were refused entry to Baghdad and cynically directed to Erbil. Iraqi civil servants from Mosul are paid salaries by Baghdad via Kurdistani civil servants who have not been paid for the last three months. Even if Ramadi or Mosul were taken back now, many Arabs would stay in Kurdistan. Of the thousands who fled when ISIS took Tikrit, just twelve families have returned since its liberation. The 20,000 strong Kurdish resort town of Shaqlava now hosts 30,000 Arabs and has been dubbed Shaqllujah. The Kurds are very wary of Arabisation and permanent changes in the ethnic mix will cause major problems.

Having repaired relations with Erdogan’s erratic Turkey and enjoying correct relations with Iran, its second biggest trading partner, the main problem is relations with Baghdad, which are based on mutual suspicion and loathing. Many Shia politicians never accepted the Iraqi constitution’s enshrining of federalism, and autonomy in energy matters to Kurdistan. The Kurds have never received their full share of the Iraqi budget – set at 17% to reflect the population and the economic effects of genocide including the destruction of thousands of villages. The Peshmerga, a recognised national defence force, were never paid, let alone armed or trained, by Baghdad. Maliki cut all budget payments at the behest, it is said, of the then Chairman of the parliamentary Finance Committee, Haider al Abadi. But when Abadi became Prime Minister, he became a more emollient figure who concluded an interim agreement last December on Kurdistani energy exports in return for that 17% plus a billion a year to the Peshmerga. The overall budget had fallen by a third in line with lower oil prices but payments to the KRG have fallen even further because Baghdad is finding excuses to keep the Kurds on a short leash. Hawrami estimates that they received one third of their entitlement in the past five months.

The result has been catastrophic given war – private companies are charitably providing daily meals to the Peshmerga, some of whom have to buy their own weapons and ammo – and the cost of caring for about 1.6 million guests. Double digit growth has nosedived with hundreds of public investment projects suspended and little is moving at construction sites that dot the capital although a major British company is about to announce a major water project. Kurds are surviving on handouts from their families or from savings. Some cite an increased suicide rate and poverty and unemployment have doubled while international flights to Kurdistan are emptier, office rents have halved and housing costs have soared.

Baghdad’s belligerence is counter-productive. The world knows that the Peshmerga are fighting ISIS with increasing efficiency, certainly compared to the shambles that is the Iraqi Army. Despite this, the Kurds were excluded from two recent international meetings of the coalition against ISIS in London and Paris. Dr Hussein expressed disappointment: ‘It would have been better if [Abadi] had taken representatives from the Kurdistan Region to show he could be proud of what the Peshmerga have done against ISIS. I think it would have been better to also have somebody from the Sunni community with him. He blamed the whole world about Ramadi but didn’t blame himself or his government. But people are not stupid and know what’s going on.’

Baghdad’s obstinacy is also driving independence but Kurdistan is landlocked and many are wary of putting all their eggs in the Turkish basket, which once prompted former KRG Prime Minister Barham Salih to argue for three export routes through Iraq, Turkey and Iran (and, conceivably, Syria one day.)

A unilateral declaration of independence could cut off imports, exports, passports, and airports. Independence would have to be negotiated with Baghdad through complex agreements on assets and liabilities, water, energy and security. Crucially, the KRG’s southern boundaries including Kirkuk must to be finalised to avoid the province becoming a flashpoint for Arab revanchism for decades to come.

The commonsense view is that ISIS should first be defeated before independence but given, as a senior security adviser told me, ‘Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and definitely won’t be put back together,’ maybe the way to defeat ISIS is to recognise that Sunnis and Kurds will never again accept unalloyed Baghdad rule. Before ISIS, Sunni provinces neighbouring Kurdistan had begun to think that the dynamic Kurds could assist their economic salvation, especially in reliable electricity supplies. Shia Basra in the south, about the same size, population and economic weight as Kurdistan but with much more oil, had been champing at the bit for greater decentralisation. A much looser arrangement, perhaps one day a confederation, could be a bigger incentive for Sunnis to overthrow ISIS in Sunnistan than centralised and sectarian Shia rule from Baghdad. Every day that ISIS keeps Mosul makes it harder to reinstate the old Iraq.

Kurdistan has to be match fit for any possibility including independence and escape the sovietesque legacy of the old Iraq. The state employs most people, which suffocates the private sector and also undermines citizenship because, as one senior party official told me, ‘people who are employed by the state have to listen to the state.’ The rentier economy is almost wholly dependent on energy although the Kurdistan parliament has just passed a law allowing the KRG to borrow on international markets and is establishing a sovereign wealth fund for when energy revenues dry up. A mineral extraction law is also before Parliament and minerals could become a major money-spinner. Once the bread basket of Iraq, Kurdistan could achieve food self-sufficiency and export surplus wheat, apples and pomegranates. Tourism is another potential boon. Erbil won the Arab capital of tourism before ISIS rained on everyone’s parade and thousands of archaeological sites, the 6,000 or possibly 8,000 year old Citadel in Erbil (the longest continually inhabited settlement in the world), and battlefield sites as well as canyons, mountains, waterfalls, vast plains, solitude and city life could attract western tourists.

Education is the KRG’s mantra and involves at least one third of the population but quantity needs to be turned into quality and quickly. Many young Kurds seem more interested in a qualification as a passport to a comfortable office job where very little is done and where indolence and incompetence could persuade skilled Kurds who have returned home as a patriotic duty that it is not worth staying. About 100,000 ghostworkers, in the absence of a wider welfare state and tax base, are being rewarded for past services. But meritocracy must replace mediocrity and the sometimes unjustified practice, to use a common Kurdistani phrase, of allowing the son to cross the river on his father’s boat. One regular visitor told me that he had ‘never seen a minister reading a book or a newspaper’ but Kurdistan has some very good strategic thinkers who carry a disproportionate burden. Enterprise needs a kick-start too. Khalid Saleh, Vice-Chancellor of the English-speaking University of Kurdistan-Hewler, told me that ‘Kurdistan needs a start-up tradition and not just government jobs’ and to lose the dependency on foreigners, adding ‘why don’t we produce our own night vision goggles’ for the Peshmerga.

It is easy in theory to design an architecture that maximises enterprise, civil society, an independent judiciary, a thoughtful media, evidence-based policy-making and so on. It is harder in practice and hampered by what Hawrami calls the ‘geopolitical perfect storm’ of financial, humanitarian and political crises. Hawrami, who built the energy sector from scratch, says the Baghdad budget crisis means that international oil companies in Kurdistan have been paid once in 18 months and that this is unsustainable.

Many Kurds look to Dubai for inspiration but others know the opulent facade conceals a soulless society. Kurdistani politics are broadly left of centre, religiously devout but largely secular and moderate while growing inequality and environmental issues motivate many Kurds. Barham Salih speaks of Kurdistani values but moving from statist to market economics is a huge challenge. Politics can be fractious too. Few Kurds seem to want to change their President in the middle of a war but his term was extended two years ago and there will be an election in August although the parties are divided on whether the Presidency is more or less parliamentary. It is likely that Barzani will be elected and that a difficult debate on the succession will take place in four years time.

The other big question in the next few years is independence. A landmark report from the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in March helped break the taboo of the ‘One Iraq’ policy. MPs acknowledged rational fears about unpredictable consequences of unravelling borders, although the sound of stable doors and fleeing horses comes to mind. They also recognised that it is rational for the Kurds to seek increased self-governance or independence which they judged to be a medium term possibility that should be accepted and respected by the UK and its international partners if done with the consent of Baghdad.

The assumption has been that the neighbours would oppose independence. But Iran could settle for Baghdad being part of their sphere of influence and Kurdistan being an effective buffer between them and ISIS. David L Phillips, the author of The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East writes Turkey and the KRG have conducted contingency planning on independence. A senior Turkish adviser privately told a recent meeting in London that he could envisage what he called the ‘liberation’ of Iraqi Kurdistan. Acquiescence to independence in the right circumstances is possible.

The Kurds see America as the key to that announcement one day in the UN Security Council. A secret CIA dossier concludes that the Kurds are ‘belligerently independent, distrust the governments over them, and have stubbornly resisted efforts to disarm them or restrict in any way their relative freedom.’ That was in 1948. However, America has doggedly clung to Iraqi territorial integrity but I put it to Hussein that the mood music in DC seems to be changing and moving to a more neutral position after the recent high-profile visit by President Barzani to meet President Obama. Hussein replied: ‘The answer is yes, the mood has changed. First, when President Obama came to power he wanted to get rid of Iraqi policy due to the war. Later on, people in Washington started to focus on other parts of the world. The reality was that the current administration did not want to have a lot to do with Iraq. Now, once again, they are involved. Second, as far as the fight against terrorism they are still engaged, they are supporting us and there is a good co-ordination between us. They know what we have achieved and we have kept our promises. They know that the weapons given to us have stayed in our hands. All these elements have meant a positive change towards the Kurds.’

As for Western ground troops, Hussein was diplomatic: ‘ISIS is an organisation which has the support of groups and individuals from many countries and is an international movement with an international strategy. There must be international support and coordination. As for boots on the ground, the Kurdistani Peshmerga have done the fighting. This organisation has support and can control territory. Is it fair only to leave it to the Kurds? We have the manpower to fight but it is a long fight. We are not the ones who would ask for boots on the ground from other countries. We are realistic. We don’t think that the Americans are going to do that now at the end of President’s term. Western public opinion opposes ISIS but they still don’t see Iraq as their fight. You would need a lot of work to convince Western opinion that Western countries would send their units to fight. But I don’t think so in the near future.’

Hussein displays the steely determination of an increasingly experienced Kurdistani leadership, which has put the place on the map. The Kurds could yet be their own worst enemies with the worst case scenario being a redivision of the Region between Iran-centric and Turkocentric entities. But the Kurds have long survived in the violent vortex of bigger empires. They usually say they have no friends but the mountains but now count many countries as friends. Kurdistan could check the expansion of ISIS, is a willing part of the free world and is anxious to modernise itself. Their success could be a game-changer in Middle East.

Gary Kent is Director of Labour Friends of Iraq and also the Director of the All Party Parliamentary Group on the Kurdistan Region. He is an honorary member of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, Deputy Chair of the European Technology and Training Centre in Erbil and writes a weekly column for the Rudaw newspaper. He has visited Iraq and Kurdistan twenty times since 2006. He writes in a personal capacity.

This article originally appeared at Open Democracy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/gary-kent/prospects-for-future-kurdistan

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Minutes of the AGM of the APPG on the Kurdistan Region in Iraq. 15 June 2015.
Present: Jason McCartney, Nadhim Zahawi, Bob Stewart, Fabian Hamilton, Dave Anderson, Mary Glindon, Mike Gapes, Stephen Metcalfe, Lord Clement-Jones and Gary Kent.
Apologies: John Woodcock, Lord Glasman
1 Election of Officers: the following were nominated, accepted and elected.
Chair and registered contact: Jason McCartney
Vice Chair: Nadhim Zahawi
Secretary: Mike Gapes
Treasurer: Tim Clement Jones.
The following were also elected as Vice Chairs: Lord Glasman, Fabian Hamilton, Stephen Metcalfe, John Woodcock, Mary Glindon, Dave Anderson, Lord Trimble, Baroness Hodgson, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, and Lord Bew.
2 Gary Kent was confirmed as Director of the APPG.
3 The following remit was agreed: ‘To promote friendship and understanding between the people of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq and the UK and to encourage the development of democratic institutions in the Kurdistan Region as part of the democratic and federal process in the rest of Iraq.’
4 Future programme and priorities
a We agreed to organise briefing meeting on 6/7 July with Angus McKee, UK Consul-General in Kurdistan and Karwan Tahir, KRG High Representative in the UK.
b Gary Kent to organise delegation to Kurdistan in September or November.
c Visas: we agreed to establish the facts of the current situation.
d We agreed to recruit 50 members this year.
e We agreed to encourage and support the establishment of an APPG on the UK in the Kurdistani Parliament.

The public enquiry point is Gary Kent. c/o Dave Anderson MP, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA, 02072195013 or kentg@parliament.uk

British Member of Parliament, Nadhim Zahawi, recently wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron on behalf of the Kurdish Genocide Task Force (KGTF) urging the British Government to recognise the genocidal acts perpetrated by ISIL in Iraq and Syria. Mr Zahawi has welcomed the Prime Minister’s response and commitment to explore all options to tackle the threat posed by ISIL and to bring those responsible for these crimes to justice.

Given the United Kingdom’s Presidency of the United Nations Security Council during August 2014, and its influential role on the Human Rights Council, Mr Zahawi sought to highlight the role the British Government could play in ensuring that all of the necessary steps are taken to end, prosecute and punish the commission of acts of genocide and crimes against humanity by ISIL.

On the 1st September, the Human Rights Council met in a special session that focused on the human rights situation in Iraq, in light of the abuses committed by ISIL. A resolution mandating the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to despatch an urgent mission to investigate and report on ISIL abuses was passed by consensus with strong UK influence and backing.

British Prime Minister, the Right Honourable David Cameron MP, wrote: “I welcome the work of the Task Force to draw attention to the terrible crimes that have been committed against the Kurds in recent decades. It is tragic that similarly brutal crimes continue to be perpetrated today by ISIL against both the Kurds and other minority groups.”

“ISIL’s actions in Iraq and Syria are simply barbaric. […] I have been clear that we must use all of the resources at our disposal to tackle them. That includes considering all options on how those responsible for crimes and abuses can be held to account.”

Mr Zahawi commented: “The Kurdish Genocide Task Force has worked extremely hard over the past three years to gain recognition for the acts of genocide that took place against the Iraqi Kurds over recent decades, and it is heart breaking to see minority groups throughout Iraq under threat of genocide from the brutality of ISIL.

It is extremely encouraging to see the Prime Minister’s support for our work and the British Government’s commitment to tackling the threat posed by ISIL and bringing those responsible for their crimes to justice.

The UK has a long held position as a protector of liberty and human rights across the world; we need to be clear that those who commit horrendous and appalling acts will not be immune to justice.”

The letter was also welcomed by the Kurdistan Regional Government’s High Representative to the UK, Ms Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman. Ms Rahman commented: “The British Prime Minister, David Cameron’s very helpful letter to Nadhim Zahawi provides important support for the work of the UK-based Kurdish Genocide Task Force, which unites activists, academics, legal figures, Kurds and Britons and people from other countries in the common cause of seeking recognition of the genocide against the Kurds and justice for them.

Mr Cameron’s active backing for an urgent UN Human Rights Council mission to investigate the brutal crimes of Isil against the Kurdish Yezedis, Assyrian Christians and others is very welcome and reflects the good standing of the UK as a guardian of democracy and human rights. The KRG will co-operate fully with this‎ mission.

We are seeing terrible crimes being committed by ISIL but they will not be immune from justice forever. It is of the utmost urgency that evidence is collected now to enable a better chance of prosecuting Isil leaders, activists, enablers and financiers involved in genocide, rape and slaughter. That in turn makes it more credible for the international community in the future not to turn a blind eye to such awful crimes and for potential perpetrators to understand that there will be a reckoning and they will have to pay for their inhumanity.

It is crucial that we all support the Kurdish city of Kobane in Syria and prevent it from falling to Isil who will rape, pillage and murder those there. I congratulate our good friend Nadhim Zahawi on his diligence in securing such commitments from the British Prime Minister.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors:
• The Kurdish Genocide Task Force was established in London in 2011 with the aim of gaining recognition for acts of genocide that took place against Iraqi Kurds.
• The KGTF is comprised of independent experts and British parliamentarians.
• Nadhim Zahawi MP is a member of the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Iraq.

The Kurds face the world’s wealthiest and best armed terrorist organisation in Daish (Isil) and are struggling to cope with a 20% increase in its population through a massive influx of desperate refugees and internally displaced people in just a few months.

The majority of the internally displaced people are Arab Iraqis but Baghdad won’t even send them their ration entitlements and the new Prime Minister has so far refused to even visit them in solidarity.

Baghdad has refused all this year to make any budget payments to the Kurds who are financing their existential struggle with loans from businesses and neighbours.

Baghdad also continues to block Kurdish oil exports, although these revenues are even more vital to cash-strapped Kurdistan. The peshmerga, no translation is necessary any more, may hold the line against Daish but Baghdad has refused to either pay them or equip or train them for over a decade.

They have relatively ancient military equipment in a confrontation with Daish, which has stolen some of the best and most sophisticated American weaponry there is. New and better arms are being sent but, even here, that is subject to vetoes and delays by Baghdad.

Baghdad is seeking to squeeze the Kurds in an economic war. It is futile. Whatever the misery and deprivations caused by this blockade, the Kurds will never bow the knee to Baghdad. In fact, it makes their resolve even stronger for either a fresh start in the fair and full federalism they have long been promised, some form of confederation or independence.

Nothing surprises me about Baghdad’s actions, which are par for the course for nearly a century in which the Kurds have been looked down on as ignorant and deplorable smugglers – “tinkers” comes near to what that means for many Arab Iraqis – but the real shock is that the international community is completely ignoring Baghdad’s efforts to cajole and coerce the Kurds.

It is understandable that internal forces and external friends of Iraq insisted on the departure of the former Prime Minister Maliki whose grossly sectarian and savage repression of the Sunnis drove many into the arms of Daish. He just had no ability to make Baghdad an attractive partner for the Sunnis who perceive the Debaathification policy as solely directed against them.

The Kurds have made it absolutely plain that their support for and participation in the new government in Baghdad is conditional on moves to end the economic blockade. They have given Abadi three months to make a move. Such a tight deadline would be unreasonable if it were not for the fact that the Baghdad has a decade long policy of promising change and never implementing it. The deadline is due in early December and should be taken most seriously by all foreign governments.

It may well be that there is a great deal of private diplomatic action behind the scenes urging Baghdad to make a move with guaranteed timetables in a reasonable give and take. Some look at the characters of those who hold key positions in Baghdad and conclude that a sequenced series of actions is possible.

But the Kurds are neither prepared nor should they be expected to merely wait for this to happen. Baghdad must be placed under serious and public pressure to do the right thing by the deadline or know that the world will understand that there will be serious consequences as the Kurds conclude that Baghdad will always break its vows.

Many Kurds looked to Scotland to go for independence for obvious reasons. The comparison is inexact but the one clear similarity is that the people of Scotland decided to stay with the UK once its political leaders cottoned on to the looming loss of the Union. They realised that threats and warnings of pain were counter-productive compared to straightforward emotional pleas to stay together. If Baghdad wants the Kurds to remain part of an Iraq, they could follow suit and undertake some love bombing rather than punitive blockades. Baghdad has a choice to make in the next few weeks or the Kurds will surely make one themselves.

Gary Kent is the Director of the all-party parliamentary group on the Kurdistan Region in Iraq and writes in a personal capacity.

We have all been disgusted by the wanton barbarism in Iraq -beheadings, mass executions, selling women as sex slaves, rape, and genocide against religious minorities. The so-called Islamic State (IS), deemed extreme by even Al Qaeda, can be defeated militarily and politically although the Nato coalition reckons it will take three years. It is a fight that cannot be flunked.

I want cross-party support for measures that can save the Kurds and encourage a deal that allows the peoples of Iraq to work together for the common good. Incredibly, Baghdad has blockaded the Kurds since January and their civil servants and soldiers have not been paid. This must end.

I met the former Iraq Prime Minister in Baghdad in 2008 but he proved unwilling to work with Kurdish and Sunni minorities and helped create alienation that the IS exploited. I have also met the new Iraqi Prime Minister and hope that he can make a fresh start.

The Kurds and the Iraqi Army, when it recovers from its disastrous defeat in June, can do the job. Military action against IS does not need foreign combat troops apart from advisers who can improve the organisation of local soldiers.

Turkey is part of the coalition and they and the Kurds have overcome ancient tensions to work together. I note that Iran and Syrian President Assad have parallel interests. We may have to sup with the a long spoon with them as we did in the fight against Nazism. Arab states and millionaires should stop backing the IS.

David Cameron was initially hesitant because he feared that public opinion would not tolerate involvement. I urged the Prime Minister to recall Parliament in August because Cameron could present a stronger case if he heeded MPs in touch with public opinion and who can help give a lead.

There is a brutal moral clarity about what is at stake. The Kurds need weapons so they can fight the IS without one hand tied behind their backs and have also asked Britain and others to take part in airstrikes.

They argue that their defeating the IS will enhance our security. Kurds with British accents due to their exile here from Saddam Hussein tell us that many IS fighters also speak with British accents and could come back here, battle hardened and keen to kill. Defeating them in Kurdistan reduces that danger.

But the miserable human consequences for hundreds of thousands of men, women and children of the jihadist onslaught will persist for many years. This is so far the least well understood part of the picture.

It needs to be better understood in human terms so that the international community can help. What would it mean here? There are about 300,000 people in Newcastle. Imagine if there were a sudden increase of about a quarter – 75,000 people – in a matter of weeks, most with just the clothing on their backs and half of them children. It would be a massive crisis.

This is broadly what has happened to Iraqi Kurdistan, a decent, democratic and dynamic country which I have been privileged to visit as Secretary of the all-party parliamentary group which seeks to build connections between the UK and the Kurds. The Kurds are widely pro-British because they know that we saved them when they rose up against Saddam Hussein in 1991 and we imposed a no-fly zone to stop them being bombed to kingdom come.

Kurdistan has about 5 million people but now has to look after an extra 1.4 million people. All public buildings, public parks, churches, mosques and even private gardens are occupied by desperate people. Refugees have some sort of roof over their heads and basic services. But a lost generation of children is denied education and intellectual nourishment at a crucial stage of their lives.

Looking after the refugees and creating the conditions for them to return home is a long-term priority for humanity. I hope that we will be as generous and kind as we usually are. The Kurds are our friends and allies. Helping them also helps us. This is a fight between barbarism and civilisation. We must help ensure the decent guys win.

This article originally appeared in the Newcastle Journal

This week’s civic commemoration in Westminster of the 26th anniversary of Anfal may come to be seen as a milestone in Anglo-Kurdish links thanks to the British Government’s decision to send a minister to the event for the first time.

The enthusiastic participation in the Anfal ceremony of the British Government’s Middle East Minister, Hugh Robertson – alongside KRG Foreign Minister Falah Mustafa – lends great credibility to the common cause of remembering this most horrific chain of events.

True, the Government doesn’t formally recognise the genocide, as the Commons did last year, but clearly acknowledges the suffering of the Kurds more prominently than before. The battle for recognition goes on and such gatherings can generate further pressure on the Government to do so.

Taban Shoresh movingly described how, in the name of a “perverted ideology,” Saddam’s goons came for her Peshmerga father but when they found he wasn’t there, decided to take her, her brother, mother and grandparents away to be buried alive. The kindness of two strangers allowed them to escape miraculously with their lives.

Such powerful testimony is essential to the world understanding the sheer scale of what the Kurds endured and why they should never be abandoned again, as they were at the time of Halabja in 1988. Baroness Nicholson reminded us that international conventions about chemical weapons and genocide required international action but were sidelined when Saddam – a “cowardly narcissist” according to the Iraqi Ambassador Faik Nerweyi – carried out the genocide. She said that “we had the knowledge, the law and didn’t act and I feel humiliated before you.”

The Co-Chair of the all-party group, Meg Munn MP clearly reiterated her criticism of the failure of the British Parliament to endorse action when Assad used chemical weapons last year. She asked if we would be similarly marking the slaughter of the Syrian people in ten years while realising that we had failed to protect them. The point of marking genocides is to make sure that such events never happen again. But they do. Meg’s profound moral point about Syria highlighted how Assad could cross the red line of using chemical weapons with impunity and stay in power to do his worst.

Tony Blair separately argued this week that failure to intervene in Syria would have “terrible” consequences for years because inaction is also an action. Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the KRG’s High Representative to the UK, told the Anfal event that failing to tackle dictators only emboldens their greed and violence. She praised Kurdish campaigners for their work over decades in challenging Saddam.

Robertson has direct experience of the dark days of the early 1990s when he was a tank commander in the first gulf war, which led to Britain promoting the safe haven in and no-fly zone over the Kurdistan Region. That decision saved the Kurds and did much, belatedly, to redeem Britain’s moral standing.

Marking Anfal and Halabja informs new audiences who only know Iraq through the 2003 invasion but also raises awareness of modern Kurdistan. I was struck by Robertson’s passion about relations between the UK and the Kurdistan Region, which he said have never been stronger and where is “much more to come.”

It wasn’t so long since upholding a “one Iraq” policy would have forced foreign policy officials to run a country mile from engaging with Erbil. I wish we had more quickly abandoned the pointless view that good relations with Erbil would offend Baghdad and Basra.

Well, those days are going. Ministers and officials now have a more realistic approach that deals directly with the KRG and in detail about how to improve visas, secure direct flights and other practical measures. The UK is seen by the KRG as a partner of choice and now more and more Brits realise that this has to be a two-way street.

The Kurdistan Region has now won many more sympathisers who better understand the shadow of the past over Kurdistan. This surely means understanding the continued existence of an Arab chauvinism that seeks to subordinate the Kurds. And it should help sustain Erbil’s refusal to accept that Baghdad should control the destiny of the Kurds.

The next stage of the new conversation between Kurds and Brits is the inquiry by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee into our relations. They will take evidence in writing and person, including Robertson, and may visit the Kurdistan Region in the coming months. My best guess is that they will issue a report in the summer, which will be taken seriously by the Government in further finessing its policy on the Kurdistan Region.

This new combination of better understanding the past and endorsing measures to assist Brits seeking links with Kurds can dynamise the relationship. Finally.

Gary Kent

The Co-Chairs of the APPG have replied to this article in the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/25/diaspora-returns-to-build-iraqi-kurdistan

27 March 2014

Orlando Crowcroft (Diaspora returns to build Iraqi Kurdistan into the ‘next Dubai’, 26 March) misses two important points. State employees were not paid for two months because the federal government in Baghdad blocked budget payments to Erbil. This is part of a dispute over the region’s oil and gas, developed from scratch recently, and exports to Turkey via a new pipeline. This flows from the second major omission: the Kurdistan region’s new and growing commercial relationship with Turkey, which was once on the verge of invading Kurdistan but is now its largest trading partner.

Neither was imaginable in 2003 as the region began to recover from decades of genocide, isolation and poverty. Both enable better public services and increased living standards. The need for further political, economic and social reform is widely acknowledged. A fuller picture of a region in transition is detailed in our reports on fact-finding delegations there.

Nadhim Zahawi MP, Meg Munn MP
Co-chairs, All-party parliamentary group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq

One of the most persistent points made by government officials, business people and others we have met on our parliamentary delegations to Kurdistan in the last six years has been the British visa system.

We have heard constant complaints from people who had to travel to Amman or Baghdad for up to two weeks, deposit their passports and visa applications in a British Embassy office and twiddle their thumbs in a hotel for up to two weeks, at their own expense, before being told if they could go to the UK.

I happened to be in the British Prime Minister’s offices in Downing Street some years back and persuaded a senior official to make a call to Amman which got the go ahead for the visa just as the man was leaving the hotel for either Kurdistan or London. He came to Britain where he addressed an important gathering which helped deepen links between Kurdistan and the UK.

Other people have not been so lucky and this has impacted negatively on the relationship between our two countries, not least as it seems easier to secure a Schengen Visa allowing travel to most countries in the European Union.

Our fear has long been that Britain’s commercial advantage in Kurdistan – the widespread use of the English language, affection for our values and standards and gratitude for our role in liberating Kurdistan and Iraq – could be eroded. The all-party group made improving visa issuing facilities one of its main priorities.

At first, a limited number of people were allowed to have their applications processed in country and without having to leave Kurdistan. Last September, Lord Marland for the British Government opened a Visa Application Centre in the Sheraton in Erbil. People no longer have to leave Kurdistan in order to secure a visa.

The centre is open three days a week and processes 150 visas a week. There is a case for increasing the capacity. It takes time to make an appointment to have fingerprints recorded on the biometric machine and then takes maybe three weeks for the application to be processed in Amman.

The applicants’ passports cannot be used in this time which sometimes means that businessmen and others are stuck in Kurdistan, even if they have other business trips to undertake. This makes it very difficult and recently three government officials and four senior business people were unable to take part in an important investment delegation to the UK.

Furthermore, as the British Foreign Office Minister conceded in the recent Commons debate on UK relations with the Kurdistan Region, there is a question over the cost, although it is still cheaper than having to stay in Baghdad or Amman.

The forms are in English with, so far, explanatory notes in Arabic. I hope that notes in Kurdish will follow. People have difficulties filling in the forms correctly and supplying the necessary information. My guess is that the vast majority of refusals are because the forms have been completed incorrectly.

I am not an expert but people should understand that the forms are designed to flush out falsehoods and trap those who intend to overstay illegally or who may present a security threat.

It is fair enough for any country to control immigration and those who carry out such tasks must apply the rules fairly and impartially without fear or favour. And the majority of applications are accepted.

My experience, however, is that some people who, in my view, have a very good case for coming to the UK, are refused. Over the years too many people, with much to contribute to the commercial and cultural links between Kurdistan and the UK, have fallen foul of the system.

There has to be a balance between the security interests of the UK and its commercial and political links.

The all-party group will be seeking a meeting with the Home Office (Interior) Minister in the UK to argue that needless obstructions should be overcome to maximise the mutually beneficial impact of visits to the UK.

All visa systems have their inconveniences and it has vastly improved over the years but more change is needed. I feel sure that the efforts of those who want to deepen our relationships will lead to more positive changes.

* Gary Kent is the administrator of All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). He writes this column for Rudaw in a personal capacity.
- See more at: http://rudaw.net/english/opinion/01022014#sthash.BYnIhrox.dpuf

The latest report of an APPG fact-finding mission to Iraqi Kurdistan can be found in full at
http://uk.krg.org/articles/detail.aspx?lngnr=12&anr=36910