The speed of events in Iraq is astonishing and frightening. The actions of the Shia government in Baghdad have assisted the insurgents in the Sunni-dominated north of the country. Meanwhile the Kurds in the largely autonomous north-east have moved quickly to take over control of Kirkuk.<\/p>\n
Some commentators have blamed “Western policy” for the present catastrophe, but my friend Gary Kent – who has visited Kurdish Iraq many times – has written on his Facebook page:<\/p>\n
“Western policy…created the disaster facing the Iraqi people.” Fine but which one? Here’s a list of some options: Sykes-Picot [Agreement of 1916]; forcing the Kurds into Iraq; treating them like dispensable pawns in the Cold War; selling them out in 1975; siding with Saddam against the Kurds and Iran; ignoring or denying Halabja; liberating Kuwait but leaving Saddam in power; failure to enforce UN resolutions for 12 years; saving the Kurds with the no-fly zone; seeking the disbandment of the Peshmerga in 2003 and forcing the Kurds to leave Kirkuk; botched occupation; the surge that helped avert full-scale civil war; premature withdrawal of US forces in 2011; failure to uphold and promote federalism; non-intervention in Syria which allowed Assad to strengthen his grip; failure to punish his use of chemical weapons; failure\u00a0to support moderate Syrian opposition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
All political problems have history and the problems of the Middle East have more of it than most.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The speed of events in Iraq is astonishing and frightening. The actions of the Shia government in Baghdad have assisted the insurgents in the Sunni-dominated north of the country. Meanwhile the Kurds in the largely autonomous north-east have moved quickly to take over control of Kirkuk. Some commentators have blamed “Western policy” for the present […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14890"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14893,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14890\/revisions\/14893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}