Window on Westminster

The almost year-long inquiry by the British parliamentary Foreign Affairs committee into UK policy on the Kurdistan Region concluded last week with a robust and wide-ranging grilling of Middle East Minister, Tobias Ellwood. The committee's report should follow in the near future.

Spontaneous interjections sometimes speak volumes. When Ellwood commented that "the Kurds are actually the largest minority population in the world without their own country," the Committee Chair and Conservative MP Sir Richard Ottaway quickly replied: "I am not sure if it will be long before they have their own country." 

But Britain will not easily abandon its preference for a One Iraq policy. Indeed, Ellwood clearly restated that the British Government "believe that Iraq is stronger for having the influence of the Kurds in Baghdad..." 

The policy was questioned at the public hearing, if only to test its coherence. Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell told the Minister that "the nation of Iraq was an artificial construction.... the people of Kurdistan would [undoubtedly] like to have independence at some point. Is it not time for the UK to think about how, in the long term, the region and the boundaries of the nations can be changed and recreated to ensure that there is more stability and more ability to create stronger nations longer term, than the instability which I don’t think can ever be resolved on the current boundaries." 

Ellwood stuck to his guns, as did Rosindell who added "is it fair to expect the Kurds to tie themselves to an artificial construction, of which they do not feel part, when they have proved themselves able to run a successful state independently of that? Surely, we should give the people of Kurdistan the right to have self-determination, as we would with anywhere else in the world?" Sympathy for Kurdish self-determination is clearly growing.

However, the Daish threat is the priority. The Minister was told that the KRG is asking for heavy weapons. Ellwood detailed the "regular drumbeat of aeroplanes landing, providing more weapons systems [to Erbil]" in what he called its "hour of need" but carefully expressed concerns, which he said he had frankly broached with Erbil. These are that the Peshmerga is divided, had a civil war in the 1990s, and that the worst-case scenario is that Kurdistan could be like Libya, which is flush with arms.

The Government, however, "stand ready to answer any further requests that come Britain’s way" on arms but are keen on "an upgrading of the transparency, the capability and the accountability of the Peshmerga to the Kurdish Government." The Foreign Office Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Edward Oakden added that the KRG had promised that all gifted arms are used in accordance with international humanitarian law, meet urgent operational needs, and are not stockpiled, sold or transferred to third parties. 

Britain clearly wishes to help protect Kurdistan but there is a danger that the One Iraq policy, with its fear that arms supplied today could drive independence tomorrow, could deprive Kurdistan of the heavy weapons it needs to defeat Daish. All arms imports go via Baghdad or have its approval, so it should not be hard to track what the Minister called "all sorts of containers [coming] in from around the world." 

The bottom line, in my view, is that the Kurds have the right to leave Iraq, just as much as they agreed to rejoin it in 2003. This possibility came to the fore after the fall of Mosul but receded when Daish attacked Kurdistan in August. The recent interim deal with Baghdad on oil could prefigure stable revenue-sharing but Committee members pondered whether this was the "last chance" for Iraqi federalism.

There may one day be no flunking the issue of independence and solidarity movements with the Kurds may have to persuade their governments not to obstruct it. It may be that Iraq benefits from the Kurds but it is much more difficult to see how the Kurds have benefitted from being in Iraq, where there has been little protest about the shameful treatment of the Kurds. 

MPs also discussed obstacles to British-Kurdish links: the Consulate-General still has no decent base, direct air links remain distant, and the official FCO advice only allows essential travel by British citizens. Ellwood also said that "I think Britain has the largest number of businesses operating in northern Iraq than any other country." Reinstating permissive travel advice is essential to that remaining the case.

This ministerial evidence session indicates that the Committee cannot avoid examining Iraqi Kurdish independence and prospects for federalism working this time.  Either way, the report could be a landmark document in Anglo-Kurdish relations and a menu for British solidarity with Kurdistan.

The full transcript of the hearing is at http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/foreign-affairs-committee/uk-government-policy-on-the-kurdistan-region-of-iraq/oral/15532.html

Gary Kent is the director of All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). He writes this column for Rudaw in a personal capacity. 

* The address for the all-party group is appgkurdistan@gmail.com