6.2 |
Military planning for the invasion, January to March
2003
be
complicated by possible CBW contamination … The UN will be
particularly badly
placed if a
humanitarian disaster occurs in the South while fighting continues
in
close
proximity.”
440.
The points in
the Assessment on the post-Saddam Hussein political and
security
landscape
are set out in Section 6.5.
441.
The Assessment
also warned that: “The establishment of popular support
for
any
post-Saddam administration cannot be taken for granted.” The
factors that could
undermine
it included:
•
“damage to
holy sites”;
•
“major
civilian casualties”;
•
“heavy-handed
peace enforcement”; and
•
“failure to
rapidly restore law and order”.
442.
In an
Assessment issued on 26 February of how Iraq would respond in
northern
Iraq to a
Coalition attack, the JIC judged:
“The Iraqi
regime would be willing to use CBW against the Coalition
and
443.
The Assessment
made clear that that judgement was a continuation from
earlier
Assessments.
444.
The
International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) published an
Adelphi
Paper,155
Iraq at the
Crossroads: State and Society in the Shadow of Regime
Change,
in January
2003.156
It included
a number of contributions addressing what might happen
in the
event of a military invasion of Iraq which had originally been
prepared for a
one-day
workshop, ‘Iraqi Futures’, held in October 2002.
445.
Key points
which were raised in relation to a military invasion of Iraq are
set out in
the Box
below.
154
JIC
Assessment, 26 February 2003, ‘Iraq: Prospects in the
North’.
155
The IISS
website describes the Adelphi series as “the principal contribution
of the IISS to
policy-relevant
original research on strategic studies and international political
concerns”.
156
Dodge T
& Simon S (eds). Iraq at the
Crossroads: State and Society in the Shadow of Regime
Change.
IISS
Adelphi Paper 354. Oxford University Press, January
2003.
453