The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
UK
strategies for Iraq, the scope and nature of that effort. There was
no formal direction
that DFID
should take charge.
21.
The IPU
retained responsibility for all policy issues and for administering
UK
secondments
to the CPA. The FCO retained responsibility for Security Sector
Reform
(see
Section 12).
22.
Mr Blair
maintained a close interest in the UK’s reconstruction effort and
the
contribution
that progress here could make to achieving broader UK objectives.
He
pressed
DFID on a number of occasions in 2003 and 2004 to accelerate the
pace of
reconstruction
and focus its efforts more directly in support of the political
process and
security.
DFID Ministers responded by highlighting work that was already
under way and
the
difficulties of making progress in the face of growing
insecurity.
23.
By late 2004,
Mr Blair’s attention was increasingly focused on the political
process,
security
and “Iraqiisation”.
24.
When military
operations against Iraq began, the UK had not made a
decision
on the
level and nature of its support for the US‑led Office of
Reconstruction and
Humanitarian
Assistance (ORHA), the body responsible for immediate
post‑conflict
administration
and reconstruction.
25.
The 10 April
meeting of the AHMGIR, which Mr Straw chaired and Ms
Short
attended,
agreed that the UK should increase its support for ORHA. That
decision
reflected
an assessment by the IPU that, although ORHA remained “in many ways
a
sub‑optimal
organisation”, it was also “the only game in town”.4
Greater UK
engagement
with ORHA
would help ensure that it did not pursue activities which the UK
judged
not to be
legal.
26.
The FCO sought
volunteers to deploy to ORHA on 22 April. The first arrived in
Iraq
in early
May.
27.
Mr Straw
visited ORHA on 14 April. He later wrote in his
memoir:
“I could
not believe the shambles before my eyes. There were around forty
people in
the room,
who, somehow or other, were going to be the nucleus of the
government
of this
large, disputatious and traumatised nation.”5
28.
Ms Short
received a report from a DFID official the following
day:
“… ORHA is
incredibly awful … There may be things we could do to support it,
but
it would
be a political judgement (and a big political
risk).”6
4
Paper IPU,
28 March 2003, ‘Iraq: Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian
Assistance (ORHA)’.
5
Straw
J. Last Man
Standing: Memoirs of a Political Survivor.
Macmillan, 2012.
6
Minute
Bewes to Secretary of State [DFID], 15 April 2003,
[untitled].
532