Call for sanctions on Iraqi Kurdistan over role in migrant smuggling to Britain

According to KurdPress, Ben Judah, a former adviser to the British Foreign Secretary and visiting fellow at the Chatham House think tank, said the British government should put sanctions on Kurdish regional officials on the agenda to show its seriousness.

Judah, who previously worked under Foreign Secretary David Lammy, said: "The government should use sanctions on Iraqi Kurdish officials to show that it is serious about this. I think when we say in meetings that this is one of our main concerns, they do not take it seriously.»

He added that the British government should “increase the pressure on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq” because, he said, the majority of the operations to transfer migrants to the UK are run by networks with roots in the region.

According to the report, the French coast, from where boats carrying migrants set off to the UK, is divided into zones, each zone attributed to networks linked to different parts of the Kurdistan Region. Judah claimed that these findings are consistent with previous research by the National newspaper into how these networks operate.

He also said that the British government has put pressure on the Kurdistan Region to tackle smugglers since the Labour Party came to power in 2024, but that these measures have so far had limited results.According to Judah, former British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and former Home Secretary Ute Cooper had stressed the need to tackle these networks in their meetings with regional officials.

Judah, referring to the long-standing political and personal ties between senior officials in the Kurdistan Region and Britain, said these ties should not prevent serious action against smuggling networks. He claimed that “progress has been very slow” and that more pressure now needs to be put on the region.

The comments came as cooperation between Britain and France has increased to prevent migrants from crossing the English Channel. British officials say that as a result of this cooperation, the number of migrants arriving this year has fallen by about 40 percent, from 32,000 last year to about 18,500.

However, on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week alone, 1,085 people crossed the English Channel.Unusually warm and calm weather conditions have been cited as possible factors in the surge in migrants, although it is thought that smugglers may have changed their routes to avoid French police patrols.

Two boats also arrived on the coast of Kent in the south-east of England during the incident. Shabana Mahmood, the UK Home Secretary, described the failure as “unacceptable” and ordered an urgent investigation.

Despite the recent increase, the number of arrivals is still far from the record of 2022, when more than 42,000 people entered the UK via the English Channel in 2022. Meanwhile, the renewed surge in migrants has been met with a backlash from far-right groups and anti-immigration activists.