The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
787.
Both
Mr Browne and Mr Blair said that reconciliation was the
key to success;
the Shia
had to be made to understand that the UK’s support was conditional
on a
non‑sectarian
future. Mr Blair also briefed Cabinet that British thinking on
reconciliation
had had “a
great impact” on the US.
788.
On 3 May, Sir
Nigel Sheinwald sent Sir David Manning a “strictly personal”
copy
of a Note
from Mr Blair to President Bush setting out his proposals for
future coalition
strategy,
written in preparation for a video conference the next
day.431
789.
In his Note,
Mr Blair characterised the position as:
“Everywhere
in the region at present, we are pinned back. We remain
strong.
We are
not losing. But we are not really able to move
forward.”
790.
Mr Blair
argued that Islamist extremists had a “coherent political strategy”
for Iraq
whereas
“our problem is that we don’t”. He considered himself and President
Bush to be
“lone
voices”, with new politicians keen to distance themselves from past
events. As a
result:
“People
start to think this is a fight we can’t win; when in reality it is
a fight we have
to
win.”
791.
Despite
military successes, Mr Blair wrote that progress was always
fragile in the
absence of
a big political deal:
“For
example, in Iraq, we fight on three fronts: the Sunni insurgency;
Al Qaida;
Iranian‑based
Shia militia. I asked our top people the other day: if you took Al
Qaida
and Iran
out of the situation, ie the external extremists, would Iraq be
manageable?
Undoubtedly,
they said … But whilst we fight on all three fronts, the Sunni
insurgents
provide a
justification for Shia death squads, and reinforce the Iraqi
Government’s
fears of a
Ba’athist return; Al Qaida can claim to be counter‑attacking the
Shia; and
everyone,
of course, can blame it on us.”
792.
In the absence
of a “big political strategy for the region”, Mr Blair wrote
that the
news was
simply dominated by television pictures of “carnage”. In response,
Mr Blair
saw a need
“radically to upgrade our political approach across the region”,
changing the
terms of
the debate from “whether we can win”, to an “insistence we have to
win”.
793.
Mr Blair
wrote that a new political strategy should have three
components;
reconciliation,
exposing Iranian support for terrorism whilst offering a chance to
alter
and improve
the relationship and making progress with the Middle East Peace
Process.
On
reconciliation, Mr Blair commented that “The missing part is
the politics” and that the
Iraqi
Government “can’t succeed and won’t survive without
it”.
431
Letter
Sheinwald to Manning, 3 May 2007, ‘Iraq’, attaching Note TB [Blair
to Bush], 3 May 2007, ‘Note’.
148