6.5 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, January to
March 2003
•
support to
local government and administration; and
•
emergency
reconstruction.
49.
The briefing
included questions to which “we must first have
answers” if the UK was
to
contribute along those lines:
•
What should
be the future of the Iraqi military, police and local and
regional
government,
and at what level should the Coalition do business with them,
“as
we will
have to do”?
•
What would
be the legal basis for Coalition forces’ involvement in civil
security?
•
Did the US
envisage “sectorisation” as in Bosnia or “central locations
and
force
projection” as in Afghanistan as the model for Phase IV Coalition
Force
structure?
If sectorisation, would the US provide additional forces in the
UK
sector to
perform humanitarian tasks for which UK capacity was
limited?
•
What role
would the military have in managing oil production?
•
When did
the US assume humanitarian agencies would take the lead
in
providing
humanitarian assistance?
50.
On 20 January,
Mr William Ehrman, FCO Director General Defence and
Intelligence,
advised
Mr Straw that clarity on US thinking would follow the talks in
Washington on
22
January.26
In the
meantime, on a personal basis, he suggested: “we should start
to
think
internally about elements relating to aftermath that might need to
go into a future
Security
Council resolution … Such elements include: aftermath UN
administration; oil
management;
and the future of IAEA [International Atomic Energy
Agency]/UNMOVIC
[UN
Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission].”
51.
On 20
January, two days before the second round of post-conflict
talks
in
Washington, President Bush confirmed publicly his decision that all
US
post‑conflict
activity was to be placed under the leadership of
Secretary
Rumsfeld.
52.
On 18 December
2002, President Bush decided in principle to place the
Department
of Defense
(DoD) in charge of all post-conflict activity (see Section
6.4).
53.
That decision
was confirmed publicly on 20 January, when President Bush
issued
National
Security Presidential Directive 24 (NSPD 24), consolidating all
post-conflict
activity in
the new DoD-owned Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian
Assistance
26
Minute
Ehrman to Private Secretary [FCO], 20 January 2003, ‘Iraq: military
aspects and aftermath’.
27
Bowen SW
Jr. Hard
Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. U.S.
Government Printing
Office, 2009.
319