BRITAIN’S communists have warned world leaders off military intervention in Iraq and urged peaceful action to defeat the “Islamic State militants” and rescue Christian and Yazidi refugees from sectarian murder.

“Islamic State (Isis) forces in northern Iraq should not be given the opportunity to present themselves as defenders of Islam or the Middle East against Western imperialism,” Communist Party vice-chair Liz Payne told the party’s political committee on Wednesday evening. 

She pointed out that US, British and Nato bombings and invasions are primarily responsible for the bloodshed and chaos now engulfing swathes of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. 

Together with their allies, notably Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the major Western powers had flooded the region with the very armaments now being used to such deadly effect by Isis and other jihadi terrorist groups.

Ms Payne called on the British government to demand that Turkey and the Gulf states cease all military supplies to their Islamic fundamentalist clients.

She also urged the United Nations and other international agencies to mount a massive programme of humanitarian aid and assistance for the thousands of civilians now fleeing the Islamic State fundamentalists massacring the people who don’t share their religious creed.

The CP political committee heard that the Iraqi and Lebanese communist parties are also calling for aid to be channelled through international bodies, while opposing military and other intervention by national governments in the West.

Britain’s communists further supported the demand from the Iraqi CP political bureau that the Iraqi government in Bagdad and authorities in the Kurdish autonomous region cooperate politically and militarily to defeat the Islamic State occupation forces.

“On the basis of national unity and international solidarity, the Iraqi people have the capacity to throw back this reactionary barbarism — but the flow of arms to Isis must be stopped,” Ms Payne concluded.