The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
DFID
provided £297m for reconstruction and a further £209m for
humanitarian assistance
in Iraq
between 2002/03 and 2009/10. Iraq was DFID’s largest bilateral
programme in
2003/04,
when DFID spent a total of £220m. That included a £110m
contribution to the
humanitarian
relief effort following the invasion and a £70m contribution to the
World Bank
and UN
Trust Funds (which would be spent by the World Bank and UN in
subsequent
years). The
size of DFID’s programme decreased over the following
years.
In
addition, UK forces in MND(SE) spent £38m from UK funds on Quick
Impact Projects
(QIPs).
It is not
possible, from the information available to the Inquiry, to produce
a definitive
breakdown
of the allocation of DFID funding between national programmes
and
programmes
in the South. The Inquiry calculates that, from 2003/04 to 2007/08,
between
76 percent
and 52 percent of DFID funding was allocated to programmes in the
South.25
DFID’s
expenditure in the South peaked in 2005/06.
UK forces
also had access to significant amounts of US funding from the
Commander’s
Emergency
Response Program (CERPs) to spend on urgent relief and
reconstruction
needs. The
Government has not been able to provide a full breakdown of the
amount of
CERPs
funding used by UK military commanders, but it appears to have been
greater
than the
total amount provided by the UK for reconstruction. The US
allocated US$66m
from CERPs
to MND(SE) in the US fiscal year 2005/06. In the same year, in
MND(SE),
DFID spent
some £35m on infrastructure and job creation and the MOD spent £3m
from
UK funds on
QIPs.
By April
2009, the US had spent or allocated to ongoing projects US$351m
from CERPs in
MND(SE),
and spent or allocated to ongoing projects some US$3.3bn from all
sources in
MND(SE).
Over the same period, in MND(SE), DFID spent at least £100m and the
MOD
spent £38m
from UK funds on QIPs.
UK funding
was also available for Iraq from the Global Conflict Prevention
Pool (and
subsequently
the Stabilisation Aid Fund and the Conflict Pool). Most of that
funding was
allocated
to Security Sector Reform (see Section 12).
84.
From June
2005, the Government considered a series of papers on the
transfer
of security
responsibilities for southern provinces to Iraqi Security Forces
(leading to
withdrawal
of UK forces from Iraq).
85.
DFID assessed
that it could not operate effectively in the South without UK
military
support
and, in October, indicated its intention to refocus on building the
capacity of
the Iraqi
Government in Baghdad. Existing projects in the South would
continue to
completion
but, given the security situation, no new projects would be
started.
25
Calculation
excludes DFID funding for humanitarian assistance, the World Bank
and UN Trust Funds,
and
programme support costs such as security, accommodation and
communications. It is not possible
to produce
a reliable estimate of the proportion of the funding provided for
those purposes that related
to the
South.
540