Today I suggest we praise a prime minister from the 1990s. No, not Tony Blair but John Major. You may think I am referring to his pioneering work on the peace process in Northern Ireland but I want to highlight a neglected position – the brave and far-reaching decision to establish a no-fly zone over the Kurdistan region, which was enabled 25 years ago today by a United Nations resolution.
The Tories had not covered themselves in glory in the 1980s, at the fag-end of the cold war. They had been complicit in a cynical policy that revelled for reasons of realpolitik in wanting both Iran and Iraq – two four-letter countries as one paper dismissively described them – to defeat each other.
The West underplayed the genocide against the Kurds, with the American State Department initially trying to fool the world that Iran had carried out the chemical weapons attack against Halabja, a Kurdistani town near the Iranian border where thousands were killed in one fell swoop. Despite protestations by Labour members of parliament, including Jeremy Corbyn and Ann Clwyd, the British government refused to boycott the subsequent arms fair in Baghdad.
But Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait changed the calculations and a UN-sponsored force removed him from that country. That in turn led to uprisings by the Shia and the Kurds in Iraq. The Shia were crushed and the same fate awaited the Kurds who fled in their many hundreds of thousands to the mountains – yet more proof of the old Kurdish saying that they have no friends but the mountains.
Unlike Halabja, this was all on television. If you visit the Red House – a former torture centre and now a museum in Slemani – you can see the haunting BBC newsreels from the time on a continuous loop. British people were deeply angered by this and so was Major.
Kurds in Britain also lobbied hard to turn public outrage into action. One of the key players was Dlawer al Alaldeen, then a leading figure in the Kurdish Medical Association, a leading figure in the Kurdish Scientific and Medical Association. He went on to become a professor at Nottingham University and higher education minister in the Kurdistan regional government. He now heads a well-regarded thinktank in Kurdistan, the Middle East Research Institute.
He recalls that after crushing the popular uprising in the south of Iraq Saddam turned on the Kurds but the west, ‘had already decided to distance themselves from the internal war that followed the Kuwait liberation. Over two million civilians were fleeing the cities and towns of Kurdistan region towards the borders with Iran and Turkey while the regime’s aerial and artillery attacks continued. For Saddam, it was shooting fish in a barrel under the watchful eyes of the international community and allied forces.’
He adds, ‘I was among those Kurds in the UK who were actively lobbying for Kurdish human rights and knocking on the doors of policy and decision-makers seeking their intervention to end the massacre. We realized that without putting pressure on the then British prime minister, John Major, and the president of United States, George Bush Sr, little else would have impact on the course of events. I headed a Kurdish delegation to meet Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister. We asked for direct military intervention to save lives, send immediate assistance and make sure the displace people return to their homes. Mrs Thatcher agreed to lend her moral and political support, as did Dr George Carey, the then Archbishop of Canterbury.’
Major writes in his memoirs that he had already raised with the cabinet separately, ironically on the day of the Kurdish new year – 21 March. The more the merrier in a case like this. Major concludes that, ‘Genocide was averted, and literally tens of thousands of lives were saved. So too, I think, was the reputation of the allies, which would surely have been harmed had we turned a blind eye.’
It was bigger than that. The decision undoubtedly saved many more lives. It was also a major departure from the doctrine of the foreign policy establishment which stressed sovereignty over justice. Breaking with that can be seen as one of the initial moves towards the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect rather than respecting sovereign if odious states.
The coalition that kicked Saddam out of Kuwait refused to exceed its mandate by pursuing Saddam’s regime in Baghdad for that reason. It thought his massive defeat in Kuwait would doom him and, astonishingly, the Americans even allowed him the right to use his air force inside Iraq, as he did against the Shia and the Kurds.
Imposing a no-fly zone also preserved a place that is now vital to defeating the new incarnation of genocide, Daesh. Where would we be now without the Kurdistan region as a beacon of democratic hope, religious pluralism and civic moderation? Major visited the Kurdistan region five years ago to a well-deserved hero’s welcome, as will Tony Blair one day. Major and then Blair gave the Kurds the ability to live another day.
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Gary Kent is director of Labour Friends of Iraq and writes in a personal capacity. He tweets @garykent
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