To really understand the war, the Iraq inquiry needs to take evidence from the ground

By Gary Kent

Given the huge investment that this country made in the lives of its soldiers and in public money, it is only right that there should be a comprehensive inquiry into the causes and conduct of the military intervention in Iraq in order to learn the lessons for the future.

Labour Friends of Iraq was founded by supporters and opponents of that intervention, but who deliberately sought to respond to the new Iraq that emerged from the intervention. For the last five years our priority has been working with Iraqis who are seeking to build independent organisations such as trade unions and to create a federal and democratic country.

The sad thing about much of the discussion about Iraq is that it either ignores or obscures the reality of Saddam’s murderous regime or that Iraqi voices are invisible in that debate. My worry is that a large number of activists have little or no knowledge of the crimes of the previous Iraqi regime which include genocide against Iraqi Kurds, massacres of Shias in the south and external aggression in which about a million people died.

It is important that the inquiry recognises that this story didn’t start with the invasion, but that it nevertheless examines this suffering of the Iraqi people under Saddam. For those reasons, it should take evidence in Iraq.

After five trips to Iraq since 2006, I would say that many Iraqis welcomed the intervention, especially in Kurdistan which had benefited for 12 years from the US and the UK policing a no-fly zone for Iraqi bombers and gunships over the Kurdistan Region. Many people were deeply angered by the litany of errors committed after the intervention, which gave vent to Shia fundamentalists, Baa’thist die-hards anxious to protect their former privileged position of dominance and Al-Qaeda.

Iraq came very near to full-scale civil war but security has vastly improved and its sovereign government is increasingly taking charge of its own security. There are still problems with delivering public services, in relations between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurds and with the country’s neighbours. There is a desperate need for foreign investment and trade as well as all sorts of cultural, political and social contacts to overcome the legacy of decades of neglect and destruction of the economy as well as Iraq’s isolation from the outside world.

British troops are on the way out but we now need a new, deep, long-term strategic relationship between Iraq and Britain based on political, diplomatic and economic issues. By all means, let’s examine how we got here but let’s also make a greater effort to work with the new Iraq in their interests and ours.

Gary Kent is Director of Labour Friends of Iraq.