British Ambassador Stephen Hitchen speaking to Rudaw’s Shaho Amin on January 18, 2024. Photo: Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The purpose of attacks on the Kurdistan Region’s capital Erbil and bases housing international forces is to destabilize the regional government, British Ambassador Stephen Hitchen told Rudaw’s Shaho Amin in a wide-ranging interview on Thursday.
“I think a broad picture of an attempt to destabilize the Kurdish government and Erbil is part of a plan in order to undermine the stability of that region and to challenge us, as your friends, as well,” said Hitchen.
Iraqi militias backed by Iran have struck bases in Iraq and Syria housing the United States-led global coalition to fight Islamic State (ISIS) with rockets and drones some 140 times since mid-October in retaliation for Washington’s support for Israel in its war in the Gaza Strip.
“The attacks on Erbil airbase are wholly unjustified. We are here as the guests of the Iraqi government and the Kurdish authority in order to fight Daesh,” said Hitchen, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
The attacks have not directly killed any personnel yet - one US contractor died of a heart attack during a drone attack - but Hitchen said they need to be taken as “serious attempts to kill.”
“They are not messages, they are not harassment. You do not send a message with 25 kilos of high explosives,” he said.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of shadow Iraqi militia groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has claimed responsibility for the majority of the drone strikes on the coalition bases in the Kurdistan Region, Iraq, and Syria.
On Saturday, the group attacked western Iraq’s Ain al-Asad base with rockets and ballistic missiles. One member of the Iraqi security forces was injured and a number of Americans are being assessed for traumatic brain injuries.
A few days earlier, the IRGC targeted Erbil with ballistic missiles, killing at least four people, including an 11-month-old baby, and injuring 17 others.
Hitchen said the number of British troops in Erbil is in the “low hundreds” and the numbers change daily. The troops have “various tasks.”
“They are a part of counter Daesh mission. That is the reason that they are there. They are there to train, to assist. There are various roles they play … all in coordination with the coalition and the Kurdish authorities,” he said.
Coalition future in Iraq
The frequent attacks and the Washington’s deadly retaliations, which were harshly condemned by Baghdad, have put the future of the coalition in Iraq in doubt.
An American drone strike against Harakat al-Nujaba, which is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi), in Baghdad earlier this month killed two, including Mushtaq Talib al-Saeedi, better known as Abu Taqwa, a former commander of al-Nujaba and the deputy commander of the PMF’s Baghdad Belt Operations.
Baghdad condemned the American strike as it was conducted without approval from the Iraqi government and therefore constituted a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani subsequently announced that his government is “in the process of setting the date to start working on the bilateral committee to make arrangements to permanently end the presence of the international coalition forces in Iraq.”
Hitchen said that “no one wants the coalition to become a permanent feature” in Iraq and they want to see a transformation into “strong bilateral security relationships.”
Kurdish leaders have said that the coalition is still needed to help combat the existing threat of ISIS.
Sudani on Thursday said during a panel on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos that the withdrawal of coalition forces was “necessary for the stability and security of Iraq” as well as “the preservation of bilateral relations with coalition states.”
He noted that the purpose of the coalition is to fight ISIS, which is no longer a threat.
Hitchen warned that the “existence of militias outside government control” might drag Iraq into regional wars, like the Israel and Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, adding that with the existence of such groups, “the government loses the ability to decide when they are at war, or where they are not.”
ISIS in Iraq
The UK envoy said that ISIS still poses a threat, but is no longer “an existential threat” to Iraq.
“Ten years ago it [ISIS] was a threat on the government, it could have destroyed the state, in Baghdad, it could have destroyed the state in Erbil, which was the reason for our intervention,” he said.
ISIS seized control of swathes of Iraqi land in 2014 and was declared territorially defeated in 2017 when Kurdish and Iraqi forces supported by the US-led coalition drove them out of the cities and villages they had seized in their brazen offensive.
Despite its territorial defeat, the group continues to carry out bombings, hit-and-run attacks, and abductions, targeting civilians and security forces across several Iraqi provinces, particularly those falling in the disputed areas stretching across the provinces of Kirkuk, Salahaddin, and Diyala.
According to Hitchen the long-term challenge of combating ISIS is “economic and social development.”
“Daesh thrives where people are marginalized, where people don’t have opportunities. In many ways, the most powerful tool to combat Daesh is not military or security, it is economic and social,” he said.
Kurdistan Region elections
The Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections are long overdue. They were initially scheduled for October 2022, but the parliament voted to extend its term and pushed the vote to November 2023 due to disagreements among the political parties over the election law.
After an Iraqi court ruling against the self-extension of the parliament, the vote was postponed to February 2024 when it would take place under the supervision of the Iraqi electoral commission. That date has again been cancelled.
Last week, a spokesperson for the Iraqi election body told Rudaw that a new date for the vote will be set following meetings with the Kurdistan Region Presidency.
“We want to see those elections to go forward as soon as possible,” Hitchen said, adding that the vote is necessary to ensure the legitimacy of the Kurdistan Regional Government.
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