Your report (UK ‘inadvertently helped neuter’ its Iraqi Kurdish allies, 8 January) is a timely reminder that our vital Kurdish allies start the new year with the same old blockade-and-punish mentality in Baghdad, encouraged and assisted by the Iranian regime for its own malevolent purposes. Newspapers that once hailed the contribution of the Kurds to defeating Daesh (Isis) largely ignore the fact, for instance, that Baghdad has closed Kurdistan’s airports to international flights, a ban that has just been extended despite its obvious impact on commerce and medical treatment for all Kurdish people. I observed their independence referendum last year with an open mind but Baghdad is doing much to convince me and others that it spurns a federal Iraq of equals, and that eventual statehood may best suit both Kurds and Iraq.
Jack Lopresti MP (Conservative)
Chairman, APPG on the Kurdistan Region in Iraq
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