Politics

Should we intervene in Iraq? The key questions

David Cameron could recall parliament to debate British action in the embattled country

August 12, 2014
RAF Tornado jets, similar to these, are already heading to Iraq
RAF Tornado jets, similar to these, are already heading to Iraq
The terrorist group Islamic State (IS) is more than just a gaggle of violent jihadists. As Patrick Cockburn has pointed out in the LRB, IS now controls a third of Syria. Following new gains this month, it controls more than a quarter of Iraq. It has oil and gas, as well as battle-won bounty. It is excellent at training and converting soldiers. It may not look much like a western country, but it is to all intents and purposes a state, and one which is hell-bent on expanding its territory.

After IS threatened genocide against Iraq's minority Yazidi population last week, the UK and US realised they could no longer sit idly by. Both have launched humanitarian operations aimed at relieving the embattled minority populations of Northern Iraq, but the US has gone further, hitting IS targets with air strikes and pledging to arm Iraqi Kurdistan's elite Peshmerga fighters.

Thus far, Britain's response to the crisis has been mostly managed by newly promoted Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, but the Prime Minister is facing increasing pressure to come back from his week of pointing at fish and step up Britain's involvement. Among others, Tory leader-in-waiting Boris Johnson and former head of the army Lord Dannat have called for military action. Multiple MPs and other voices have called for a recall of parliament to debate the issue. Our main options would be twofold: Joining the US in launching strikes or sending arms to the country (either to the Kurds in the north or to the government in Baghdad). British Tornado jets are already in the region helping with the humanitarian mission. Any military intervention should be focused on promoting long-term stability in the country and/or protecting the embattled Kurds against the IS advance.

Should David Cameron take the plunge? We've run through four key questions on the issue. Tell us what you think in the poll below.



Does the public support intervention?

In many ways the million-dollar question (though as Isabel Hardman has pointed out, maybe it shouldn't be.) The accepted wisdom is that support for overseas intervention is at a dizzying low in Britain, and has been throughout this parliament. Last year, a YouGov/Sunday Times poll showed a small but significant 4 per cent boost to Ed Miliband's popularity following his objection to military intervention in Syria, for example. But YouGov's Peter Kellner thinks that this time around, things are different. A YouGov/Sun poll published today shows 37 per cent of the public in favour of military intervention, with 36 per cent against—neck and neck, taking into account the margin for error. Kellner points out to me that YouGov polling last year showed the public were against intervention in Syria by a factor of 2 to 1, even after the Prime Minister had passionately spoken in favour of it. This new Iraq poll was taken before any such advocacy. Kellner thinks if Cameron were to recall parliament and achieve broad consensus among the party leaders in favour of intervention, the public would quite likely fall into line behind them.

How is the US operation going?

The White House and the US State department have both been keen to paint their military involvement in Iraq as temporary—a response to a specific crisis (ISIS's recent gains in the north of Iraq and the threat to embattled minority groups like the Yazidis). But, in an interview with the Today programme this morning, US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf said that the US was “committed to working with the Iraqis long term to fight ISIS.” That sounds like there is acceptance in Washington that this isn't going to be a quick fix. Michael Stephens, a RUSI Middle East expert based in Erbil, thinks that the US managed to gain political influence in Iraq by agreeing to launch air strikes, but is doubtful of whether Britain, with its smaller intelligence capacity, could benefit in a similar way.

How important is protecting Kurdistan?

Iraqi Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region in the North-East of Iraq, is under the most immediate threat from IS troops. The US's operation, both in terms of air strikes and the provision of arms, has been focused on protecting this region. Kurdistan, as Martin Fletcher wrote for Prospect last year, has gained a reputation for being “everything the rest of Iraq is not: safe, prosperous and tolerant.” Michael Stephens, while cautioning that there are plenty of problems in Kurdistan, such as government corruption, broadly agrees. The UK has no direct strategic benefit to gain from protecting Kurdistan, but there are wider arguments for backing a place which has tried its best to forge an inclusive, liberal society in a region where doing so is going against the grain. Michael Stephens thinks it would send a message to other countries in the region that Britain will get behind societies that try to build this kind of society for themselves. For that reason, he cautions that we'd be far better off arming the Kurds to help them win the war themselves than joining in air strikes. This would boost faith in the government within Iraqi Kurdistan and ensure a more stable society after the conflict was over. It's worth mentioning here that Michael Goldfarb recently wrote for us on the theory that the Kurdish government has strategically planned its operations to encourage US intervention.

Could military intervention actually produce stability in Iraq?

Iraq has a lot of political problems, none of which are going to go away entirely if ISIS does. Nouri al-Maliki, who has been the country's Prime Minister since 2006, is fighting what appears to be a losing battle to keep his job after the country's President Fuad Masum appointed a rival candidate, Haider al-Abadi to form a new government. Maliki is blamed by many for sowing the seeds of the current crisis, leading an often intolerant Shia-majority regime and fostering a split between the country's Sunni and Shia populations. One western official told me before Iraq's last election that Maliki's government had failed to properly integrate Sunni tribal groups into Iraqi society, which helped ISIS (as IS were then known) gain their first footholds. Only the Iraqi government which emerges from the turmoil can address these problems in the long term but, as Michael Stephens points out, this process would be helped by the temporary relief in pressure that would come from seriously damaging IS.