A Journey (82 page)

I confess I was always very doubtful about this. Though the conventional wisdom was that Basra had to be managed this way because that was just the reality of it, I was deeply sceptical about the notion Iraqis or indeed anyone else preferred to live like this. But I could understand why people felt it. For some time, our civilian people in Basra had been able to do little, their HQ often locked down for fear of bombs and violence.

In October 2006, while I was at St Andrews for the Northern Ireland negotiation with Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein, General Sir Richard Dannatt, the new Chief of General Staff, gave an interview to the
Daily Mail
essentially saying that we had reached the end in Iraq, we were as much a risk to security as keeping it and we should transfer our attention to Afghanistan where, in effect, we had a better chance. As you can imagine, I wasn’t best pleased, my humour not improved by Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams telling me the IRA would never have had one of their generals behaving like that.

I visited Basra again in December 2006 and of course, as ever, found the troops in good heart and determined to take on the enemy. The major general there, Richard Shirreff, seemed to have the required mettle. The soldiers told me of an operation they were going to mount against a rogue police unit, which greatly cheered me, and which they carried out on Christmas Day, arresting the whole lot and disbanding the unit.

We then offered to mount a major offensive to take Basra from the militia. We were losing soldiers but that was, in part, because the militia forces controlling the Basra streets knew that as long as we remained, they were in jeopardy. The attacks, unlike those in the centre of the country, were now almost exclusively on British forces, not civilians.

However, for reasons I understood, the new Iraqi government under Prime Minister Maliki did not want the offensive carried out by coalition forces but rather led by Iraqi ones. The British had done a good job with the Iraqi 10 Division and it was clear that in the not too distant future they would be capable of mounting such an operation, albeit with coalition support.

Eventually, in March 2008, Iraqi and US forces, with British support, mounted the biggest and most successful security operation in Basra since 2003, which the Iraqis called Charge of the Knights, and effectively ousted the Iranian-backed and criminal militia from the city. It was an important moment, but I was left with the feeling that had we believed in our mission more and not despaired so easily – as indeed the soldiers on the ground showed – we would have had a far greater part in the final battle. Our relatively small role in cleaning up Basra in 2008 left a bad aftertaste for our forces.

However, when all is said and done, the truth is the British forces were heroic, they played an absolutely vital and irreplaceable role in stabilising the south and in staying there until the Iraqi force capability was such that Charge of the Knights could be mounted.

It should also be pointed out that from May 2003 the forces of the UK and the US were in Iraq with full and indisputable UN backing. It made no difference to those attacking them. It should have made a difference, however, to those criticising their presence from the outside. But those British Army actions in 2007 were vital in laying the ground for the clearing up of the city in 2008.

In the rest of Iraq, the story was even more bloody. As suicide bomb attacks increased, the security situation grew so bad that it became impossible for civilians to help Iraq. They had to have bodyguards if they went out and they too were targets. Criminal elements started to kidnap people for ransom. Religious fanatics began to persecute anyone who disagreed with them. Christians were singled out and intimidated.

The US Army performed absolutely magnificently; they were tough, dedicated and with raw and rare courage. Our special forces together with theirs, in Baghdad, went on one of the little-known missions of the conflict, but one of immense significance for the future. I visited them a few times. Truly incredible people. Brave beyond imagining. And smart, not gung-ho or macho, just intelligent soldiers doing their job and with an utterly clear-sighted view of what was at stake. Essentially they went out after al-Qaeda. Over time, they beat them down. The surge counted, of course, as did the scaling up in capacity of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). But what the special forces did in Iraq was one of the most remarkable stories of the whole campaign and deserves a special chapter in their history. For sure, they badly damaged al-Qaeda’s capability and set them back not just in Iraq but worldwide.

I also agreed to put the Black Watch into a mission to help the US forces in Operation Dogwood, in north Babil, in November 2004. I was criticised for agreeing to it and there was the usual nonsense about Brits taking risks for Americans, ignoring the fact that the opposite was also true; but, as usual, the troops themselves were totally up for it and performed with distinction.

By mid-2006, however, it was clear that the Iraq campaign was not succeeding. We hadn’t lost control, although we were being fought to a stalemate, and ordinary Iraqis were, unsurprisingly, complaining and saying we had failed to provide security. Articles were appearing comparing the situation unfavourably to that under Saddam. In 2006, according to the Iraq Body Count, almost 28,000 Iraqis died and almost as many were to die in 2007. Most were dying in terror attacks and reprisals, killed not by US or UK soldiers but in sectarian violence. But we, as the coalition forces, got the blame.

In November 2006, George Bush replaced Donald Rumsfeld with Bob Gates. In early 2007, George took the decision to surge US troops. It was a huge decision that I don’t think anyone else would have taken. He took it. The surge began in late 2007. It worked. There were many other factors: one was the Sunni outreach and the bringing on board of former Sunni insurgents, an effort led in part by Major General Graeme Lamb, a Brit. Also, the Iraqi government was ramping up the ISF.

In 2008 the Iraqi deaths fell to just over 9,000. By 2009, the figure had come down to under 4,000. By May 2010, it was 850.

So the aftermath was more bloody, more awful, more terrifying than anyone could have imagined. The perils we anticipated did not materialise. The peril we didn’t materialised with a ferocity and evil that even now shocks the senses.

So: could it have been prevented? And was it worth it?

The shortcomings on the reconstruction and essentially civilian side can, as I have indicated, be blamed in part; but only in part. Done more quickly, it might have created a more benign atmosphere and this undoubtedly would have helped. But it is essential to remember one thing: the terrorist activity did not arise from frustration at the lack of progress on reconstruction. It was rather aimed at preventing such progress. Frequently in the south, the British would repair vital infrastructure only for terrorists to blow it up again. The pattern of al-Qaeda operations in the centre and north of the country was directed at intimidating and inhibiting Iraqis from rebuilding their country. These weren’t, therefore, expressions of frustration about the pace of change; they were deliberate attempts to sabotage it.

Now it is correct, as I shall say, that a bigger pre-planned effort and a massive civilian reconstruction programme would have filled an early vacuum. It would have been an immediate jobs programme for unemployed Iraqis. But my personal view is that it would be naive in the extreme to believe that this in itself would have stopped the violence, the origins of which were profound and political.

With a manageable security situation, any shortcomings could quickly have been overcome (and the same is true in Afghanistan). Security was the issue – not one among many, but
the
issue.

The disbandment of the army and the de-Baathification are more open to dispute, since they impacted on the security situation. There is a case that both contributed to the anarchy. But it is a case with limits. The truth is the army more or less melted away. The visibility and blanket nature of the initial de-Baathification policy was quickly altered, partly under UK prompting. And it must be remembered that for large numbers of Iraqis, the Baath Party was the embodiment of the Saddam regime, detested, feared, and its continuing existence in any form an obstacle to liberation.

Of the two million Baath Party members, only around 25,000 were excluded from office. It was a far less drastic programme than, say, the denazification programme in Germany after the Second World War. When the British in the south initially used a former Saddam general – highly competent – to keep order, there was an outcry from the people in Basra, who saw him as a hated symbol of the old regime.

With hindsight, both the de-Baathification and the disbanding of the army could and should have been done differently. Possibly if that had happened then, as General Petraeus has suggested, part of the Sunni insurgency would have been tamed. But this is, as I say, a judgement with the benefit of hindsight, and it is fair to record it would be hotly disputed by those taking the decisions at the time, who would tell you that they were actually under pressure to do more.

It is crucial that the right and not the easy lessons are learned from the aftermath. Of course, there will be a natural desire to draw simple, bureaucratic conclusions – to say with different ministers at differently constituted meetings, the outcome would have been different. At least so far as the British effort was concerned, I really think that would be glib and mistaken.

Even on the US side, for all the errors undoubtedly made – which the US now accepts – to blame those for the chaos and carnage that followed is a leap that has to be very carefully analysed. Rereading the accounts of all the meetings, assessments and reassessments, the impression is not that of feckless or reckless people taking foolish or rash decisions; but is rather one of people straining to get policy right in a situation that was evolving, twisting and turning constantly, with highly unpredictable consequences for all.

So what lessons would I draw? This matters because we may well be in similar situations in the future.

First, assume the worst. We believed that Iraq had a functioning Civil Service, that the basic infrastructure of government was intact and capable. It wasn’t. Saddam had wrecked the country completely. Without the control exercised by sheer fear and force, there was nothing. Iraq was a total basket case. That will be the likelihood in such situations. Failed states are just that: failed. In every conceivable way, including security. In future we should be prepared for a shadow government to be in formation, ready for deployment – as we have provided for, through creating in 2004 what is now known as the Stabilisation Unit, an interdepartmental body that aims to support nations coming out of conflict.

Similarly, the troops needed for the military campaign may well be different from those required for the aftermath, and there was certainly a case for more troops, though it is also fair to point out that in certain parts of the country – in the south, for example – a greater foreign presence would have been resisted and resented. The point is, however, we should be in a position with sufficient flexibility for us to call on more troops and to have that call answered.

We are going to be in the position of nation-builders. We must accept that responsibility and acknowledge it and plan for it from the outset. That was clearly a failing in respect of Iraq.

Second, we need to build the indigenous local capacity on security as soon as possible. Tough stuff is plainly easier to do, and, politically, infinitely more sellable for local politicians under pressure, if done by local forces.

To be fair, in Iraq, this began almost immediately and, as has been recounted earlier, police academies and training facilities were being established in mid-2003. But creating a new Iraqi Army was a challenge of a wholly different order of magnitude. This took time. As my notes to President Bush in May and June 2004 indicate, General Petraeus, put in charge of the process of ‘Iraqi-isation’ of security, was excellent, and by then had in place a plan for the Iraqi forces. Also, partly because this theme of ‘Iraqi-isation’ had very much been my concept, we got the British deputy in beneath General Petraeus. But it was an immense logistical, technical and political effort. An army was being built from scratch. It needed training, an officer class, support units, equipment, legitimacy – and it needed all of this in circumstances where we had to be on constant watch for disloyalty or infiltration.

In June 2004, a further UN resolution gave the ISF the authority they needed and envisaged a timetable of handover. By November 2004, I was able to minute to the office that it looked like the Petraeus plan was working; but by the end of the year, as the terrorist attacks intensified, I returned time and again to the theme that we needed to improve the plan for ‘Iraqi-isation’ and somehow hasten its implementation.

The elections in January 2005 were obviously a critical moment. The insurgency was diverted towards stopping them. Allawi, prime minister up to the election, was deeply frustrated that he couldn’t provide the security his people wanted. I signed off an additional $120 million for Iraqi forces in the south. As I said: ‘Can I be sure it is essential? No. But I’ll take the risk rather than find six months later that it was.’

From then on through 2005, as Ayad Allawi was succeeded by Ibrahim Jaafari and then Jaafari by Nouri Maliki, I was in a constant dialogue with the US and my own people about how we could speedily improve the efficacy of the Iraqi forces. But the truth is, it was always going to take time. By 2007 they were ready, or at least in the first stages of proper capability, and in a sense maybe the surge was only going to work if it coincided with such a minimum capability. Going back over 2006, in particular, I am struck by the continual and detailed pushing for a better, faster, more effective plan.