10.3 |
Reconstruction: oil, commercial interests, debt relief, asylum and
stabilisation policy
919.
In March 2005,
the House of Commons Defence Committee expressed
concern
that the
PCRU might not achieve its initial operating capability by the
target date of
spring
2005.579
Issues
still to be resolved included:
•
identification
of the best department to manage the deployment of civilian
police
officers;
•
the need
for the PCRU to operate in “a genuinely cross-departmental
manner”
and not as
“the advocate of a particular department’s priorities”;
and
•
provision
of the funding needed not only to establish itself but to pay
for
deployments.
920.
On 4 May 2005,
Mr Neil Crompton, the departing Head of the IPU,
expressed
doubts to
Mr Sawers about the PCRU’s ability to achieve everything
expected of it:
“MOD
frustration with the pace of reconstruction has been a cause of
much tension
within
Whitehall. The creation of the PCRU should help resolve some of the
issues,
but I doubt
that it will solve the problem completely, HMG as a whole has lost
the old
ODA
[Overseas Development Agency] ability to ‘fix things’. DFID no
longer regard
this as
core business. Civilians and contractors have to operate under
tight security
rules which
prevent them operating at the required pace in environments like
Iraq.
“Part of
the solution is for MOD to regard post-conflict reconstruction as
their core
business …
MOD need to follow US practice and develop civil affairs battalions
…
“In
parallel, we need to sell the notion that military assets
(particularly transport)
belong to
HMG as a whole and that decisions on how they are deployed should
be
determined
by HMG, rather than MOD/PJHQ on the basis of military
priorities …
We [FCO]
and DFID should be involved in the force level review process in
a
more formal
way than our participation in Chiefs of Staff allows, so that
wider
considerations
are taken into account. PJHQ will resist – but we should
persist.”580
921.
Mr Sawers
shared Mr Crompton’s scepticism about the PCRU, but
suggested
that it
would need to be tested in a real crisis.581
He
added:
“The MOD’s
resistance to doing civilian reconstruction has been a problem and
I
am
attracted by your proposal that they should develop civil affairs
battalions who
can
actually restore basic services in a post-conflict environment.
With DFID’s near
exclusive
focus on poverty, and as you say their inability these days to ‘fix
things’, it
is always
going to be difficult to get DFID to wholeheartedly commit to
underpinning
the
political objectives of HMG. MOD is more resource constrained than
DFID but
this is an
area worth exploring with the new Defence Secretary.”
579
Sixth
Report from the Defence Committee, Session 2004-05,
Iraq: An
Initial Assessment of
Post‑Conflict
Operations, HC 65-1, paras
267-270.
580
Minute
Crompton to Sawers, 4 May 2005, ‘Iraq Reflections’.
581
Minute
Sawers to Crompton, 9 May 2005, ‘Iraq: Reflections’.
511