A lack of planning – and a lack of planning for what Iraq turned out to be – was found by the Chilcott Inquiry on the war in Iraq. It published its findings on July 6.
A finding of importance now in terms of terrorism is that ‘between 2003 and 2009 [that is, when UK forces as part of the Coalition entered Iraq, and left Basra], events in Iraq had undermined regional stability, including by allowing Al Qaida space in which to operate and unsecured borders across which its members might move’.
While Tony Blair’s defence and reputation as prime minister who took the UK into the war made headlines, readers may know some of those called to give evidence over the years.
They included senior police, many with a Northern Ireland background: notably Sir Ronnie Flanagan, former HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, who visited Iraq to do a review. As Sir Ronnie put it in evidence to the inquiry in 2010: ‘there was a belief that having toppled Saddam [Hussein] we would be welcomed with open arms, and that everything would be much easier than it transpired to be’.
Other witnesses were former police advisers in Iraq Paul Kernaghan, ACPO’s international policing representative, the former Hampshire Chief Constable; former senior Hampshire Police man Colin Smith QPM, who was later a head of a European Union police mission in Palestine; and Stephen White OBE, the former Assistant Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and Director of Law and Order and Senior Police Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, 2003 to 2004, that administered Iraq after the downfall of Saddam Hussein. Andy Bearpark, the Director Operations and Infrastructure in the Coalition Provisional Authority, 2003 to 2004, later became Director General of the British Association of Private Security Companies (BAPSC) trade association.
For example on training of Iraqi police, the inquiry heard from witnesses ‘there was no clear notion of how a new Iraqi Police Service should be structured and how it should link with other parts of the criminal justice system and who it should be accountable to’. To that, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, who visited Iraq four times, replied that Iraq was at a stage after conflict, ‘and I saw it first-hand in Kosovo’, that society had ‘completely broken down’ and was difficult to build up again. Sir Ronnie stressed how difficult the post-conflict job had been; and spoke of naivete, and complacency, at the time over the developing of police for Iraq; ‘I coined a phrase … that we had to realise we were not building a police service for Hampshire’. Or as the Chilcot report itself put it, “The gap between the ambitious objectives with which the UK entered Iraq and the resources that the Government was prepared to commit to the task was substantial from the start’.
As for the personnel who were sent from the UK on the mission to rebuild Iraq’s police, Sir Ronnie pointed out that they had to be volunteers from the 43 forces; ‘which is why we ended up relying very heavily on recently retired officers’. Another issue was which central Government department ought to ‘own’ the police mission; whether the Home Office, the Foreign Office or Ministry of Defence (as police were working with British troops). In his final impressions, Sir Ronnie returned to the presuming that the Coalition would have more than a honeymoon period, after removing a dictator: ‘in the pre-planning I think what we must look at are virtually the worst case scenarios. Hope for the best and plan for the worst’.
Likewise the Chilcot report found that the results in Iraq, despite UK civilian and military efforts, were ‘meagre’; thanks to among other things ‘inadequacy of planning and preparation, and the inability to deliver law and order. The lack of security hampered progress at every turn.’
Among the documents on the Inquiry website, a now declassified intelligence assessment of the Iraqi security forces in June 2006 described Iraqi police effectiveness as ‘patchy’, with ‘serious problems of corruption, criminality and divided loyalties’ and in any case little was known of the local police ‘outside Baghdad and Basra’. Because of the ‘poor security situation’, and lack of experience, the Iraqi police were ‘almost wholly ineffective’ in tackling crime. The Iraqi Government’s security was increasingly ‘supplemented by dozens of private security companies’ and Iraqi ministries’ own ‘protection services’ whose loyalty and accountability was ‘of serious concern’.
The Chilcot report proper found that the UK and United States had no strategy for ‘security sector reform’ in Iraq, in the sense of training of police and armed forces; the UK was unable to influence the US, and ‘the UK began work on SSR in Iraq without a proper understanding of what it entailed and hugely underestimated the magnitude of the task’.
The Inquiry report covers many issues, from ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that justified the war, to the post-conflict period after 2003 to withdrawal in 2009, reconstruction of Iraq, and resources provided, and offers lessons. The report goes back to the 9-11 terror attacks : “The attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 changed perceptions about the severity and likelihood of the threat from international terrorism. They showed that attacks intended to cause large‑scale civilian casualties could be mounted anywhere …”
For the 150-page Chilcot Inquiry report executive summary, visit http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/246416/the-report-of-the-iraq-inquiry_executive-summary.pdf.
For transcripts of the witnesses, visit http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/the-evidence/witnesses/.
