Former Iraq war whistleblower calls for a UK foreign policy based on 'global solidarity'

Carne Ross is running as a Green Party candidate in north London, challenging a senior Labour MP

Carne Ross in the documentary Accidental Anarchist. Hopscotch Films

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A former British diplomat and whistleblower on the Iraq war believes UK foreign policy should shed its colonial hangover of “British interests” overseas and instead think more about how nations can work together on global issues.

Carne Ross spent more than 15 years as a British diplomat working on Middle Eastern files including the Iraq war – before resigning in 2004 to give secret testimony on the UK's intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Today he is a Green Party candidate in the UK general elections, helping to steer the party’s foreign policy of “global solidarity”, while challenging Labour’s prospects at forming the next government. His opponent in London's South Islington constituency that he is standing in is Emily Thornberry, a shadow cabinet member and Labour MP of almost 20 years.

“I reject the notion of British interests. I think this is a manufactured notion. A safer world will come about when we show solidarity with people all over the world, and above all, for the protection of their human rights,” he said during a video interview.

Mr Ross’s anger over the legacy of the Iraq War is what compels him to stand with the Greens, a party with historically few seats in parliament.

“Tony Blair has been rehabilitated. His officials who perpetrated the lies have also been rehabilitated. There's been no real accountability. So I'm quite angry about that,” he added.

His testimony to the Butler inquiry in 2004 as the UK’s Iraq expert on weapons of mass destruction at the UN, later to the Chilcot Inquiry, helped expose that the basis for the Iraq War – that Saddam Hussein had obtained weapons of mass destruction – was a lie.

“In Britain it's certainly believed by most people that the war was based on a lie. I'm partly responsible for that belief, which I'm proud of,” he said.

But he is nonetheless filled with regret. "It's awful being a mouthpiece for a government you don't agree with," he said.

The Iraq war and the war on terror, he said, were the catalysts for the “erosion of global rules” that drives major conflicts today, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“Putin and Lavrov have been around for a very long time, and they have long memories. They took their cue from the lawlessness of (the) Western war on terror and the Iraq war to pursue their own illegal actions in places like Georgia but above all, Ukraine,” he said, with reference to the Russo-Georgian war of 2008.

Today, the West’s inaction over Gaza and Israel’s perceived impunity, he added, further threatens this world order.

The Green Party has condemned the Hamas attacks of October 7, but also called for a ceasefire “early on” because they had anticipated the huge civilian casualties that would ensure. The party is on the margins of the UK Left and is currently polling around 5 per cent.

As well as supporting the cases against Israel and Israeli officials at the international courts, they have called for the Metropolitan Police in the UK to investigate government ministers for complicity in war crimes because of continuing arms sales to Israel.

It is a position, which Mr Ross says differs greatly from the Labour party. “Even now (Labour) doesn’t seem to be calling for an unambiguous and lasting ceasefire, which I find incredible,” he said. “Labour Party talks about a rules-based order, but we actually stick to it."

Ms Thornberry, he points out, had refused to answer a BBC journalist on whether the Israeli siege of Gaza in the early days of the war was a breach of international law.

The West would pay in the long term for pursuing a diplomacy that put security interests and economic relationships over global human rights and climate action.

“The West did not show solidarity with the Global South on covid or on debt. People in the Global South ... see the hypocrisy and the double standards of the West in places like Gaza. There is a price for that,” he said.

The consequences of this were already palpable with Ukraine's struggle to attract leaders from the Global South countries to its peace summit in Switzerland this week.

He also condemned the UK's "deep defence" relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia as examples of putting security interests over solidarity.

Catapulted to another existence

Mr Ross had expected to be a diplomat all of his life, but his resignation after Iraq became “a catapult into another existence”.

“At the time that was a disaster for me professionally, but looking back, I'm glad it happened, because it's awful being a mouthpiece for a government you don't agree with.”

He founded Independent Diplomat, a non-profit supplying diplomats for hire to unrepresented minority groups around the world, from the Polisario in Western Sahara to the Kurds of North East Syria - people left behind when a world order of nation states was established in the last century.

He also worked with the Syrian opposition against shortly after the revolution in 2011, where he had supported a military intervention against Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, who launched barrel bomb and chemical weapons attacks against civilians with Russian-backing.

The lessons from these inform the paths forward that he sees to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Palestinians needed to be given “the space to develop their own political voice, ideally, a united political voice that can represent the views of the Palestinian people fairly,” he said.

The international community should move beyond rhetoric and pressure Israel to leave to occupied territories. "Warm words" about a two-state solution were moot without "real pressure".

“There must be a political solution that provides for the security and the protection of human rights for Israelis and Palestinians, but it's going to take international pressure for that to come,” he added.

Mr Ross' diplomatic journey turned him into an “accidental” and “gentle anarchist”, the memoirs and philosophy of which he will outline in his next book, The Gentle Anarchist.

“Elites in institutions don't take seriously the people they're fully responsible for. I saw that myself when I was part of an elite institution,” he said.

“We thought that we knew best, and that's what you're encouraged to believe. That's why I'm an anarchist these days. Institutions as much as they are necessary need to be absolutely transparent and accountable, and they're not.”

In the long term, abolishing the British foreign office may be the only way to rid the institutions of its colonial hangovers and ensure its transparency, he said.

“I'd abolish it. It is deeply steeped in its own arrogant traditions, it needs to be totally abolished,” he told The National.

Although diplomats are necessary, he insists, institutions like the FCDO in its current form were not – they needed to be rebuilt from the ground up to be “absolutely transparent and accountable”.

“It's not that I don't see the need for diplomats. Of course, we need diplomats to explain our views to other people and to listen.

“But I would make those temporary representatives. I would make their work transparent."

As an MP, he hopes to also encourage people to lead less consumerist lives and advocates for forms of spiritual fulfilment that could lead us towards a more sustainable future.

“We have a hyper consumerist society, because our spiritual needs are not being met. The society I envisage allows for those spiritual needs to be met,” he said.

“We'd consume less and produce less, which would ultimately help us live more in harmony with the planet.”