Toppling Saddam Hussein bears some responsibility for today’s crisis in Iraq, Tony Blair has admitted.
Mr Blair said it would be ‘absurd’ to argue the 2003 Iraq war had nothing to do with the chaos in the country today – as al-Qaeda inspired Isis fighters close in on Baghdad.
The former Prime Minister’s admission comes just days a week after he claimed the US-American invasion was not to blame for the looming civil war in the country. He said it was the ‘predictable and malign effect’ of the crisis in Syria.
But writing in the Financial Times today, Mr Blair said: ‘Of course the Iraq of 2014 bears, in part, the imprint of the removal of Saddam Hussein 11 years ago. To say otherwise, as a recent editorial in this newspaper implies that I do, would be absurd.’
However, Mr Blair insisted the main cause of today’s crisis in Iraq is the civil war in Syria which the West has failed to stop.
Mr Blair’s remarks came as the jihadist fighters in Iraq captured two border posts over the weekend – one along the frontier with Jordan and the other with Syria – considerably expanded territory under their control.
The lightening offensive by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant takes the group closer to its dream of carving out an Islamic state straddling both Syria and Iraq.
Mr Blair claimed that the al-Qaeda in Iraq style terrorism had been all-but defeated seven years after the 2003 invasion but has been given new life by the West’s failure to stop the sectarian strife ripping Syria apart.
He said: ‘We cannot ignore the fact that Isis, the jihadist group advancing across Iraq, rebuilt itself and organised the Iraq operation from the chaos in Syria.
‘Isis and other al-Qaeda-type groups in Iraq were flat on their back four years ago, having been comprehensively beaten by a combination of US and UK forces and Sunni tribes. The civil war in Syria allowed them to get back on their feet.’
The former Labour leader said not intervening in countries like Syria had been just as bad as going to war in Iraq.
He said it would be ‘odd’ to claim the Arab spring of 2011 would not have touched Iraq forcing a civil war regardless of the decision to invade 11 years ago.
Saddam Hussein kept the country’s ethnic tensions in check with an iron fist, claim opponents of the Iraq war. But he sparked a war with Iran killing one million people, invaded Kuwait and massacred thousands of Kurds
Mr Blair claimed the ‘fundamental challenge today… is the challenge of Islamist extremism’ around the world which needed to be taken on and defeated.
He said the ‘bad news is that this issue is not going away’ but claimed most Muslims want nothing to do with dictators or terrorist – and should be supported to live in democracies.
Mr Blair has previously warned that by not intervening in Syria the problems are ‘going to come back and they are going to hit us very directly even in our own country’.
He added the ‘biggest single worry today [is] returning jihadists fighters from Syria’.
The former PM also called for Britain to ‘support’ the United States if they take military action in Iraq. ‘It’s in our interest to stop these jihadists.’
‘They are prepared to fight us and they will if they are not stopped,’ he added.
But Mr Blair’s intervention has been slammed by critics of his 2003 decision to take Britain to war against Iraq.
Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s ambassador to the US from 1997 to 2003, said the decision to topple Saddam was ‘perhaps the most significant reason’ for the sectarian violence now ripping through Iraq.
‘There are many reasons for this disastrous state of affairs. Perhaps the most significant is the decision taken more than 10 years ago by President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair to unseat Saddam Hussein without thinking through the consequences for Iraq of the dictator’s removal.’
The decision to bar members of Saddam’s Ba’ath party from top jobs and disbanding the army – one former member of which now leads the Isis surge, were among the most serious errors, he said.
‘We are reaping what we sowed in 2003. This is not hindsight. We knew in the run-up to war that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would seriously destabilise Iraq after 24 years of his iron rule.
‘For all his evil, he kept a lid on sectarian violence. Bush and Blair were repeatedly warned by their advisers and diplomats to make dispositions accordingly.
‘But, as we now know, very little was done until the last minute; and what was done… simply made things far worse.’
Tony Blair has vigorously defended his decision to support the then US President George Bush’s decision to invade and remove Saddam Hussein in 2003
Meanwhile, the US Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Baghdad today on a surprise trip to push for Iraqi unity and stability.
Flying in from Jordan on a visit which the State Department had sought to keep secret amid security concerns, Mr Kerry was to meet with beleaguered Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Iraqi leaders across the political and communal spectrum.
Mr Kerry ‘will discuss US actions under way to assist Iraq as it confronts this threat from ISIS and urge Iraqi leaders to move forward as quickly as possible with its government formation process to forge a government,’ State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
