The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
allowed
only 10 minutes to speak to the four detainees immediately prior to
their release,
rather than
the agreed one to two hours. A longer meeting would have allowed
him to
emphasise
that this was an agreement for the benefit of all the
detainees.
222.
JAM1 said that
this was a dangerous period, and there was plenty of potential
for
things to
go wrong. He had asked his contacts to monitor those whom he
suspected of
being
active in the Special Groups in order to curtail their
attacks.
223.
The officials
reported their meeting with JAM1 to the Steering Group
for
the operation,
now renamed the Mohan Initiative Group (MIG) and chaired
by
Maj Gen Binns,
later that day. In their report back to London, the officials
explained:
“We then
discussed the substance of further agreement between MND(SE)
and
[JAM1]. We
opined that this would come down to the number of detainees to
be
released.
We would need to release more than four (because [JAM1] would
be
looking for
progress); he would want us to release as many as possible …
GOC
was
admirably focused on the timelines for securing all-party sign up
to Phase II
(Phase III?)
of the [NAME OF OPERATION] agreement. Working backwards,
this
looks like
this:
•
13 Sep –
second (third?) tranche of releases
•
12 Sep –
final date for sign-off on agreement to releases/DIRC
[Divisional
Internment
Review Committee]
•
7 Sep –
agreement of SOSDEF [the Defence Secretary] secured
•
1 Sep –
submission goes to SOSDEF
•
28 Aug –
submission goes to PJHQ, with US assent
•
21 Aug –
GOC travels to Baghdad to meet Odierno and Petraeus.”
224.
Maj Gen Binns
told the Inquiry that part of his mindset on arriving in post
was:
“I thought –
and this was before I knew about reconciliation – that
only by engaging
and seeking
to reconcile leaders and organisations that possess some
degree
of
credibility would there be any chance of a solution and that
solution would be
political
and we would find it and we would meet it in Iraq.”99
225.
Having arrived
in Iraq, Maj Gen Binns observed that:
“… almost
every time we resupplied, the price just to deliver the bread and
water
there was
a death, and that our impact outside the immediate confines of
our bases
was limited
and we had become focused on force protection and trying to break
the
bones of
this amoeba that was called JAM was difficult, if not impossible.
I thought
that the
Iraqi army and police were standing by and watching us get killed,
I thought
that the
rate of casualties was amongst the highest in Iraq and that
self-protection
and
administration was consuming us. I thought the time for the UK
was running out.
99
Private
hearing, 2 June 2010, pages 15-17.
224