APPG Kurdistan

High Representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to the UK, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman says that “Kurdistan is a forward-looking, democratic and secular Muslim society and that bilateral relations between Kurdistan and the UK are very good, solid and detailed. As for Kurdistan’s relations with the Iraqi government, she says that “We are a part of Iraq, and in 2003, we decided to voluntarily remain as part of Iraq, which is now inclusive and democratic. This is what we are committed to. We are not willing to be a part of an Iraq that is under a dictatorship. It was under a dictatorship that our people suffered genocide. While Iraq remains on the path to federalism, democracy and unity, we will be part of it.”

Read more at http://www.worldfolio.co.uk/region/middle-east/iraq/n-2008-closer-ties-with-the-uk-in-investment-and-education

“There is another Iraq, buried under Iraq”. So said the head of the Kurdistan Mass Graves Commission as she explained to me her work during one recent visit to Kurdistan with the All-Party Kurdistan Group. Travelling around Iraq, her job is to try and identify the mass graves of the victims of Saddam Hussein’s campaign of genocide against the Kurds. Sometimes using DNA techniques, sometimes through simple ID (like a chain, a wallet or ID Card), the Kurds are painstakingly going through every mass grave they can find, in order to try and bring respite to grieving families and some kind of closure to what happened under the Baathist regime.

So far around 300 mass graves have been discovered, some with hundreds of bodies, some with 50 to 60. There are also pits with just bones. We saw this for ourselves when we went to the far north area of Garmian. Row after row of baby-sized coffins, filled with bones. Incomplete, unable to be identified, but at least given dignity. Whilst there, we were not only greeted by the Mayor and other dignitaries, but also Shazad Hussein, a grandmother whose family was killed in the genocide and who literally played the grandmother in the award winning Iraqi film, Son of Babylon – a moving and tragic account of Iraq’s missing million people.

It is strange that whilst the world knows much about modern genocide: the Bosnians by the Serbs, the tragedy of Rwanda, little is known about the Kurdish story in Northern Iraq. In fact, their genocide which is known to most as ‘Anfal’, is not even recognised as an international genocide by the United Nations – something that I, chairing a committee of academics, lawyers, and Parliamentarians, am trying to change. The facts are these: if you define genocide as scientifically planned mass murder with various stages of development – notably, marginalisation, demonisation, and eradication, – then the Kurds suffered a genocide. As parts of the Middle East collapse into civil war and violence, most notably in Syria, it is more important than ever that the United Nations condemns genocide, and formally recognises where it has occurred.

Saddam and the Baathists were determined to ‘vacuum’ the Kurds from Iraq – partly because of Arabist nationalism, partly a desire to gain full control over Kurdish lands and resources. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed in a campaign that began in 1963, carried through to 1969, 1976 and 1988. In these years, many thousands Kurdish villages were destroyed, prison camps built and torture chambers established. In one, known as the Red House – which I have seen for myself – there was even an Auschwitz style incinerator. Women were raped in what was known as ‘the party room’; their foetuses and babies were burnt in the incinerator.

As with every other genocide the methods of killing get more and more sophisticated (think shooting in the woods by the Nazis, and then the concentration camps).

The culmination of the Kurdish Genocide came in 1988. This was the year when Saddam Hussein decided to drop mustard gas on the Kurds including, most notably, the City of Halabja. First, the planes bombed the houses, so windows and walls could break and leave no respite. Second, the pilots let loose the mustard gas: Five thousand Kurds died, almost instantly. Thousands more were disfigured. Even in 2011, recent diggers of mass graves have died from residual mustard gas. Even today, Kurdish people are suffering the evil of chemical and biological weapons.

If it were not for John Major’s safe havens established over Kurdistan in 1991 and Tony Blair’s subsequent determination to get rid of Saddam Hussein, it is likely that Saddam would have succeeded. There would be no Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands would have died. Unlike Nazi Germany, where many of those responsible for the killing were tried at Nuremburg, there has been little justice meted out to those responsible for the Kurdish genocide. It is said that military organisers of the Anfal, and many of the pilots remain at large – some even living in Europe.

Whilst the Kurds are a people that learns from the past rather than lives in it, they have waited too long for justice. The state of Iraq has now officially recognised the Iraqi genocide: it is the duty of the rest of the world to do the same, to ensure all the perpetrators are brought to the International Court and help with a programme of education and remembrance, so that the true story of Saddam’s butchery can never be forgotten by future generations.

That is the aim of the All-Party Group of MPs, here in the UK. Our e-petition has now reached over 25,000 signatures, and the Government will soon respond formally. Parliamentary motions on this issue have been supported by MPs of all parties. Many MPs have tabled written and oral questions in Parliament, and spoken supportively in debates.

Finally, this Thursday the Kurdish Regional Government are organising an International Conference: The untold story: the Kurdish genocide in Iraq. This will bring together British MPs and Peers, Ministers from Baghdad and Erbil, the Deputy Speaker of the Norwegian Parliament and Members of the Swedish Parliament, as well as survivors of the genocide and their families, to discuss the next steps of the campaign (Norway and Sweden recognized Kurdish genocide in autumn 2012).

Robert Halfon is MP for Harlow. He tweets at @halfon4harlowMP and is Vice-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Kurdistan.

http://centrallobby.politicshome.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/robert-halfon-mp-iraqs-missing-million/

When I am out meeting constituents and helping with their day-to-day issues in Stratford-on-Avon it is sometimes hard for me to think of how differently my life could have turned out. We are products of our upbringing and I often reflect on how lucky I was to have moved here to Britain in the 1970s, a move that happened because my Kurdish father faced imprisonment or death under Saddam Hussein’s murderous rule.

Under the Ba’athist regime, Iraqi Kurds endured a systematic military programme of discrimination, demonization, removal and death. More than a million people in Iraq have ‘disappeared’ since the 1960s, all presumed dead, most murdered.

Men of ‘battle age’, (which could mean a tall, strong boy of twelve years old), were rounded up and ‘disappeared’. Thousands of women and children also vanished. There is strong evidence that many were taken to internment camps where they were executed or died from malnutrition and torture. Hundreds of thousands of people, including children, were buried in hundreds of mass graves which have only been discovered in recent years. While we all know that Coalition forces did not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they certainly found a large number of these mass graves and the thousands of bodies they were supposed to conceal.

This year is the 25thAnniversary of the final act in this persecution, the ‘Anfal Campaign’, which in Arabic literally means ‘the spoils of war’.

This last and best known phase took place in 1988 when about 182,000 men, women and children are believed to have died. To put this into context, that’s enough people to fill Wembley Stadium twice over, or when compared to the horror of the September 11 attacks on the US it is 60 times the 3000 innocents killed on that terrible day.

The most notorious incident was the bombing of the town of Halabja by Iraqi planes armed with mustard gas. Five thousand people died a very painful death and thousands more were injured. Many babies born were born with deformities long after the bombing.

It is of course partly because of my heritage that I co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Kurdistan. I am proud that here in the UK and across the globe, survivors of the Kurdish genocide are bravely rebuilding their lives and their homes. Kurdistan is now the safest part of Iraq: it has a booming economy, an emerging tourist industry and a strong higher education sector.

But I believe it is hugely important that the victims of these atrocities are able to come to terms with the horrors they have endured. To do this, they need international recognition of the state-sponsored savagery inflicted on them. This is why it is so important that the ‘Anfal Campaign’ should be recognised internationally as the genocide that it truly was. Educating people about it will, I hope, help ensure that this form of hatred is never allowed to flourish again, in Iraq or indeed the rest of the world.

Finally, I think that we as Britons should be proud of our role in defending the Kurdish people after the events of the first Gulf War. John Major’s government was instrumental in securing the no-fly zone over Kurdistan which forced Saddam’s army to retreat and ended the nightmare once and for all.

I now hope that Britain will continue to be a close friend and ally of the Kurds and that our Government, like the President of Iraq itself and the Government of Sweden, will pledge to ensure that this act of genocide is recognized in this its 25thAnniversary year.

On Thursday January 17th 2013, the Kurdistan Regional Government is holding an international conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the intervention in Iraq and the 25th anniversary of the Anfal genocide operation and the chemical attack on Halabja.

Nadhim Zahawi MP will take part in a panel discussion entitled, ‘The role of the diaspora then and now’, chaired by Meg Munn MP

http://centrallobby.politicshome.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/nadhim-zahawi-mp-state-sponsored-savagery-was-genocide/

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. This often astonishes people because it remains very vivid and even vicious in British politics. The usual historical perspective about past events hasn’t yet overcome often hysterical arguments about this intervention. Expect a vitriolic avalanche of polemic because Iraq remains a four letter word in Britain.

Few partisans have changed their minds and the default position here, if not in Iraq, is that intervention was based on deceit, caused (vastly exaggerated) numbers of deaths and that Iraq is barely better or even worse than under Saddam Hussein.

Most agree though that the Pentagon made a lash of the occupation, exacerbated sectarian tensions and unwittingly facilitated the insurgency.

Supporters of liberation from fascism have the hardest case because we can now never use the road not travelled. It is possible if improbable that Saddam’s Republic of Fear would have collapsed internally.

However, Saddam was the great survivor whose calculation that the west and the UN were paper tigers was vindicated for a decade after his defeat in Kuwait in 1991. The sanctions regime was falling apart and increasing revenue streams could have sustained Saddam. The succession could then have gone to one of his psychopathic sons and Iraq would have returned as an active canker in the region.

Many papers and pundits will soon audit the consequences of the invasion for good and for bad but some need reminding that March 2003 was not year zero. The invasion followed many years of brutality, which has been lost or obscured by new generations who see Iraq mainly through the prism of the 2003 invasion and “Bliarism” – that Tony Blair lied to secure a dishonourable objective.

My hope is that the looming media coverage will also focus, for instance, on this year’s other major milestone – the 25th anniversary of the chemical attack on Halabja on 16 March 1988 and the wider genocide against the Kurds.

One criticism of the campaign for the UK and others to formally recognise the genocide is that it is backward-looking. But its impact remains red raw in Kurdistan where almost every family has direct experience. Morally, in any case, genocides should always be recognised.

The campaign has done much to raise awareness. Over 21,000 British residents have backed Nadhim Zahawi’s e petition so far – a very good tally and one of the highest for a foreign issue.

Sadly, this anniversary is far more than academic given the dangerous impasse between Baghdad and Erbil which reminds me of two old tunes by Jim Reeves and Neil Sedaka, “(I hear the sound of) distant drums” and “breaking up is hard to do.”

The drums have been beating ever louder since the withdrawal in December 2011 of US troops, which had played an important stabilising role. The lack of American oomph makes it easier for Baghdad to indulge its baser reflexes. The illness of President Talabani undermines another moderating influence.

Remembering the genocide provides a good context for understanding today’s disputes between Baghdad and Erbil. Given the history, the Kurds are understandably wary of Baghdad’s motivations and plans given that some in the Arab south seem keen to put Kurds in their supposedly rightful place. Others seem content for the Kurds to wave farewell and “good riddance” as one recently put it on television.

The anniversaries provide the hook for taking Iraqi Kurdistan’s case to a wider audience. Kurdistan is not the problem in Iraq. Its services, safety and stability are in stark contrast to continued dysfunctionality down south. The Kurdistan Region could be a model and the gateway for foreign investment in the bigger Iraqi market when it is ready. Yet Baghdad’s blundering and aggression could deter investment and trade.

The Kurds can only be expected to continue their substantial contribution to Iraq if the federal deal made in 2005 and enshrined in the constitution is honoured. Federalism and democracy would ensure that the dark days of genocide and sabotage are over. All these issues should be part of the debate this year.

Fortunately, there are now many more British parliamentarians with a good and growing understanding of the Kurdistan Region and its relations with the rest of Iraq and the neighbours. These parliamentarians include those who thought that the Iraq war was one of necessity and those who thought it was a war of choice. They have put their differences to one side in order to focus on advancing British interests and helping the Kurdistan Region.

My hunch is that much of the coverage of these anniversaries will generate more heat than light but I hope that the KRG UK and the all-party group can follow the wise words of another old crooner, Bing Crosby – accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.

* Gary Kent is the Administrator of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). He writes this column for Rudaw in a personal capacity.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/science/columnists/5630.html

The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide, in a recent parliamentary debate recognised the judgement of the Iraqi High Court that Saddam Hussein’s’ Anfal campaign, including the chemical weapons attack on Halabja, constituted genocide. The debate was attended by Sabah Ahmed Mohammed, the Minister of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs from the Kurdistan Regional Government, as well as over one hundred people from the Norwegian Kurdish community

Read more at http://uk.krg.org/articles/detail.aspx?lngnr=12&anr=36740

Next year’s 10th anniversary of the Iraq war may focus on the feebleness so far of federalism and  the country possibly breaking up without having resolved the tensions between the autonomous Kurdistan Region and Baghdad that have recently put tanks and artillery on their internal borders. Ancient differences now involve energy policy, land disputes and differing attitudes towards powerful neighbours, which reflect the wider Shia-Sunni divide.

Iraqi Kurdistan’s success attracts needless resentment rather than rejoicing in Baghdad. Last week’s huge oil and gas conference in its capital, Erbil, ‘the exploration capital of the world,’ illustrated its dramatic progress. It is now clear that the Kurds have about three per cent of the world’s oil and much natural gas, most of the world’s top oil companies have established themselves there, and the economy enjoys double-digit growth.

But Baghdad remains a drag anchor. Previous regimes neglected Kurdistan and conducted genocide including the attack on Halabja in 1988 where mustard gas killed 5,000 people. Baghdad continues to seek central control over Kurdistan’s resources although the 2005 constitution allows the Kurds autonomy to encourage exploration in virgin territory with bigger incentives for oil companies.

Read rest at http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/12/11/tactical-tantrums-in-iraq/

The ability to love your country but face the facts and be truthful about its shortcomings is what distinguishes patriotism from chauvinism, which essentially says ‘my country right or wrong.’ Many people are critical of America or Britain but not as forthrightly as some Americans or Brits.

I recently met Serwan Baban who was a senior academic in the UK before becoming vice chancellor of the University of Kurdistan-Hawler and who has just been appointed, as one of four independent technocrats, to the cabinet of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

He comes across as a forward-thinking and frank patriot. He cheerfully and candidly canters through some of the problems faced by his homeland. Citing the number of expensive tractors that were lent to farmers by the Agricultural Bank but which then end up in Iran and the illegal practice of siting hilltop villas on agricultural land, he concedes that the problem is one of weak law and order.

He recognises, as one of so many Kurdish leaders who spent years in exile here,  that respect for the law in countries such as the UK is deeply engrained psychologically: “why does a driver stop at a stop sign at 2am when there are no police around. It’s because they know that it is the right thing to do deep down.” He believes that the Kurdistan Region is maybe 20-25 years ahead of the rest of Iraq but maybe 50 years behind Europe.

He also agrees that too many people in ministries have skills that were gained in the liberation struggle in the mountains but that there now needs to be professional recruitment and development. He cites how large ministries send many thank you letters to staff which are then used in CVs while no reprimands are issued, which doesn’t make sense given the numbers employed.

He acknowledges the prevalence of what is described as ‘wasta’ in the Middle East, using influence for a relative in order not to offend and that this “blurs the social and professional scenes.” He adds that this is another reason to make more use of private companies which are better in insisting on clear professional standards.

I raised the issue of litter having seen over the years that the region is spoiled by litter, especially water bottles. He replies that “the sooner we can ban plastic the better, given that they last for 5,000 years” but points out that “Kurds love our homes but not necessarily our country” and mentions a campaign to persuade Kurds to clear up after themselves.

His remit is agriculture and water which is one of the big challenges facing the region. Agriculture was born in Kurdistan and most of the population used to work the land and live in villages. Today, however, a much smaller section of the workforce is farming, most food is imported and a great potential is being neglected.

This is the direct result not so much of the global trend towards urbanisation but the deliberate decision of Saddam Hussein to drive Kurds off the land and into the cities where they could be eliminated more easily as part of the genocide against the Kurds.

Farmers and livestock were shot on sight in free fire zones in the countryside, wells were capped and people sent to concentration camps. The UN sanctions regime after the Kurds threw Saddam out in 1991 made things worse by shipping in substandard agricultural products and undermining incentives to produce their own food.

The ministry is now devising an ambitious roadmap for reviving agriculture and asking foreign universities and experts for help. The draft plan has also been put out for consultation to the people of Iraqi Kurdistan.

The plan goes back to basics by asking how much protein people need and working out how to increase the amount of home-grown red meat and chickens, for instance, in the coming three or four years. The minister admits that “we’re flying the plane but also building it.”

One of their major problems is the availability of ground water and the need for increased irrigation. He details how ground water has become the primary rather than secondary or tertiary source for agriculture and how this is drying out supplies in a way that can make it unsustainable.

He says that the solution is to build five dams but that because these are deemed as serious strategic projects they are the responsibility of the federal government in Baghdad but they not a “priority for them” and “the signs from there are not encouraging.”

Given the scope of agricultural assets – great honey, pomegranates and 56 varieties of grape, for instance – he argues for “something like the Marshall Plan” to unlock the potential: “there is little so important as food that touches our daily lives. We need good quality food at reasonable prices and food security. We need to set up an irreversible process that is evidence based and a priority for everyone.”

The minister’s expertise and enthusiasm speak volumes about the ability of the Kurdistan Region to husband its resources for the good of its own people.

Gary Kent

http://uk.krg.org/articles/detail.aspx?lngnr=12&anr=36729

29 October 2012: This weekend survivors of Iraq’s genocide living in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and London took to the streets of their home cities to ask the public to support their call for the British Government to recognise the mass murder of Iraqi Kurds by Saddam Hussein as genocide.

Supporters on the streets of the four cities were asked to sign an e-petition calling for the British Government to recognise the genocide. Over the course of the weekend over a thousand people signed the petition, meaning that only 2,000 more signatures are needed in order to prompt a response from Government. To trigger a debate in Parliament, 100,000 are needed.

The e-petition can be found here: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/31014

Within each city, the names of the Kurdish people who were brutally murdered in Iraq were read out to the public. The event was  called ‘The Endless Roll Call’ to reflect the huge volume of men, women and children who were shot en masse, gassed by chemical weapon attacks, starved to death in camps or simply ‘disappeared’.

Thousands of Kurdish people who fled Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime now live in the UK. But hundreds of thousands of men, women and children weren’t able to escape. From 1987 to 1988 alone, an estimated 180,000 Kurdish people were killed during Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaign; enough people to fill the Olympic stadium in London more than twice.

The mass killing of Kurdish people in Iraq started in the 1960s, long before Saddam Hussein. It was a lengthy campaign, perpetrated over four decades, to systematically wipe out the Kurdish people yet it is currently not recognized by the British Government as genocide. The ‘Justice4genocide’ campaign launched the e-petition calling for this to change.

Dr. Eymen Qadir, 45, survived the genocide. He fled Iraq in 2001 and has lived in Leeds for ten years. As a medical student in Iraq, he witnessed the attacks under Saddam’s regime. Many of the patients he worked with were victims of chemical weapons. He also witnessed hoards of people being driven away by security forces, never to be seen again. Eymen lost several members of extended family under the regime.

He says: “We need to recognise the genocide so it does not happen again, so that people need not suffer the same as we did.”

Commenting on the ‘Justice4genocide’ campaign event, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, Kurdistan Regional Government High Representative to the UK, says: “We need international recognition of the horror endured. Recognition is the first step towards prosecuting those individuals inside Iraq and out who were responsible for the genocide in Iraqi Kurdistan. As well as mass shootings, the Kurdish people were attacked with chemical weapons. The companies which sold these weapons are still operating and still need to be brought to justice.

“Saddam Hussein was never tried or convicted for the genocide. Justice has not yet been done. The British Government ended the killing when they created the no fly zone over northern Iraq and for that we will always be grateful. Now we ask that they recognize formally the genocide which took place so Kurdish survivors living inthe UK, and in Iraq, get the justice they deserve.”