UK MPs' ‘outraged’ at continued blockade of Kurdistan airports

Rudaw | Feb. 27, 2018

Erbil International Airport © EIA

News that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has again extended the blockade on international flights to and from the Kurdistan Region was immediately greeted by a critical cross-party motion in the UK parliament.

The motion, tabled by Mary Glindon, Labour MP and vice-chair of the APPG, and Bob Blackman, Conservative MP and Chairman of the Conservative backbench committee on foreign affairs, expresses their "outrage" that Abadi has extended the five month blockade for at least another three months.

The MPs' motion recognises that "this needless blockade is obstructing those who want to travel abroad for medical, family or commercial reasons and especially in the run up to Kurdish New Year, Newroz, on 21 March."

It also recognises that "the Kurdistan Regional Government, in negotiations with Baghdad, is making it clear that it will comply with all its constitutional commitments.

The MPs fear "that the Iraqi Prime Minister is cultivating a strongman image merely to boost his support before the Iraqi elections in May rather than showing a statesmanlike attitude that can convince Kurds that they will have an honoured and equal place in Iraq according to the rights and responsibilities of the increasingly notional federal constitution."

It concludes by urging the UK Government "to urgently redouble their efforts to persuade Baghdad to lift this blockade."

The motion may attract further support from other MPs. The importance is that two MPs have decided to take immediate action to signal their outrage at the extension of the ban.

The extension may have been technically necessary or it would have lapsed automatically before the conclusions of current negotiations between Erbil and Baghdad. It need not mean that the ban will last for the full three months and it could be rescinded at any time, in theory.

But, in my view, it indicates a calculated and high-handed action by Baghdad, especially as it covers the Newroz holiday period when Kurds from abroad return home to see their families.

It is difficult to shake the notion that Baghdad is playing with Erbil as the cat tortures a mouse. It is a sad indictment of Iraqi politics that this is seen as a bonus in the current Iraqi elections. It may well be that the airports will not resume international operations until after these elections.

Erbil is negotiating in good faith with Baghdad, whose demands for control of the airports ignore the fact they already come under the authority of the Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority and that their employees are federal.

It is hard to see the continuing ban as anything but a pointed and punitive act that seeks to suffocate and isolate the Kurds because Baghdad can do this. It does not augur well for the future of the Kurds in Iraq that its government sees fit to make life needlessly difficult through a strategy of destabilisation for those who are its own citizens.

Maybe this extension of the blockade will eventually encourage more MPs and policy-makers to realise that Baghdad does not seem to be serious about upholding the rights of the Kurds in a federal constitution it has persistently flouted.

When combined with efforts to slash the federal revenue sharing figure from 17 to 12 percent, and other measures, it should raise alarm that Baghdad is prepared to gamble with the prosperity of the Kurdistan Region, even if it hurts the Iraqi economy itself.

Yet it is extremely difficult to push international issues up the UK's agenda given the almost complete focus on the vexed question of how to implement the country's departure from the European Union. This is exacerbated by wider weaknesses and divisions in Western foreign policy which have made it a bystander in many crucial disputes and tragedies.

Source: Rudaw