Isis in Iraq: Britain has no plan for tackling the militants, and no idea who’s in charge

‘The traumatic experience of Britain’s participation in the 2003 Iraq war led the Government to have as little to do with the country as possible. By the spring of 2014, as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) prepared its great offensive that would capture a third of Iraq, the political section of the British embassy in Baghdad consisted of just three junior diplomats on short-term deployment.

The British consulate in Basra, the city that had been the base for UK military operation between 2003 and 2007 and is the centre of Iraq’s oil industry, had been closed in 2011. Amazingly, Iraq was apparently a low priority for British intelligence at a moment when it was becoming obvious that much of the country was being taken over by the world’s most violent terrorist movement.’

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