Executive
Summary
inter‑departmental
co‑ordination, inadequate civilian military co‑operation
and
a failure
to use resources coherently.
•
An unstable
and insecure environment made it increasingly difficult to
make
progress on
reconstruction. Although staff and contractors developed
innovative
ways to
deliver projects and manage risks, the constraints were
never
overcome.
Witnesses to the Inquiry identified some successes, in particular
in
building
the capacity of central Iraqi Government institutions and the
provincial
government
in Basra.
•
Lessons
learned through successive reviews of the UK approach to
post‑conflict
reconstruction
and stabilisation, in Iraq and elsewhere, were not applied in
Iraq.
818.
The following
key findings are from Section 11.2, and relate to evidence
in
Section 11.1:
•
Early
decisions on the form of de‑Ba’athification and its implementation
had
a significant
and lasting negative impact on Iraq.
•
Limiting
de‑Ba’athification to the top three tiers of the party, rather
than
extending
it to the fourth, would have had the potential to be far less
damaging
to Iraq’s
post‑invasion recovery and political stability.
•
The UK’s
ability to influence the CPA decision on the scope of the policy
was
limited and
informal.
•
The UK
chose not to act on its well‑founded misgivings about handing over
the
implementation
of de‑Ba’athification policy to the Governing Council.
819.
The following
key findings are from Section 12.2, and relate to evidence
in
Section 12.1:
•
Between
2003 and 2009, there was no coherent US/UK strategy for
Security
Sector
Reform (SSR).
•
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 UK was
unable to influence the US or engage it in a way that
produced
an Iraq‑wide
approach.
•
There was
no qualitative way for the UK to measure progress. The focus on
the
quantity of
officers trained for the Iraqi Security Forces, rather than the
quality
of officers,
was simplistic and gave a misleading sense of comfort.
•
After 2006,
the UK’s determination to withdraw from Iraq meant that
aspirations
for the
Iraqi Security Forces were lowered to what would be “good enough”
for
Iraq. It
was never clear what that meant in practice.
125