Donna Mulhearn on Iraq

Freelance journalist and peace activist – and fellow member of the Campaign for an Iraq War Inquiry – Donna Mulhearn writes in Eureka Street that Iraq needs a local solution, not another Western intervention. She writes of the peaceful protests led by Sunni tribal elders from Anbar Province, and how these protests produced a violent response from the Maliki-led Government. In her view it is Iraq's Sunni tribes and militias — who hold little in common with ISIS and reject its extreme ideology — who could withhold the Islamists' march to Baghdad, should they have the motivation to do so.

Iraq needs a local political solution, she says, not another foreign military intervention, and there can be no moving forward until the mistakes of the past are acknowledged and addressed. This requires political work not just by Iraqi leaders, but by the nations of the 'Coalition of the Willing', who were too quick to jump into the invasion and occupation, and too slow to respond constructively to its disastrous legacy.

Read Donna’s piece in full here.