The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
4.
Participants
were divided into three working groups:
•
the
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) period (18
participants);
•
mid‑2004 to
mid‑2007 (21 participants); and
•
mid‑2007 to
mid‑2009 (nine participants).
5.
Each working
group discussed two themes: “Strategy and Delivery”
and
“Support to Staff”.
6.
Views
expressed during the event appear where appropriate in this
Section.
7.
Sections 6.4
and 6.5 address the shortcomings in the UK Government’s planning
and
preparation
for a post‑Saddam Hussein Iraq.
8.
When the
invasion of Iraq began overnight on 19/20 March 2003, there had
been
no
systematic analysis of the availability of civilian personnel to
meet the UK’s
likely
obligations in post-conflict Iraq.
9.
Factors
shaping the Government’s pre‑conflict approach to civilian
deployments
included:
•
inadequate
planning machinery;
•
the absence
of a comprehensive strategy for post‑conflict Iraq, which could
have
informed a
cross‑Whitehall assessment of the civilian
requirement;
•
an
assumption that, after a short transitional phase led by the US,
the
post‑conflict
administration and reconstruction of Iraq would be run and
staffed
by the
international community, led by the UN, allowing the UK to limit
its
contribution
to provision of financial resources and targeted advice
delivered
by a
small number of civilian specialists;1
•
DFID’s
limited operational capacity;
•
concerns
about the legal status of UK secondees working for the US‑led
Office
for
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) in Iraq;
and
•
failure to
decide whether the UK should assume overall responsibility
for
a geographical
sector of Iraq.
10.
In the months
before the invasion, the UK Government made preparations
for
civilian
deployment to Iraq in four areas:
•
cross‑government
support to ORHA;
•
DFID
humanitarian support to the UK military and international
organisations;
•
FCO staff
for the British Embassy Baghdad; and
•
MOD
civilians supporting Operation (Op) TELIC.2
1
Paper FCO,
[undated], ‘Scenarios for the future of Iraq after Saddam’; Letter
Chilcott to Ward,
24 February
2003, ‘ORHA’.
2
Operation
TELIC was the codename for the involvement of UK Armed Forces in
the military campaign
in Iraq
from 2003 to 2011.
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