'Iraq chaos is Tony Blair’s legacy’: intervention by
Ex-PM in 2003 destabilised the country and left it open to extremism, says home
office minister
* Government 'rules out' new Iraqi campaign despite
major jihadist threat
* Al qaeda militants have seized large areas of
northern Iraq
* Norman Baker said Iraq was stable under Saddam 'in
a vile sort of way'
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| Bush and Blair: The two destablizers |
The disaster unfolding
in Iraq was branded ‘Tony Blair’s legacy’ last night as Britain ruled out
military intervention.
Though Islamist
extremists are threatening to seize Baghdad, Foreign Secretary William Hague
said Britain was ‘not contemplating’ any form of action, and Nato chief Anders
Fogh Rasmussen said there was no role for the alliance.
US President Barack
Obama insisted his country had an interest in stopping jihadists taking control
and said he was looking at ‘all options’, including drone strikes.
Iraq is facing a return
to its darkest days after al Qaeda-linked militants seized a huge swathe of the
Iraq’s northern region and vowed to press on to the capital.
The developments have
reignited debate over the wisdom of the decision of Mr Blair and US President
George W Bush to invade Iraq in 2003, at the cost of 179 British lives and at
least £9 billion.
Critics say the US and
UK governments of the time failed to prepare properly for the aftermath of the
invasion. In 2007, Mr Bush ordered a ‘surge’ of troops to quell insurgency, but
in 2011, the last British forces pulled out of Iraq. Researchers have estimated
that as many as half a million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict,
though the figure is hotly disputed.
Home Office minister
Norman Baker, a Liberal Democrat who is a longstanding opponent of the Iraq
War, told the Daily Mail: ‘Saddam Hussein was a dictator who gassed his own
people, but the country was stable, in a vile sort of way.
‘The reality is that the
intervention by Tony Blair and George Bush has destabilised this country and
left it open to extremism, and we are seeing that now. Iraq today is Tony
Blair’s legacy.’
+4The accusation was made by Liberal Democrat MP
and Home Affairs Minister Norman Baker who said Tony Blair's decision to go to
war in Iraq has left the country 'open to extremism'
Conservative MP John
Baron, who resigned from his party’s front bench to vote against the Iraq
conflict, said events in the country demonstrated the folly of intervention
across the Middle East.
‘One of the dangers of
invading Iraq is that we underestimated the religious tensions and the
resources needed to leave robust structures in place when the West left. A
weakened Iraq was always going to be more susceptible to extremism,’ he said.
‘Other examples include
Libya, and possibly Afghanistan. In Libya, a weak central Government has been
unable to establish its authority over militias. In Afghanistan, Western
confidence that the Afghan security forces will be able to hold the line surely
needs re-evaluating after these events.”
‘All in all, such
developments once again bring into question the wisdom of our recent
interventions.’
Jihadi militants from
the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) , pictured,
have seized Mosul and Tikrit after heavy fighting
Mr Hague said there was
no prospect of the UK offering military assistance of any kind to Iraq, though
the Government is providing humanitarian support.
The Department of
International Development confirmed that a team of experts have been sent to
the country after two major cities, Mosul and Tikrit, fell to insurgents from
the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).
‘No military assistance
has been requested from the UK, we're not contemplating military intervention
or assistance from the UK,’ Mr Hague said.
‘We are considering what
we can do to relieve the humanitarian pressures caused by the displacement of
hundreds of thousands of people, that is something that the UK is well-placed
to provide.’
Mr Hague insisted that
the Iraqi authorities – which failed even to persuade enough MPs to turn up to
parliament to vote on a request by prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to declare a
state of emergency – form a more effective consensus between the country’s
rival religious and ethnic groups.
‘It is very much an
issue for the Iraqi leaders to make sure that together they form a political
unity and consensus to deal with this involving Shia, Sunni and Kurds working
together. We look to the Iraqi government to do that,’ the Foreign Secretary
said.
Deputy Prime Minister
Nick Clegg said he also opposed military action, referring to the 2003 war: ‘I
don't think having made one mistake you repeat it by making a second one.’
Mr Clegg said the Iraq
was now in a ‘very, very dangerous situation’ and were in part due to the
knock-on effects of the civil war in Syria.
The Deputy Prime
Minister told his LBC radio phone-in that his view was that the legal basis for
the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was ‘very shaky’, adding: ‘I personally do not
think legality was ever proved. My party was alone in thinking at the time, as
the Conservatives and Labour parties both argued for the invasion of Iraq, that
we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq in the first place.
‘This porous border
between Syria and Iraq is really becoming the absolute fulcrum for ever more
organised violent forces usurping the government of Iraq and occupying as you
say, very large parts of that part of the world.
‘It is an incredibly
serious situation but at the end of the day the only way that this is going to
start turning around is if the violence subsides in Syria and politics can
start taking root where violence at the moment is raging.’
Nadhim Zahawi, an
Iraq-born Conservative MP who is a member of Downing Street’s policy board,
said Britain's failure to intervene in Syria has fuelled Iraq’s descent into
civil war.
He also blamed the
decision of Paul Bremer, the head of the occupational authority in Iraq
following the invasion, to disband the 700,000-man Iraqi Army 11 years ago.
David Cameron last
summer said he wanted to launch airstrikes on Syria, but the plan was scrapped
after Labour MPs and some Conservative backbenchers voted it down in the
Commons.
Mr Zahawi told BBC Radio
4’s Today programme: ‘I argued for very limited intervention to take the
chemical weapons out of the game in Syria to protect the silent majority of
innocent people.
‘Early intervention in
Syria, supporting people who were working towards replacing Bashar al Assad
with a moderate democracy which is inclusive would have been the right move.
‘Otherwise the message
you send to the silent majority is actually you don't care about them. That is
where these groups thrive because they go in and they are brutal and they take
over and fill that vacuum.’
