Graham Jones
Haslingden MP
A DISEASE is creeping into British society pushed by hardline extremists and that is cult like belief in post-truth conspiracy theories. Placard politics and fake news are growing.
Iraq is a war ravaged country where military intervention hasn’t worked. Discuss?
I strolled into the big modern Jaguar-Land Rover garage in Iraq which has been selling 300-500 British cars a year for the last six or seven years. Everything inside was British design. Even British people selling the cars liked living in Iraq. No armed guards outside. Good lifestyle.
Leaving the nice hotel, we visited three cities in the north of Iraq. Visited restaurants, shops, truck stops. Miles of open Iraqi roads. With a brand new airport this one-third of Iraq is looking to build up its tourist industry. So what war? What violence? This third of Iraq has been at complete peace for 26 years. Why you may ask?
Because of British military action.
It was John Major’s and the British Governments decision in 1990 to implement a no fly zone with threat of UK airstrikes that gave freedom to this northern third of Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s henchman fled his brutal torture chambers such as the infamous ‘Red House’ (now a torture and genocide museum), fled the mass genocide graves to the south of Iraq – because of that UK military action. And also because of BBC camera crews who reported the genocide. The action has brought 26 years of peace for the people.
It’s why we, the British, are treated as a great nation by the Kurdish people and others. We did the right thing. We freed people from oppression. It’s why you can go to the downtown restaurant as normal and why British made Jaguar-Land Rover sales are doing quite nicely.
It’s why last Christmas Iraqi Kurds turned up and protested vehemently at ‘Stop the War’s’ Christmas gathering. To correct post-truth opinion. Part of a new imperialist arrogance among some Westminster politicians and extremist fringe groups. Whenever we discuss war in Iraq, have you noticed how these people never-ever ask an Iraqi for their view on Iraq?
The Chilcot report. Cost £10.3m of tax payers money, a massive 12 volumes and 2.6 million words. Five times as long as War and Peace and three times as long as the complete works of Shakespeare. So big are the volumes, that hard copies of a volume will cost £767 each. Not one Iraqi was interviewed about the Iraq war by Chilcot, or by anyone for that matter.
And while I remain of the view that the 2003 invasion was not the right decision (and distant family members served in Operations Herrick and Tellick) we need an honest assessment, not a dishonest view.
It is why I said on my return from Iraq the west is not to blame for ISIS. The southern two-thirds of Iraq are to blame for ISIS. ISIS is a product of centuries of sectarianism, not western intervention. Since our withdrawal in 2011, ISIS has been able to grow and expand.
YouGov, another successful British company, has a big operation of 10 international staff and 20 local staff in a plush office block in Erbil, near Mosul. They test marketing ideas and persuade ordinary Iraqis to buying global brands. They also do attitudes surveys, including through social media in ISIS controlled Mosul. The power of the internet.
The views of real people expose our naivety. Most people in Mosul believed ISIS was for the good. ISIS ‘liberated’ the city from the oppressive and vindictive Shia, Baghdad government. Under ISIS their lives got easier.
They believed the west supported or tolerated ISIS. After all, it took three weeks for the coalition to remove Saddam yet under ISIS and the caliphate, the west was quite happy to withdraw militarily from Iraq. The West, in short, had no problem with ISIS in the eyes of the people.
That military withdrawal sent completely the wrong message and gave credibility to ISIS. We should have found another way of de-escalating our involvement.
It wasn’t the big things that turned people in Mosul against ISIS, according to YouGov. It was the ban on smoking and drinking. Smugglers are still able under ISIS to get Scotch whisky smuggled in. It was the oppressive restrictions on women being house bound prisoners, the banning of televisions. Not the beheadings which few of the 1.6million population saw.
I still remain worried that we will not achieve the necessary power sharing agreement across Iraq (and Mosul particularly) like the one in Northern Ireland that promotes moderates and that is desperately required – but I remain optimistic.
Whatever the outcome, it is not the West’s fault that other people haven’t got on for centuries, live sectarian lives and we shouldn’t blame ourselves for deciding not to walk by on the other side.