Previous page | Contents | Next page
15.2  |  Conclusions: Civilian personnel
6.  The Government had no pre-existing machinery for recruiting and deploying at speed
large numbers of civilians with the appropriate skills. As a result, efforts to deploy larger
numbers of civilians to Iraq fell well short of targets.
7.  There was a particular shortage of Arabic speakers and reconstruction expertise.
8.  From late summer 2003, concern about staff safety led to the progressive
introduction of protective security measures for civilian personnel in Iraq and placed
additional constraints on civilian deployments.
9.  Government departments recognised their duty of care obligations to personnel
working in Iraq. Significant effort and resources went into keeping staff safe.
10.  In the absence of a government-wide approach to risk or an effective framework
for assessing the value of civilian personnel in a highly insecure environment, the
Government struggled to establish a co-ordinated approach to the deployment
of civilians.
11.  The Iraq Reconstruction Service Medal and the Locally Engaged Staff Assistance
Scheme were appropriate responses to the issues they addressed.
Pre-invasion planning and preparation
12.  Sections 6.4 and 6.5 address the UK’s pre-invasion planning and preparation
for its role in the Occupation of Iraq. In the absence of effective cross-government
machinery for drawing together all aspects of planning and preparation, the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO), the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Department for
International Development (DFID) pursued broadly complementary objectives, but did so
separately. This left significant gaps in UK civilian capabilities that were overlooked.
13.  The UK did not plan or prepare for the deployment of more than a handful of
civilians to Iraq, other than in direct support of military operations.
14.  The FCO was not equipped by past experience or practice, or by its limited human
and financial resources, to prepare for nation-building of the scale required in Iraq, and
did not expect to do so.
15.  The FCO did make effective preparations, however, for resuming diplomatic
representation in Baghdad. The British Office Baghdad opened, on schedule, on
5 May 2003.
16.  DFID was reluctant, before the invasion, to engage in planning and preparation for
anything other than the immediate humanitarian response to conflict.
17.  DFID did, however, make pre-conflict preparations to support those multilateral
institutions providing humanitarian assistance in Iraq and the region.
413
Previous page | Contents | Next page