12.1 |
Security Sector Reform
that Corps
will be professional, non‑political, militarily effective, and
representative
of all
Iraqis. The CPA will promulgate procedures for participation in the
New
154.
There was
nothing in CPA Order No.2 that prevented former employees of
the
dissolved
entities – including the military – from applying to join the New
Iraqi Army
(NIA),
although the provisions of Order No.1 would apply.
155.
Hard
Lessons, the account
of US involvement in Iraq by the US Special Inspector
General for
Iraq Reconstruction, records that Order No.2 was drafted by
Mr Slocombe.122
156.
In a 2004
interview, Mr Slocombe observed that the reasons for
disbanding the
Iraqi Army
were both political and practical:
•
The Army
had effectively disappeared after the invasion and its barracks
had
been
heavily looted: “We didn’t disband the army. The army disbanded
itself …
Furthermore,
even if they had come back … all the facilities were
trashed.”
•
The
structure of the former Iraqi Army was such that it would have
required
substantial
reform to be a suitable modern army: “… it was a conscript
army
with
overwhelmingly Shia conscripts and overwhelmingly Sunni
officers …
The Iraqi Army
had 11,000 general officers. The American Army … has
300 general
officers.” 123
157.
Lieutenant
General Jonathon Riley, who served in Baghdad in 2003 as
Deputy
Head of the
Coalition Military Assistance Training Team (CMATT), told the
Inquiry that
the CPA was
left with no choice but to disband the army:
“He
[Ambassador Bremer] is criticised for doing it, but I believe that
by the time
he made
that decree, the army had disbanded itself and what was left of
its
infrastructure
had been largely torn apart by the population, which had lost
all
respect for
its own army. A very bad situation to be in.”124
158.
According to
the RAND Report, After Saddam:
Pre‑war Planning and the
Occupation of
Iraq:
“… the
decision to disband the Iraqi armed forces was … made in
Washington …
in early
May 2003, before the deployment of Ambassador L Paul Bremer
to
121
Coalition
Provisional Authority Order Number 2, 23 May 2003, Section
4.
122
Bowen SW
Jr. Hard
Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. U.S.
Government Printing
Office, 2009.
123
PBS, 26
October 2004, Interview
Walter Slocombe.
124
Public
hearing, 14 December 2009, pages 31‑32.
125
Bensahel N,
Oliker O, Crane K, Brennan RR Jr, Gregg HS, Sullivan T &
Rathmell A. After
Saddam:
Prewar
Planning and the Occupation of Iraq. RAND
Corporation, 2008.
95