Graham Jones

Hyndburn MP

I NOTED your letter from Mr Livesey (‘ Our arms are always at war,’ November

25). He is not just historically wrong but his views are dangerous and ones not supported by moderates in Iraq.

The long history of Iraq is of warring empires.

The Ottoman empire and Persian empire have fought over the Mesopotamian (Iraq) plain for centuries. Each victor persecuting the vanquished and in that, adding to previous historical grievances that perpetuate into new cycles of violence. Even more recent decades have been filled with the same fighting between these two empires, their supporters and affiliates. Saddam’s Sunnis fought a brutal seven-year war with Shia Iran in the 1980s. And so it has gone on and on.

It was Prime Minster John Major’s military intervention in 1990 that ended the brutal genocide of 400,000 Kurds. I visited Saddam’s torture house in Sulemania where he tortured Kurds until that British intervention. Pregnant women, little boys. The Kurdistan region of Iraq has now lived in relative peace since and because of that UK military intervention.

A fact too easily forgotten, and it was only when the coalition left in 2011 that Daesh began to grow, another fact too easily forgotten. That is because without a strong moderate middle, Iraq falls back on its history, not ours. The West’s presence has not always been helpful but it is not the contributor to the underlying historical tensions and frequent periods of violence nor responsible for the factions that exist today and who have their roots in centuries of history. Shia, Sunni, Kurd. Every moderate Iraqi I met was proud of the UK, proud of what Britain stands for. They think we are great nation because we don’t walk by on the other side. We try to do the right thing.

Our current presence (airstrikes, military advice and some limited arms) is helping defeat Daesh and without that help Daesh would be thriving. Our limited presence now is to reassure and to help Iraq win the peace in divided cities such as Mosul and Tal Afar. To ensure that centuries of hateful history come to an end and that like Northern Ireland, people learn to live together. I raised that point with the Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons this week that power sharing is vital.

I have not changed my view that I would have voted AGAINST the 2003 Iraq War. However I think that rather than just lazily blame ourselves, we ought to understand history better and despite its inconveniences, learn from those historical inconveniences rather than just make up our own version of events.