The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
14.
The transition
from conflict (Phase III) to post-conflict (Phase IV) military
operations
in Iraq
started as soon as Coalition troops began to occupy Iraqi
territory.
15.
Section 6.5
concludes that, when that transition began:
•
The
Government had not taken firm decisions on the nature or duration
of the
UK’s
military commitment in post-conflict Iraq or on the extent of the
UK Area
of Responsibility
(AOR).
•
There had
been no systematic analysis of the UK’s military or civilian
capacity
to fulfil
its likely obligations in the South in a range of circumstances,
including:
{{in the
prolonged absence of an authorising Security Council
resolution;
{{in the
absence of additional Coalition partners;
{{in a
hostile security environment with low levels of Iraqi consent;
and
{{over
different timescales, in particular the medium and long
term.
16.
Ministers,
officials and the military continued to assume that:
•
there would
be early agreement on a post-conflict resolution;
•
levels of
consent would rise steadily across most of Iraq; and
•
despite the
scale of the undertaking, the international community
would
succeed in
realising the Azores vision for Iraq’s social, political and
economic
transformation
of Iraq.
17.
Above all,
despite UK concerns that the US had not prepared a satisfactory
plan
for
post-conflict Iraq and that ORHA, the body responsible for
immediate post-conflict
administration
and reconstruction, was not up to the task, it was assumed that the
US
could act
as guarantor of the UK’s objectives in Iraq.
Area of
Operations (AO) refers to the UK military’s area of combat
operations during the
invasion of
Iraq (Phase III of operations). It is the term applied during
conflict and, in terms
of time,
space and force, is the area in which lethal force can be applied
for a designated
period of
time.
Area of
Responsibility (AOR) is usually applied in peace support
operations. In Iraq, it
refers to
the area of southern Iraq for which the UK military was responsible
during the
post-conflict
Occupation of Iraq (Phase IV of operations).
The two
terms were not used consistently within government and were
sometimes applied
interchangeably
in the same document.
6