6.4 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, mid-2001
to January 2003
413.
During late
August and early September, UK analysts advised on:
•
the likely
need for sustained international commitment to Iraq’s
reconstruction;
•
the
importance of starting preparations early; and
•
the need
for greater clarity on US thinking.
414.
An FCO
paper on the economic consequences of military action
assessed
that “an
enormous task of reconstruction and economic and
financial
normalisation”
lay ahead. If serious preparatory work did not begin
many
months
before regime change, there was likely to be a “serious and
politically
embarrassing
hiatus”.
415.
A paper by
Treasury officials compared the reconstruction of Iraq
with
Yugoslavia,
Afghanistan and East Timor. It concluded that reconstruction in
Iraq
could prove
more expensive, but might also be less challenging.
416.
On 29 August,
the FCO Economic Adviser for the Middle East and North
Africa
produced an
assessment of short- and long-term economic consequences of
military
action for
the region and for Iraq.233
The paper
identified a number of priorities for the
UK,
including mobilising the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
World Bank as
soon as
possible to begin building up a picture of Iraq’s
economy:
“An
enormous task of reconstruction and economic and financial
normalisation lies
ahead. For
all Iraq’s oil wealth it will take many years before the country
can get
back to
levels of prosperity seen in the 1990s.
“...
[T]here will be a huge job of reforming Iraqi economic policies and
institutions:
dismantling
Ba’ath Party economic control and corruption and replacing it
with
competent,
transparent market-orientated management will probably be akin
to
dismantling
Communist Party control in Central and Eastern Europe. A
strategy
for reconstruction
and long-term development will have to be worked out.
“...
[T]here is a desperate shortage of available information on Iraq’s
economy
which will
delay assessment of both the financial position and the requirement
for
institutional
change/technical assistance. Unless serious preparatory work is
put
in hand
many months before regime change there is likely to be a serious
and
politically
embarrassing hiatus.”
233
Minute
Economic Policy Department [junior official] to Gray, 29 August
2002, ‘Iraq: economic issues
raised by
military action and regime change’ attaching paper, undated,
‘Regional economic consequences
of military
action against Iraq’.
181