The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
an initial
focus on electricity, water, rubbish and sewage, designed to
deliver tangible
improvements
in essential services and create jobs.583
Resources
would come from the
US CMOC and
the PRT, and delivery would be through task-based Joint
Reconstruction
Action
Teams (JRATs). The JRATs would be under joint civilian-military
leadership (each
having a
military head and civilian deputy head or vice versa), and would
work with the
appropriate
Iraqi authorities.
997.
Mr Keith
MacKiggan arrived in Basra in late September 2008 to take up post
as the
Head of the
Basra PRT.584
His arrival
signalled the end of the practice of double-hatting
the Head of
the PRT and the Deputy Consul General. He described the situation
in
Basra at
that time:
“We were
able to get out to meet … clients, NGOs, officials in the
local
administration,
local businesses and so on. Equally importantly, they were able
to
come and
visit us because they no longer felt the fear they had previously
of being
associated
with the Multi-National Force.
“It also
meant that we could expand our capacity building work, both in
a
geographical
sense and also in a functional sense … we were now much more
able
to get
beyond the city [Basra] to the furthest reaches of the province …
and dig
below the
level of the Provincial Council to the level of the local Councils
and really
start to
stitch the different parts of the governance structures in Basra
together.”
998.
In their
evidence to the Inquiry, Maj Gen Salmon, Mr Haywood and
Mr MacKiggan
agreed that
the UK effort in Basra was well integrated during their time
there.585
999.
Maj Gen Salmon
told the Inquiry that that integrated approach had emerged in
the
context of
clear UK objectives (as set out in Mr Brown’s 22 July
statement to Parliament)
and a
timetable for withdrawal, but in the absence of an overall UK
strategic plan agreed
1000.
Maj Gen Salmon
described how the move to a more integrated approach
had
been driven
by decisions in Basra:
“Well, we
had a set of objectives. There was no comprehensive strategic plan
that
I ever
saw. So what we decided to do – when I say ‘we’, that is the Consul
General,
the Head of
the Provincial Reconstruction Team … and to a certain extent the
Head
of US
Regional Embassy Office … [was] ensure that we had much more
collective
consensus,
joined-up approach, because nobody was in charge.
“So that
was the only way that we could think of working out what the
strategy
needed to
be and how we were going to prosecute that strategy, run it, steer
it,
583
Minute
Salmon to CJO, 7 September 2008, ‘GOC MND(SE) Weekly Letter – 7
September 2008’.
584
Public
hearing, 7 January 2010, pages 1, 10-11.
585
Public
hearing, 7 January 2010, page 6; Public hearing, 20 July 2010, page
24.
586
Public
hearing, 20 July 2010, page 24 and 32.
358