Wallace shrugs off criticism of his visit to Iraqi militia headquarters
WEXFORD MEP Mick Wallace has responded to criticism surrounding around a recent trip to Iraq during which he visited an Iraqi militia’s headquarters. The trip has drawn criticism from several quarters, not least of all from political rival, Fianna Fáil Senator Malcolm Byrne who described Mr Wallace and fellow MEP Clare Daly who also made the trip as ‘an embarrassment to Ireland’.
Responding to the criticism, when asked for comment Mr Wallace said: ‘Criticism? I don’t really engage with it. (...)You’ll always have an element of people criticising in order to garner some much needed attention for themselves’. He also said that the reason the visit may have drawn a negative reaction in certain quarters in Ireland was because ‘mainstream media in Ireland has long supported US imperialism’ going on to accuse the media of ‘generating an element of racism against the Muslim community’.
Apart from this, Mr Wallace directed us to a podcast uploaded by himself and Ms Daly, detailing their trip. In it, he noted that he had been appointed as the ‘rapporteur on Iraq’ for the European Parliament a year ago and he had been ‘ bursting’ to go there since.
‘To go officially as rapporteur, I could only go under umbrella of EU institutions, mainly foreign affairs committee,’ he explained. ‘They would actually dictate the nature of the trip, who we’d meet, what we’d do. It’d be a bit of a fanfare, but very much controlled. I’m not mad into formal myself.
‘We decided to go unofficially, because we can go anywhere we like. I didn’t go as the rapporteur. I made it plain, we were going off our own bat and it wasn’t an official trip. We are MEPs, but we weren’t representing the institution of the European Parliament. We are obliged, however, under our remit, to represent the 460 million plus people of Europe. We were a long time organising. We had some amazing meetings. It was an incredible experience. We were there for a week and it was amazing.’
The two MEPs visited a brigade headquarters of Hashed al-Shaabi in Iraq to criticise American foreign policy in the region. Footage of this visit, showing Mr Wallace and Ms Daly viewing a picture gallery ‘wall of martyrs’ before they speak, has now been used in a YouTube video to promote the group.
Mr Wallace said ‘one of the stones that the West throws at’ Hashed al-Shaabi is the fact that they are an Iranian-supported militia. While, he said the group still gets support from Iran, Mr Wallace said they are now fighting for Iraqi sovereignty and independence including from Iran.
‘Iran played a huge part in the formation of Hashed al-Shaabi, but Hashed al-Shaabi went to great lengths to tell us that they are now incorporated under the Iraqi army, they work for the Iraqi government, they are under their orders,’ he said. ‘And while they have great respect for the help Iran give them they want to be independent of Iran.’
Ms Daly added: ‘They’re actually part of the Iraqi army now, so people in the West and the EU, say these are a terrorist organisation, they are not terrorist organisations. They are organisations which have been through their human rights training under the Geneva Convention in terms of how to deal with civilians in conflict, for example, they’ve worked closely with the Iraqi army. They’ve been dealing with the Covid fallout, for example, they’ve been rebuilding schools in areas. This isn’t the type of stuff that a terrorist organisation does.’
Back in Ireland, however, this was not a view shared by Fianna Fáil Senator Malcolm Byrne.
‘These two MEPs visited a Shiite Militant Group that has lured gay people to their deaths,’ he said. ‘As if their support for Lukashenko in Belarus and Hezbollah in Lebanon was not bad enough. They are an embarrassment to Ireland.’
He added that while, ‘seeking to understand issues in a conflict is a good thing, not doing due diligence on a group in advance and allowing themselves to be used as propaganda tools is foolish.’