Art sometimes imitates real life. The number one record on the British pop music charts in March 1991 was by The Clash and was called “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”
You couldn’t find a better way of framing the American dilemma after chasing Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and contemplating if it should finish off the job in Baghdad. US public opinion wanted their boys and girls to come home, and the US declined to breach the limits of its UN remit to liberate Kuwait.
But then the country had to decide how to respond to the uprisings of Shias in the south and Kurds in the north, which it had encouraged in the belief that Saddam’s days were numbered after his humiliating rout in Kuwait.
The consequent Shia uprising in the south was mercilessly crushed due, in part, to a foolish US decision to allow Saddam to use his helicopters in Iraq.
John Major
Fortunately for the Kurds, the British Prime Minister John Major listened to the upsurge of popular and parliamentary concern about the conditions of the Kurds who had revolted and made significant gains but were then forced to flee to the mountains. The television news showed the reality every day, and footage is showcased in the Red House Museum in Suleimani to this day.
Kurds were in desperate straits. There were between 500-1000 deaths a day in the turmoil of March and April. Visiting the Turkish border, British Conservative MP Paul Howell said, ''On television, you only see the faces, you don't see the ground. There you see human feces, diarrhea, sheep's heads and entrails. It's as close to hell as you can think of.''
British Conservative MP Julian Amery argued that in any conflict when there is a choice faced between non-interference in the affairs of other countries and helping refugees in danger, we should firmly choose the latter. This should occur even through co-operating with some of our allies and using military power under the aegis of the United Nations and, if that is not possible, we should still act.
Accounting genocide
British Labour’s Shadow Overseas Development Minister Ann Clwyd gave the Commons her eye-witness account of the five days she spent with the Kurds in the mountains. She passionately described how they were freezing by night and bitterly cold by day, wearing the same clothes in which they had fled and living in makeshift tents of the same quality as the thin plastic that laundries use. She said “Saddam Hussein is still killing, killing, killing, in Iraq. This is genocide, and it calls for an international response.”
Major said that “worsening conditions amounting to near-genocide” and “potentially a humanitarian disaster” made him “sufficiently concerned at the plight of the Kurds” to raise the issue himself in the Cabinet on 21 March (Newroz, by coincidence) because “It was clear we should help.”
In his autobiography, Major recalls that: “defeated in the war, Saddam Hussein’s fury turned on his domestic opponents – the Kurds”…and that “genocide was in the man’s mind, and it was certainly in the man’s character.”
Iraqi Embassies in Britain and across Europe were occupied by Kurdistanis. Many prominent Kurdistanis such as Safeen Dizayee, Mam Jalal Talabani, Hoshyar Zebari, Massoud Barzani, and Nadhim Zahawi deserve credit for their rushed but effective lobbying.
The British people were moved to act and gave hundreds of tons of material aid to the Kurds. I was a young parliamentary researcher then, whose MP had been asked to help find transport for tons of blankets and food to the mountains. We somehow managed to persuade Iran to send a Boeing 747 to deliver the aid.
A model for future humanitarian emergencies
The usual rules of international relations would have left it there, but Major acted decisively with an innovative solution: to impose a no-fly zone over Kurdistan and a haven on the ground.
This idea won French and then European Council support and later enabled Major to persuade US President George H. W. Bush to join the operation, which lasted for 12 years.
Saddam arrogantly expected Kurdistan to fail without him. It proved him wrong. John Major’s initiative resulted in the fastest major refugee return in history. Within three to four months, over 1.5 million refugees in Turkey and Iran returned to their homes.
Furthermore, refugees in Turkey since 1988 and in Iran since 1975 also began returning to Iraqi Kurdistan. This multilateral military intervention combined with, and in support of UN and NGO humanitarian assistance, saved countless lives.
The UK should be very proud of its intervention in 1991, which has been forgotten by too many, and which is a model for future humanitarian emergencies. It also more prominently thrust Kurdistan into the mix of British foreign policy thinking and today underpins a strong bilateral relationship of mutual benefit to this day.
Gary Kent has been the Secretary of the APPG on the Kurdistan Region, House of Commons, since 2007 and writes in a personal capacity.
