The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
693.
The ‘UK Vision
for Phase IV’, written by the IPU, opened with the
statement:
“A
successful mission means winning the peace as well as the war. We
should aim
to leave
Iraq radically changed for the better. That means an Iraq
which:
•
Has given
up its attachment to WMD
•
No longer
supports terrorism
•
Has
appropriately sized, reformed armed forces and
intelligence/security
agencies
•
Does not
threaten its neighbours
•
Complies
with its international obligations
•
Enjoys a
broad-based, representative government, which respects
human
rights
•
Has a fair
justice sector
•
Has been
weaned off its dependency on the Oil-for-Food programme
and
is
determinedly travelling along the path towards becoming a free
market
economy
•
Trades
normally and is set to normalise its relations with
international
financial
and trading organisations.304
“That is a
lot to achieve – similar in scale to the post-communist reforms of
central
European
countries. Success will require huge efforts from the Iraqis
themselves
and from
the wider international community. The support of countries in the
region
will also
be critical. We shall need to pull together a large coalition to
provide the
resources
for the task. And it will take a lot of time – perhaps many years –
to
achieve
success.”
694.
The paper set
out the UK’s expectations for the three stages of Phase
IV:
•
Phase IV
Alpha. Military administration by CFLCC, then, when conditions
permit,
ORHA, under
CENTCOM command. Key issues would be:
{{constraints
placed on the military’s powers to administer Iraq by
international
humanitarian law;
{{the
urgent need to provide clean water, sanitation, food, shelter
and
medicines;
most of that task would fall to UN agencies and NGOs, with
the
Coalition
providing the secure environment in which assistance could
be
delivered;
{{early
resurrection of OFF;
{{maximising
Iraqi involvement from the outset through a consultative
council
to advise
the military and ORHA; and
304
Paper Iraq
Planning Unit, 25 February 2003, ‘UK Vision for Phase
IV’.
436