The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
408.
On 14
February, Ms Short advised Mr Blair of constraints on the UK’s
ability
to perform
an “exemplary” humanitarian role in Iraq.
409.
In
response, Mr Blair restated the need to “get the US to accept
the UN role”.
410.
Ms Short sent
Mr Blair a letter on 14 February setting out “key humanitarian
issues
and some
thoughts on the UN’s role which we need to pursue with the
US”.191
Ms
Short
advised:
“The
vulnerability of the Iraqi people to humanitarian catastrophe
should not be
underestimated
… Iraq should be an upper middle or high income country.
Instead
its average
earnings have plummeted in the last two decades, its population
is
largely
dependent on food handouts, its agricultural sector operating well
below
capacity.
Iraqi people’s lives are perilously fragile – their private coping
strategies
worn away
by years of misrule … The situation in the centre and south of Iraq
is
much worse
than in the north …”
411.
Ms Short also
expanded on her comments on the UK’s ability to do an
“exemplary”
job, made
at Mr Blair’s meeting on 13 February. She told Mr Blair
there was a “great
opportunity”
for the UK to play “an exemplary humanitarian role” in a sector
under
UK control,
within an agreed international framework set out in a second
resolution.
Such a
resolution “should address the UN’s lead role after conflict and
underline the
prioritisation
of humanitarian considerations”.
412.
Ms Short also
highlighted budgetary constraints. She could not:
“… take
resources from other poor and needy people to assist post-conflict
Iraq.
Without
some understanding on finance, I cannot responsibly commit DFID to
the
exemplary
partnership with MOD which we discussed.”
413.
In her
evidence to the Inquiry, Ms Short focused on the resolution’s
importance
to reconstruction,
rather than humanitarian efforts:
“… we knew
that if we didn’t get another UN resolution, we were in big
trouble. We
could do
humanitarian, but you can’t reconstruct the country, and that
became an
absolute
obsession of Whitehall.”192
414.
Mr Blair
wrote on his copy of the letter: “We must get the US to accept
the
191
Letter
Short to Blair, 14 February 2003, ‘Iraq: Humanitarian Planning and
the Role of the UN’.
192
Public
hearing, 2 February 2010, page 68.
193
Manuscript
comment Blair on Letter Short to Blair, 14 February 2003, ‘Iraq:
Humanitarian Planning
and the
Role of the UN’.
380