6.4 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, mid-2001
to January 2003
630.
The
problems with Iraq’s infrastructure and public services
highlighted
by the
review were not addressed by DFID’s planning for post-conflict
Iraq
over the
coming months, which focused almost exclusively on the provision
of
humanitarian
relief.
631.
The DFID
desktop analysis of central and southern Iraq, the second half of
the Iraq
review
programme initiated in May, was completed on 17
October.319
632.
Like the
northern Iraq review in August, the ‘Central/southern Iraq
humanitarian
situation
analysis’ was marked for DFID internal circulation only. The
Inquiry has seen
no evidence
that it was distributed more widely.
633.
Unlike the
northern Iraq review, because of restrictions on external contacts
by
DFID
officials, the analysis of central and southern Iraq was produced
without consulting
the UN,
NGOs or bilateral partners, but did draw widely on external
(including UN)
publications.
634.
Observations,
some of which were repeated from DFID’s report to Ms Short
in
May,
included:
•
“serial
decline” or “collapse” in non-oil sectors of the
economy;
•
the
negative impact on public services of the large number of public
employees
leaving
their jobs;
•
50 percent
of schools physically unsafe, unfit for teaching or learning
and
considered
a public health hazard for children;
•
80 percent
of primary schools in a “deteriorated” state;
•
Umm Qasr
port in a “dilapidated” state;
•
only 50
percent of electricity demand being met;
•
rising
levels of waterborne diseases and salt intrusion in water systems
in
southern
Iraq;
•
transport
infrastructure improving slowly “from a highly degraded
base”;
•
the
vulnerability of the population could be expected to increase as
international
pressure on
the government grew; and
•
in the
event of military action, the scale and duration of a humanitarian
crisis
would be
“dependent on efforts to stabilise the situation and address
political,
security,
humanitarian and economic considerations coherently and
rapidly”.
635.
Officials
recommended that better data be sought as soon as contact
with
international
agencies was authorised.
636.
The two
DFID reviews of northern and southern Iraq constituted a
significant
body of
information on the scale of Iraq’s social and economic
decline.
319
Email DFID
[junior official] to Fernie, 17 October 2002, ‘CSI analysis’
attaching Paper Conflict &
Humanitarian
Affairs Department, October 2002, ‘Central/southern Iraq
humanitarian situation analysis’.
221