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9.4  |  June 2005 to May 2006
government and rule of [law] institutions is out of the question” and pulling troops out
more rapidly would leave a vacuum. The authors therefore concluded:
Our only realistic option is to maintain our course and see the job through.
But we need to make adjustments to our policy, while sticking to our strategic
approach of ensuring in due course successful transition of responsibility for rule of
law in the south-east to the Iraqis.”
271.  The paper identified a practical problem; the possibility of reprisal attacks against
UK personnel made it questionable when UK civilian trainers and mentors could return
to work alongside Iraqis after their current period of lockdown.
272.  The authors recommended a number of actions including:
getting a “clear commitment from Baghdad politicians to grip the South-East”;
persuading the Interior Minister to visit Basra immediately;
demonstrating “to the international community (in particular, the US) that we can
handle the situation”;
putting an “effective Chief of Police in place”; and
despatching “a senior UK police officer (eg Sir Ronnie Flanagan) with relevant
background in such sectarian issues to audit the police in MND(SE)”.
273.  The paper also cautioned that “we may not be able to deliver, by next year, the
minimum standards required in rule of law and governance” and that “we will need to
allocate more resources, which might include military resources, to security”.
October 2005
274.  An Iraqi investigation into the Jameat incident concluded by early October that
“80 percent of the blame was down to the British”.131 Mr Patey reported that the ITG was
unlikely to publish the investigation report as “we will have no choice but to take issue
with it”. Of most concern was the failure of the ITG to act on militia infiltration of the
Basra police.
275.  SIS3 told the Inquiry that the event was a “wake-up call” to what was happening in
Basra, where the police had become integrated with the militias, and commented that:
“What we were looking for … was Iraqiisation. What we ended up with at this point
was a different kind of Iraqiisation … In other words, we were pulling back and the
Iraqi Government was not occupying the space, I think because it was too early
for the Iraqi Government to be able to do that. So in that gap you ended up with a
different kind of Iraqiisation, which was militia-isation, criminalisation, intimidation,
131  eGram 14641/05 Baghdad to FCO London, 1 October 2005, ‘Iraq: Basra Investigation’.
535
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