One strand of the enormously long and detailed Chilcot Iraq Inquiry report is the duty of care towards UK civilian staff at work in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. As one official put it, there was a ‘balancing act’ between not exposing staff to risk, and success in the ‘mission’.
As for the safety of UK civilians at work in Iraq in those years to the 2009 withdrawal, Chilcot found ‘a significant effort was made to keep civilians safe in a dangerous environment’; and the Government recognised its duty of care to UK‑based and locally engaged civilians in Iraq. However, there was ‘no overarching consideration by the Government of the extent to which civilians could be effective in a highly insecure environment, or of the security assets needed for civilians to do their jobs’. The Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Department for International Development (DFID) could not confirm to the Inquiry how many civilian personnel were deployed to or employed in Iraq, where and in what roles; the Inquiry described this as ‘a serious failure’.
The section on civilian personnel in the colossal report runs to 158 pages. It recalls the start-up of a ‘flat-pack’ UK embassy in May 2003; as for securing it, the Inquiry report heard that to rely on ‘on the US military or a private security company’ would have been at the time ‘politically unacceptable’; so guarding by the British Army was the only option. As a sign of the haste of those days and lack of preparations for deployment in a risky setting, the Inquiry heard from one woman of how she was not given a briefing by the Foreign Office before travelling to Iraq. Instead she received a phone call telling her: “You’ve spent a lot of time in the Middle East. You will be fine.” As a comparison, civil servants seconded to Iraq at this time were issued with ‘protective equipment including body armour’, as one declassified document states. The same document went on to say that ‘security for our secondees [in Baghdad, provided by the US military] is a key concern’ and was adequate.
By June 2003, security of civilian personnel in Iraq had ‘become a major concern’, the Inquiry report found; and Tony Blair was told it was worsening by the day. The Foreign Office (FCO) and DFID carried out a joint security assessment of Baghdad and Basra. Already the US troops were the target of daily attacks. According to the assessment the UK was are failing ‘to meet our duty of care to both FCO staff and those seconded to CPA (the Coalition Provisional Authority) through the FCO. The security situation is extremely dangerous and the CPA security resources are inadequate …’ According to the rules, seconded civilians travelled in ‘soft skinned vehicles’ with US military escorts and were asked to handle weapons. The assessment called for among other things a (commercial contract) security manager in Iraq and armed escorts to accompany the secondees ‘outside the secure zone’. Baghdad was worse than Basra.
Security got worse in 2003 in Baghdad and Basra alike. On August 19, a bomb exploded outside the UN headquarters at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, killing 22 UN staff and visitors and injuring one DFID staffer slightly. That night, the ‘British Office’ in Baghdad was evacuated to the CPA’s ‘secure zone’. Likewise in Basra where the British military was concentrated, and Sir Hilary Synnott was head of the Coalition Provisional Authority South from July 2003, the Inquiry quotes from Sir Hilary’s memoir of a similar lack of security at their early premises; although he recalled it was the days before suicide bombers, ‘we were still vulnerable to car bombs, rocket‑propelled grenades, mortars, small‑arms fire through our windows, siege and sapping’. By quoting from civil service advice to ministers, the Inquiry report shows that concerns about security vied with the wish for the seconded staff to do their job of aiding Iraq’s reconstruction; and cost of ‘security assets’. UK officials at the time also spoke of how the US was unwilling to discuss security details such as ‘no-go areas’. Meanwhile the UN and some other governments told their staff to leave Iraq as being too dangerous. Putting the security versus getting the job done dilemma another way, Sir Hilary told the Inquiry that ‘Whitehall departments’ interpretation of their duty of care towards civilian personnel had been an obstacle to the recruitment of the people’; that is, it was taking too long over concerns over liability if staff were hurt or killed. Also, beyond security, operations generally were ‘hand to mouth’.
And the argument security of people versus getting them out onto the streets to do their job came out further in the Inquiry report; while Sir Hilary asked for 20 armoured vehicles in August 2003 for Basra, a visitor to CPA South in November 2003 told the Inquiry how only eight ‘protected vehicles’ had to suffice for 60 staff wanting transport. Control Risks Group (CRG) was contracted as early as July 2003 to provide armed guards, in Baghdad. That contract work was expanded and extended into 2004. By November 2003, a villa housing the British Office Baghdad and that flat-pack British embassy, only partly built and since August empty, were guarded by Gurkhas supplied under contract by ArmorGroup. Other UK civilians in CPA Baghdad were living in trailer parks within the ‘Secure Zone’ which however was not secure against mortar bombs and rockets. Control Risks was supplying bodyguards to UK civilians going ‘into the field’, working at Iraqi ministries, outside the Secure Zone. Royal Military Police Close Protection Unit guards were also at work. A contingency evacuation plan was being drawn up. For example, UK economists from the Treasury (and the Bank of England) seconded to the CPA withdrew from Iraq, because of the insecurity. As for number of UK secondees in Iraq, in January 2004 there were 165 from the Foreign Office and DFID, about equally divided between Baghdad and Basra, with more due. As for the amount of work to do, a DFID security assessment of Baghdad and Basra in January 2004 found ‘CRG teams remain fully stretched’ and more armed guards and armoured vehicles were urgently needed.
As for 2004, attacks became more sophisticated and security worsened further. In May in Nasiriyah, Rory Stewart, Deputy Governorate Co‑ordinator, was evacuated with the CRG close protection team after the CPA compound came under ‘sustained attack’. Stewart has since become a Conservative MP and wrote of those times in The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq. Staff had a shortage in Baghdad and Basra of ECMs [electronic counter-measures] for preventing remote detonation of roadside IEDs (improvised explosive devices). In Basra two CRG contractors were killed by the first Explosively Formed Projectile (EFP) in July 2005. After a 2006 review of security, Andrew Noble, Foreign Office Director of Security, reported that the security risks in Iraq were ‘extreme by normal diplomatic standards’. The report spoke of a rising threat of kidnap, and worsening security of UK posts: in Basra, because of ‘insufficient military protection’; in Baghdad, because of the ‘increasing threat from extremists’. Intriguingly, because of pressure on the diplomatic and other non-security staff to do their work, security managers and heads of close protection teams were sometimes restraining staff from going into risky places. Returning to the dilemma that security was not the only factor around staff deploying into this almost impossible situation, Sir Michael (now Lord) Jay, then the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, told the then Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett in 2006 that because it was politically important to work in Iraq (and in southern Afghanistan) it was judged acceptable to ‘tolerate a higher level of risk there’ than elsewhere. But duty of care remained, he added. Hence mitigating of risk and reviews; but ‘a residual level of risk in operating in such an extreme environment’ remained. As an example, the British Consul General after arrival in Basra in 2006 wrote that staff wore full body armour, lived in ‘hardened’ accommodation (though not considered mortar or rocket proof), took helicopter flights only in the dark; ‘badlands’ started about 200 feet from her office, and local staff ran risks to work for the UK.
All Foreign Office staff working in Iraq had to be volunteers and the Foreign Office had to do all it ‘reasonably’ could to reduce risks (and meet legal obligations). Sir Michael’s use of the word reasonable was not accidental; the legal advice to the Foreign Office on duty of care was that the FO was liable in law only if it is found to have breached that duty, in other words it the employer fell below ‘a reasonable standard of conduct through negligent acts or omissions’. For example, a building might come under attack, but that did not necessarily mean that the FO was at fault. The UK was doing emergency planning by then, for instance asking – if the time came for evacuation in an emergency – what about the third country nationals employed by the UK? What of the status of retired police officers? and what of serving officers on secondment from their home forces – did they come under the Foreign Office, legally?
In 2006 British staff (still protected by Control Risks close protection, and a perimeter guard force from contractor Kroll) were having to go into and out of Basra Palace by armoured vehicle or convoy, and to Kuwait by military helicopter only. Meanwhile many locals employed by the British Embassy Office in Basra were murdered and other local staff were ‘regularly intimidated’, and left. By October 2006, advice was that the security risk to UK civilian staff was becoming unacceptable, and a phased reduction in civilian staff from Basra was recommended. However (a further case of how security and staff welfare were not the only factors) such a reduction would be damaging in relations with the US as an ally, and in public relations. The security situation throughout Iraq deteriorated yet further between Foreign Office Senior Overseas Security Adviser (SOSA) visits in September 2006 and January 2007. Between September 2006 and April 2007 when the British Embassy Office site on the Basra Palace was handed over to the UK military , the site was hit by rockets and mortars 70 times.
As for learning lessons’, several of the civilians told the Inquiry that it was the first time they had been asked to talk about their experiences: “Most of those who had served in Iraq during the CPA period felt let down.”
