Amar International Charitable Foundation
Contact:   Press Office – 077100 83626 

Embargo: Immediate, Thursday 15 December 2011



*Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne praises US led-coalition mission in Iraq.

Commenting on the end of US military operations in Iraq, Executive Chairman of Amar International Charitable Foundation, BARONESS NICHOLSON OF WINTERBOURNE said:

“ As US forces withdraw from Iraq the world must never forget the incredible legacy left behind for the Iraqi people.  

Before the invasion of 2003 Saddam Hussein's brutal regime had murdered countless thousands of Kurds in the Anfal campaign whose purpose was to exterminate all adult males of military age in rural Kurdistan. Saddam's barbarism also included the use of chemical weapons on the people of Halabja where at least 5,000 died in March 1988.

In a similar acts of genocide in the south of Iraq the Iraqi dictator persecuted the Marsh Arabs, by draining their homeland and murdering thousands more in brutal military assaults and summary executions.

But Saddam Hussein was toppled and his Baathist regime ousted thanks to the US-led invasion and now the Kurds, the Marsh Arabs and the rest of the Iraqi people live in relative peace, free from persecution.  

The decision to invade Iraq was the right one. It saved the Kurds and The Marsh Arabs and has also brought democracy to a once troubled land, enabling the Iraqi people to decide their own destiny rather than be cowed by a brutal tyrant in Baghdad.


ENDS



AMAR is a British charity which has been working since 1991 to deliver services to refugees, internally displaced persons and other under served populations affected by human-caused and natural disasters in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East and South Asia.