6.5 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, January to
March 2003
•
Potential
international partners for reconstruction and additional
Coalition
partners to
provide security continued to make their post-conflict
contributions
conditional on UN authorisation for Phase IV.643
1440.
Despite
being aware of the shortcomings of the US plan,644
strong
US
resistance
to a leading role for the UN,645
indications
that the UN did not want
the
administration of Iraq to become its responsibility646
and a
warning about the
tainted
image of the UN in Iraq,647
at no stage
did the UK Government formally
consider
other policy options, including the possibility of making
participation
in military
action conditional on a satisfactory plan for the post-conflict
period,
or how to
mitigate the known risk that the UK could find itself drawn into
a
“huge
commitment of UK resources” for which no contingency preparations
had
been made.
1441.
As a junior
partner in the Coalition, the UK worked within a
planning
framework
established by the US. It had limited influence over a
process
dominated
increasingly by the US military.
1442.
The
creation of the AHGI in September 2002 and the IPU in February
2003
improved
co-ordination across government at official level, but neither
body
carried
sufficient authority to establish a unified planning process across
the four
principal
departments involved – the FCO, the MOD, DFID and the Treasury –
or
between
military and civilian planners.
1443.
Important
material, including in the DFID reviews of northern and
southern
Iraq, and
significant pieces of analysis, including the series of SPG
papers
on military
strategic thinking, were either not shared outside the
originating
department,
or, as appears to have been the case with the SPG papers, were
not
routinely
available to all those with a direct interest in the
contents.
1444.
Some risks
were identified, but departmental ownership of those risks,
and
responsibility
for analysis and mitigation, were not clearly
established.
1445.
When the
need to plan and prepare for the worst case was raised,
including
by MOD
officials in advice to Mr Hoon on 6 March
2003,648
Lt Gen
Reith in his
paper for
the Chiefs of Staff on 21 March649
and in
Treasury advice to Mr Brown
643
Paper FCO,
25 March 2003, ‘Iraq: Phase IV Issues’.
644
Minute
Drummond to Rycroft, 19 March 2003, ‘Iraq Ministerial
Meeting’.
645
Minute
Ricketts to Private Secretary [FCO], 7 February 2003, ‘Iraq
Strategy’.
646
Public
hearing, 15 December 2009, page 5.
647
Paper
Middle East Department, 12 December 2002, ‘Interim Administrations
in Iraq: Why a UN-led
Interim
Administration would be in the US interest’.
648
Minute
Sec(O)4 to PS/Secretary of State [MOD], 6 March 2003, ‘Iraq:
Aftermath – Medium to Long
Term UK
Military Commitment’.
649
Minute
Reith to COSSEC, 21 March 2003, ‘Phase IV Planning – Taking
Stock’.
563