UK 'inadvertently helped neuter' Middle East ally the Iraqi Kurds

UK 'inadvertently helped neuter' Middle East ally the Iraqi Kurds

Ministers told of precise links between Iran and Baghdad-backed Shia militia operating in Iraq, claims former UK and Nato official

Foreign Office ministers inadvertently helped neutralise the Iraqi Kurds, one of Britain’s most effective allies in efforts to limit Iranian influence in the Middle East, a former UK and Nato official has claimed.

The claims, which refer to the weeks in September and October 2017 when the Iraqi government moved against Kurdish militia after an independence referendum, are expected to be raised with the Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt at a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday in which the UK government will be asked to justify its assertion that Baghdad has recaptured disputed Kurd-held territory with “limited clashes and loss of life”.

Kurdistan, against overwhelming international advice, held a vote on independence in September that prompted Baghdad to react by forcibly taking back disputed territories outside the Iraqi Kurdish region’s original 2003 borders, including Kirkuk and the surrounding oilfields.

Tom Hardie-Forsyth, a former Cabinet Office and Nato official and now an informal adviser to the Kurdistan regional government, said in written evidence to the foreign affairs select committee that UK ministers possessed detailed intelligence warning of the precise links between Tehran and the Baghdad-backed Shia militia operating in Iraq.

There have been numerous claims of human rights abuses led by these militia, notably by parts of the Hashd al-Shaabi (Has), also known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, to remove Kurds from Kirkuk.

Baghdad’s tough response has led to turmoil among the Kurdish political leadership, a near breakdown in relations between the Kurdish and Iraqi governments, and a weakening of the UK-trained peshmerga forces that played a key role in driving the Islamic State out of northern Iraq.