6.5 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, January to
March 2003
572.
On 19
February, at the request of the Cabinet Office, the JIC produced
the
Assessment
‘Southern Iraq: What’s in Store?’.246
Key
Judgements included:
•
“Coalition
forces will face large refugee flows, possibly compounded
by
contamination
and panic caused by CBW use. They may also face
millions
of Iraqis
needing food and clean water without an effective UN presence
and
environmental
disaster from burning oil wells.”
•
“Iran does
not have an agreed policy on Iraq beyond active
neutrality.
Nevertheless
Iran may support small-scale cross-border interventions by
armed
groups to
attack the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK). The Islamic
Revolutionary
Guards
Corps (IRGC) will continue to meddle in southern Iraq. Iranian
reactions
to a
Coalition presence in southern Iraq remain unclear but are unlikely
to be
aggressive.”
•
“Post-Saddam
the security situation in the South will be unpredictable. There
is
a high risk
of revenge killings of former regime officials. Law and order may
be
further
undermined by settling of scores between armed tribal
groups.”
•
“Popular
support for any post-Saddam administration in the South will
depend
on
adequately involving the Shia in the government of Iraq as a whole
as well as
engaging
the remains of the state bureaucracy in the South, local tribal
leaders
and Shia
clerics in local government.”
573.
The JIC
emphasised that intelligence on southern Iraq was
limited.
574.
In addition to
assessments of Iraqi military dispositions and the immediate
Iraqi
and Shia
responses to an attack, the JIC looked at Iranian policy and the
post-Saddam
Hussein
political and security landscape.
575.
The Assessment
stated that Iran’s aims in response to a Coalition presence in
Iraq
included:
•
preventing
refugee flows into Iran;
•
ensuring a
leading role for its allies among the Iraqi Shia (the Supreme
Council
for an
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its armed wing the Badr
Corps);
•
minimising
the size and duration of a US presence; and
•
destroying
the MEK.
576.
Iran had
interests throughout Iraq, but might consider that it had the
greatest
influence
to pursue them in the South, through armed Shia groups such as the
Badr
Corps. The
Badr Corps was estimated to be 3,000 to 5,000 strong, but “with the
addition
of
reservists this may increase up to 20,000”.
246
JIC
Assessment, 19 February 2003, ‘Southern Iraq: What’s in
Store?’
411