Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Debate between Gregory Campbell and Jack Lopresti

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the relationship between the UK and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. The relationship between Iraqi Kurdistanis and the UK—people and Governments—goes back many decades but has emerged as a more enduring and vital alliance in the last third of a century, for great mutual benefit. Before that, Kurdistanis, as they prefer to be called, were long demonised in Iraq as second-class citizens. That developed into genocide in the 1980s, which was formally recognised by the House of Commons on the 25th anniversary of the tragic gassing in 1988 by Saddam Hussein’s air force of the town of Halabja, with the instant death of 5,000 people and many maimed for life. Overall, nearly 200,000 people were murdered in a systematic genocide that also razed thousands of villages to the ground and destroyed the backbone of the rural economy.

Many Kurdistanis were exiled here before returning. That drives a great affinity with the UK and the widespread use of English. That living link was boosted when Saddam, defeated in Kuwait in 1991, turned on the Kurdistanis with genocidal intent. They revolted, and about 2 million people fled to the freezing mountains to escape Saddam’s revenge. I am immensely proud that Sir John Major showed fantastic leadership and moral courage by establishing with America and France a no-fly zone. I am delighted that the Kurdistan Regional Government agreed to name a major thoroughfare in Irbil after Sir John, and very much hope that they do the same for Sir Tony Blair.

The creation of the safe haven, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) participated as an RAF officer, averted further genocide and helped to usher in an autonomous region. Kurdistanis elected their first Parliament in 1992 and, despite harsh Iraq and UN sanctions, laid the basis of a new society that bettered Saddam’s Iraq in, for instance, one key area: infant mortality. Sadly, civil war marred that fresh start.

Iraqi Kurdistan won a place at the forefront of our foreign policy, which was a great advantage when Iraq was liberated in 2003. Kurdistani leaders stabilised the new Iraq with peaceful elections and a landmark constitution in 2005, based on federalism and rights for the officially recognised autonomous region. Kurdistan enjoyed a golden decade in which new oil, long denied by Saddam, boosted living standards and infrastructure in “the Other Iraq”. However, there were difficult challenges; most important was Baghdad’s refusal to implement a settlement by 2007 in which the people of Kirkuk and other disputed territories could choose to join Iraq or the autonomous region. That is unfinished business and requires greater attention, and I ask the Minister to comment on it in his remarks.

Worse was to come with the complete and unilateral suspension of budget payments from Baghdad to Irbil in early 2014, the sudden seizure by ISIS of Mosul in June 2014 and its broader attack on Kurdistan. The Kurdistanis took the brunt of the defence of Iraq by saving Kirkuk and, with a refreshed Iraqi army and coalition forces, by helping to liberate Mosul in 2017. I saw the Kurdistani army—the peshmerga, which means “those who defy death”—in action in Kirkuk and Mosul. The peshmerga were valiant allies in fighting a foul fascism, with British help, especially from the RAF. Kurdistani action reduced a serious threat to our own people in the United Kingdom.

It was deeply disappointing that the Iraqi Prime Minister “forgot” to thank the peshmerga at the UN, and that his reaction to a peaceful referendum in 2017 on the principle of independence, which I observed in three cities, was to violently seize Kirkuk, killing peshmerga. Baghdad closed international flights and even tried, unsuccessfully, to invade the autonomous region. All of that was a tragic indictment and demonstration of the very dysfunctional nature of the relationship between Baghdad and the KRG at the time, to say the least.

The all-party group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq returned in 2018 to Kurdistan and for the first time visited Baghdad, where there was a stated desire to seek reconciliation. Sadly, the momentum has stalled due to the undue influence of Iran and its proxy militias and terrorist organisations.

Warfare and lawfare via a supreme court that has not been constitutionally established is destabilising and suffocating Kurdistan, and Shi’a militia attacks have targeted British and American military facilities at the main airport in Irbil.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we must not allow those elements, particularly in Iraq and in other locations, to replace what most of us want to see, which is democratic accountability in each of these regions and nations? They try to make it seem as though these are western values, thereby devaluing the independence of regions such as Kurdistan.

[Jack Lopresti]

I absolutely agree. We have to look only across the broader middle east, where we have seen in recent and historical events the malign influence of Iran, with its wish to diminish and extinguish any country or region that exemplifies the western values of freedom and democracy.