The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
419.
In five
meetings and conversations with President Bush in May and June,
Mr Blair
raised
Iraqiisation; emphasising the importance he attached to the
approach and his
hope that
Lt Gen Petraeus, now Commanding General, Multi‑National Force
– Iraq
(MNF‑I
subsumed OSC in June 2004), and Prime Minister Designate Ayad
Allawi could
agree a
joint plan for publication.354
420.
On 16 June,
Sir Nigel Sheinwald sent Dr Rice a Note written by
Mr Blair for
President
Bush.355
Mr Blair
envisaged that the timetable and strategy in relation to
Iraq
would
include the Iraqi Interim Government publishing an “action plan on
Iraqiisation
of Iraq’s
security” in the week before handover and an international
conference in early
September.
Mr Blair wrote that the problem on Iraqiisation was
“obvious”:
“The
numbers in the police are there. But not the quality or equipment,
e.g. only
7,000 of
the 80,000 police are Academy trained: 62,000 have no training;
only
nine percent
have proper body armour; only 30 percent of the required vehicles
are
in place.
Apparently the logjam on resources and equipment is now broken. But
it
will take
time. And the Iraqi Army isn’t really started yet.
“All of
this is now urgent.”
421.
According
to Hard
Lessons, at the end
of June 2004 only half of Iraq’s army and
two‑thirds
of its police forces had received any training at all, and the
quality of that
training
“varied wildly”.356
In May
2004, Mr Richmond reported that the CPA had begun to implement
a “pragmatic”
strategy to
reintegrate the militias into Iraqi society.357
The plan
was to recruit militia
personnel
into the ISF, to retire them with a pension or to reintegrate them
through a
training
and job placement scheme.
The largest
militia groups were the two Kurdish Peshmerga (the Kurdistan
Democratic
Party had
an estimated strength of 41,000 and the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan 31,000)
and the
Badr Corps (16,000). Other smaller militia, such as the Dawa, the
Iraqi National
Accord and
the Iraqi National Congress, tended to consist largely of security
personnel
protecting
their respective political leaders.
354
Letter
Quarrey to Owen, 20 May 2004, ‘Prime Minister’s VTC with Bush, 20
May: Iraq’; Letter Quarrey
to Owen, 26
May 2004, ‘Iraq: Prime Minister’s VTC with Bush, 26 May’; Letter
Rycroft to Adams,
30 May
2004, ‘Prime Minister’s Conversation with Bush, 30 May’; Letter
Rycroft to Adams, 9 June 2004,
‘Prime
Minister’s Meeting with President Bush 9 June 2004: Iraq and
European Issues’; Letter Quarrey to
Owen, 22
June 2004, ‘Prime Minister’s VTC with Bush, 22 June:
Iraq’.
355
Letter
Sheinwald to Rice, 16 June 2004, [untitled] attaching
Note Blair
[to Bush], [undated], ‘Note’.
356
Bowen SW
Jr. Hard
Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. U.S.
Government Printing
Office, 2009.
357
Telegram
263 IraqRep to FCO London, 27 May 2004, ‘Iraq: Militia
Strategy’.
148