10.3 |
Reconstruction: oil, commercial interests, debt relief, asylum and
stabilisation policy
“Of course,
it doesn’t provide the whole of the answer, but it means that
you
are in a
better position to do that range of work that is required in these
kinds of
circumstances.
So it is about learning lessons, building capacity to be able to
do
it better
in the future.”621
978.
Lord Walker,
Chief of the Defence Staff from May 2003 to April 2006, was
critical
of the
early days of the PCRU. He told the Inquiry that the problem of
pulling together
the strands
of post-conflict activity had been an issue since the Balkans, but
the PCRU
had gone
into “university mode: lots of discussions sitting round the
table”.622
979.
Sir Suma
Chakrabarti also commented on the PCRU’s difficult start in
2005,
but told
the Inquiry that its performance had improved during 2006 and 2007,
when it
became
“more focused on operational work, rather than … policy and
strategy, which
was left
with the three departments”.623
980.
Dr Shafik,
who succeeded Sir Suma Chakrabarti as Permanent Secretary at
about
the time
the PCRU became the SU, told the Inquiry that the SU’s contribution
in Iraq was
“relatively
modest, because, by that stage, the numbers of people that we
needed to
deploy were
relatively small”, whereas in Afghanistan it had been “hugely
important”.624
In the
early days the Unit had been a “body shop”, but it had “evolved
enormously”,
becoming
“the repository for expertise on how to do stabilisation well” and,
as it had built
its
credibility in Whitehall, starting to lead programmes in
Afghanistan.625
981.
Dr Shafik
also confirmed that agreement had been reached with the MOD
on
incorporating
military Reservists into the pool of deployable expertise available
to
the SU.
The key was:
“… when
people deploy, they have to be clear what they are doing. Are they
there
as a
soldier or are they there as a civilian? I think that distinction
of roles is quite
important,
but tapping into the expertise is a huge potential gain … if a
reservist,
for
example, happens to have skills in accounting or in agriculture,
they can be
employed by
the Stabilisation Unit, but in their civilian
capacity.”
982.
Ms Lindy
Cameron, Head of DFID Baghdad from 2004 to 2005, told the Inquiry
that
it was only
the SU’s work to put civilians on military courses that had
eventually begun to
undermine
some of the military’s preconceptions about DFID. It was not until
then “that
people
realised that actually there was a real intention on DFID’s part to
actually make
this work
collectively”.626
621
Public
hearing, 2 February 2010, page 41.
622
Public
hearing, 1 February 2010, pages 63-64.
623
Public
hearing, 22 January 2010, page 42.
624
Public
hearing, 13 January 2010, page 30.
625
Public
hearing, 13 January 2010, pages 32-34.
626
Public
hearing, 22 June 2010, page 84.
525