15.1 | Civilian
personnel
891.
On 28 June
2004, the CPA handed over to a sovereign Iraqi
government
(see Section
9.3).
892.
During the
post‑CPA period the UK deployed:
•
an average
of 372 civilians in support of Op TELIC on any given
day;
•
an average
of 112 civilians to the UK’s bilateral missions in Iraq,
including
the DFID
offices in Baghdad and Basra, on any given day;
•
43 police
officers in support of the UK’s SSR programme in September
2004,
falling to
13 in March 2008; and
•
eight
civilians to the Basra PRT from mid‑2006.586
893.
The UK
civilian presence in Baghdad, previously split between the CPA and
the
British
Office Baghdad, was consolidated in the new British Embassy
Baghdad.
894.
In Basra, UK
civilians were deployed to the British Embassy Office and
additionally,
from April
2006, the UK‑led Basra PRT.
895.
A second,
smaller, British Embassy Office was opened in Kirkuk, alongside the
US
Regional
Embassy Office (REO).587
In January
2007, the British Embassy Office Kirkuk
was moved
to Erbil after the US REO transferred to Kirkuk Regional Air
Base.
896.
Figure 2 shows
the distribution of UK civilian personnel (including
DFID
contractors,
but not civilians deployed on Op TELIC, police or security
contractors)
between
Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk/Erbil during the post‑CPA period. The
underlying
data are
reproduced in Table 8 at the end of this Section.
586
All figures
in this list exclude security contractors.
587
Select
Committee on Foreign Affairs Minutes of Evidence, 24 March
2005, Letter to
the Chairman of the
Committee from
the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, 2
November 2004.
397