The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
“An interim
authority would be best run by the Iraqis themselves with
long-term
technical
and financial support from the international community. (The UK is
in
a
particularly strong position to do this – we still maintain the
image of being
professional
and knowledgeable!)”
960.
During October
and November, the FCO produced a number of drafts of a
paper
on SSR, one
of which informed the 1 November Cabinet Office paper on models
for
post-Saddam
Hussein Iraq.460
961.
The last
version seen by the Inquiry, dated 10 December, described SSR as a
key
task which,
if carried out successfully, “should lead to Iraq giving up its
attachment to
WMD,
dismantling its oppressive network of spies, informers and secret
police, scaling
down its
huge armed forces and reforming its criminal justice
system”.461
If SSR
went
well, Iraq
would be “much less likely to pose the same threat to the region
and its own
people”.
The process would be shaped to a degree by post-conflict
stabilisation and
should be
seen within the overall policy framework of promoting good
government.
There was a
particularly clear overlap between SSR and those wider issues in
areas of
police and
judicial reform, about which the UK knew little.
962.
The paper
listed the questions that any SSR plan for Iraq must
answer:
•
What
security structures would be appropriate? That required an
assessment of
the
internal and external threats to Iraq and knowledge of its future
constitutional
shape.
•
Who should
be in charge? SSR in Afghanistan had been hampered by
the
lack of
international institutional architecture: “In Iraq’s case, we
should give a
higher
priority to organising SSR much earlier, ie ideally before military
action …
Good
articulation between the body charged with overseeing SSR and the
post
S[addam]
H[ussein] interim administration will be critical.”
•
Methodology.
How far should the exclusion of members of the Tikriti clan
be
taken? The
inner circle of security agencies around Saddam Hussein were
ripe
for
abolition, but what about the civilian police and the
judiciary?
•
DDR. What
mechanisms were need to bring perpetrators of crimes
against
humanity to
justice?
•
Qualitative
and quantitative change. How to reform the security sector to
operate
on the
basis of humanitarian values in support of a legitimate
government?
•
Accountability.
How to establish the principle of civilian oversight?
460
Letter Gray
to Drummond, 18 October 2002, ‘Papers for the AHGI’ attaching Paper
[unattributed],
17 October
2002, ‘Iraq: Security Sector Reform’.
461
Paper
Middle East Department, 10 December 2002, ‘Iraq: Security Sector
Reform’.
274