St. Barham Salih posted by Richard Seymour

The pro-war Left's favourite apostle of intervention in Iraq is Barham Salih, prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Sulaymaniyah. Nick Cohen never fails to cite him as the exemplar of international socialism and solidarity, and uses his rhetoric to condemn voices on the Left who object to the occupation of Iraq. Even the Late Christopher Hitchens exudes enthusiasm for this apparently authentic voice of resistance. I have never had much tolerance for such pretenses. The PUK, of which Barham Salih is one of the more senior spokespeople, has sold out its Kurdish comrades time and again through its filthy civil war with the KDP. Jalal Talabani, its leader, has kissed the cheek of Saddam here only to invite the Iranians in to kill his opponents there. In the mid-1990s, in fact, the Iranians were allowed to kill hundreds of their own dissident Kurds seeking refuge in northern Iraq, in return for their support in fighting the KDP.


St Barham of Sulaymaniyah: Apostle of War.

Inconvenient facts aside, however, Salih has written an article for the Washington Post, and Harry's Place are over the moon about it.

I'll give you a flavour of some of the outlandish claims he makes (this published just yesterday, mind):

"While there is a grave and continuing terrorist threat, Iraq is not the violent disaster that naysayers depict..."

I'll let that one speak for itself.

The interim constitution "is the most liberal in the Islamic Middle East and is an achievement we can all take pride in."

Oddly enough, precisely this interim constitution has been derided as bullshit up one side and down the other by most Iraqis. It has the support of noone and the IGC will fall with its "Law of Administration" into the gutter the second US troops leave.

"More than a million Iraqi refugees have come back to their homeland, despite being told by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees that it was unsafe to do so.

The refugees have returned to a thriving economy characterized by improving services. A year into the new Iraq public health care funding is more than 25 times as much than under Hussein, and child immunization rates have risen 25 percent. The supply of drinking water has doubled..."

The figure for refugees returning to Iraq since the end of the war given by the UNHCR is 10,000 . A million is considerably above that estimate, so I'd be interested to know Salih's sources, or if he's just, well, lying his ass off in the service of the occupation with which he is colluding. The stuff about the thriving economy and health-care funding, even accounting for obvious exaggeration, would be more impressive if it weren't for the fact that sanctions have now been lifted - over a decade too late.

I won't waste your time with any more of Salih's propaganda efforts, except to quote this , also noted in Harry's Place:

"I believe that most Iraqis want the Coalition to stay. This is based on many independent polls. Regrettably, a vocal minority is able to dominate the airwaves-- it seems true that bad news sell better!"

Do you know, I was sure that the last opinion poll showed that 50.9% of Iraqis said they were opposed to the occupation of Iraq, while only 39% suported it .

So there you have it. Salih, an opportunist, a collaborator with an Iranian occupation and now a US occupation, and a propagandist of the most careless order. Right up the warniks' street, then.