George Galloway has been accused of making a disgraceful intervention in a House of Commons debate on Iraq when the Respect MP said Islamic State (Isis) was controlling an area the size of Britain because of a “quiescent” local population.
Ian Austin, the former Labour minister, challenged the veteran MP to justify his remarks after the enslavement of women by jihadis.
Galloway prompted the angriest exchanges of the debate when he told MPs: “Isil [Isis] itself is an imaginary army. A former defence secretary said we must bomb their bases. They don’t have any bases. The territory they control is the size of Britain and yet there are only between 10,000 and 20,000 of them. Do the maths.
“They don’t concentrate as an army. They don’t live in bases. The only way a force of that size could successfully hold the territory that they hold is if they have population which is acting as the water in which they are swimming.
“And that population is quiescent because of western policies and western invasion and occupation. That’s the truth of the matter. Isil could not survive for five minutes if the tribes in the west of Iraq rose up against them.”
Austin interrupted Galloway to say: “Does he understand how appalled people will be to hear him say that women buried alive, women enslaved are quiescent in their persecution by these people?”
Galloway replied: “They don’t like it up them. They’d rather have an imaginary debate moving around imaginary armies. Isil is a death cult, it is a gang of terrorist murderers. It is not an army and it is certainly not an army that is going to be destroyed by aerial bombardment. Isil is able to rule the parts of Iraq that it does because nobody in those parts has any confidence in the government in Baghdad, a sectarian government.”
Galloway also accused Emma Reynolds, the shadow housing minister, of making an “asinine” intervention after she challenged him to outline a plan for dealing with Isis.
“This will not be solved, every matter will be made worse. Extremism will spread further and deeper around the world just like happened as a result of the last Iraq war. The people outside can see it but the fools in here, who draw a big salary and big expenses, cannot and will not see it like the honourable lady with her asinine intervention.”
Galloway eventually outlined a plan when Rory Stewart, the Conservative chairman of the Commons defence select committee, challenged him to “please bring us towards his solution to this problem”. The MP for Bradford West called for a strengthening of forces already fighting Isis; arming the forces fighting Isis; and strengthening of Kurdish forces.
He said: “We have imaginary armies – the Saudi, Emirati, Qatari – they are all imaginary armies. They haven’t even told their own people they are on the masthead. Anyone seen a picture of a Saudi jet bombing in Syria? Saudi Arabia is the nest from which Isil and these other vipers have come. And, by the way, they do a fine line in head-chopping themselves.
“Saudi Arabia has 700 war planes – get them to bomb. Turkey is a Nato member – get Turkey to bomb. The last people who should be returning to the scene of their former crimes are Britain, France and the US.”
Galloway had begun his speech saying that al-Qaida and Islamist fundamentalists had no place in Iraq before the 2003 invasion.
He said: “Millions of ordinary people knew what the expensive talent governing our country did not know, namely that there was no al-Qaida in Iraq and that there was no Islamist fundamentalism in Iraq before Mr Blair – and his mouthpieces who are still here – and Mr Bush invaded and occupied the country. What a tangled web we have woven is abundantly clear to everyone watching this debate.”
Ann Clwyd, Tony Blair’s former envoy on human rights in Iraq who clashed with Galloway during his years as a Labour MP, challenged his claim that al-Qaida grew in Iraq only after the 2003 war.
“You are wrong now. There was al-Qaida in Iraq before 2003. It was under the name of Ansar al-Islam.,” she said. “Can I remind the house that [Mr Galloway] was the man who greeted Saddam Hussein as a great friend, as a great leader of his people and shook his hand in Iraq. I don’t think the Kurds would have been very pleased at that, I don’t think the Shia would have been very pleased with that because we know exactly what Saddam Hussein did to those hundreds of thousands of Shia and Kurds who were exterminated by him.”