Toppling Saddam Hussein bears some responsibility for today’s crisis in Iraq, Tony Blair has admitted.
Mr Blair said it would be ‘absurd’ to argue the 2003 Iraq war had nothing to do with the chaos in the country today – as al-Qaeda inspired Isis fighters close in on Baghdad.
The former Prime Minister’s admission comes just days a week after he claimed the US-American invasion was not to blame for the looming civil war in the country. He said it was the ‘predictable and malign effect’ of the crisis in Syria.
But writing in the Financial Times today, Mr Blair said: ‘Of course the Iraq of 2014 bears, in part, the imprint of the removal of Saddam Hussein 11 years ago. To say otherwise, as a recent editorial in this newspaper implies that I do, would be absurd.’
However, Mr Blair insisted the main cause of today’s crisis in Iraq is the civil war in Syria which the West has failed to stop.
Mr Blair’s remarks came as the jihadist fighters in Iraq captured two border posts over the weekend – one along the frontier with Jordan and the other with Syria – considerably expanded territory under their control.
The lightening offensive by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant takes the group closer to its dream of carving out an Islamic state straddling both Syria and Iraq.