by Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 31 October 2023 Conservative and Labour governments supported Baghdad’s brutal attack on the Kurds 60 years ago, knowing it may have constituted genocide, declassified files show. In October 1963, the British government approved the export to Iraq of high explosive demolition slabs, on the understanding that these “will probably be […]
Topic: Kurds
by Mark Curtis Published in Middle East Eye, 17 November 2018 One hundred years ago this month, the guns of the European powers may well have fallen silent after four years of war. But in the Middle East, many of those same powers were creating the conditions for a century of further conflict. Decisions taken […]
by Mark Curtis Published in Middle East Eye, 22 July 2018 How does a British government respond when an allied state invades another territory with the backing of jihadists, overthrows a democratic experiment and consolidates an occupation? Judging by what Turkey is doing in the Afrin district of northern Syria, the answer is: by supporting […]
Iraq’s attack on the Kurds, 1963-65 By Mark Curtis An edited extract from Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses On 10 June 1963, the Iraqi military began a vicious campaign against the Kurds, whose struggle for autonomy against Baghdad had been stepped up when the first Kurdish war broke out in 1961. The Kurds were […]