Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-33)
MR RAJA
JARRAH, MR
NICK GUTTMAN,
MR ADAM
LEACH AND
MR MIKE
AAARONSON
TUESDAY 10 JUNE 2003
Q20 Ann Clwyd: I just wanted to take
you up on what you said about de-Ba'athification. The truth is,
of course, that local people, the Iraqis themselves, wanted to
get rid of some people from the ministries because of their record.
It is erroneous to suggest that everybody who was a member of
the Ba'ath party has been removed from the ministries or the police
or from the military. They have not. There are various layers
of Ba'ath party control, and it is really the highest strata that
are being removed. Occasionally, of course, for example, just
last week it was discovered that a Ba'ath political cell was regrouping
in the central police station. It is local people themselves who
blow the whistle very often. Now that the CPA has set up a de-Ba'athification
council to advise on the way that process should take place, that
will enable whoever is making those decisions to make the right
decisions, but there must also be some form of appeal, because
some people may be denounced because somebody does not like them,
not because of the role they played in the previous administration.
I was there just last week and that is the reality of what is
going on. Whereas the CPA in the early days did keep people in
post, those people are now being removed. At one of the women's
meetings that I went to organised by the CPA, women were denouncing
other women for their role in the Ba'ath party. So local people
can sort it out pretty well.
Mr Guttmann: I agree entirely;
local people can sort it out very well for themselves. They know
who the people were who were committing the atrocities. In the
towns and in the villages it is known, which is why I was saying
it is important that there is local control, with the right of
appeal, of course, rather than something being led by ideological
views about getting rid of the whole top four layers. Some of
them should be removed, some from the lower layers probably should
also be removed, but it is the people themselves who are best
placed to know who they are. That is what I mean by taking a more
pragmatic approach.
Q21 Alistair Burt: Can I raise two
or three practical issues that have been highlighted by the media
as a result of what has happened? Firstly, water. All the agencies
pick out the issues affecting water supplies as being of major
concern. CARE says "While water is available, albeit erratically,
in most parts of Baghdad and elsewhere, the state of the sanitation
system is more worrying." UNICEF say, "Lack of grid
electricity is a major problem. Water treatment plants are operating
on generators or not at all. Water and sewage treatment plants
are extremely dependent on the availability of electricity."
Do you think more could have been done to highlight water as a
likely pressing issue in the run-up to the conflict? What is your
assessment of the accessibility of Iraqis to clean water throughout
the country at the moment? What is your sense and your estimate
of the likelihood of disease breaking out as a result of the problems
of sanitation? Could one or other of you give us a brief rundown
on those issues?
Mr Jarrah: You have put your finger
on the biggest problem that we foresee in the next few months
from the humanitarian point of view. If as much energy had been
put into repairing and rehabilitating the electricity infrastructure
as was put into securing the oil installations, we would perhaps
have a better water supply situation in Iraq now, leading up to
the hot summer months. Apart from electricity, the other key bottleneck
that we are seeing at the moment is a shortage of chlorine in
the country, which is needed for water treatment. CARE has been
working in south and central Iraq for about 12 years, and round
about this time of year there is always an increase in water-borne
disease simply because of the reduced quantities of clean water
available. This year the indication is that the incidence of childhood
diarrhoea is three or four times the usual rate that is experienced
at this time, and we see that as an early signal of a possible
epidemic this coming summer. That is going to be compounded by
the fact that the health infrastructure cannot cope. There are
shortages of key drugs, as well as of staff and logistical support
for hospitals. We see that as the biggest immediate problem that
might hit our television screens.
Q22 Alistair Burt: Do you see anything
in place at the moment which gives you any confidence that this
is currently being adequately addressed? Although there must inevitably
be a time lag in trying to catch up to where we would like to
be, do you think adequate steps are currently being taken, or
is enough not being done to secure clean, safe water in the near
future?
Mr Jarrah: The way you phrased
that question is really important. We do not see it. It may well
be that there are plans afoot, and it may well be that there is
a contingency operation being prepared right now. I quite take
your point that these things do take time to set up, but there
has been no information about it, no dialogue about it, and there
are no indications that anything like that is in hand.
Mr Leach: If I may add to that,
in addition to not seeing it, I think it is extremely difficult
for UNICEF, the delegated lead for the UN system, to co-ordinate
a response and to make sure that adequate provision is made. It
is a double problem: it is a problem of lack of disclosure, but
also lack of opportunity for UNICEF, in this case, to do its job.
Mr Aaronson: With regard to the
first half of your question, whether anything more could have
been done to highlight the importance of this, certainly it was
highlighted by all of us in a major way. As long ago as last September,
Save the Children was pointing out that only 46 per cent of the
rural population of Iraq had access to piped water, and already,
even then, issues of sanitation were a major factor in the health
of Iraqi children, and the likelihood of that being disrupted
by a war was very high. So, again, this was foreseeable.
Q23 Alistair Burt: Turning to hospitals,
what plans were you aware of to ensure that hospitals remained
operational? What is your assessment of hospitals' access to water
and electricity supplies at the moment? What is your knowledge
of hospital staff being paid or not paid at the moment? What is
the impact of uncollected waste from hospitals festering in nearby
areas? Do you have a sense that this is an issue which is being
tackled, or do hospitals remain seriously hazardous places?
Mr Jarrah: One of the casualties
of the dismantling of the previous Iraqi government is that the
Ministry of Health is no longer operational, and one of the things
that they were very good at was assembling information about the
state of the country's health infrastructure, with systematic
information about the state of the hospitals, epidemiological
data and so on. None of that is now being collected in any systematic
way. We have anecdotal information about hospitals that are faring
well, and we have anecdotal information about hospitals that are
in really dire circumstances. But there is no overall picture
about the current state across the board. Without an operating
Ministry of Health, we do not know how that overall picture can
be arrived at.
Q24 Alistair Burt: We were all shocked
and to some degree surprised at the immediate scale of looting
in the aftermath of the conflict, and that the most bizarre equipment
was removed from hospitals, which would appear to have had no
other value beyond being in a hospital, for example incubators.
Again, to what extent, in your judgment, could the scale of looting
have been anticipated by the authorities? We hear that some places
that have been repaired, such as water treatment plants, have
been looted again. What do you have that better precautions could
have been put in place, and do you think they are there now?
Mr Guttmann: I think there certainly
could have been better preparations to have avoided the looting,
had the occupying powers provided the security that was needed
and taken that on as a responsibility. In Amarah, which is, as
I said, an area that I went to, some of the people I was speaking
to said, "We are very pleased to have had the British here,"
even though the British did not actually overthrow the regime
there; it crumbed by itself. The one thing they would not forgive
them for was their failure at that very early stage to provide
security for the hospitals, schools and other public institutions,
to stop the looting. The looting in a place like that was an upsurge
of people's anger at the previous regime. Schools, hospitals and
government buildings were seen as symbols of the previous regime.
Q25 Alistair Burt: Hospital incubators
were seen as symbols of the previous regime?
Mr Guttmann: I do not know; I
cannot answer whether hospital incubators were seen as that. But
the institutions themselves were, and therefore anything was seen
as fair game, which is wrong, but is what seemed to happen. There
was also common criminality. You have to remember that 70,000
ordinary prisoners were released from the prisons just before
the war started, and people probably thought, "Oh, here's
our chance to take some stuff, and maybe we can sell it back after
the conflict." That is common criminality. More recently,
people have been talking about organised crime, and maybe that
is what has happened to the water treatment plants.
Mr Aaronson: Could I add something
to that? I hope this does not sound glib; it is not meant to.
We have to recognise that, if we are going to intervene in a massive
way in somebody else's country, it is highly unlikely that we
will be able to anticipate how ordinary people are going to react,
and I think a degree of humility in anticipating the consequences
of our actions is an important thing to learn from what has happened
in Iraq.
Mr Jarrah: Can I make an additional
point on that question? Some of the looting of hospital supplies
was actually benign, if you can call it that, in that the drugs
and the bandages and some of the more minor medical equipment
reappeared in neighbourhood clinics run by community organisations.
So it was creating an alternative health facility for local communities
to what was seen as the centralised party system.
Q26 Ann Clwyd: You have partly answered
the questions I was going to ask you about co-ordination. It was
very difficult to get into the CPA. I found it difficult to get
into the CPA. I could only go in with somebody who had a badge,
and there were very few of those badges issued. It was a matter
of security, and the difficulty of trying to secure that building,
with several road blocks before you got into it. There was difficulty
with communication, if you wanted to communicate from outside
the building, because there were no land lines, only satellite
phones which worked intermittently. Sometimes you might try on
six occasions to contact somebody inside that building, and unless
you persisted, you very often found that you did not make contact
at all. One has to look at it also in that context, of difficulty
of communication in general, because of the phone problem and
the problem over security. We all agree that there is a problem
of security, and the people working in ORHA became over-defensive,
because they could not get out of the building very easily, so
they could not communicate with the people they wanted to contact
outside. Obviously, communicating by telephone is extremely important
to the proper running of any organisation for interaction between
people, and those things need to be put right.
Mr Guttmann: Communication can
be established. There also has to be a will among the people inside
the security zone to make more effort to get out and to communicate.
I think there were problems with Baghdad communicating with the
south, and ORHA were hardly establishing themselves at all two
weeks ago, and they were saying, "Maybe in three weeks or
so we might get our staff there." I would have hoped the
CPA could have got things going faster, but I think they did have
a role to try harder to get out of there.
Q27 John Barrett: I would like to
ask a question about resources and also about the timescale. You
mentioned earlier on that in order to get on and do the job, the
military, having done their job, need to have moved on. How do
you see the timescale unfolding? Do you see the military presence
being extended, with consequent delay in the opportunity for NGOs
to get on and do their job?
Mr Jarrah: I think there is going
to be a longer term need for some kind of backstopping function
in Iraq that does not necessarily require it to be a very visible
one or one that flies under the flag of the coalition forces.
In the best of all possible worlds, if the United Nations were
given the mandate and the resources to oversee both the civil
security aspect of the post-war situation, as well as the coordination
of the rehabilitation efforts, we could get on with our jobs tomorrow.
The problem for us is that we do not know how long it is going
to be before that space is created for us.
Mr Leach: I would agree with that.
Q28 John Barrett: On the question
of the availability of resources, there have been a number of
appeals and so on. Do you envisage the resources being available
when you need them, and are there local authority resources out
there that you need access to, for instance, for rubbish collection
and so on?
Mr Aaronson: I think it is worth
pointing out that the latest data on the level of funding of the
UN appeal is that it is only funded to the extent of 44 per cent
of requirements. So there is a serious issue about under-funding
of UN agencies, which needs to be resolved quickly.
Q29 John Barrett: Apart from the
under-funding, you cannot really move until you have this space?
Mr Jarrah: Yes. Iraq is fundamentally
a rich country, and it should not require its social services
to be run by NGOs or any other outsider. It is simply a stop-gap
measure until Iraqi institutions are functioning using Iraqi resources.
Q30 Mr Colman: We were in New York
at the United Nations when the flash appeal was launched for Iraq,
which was for $2 billion, and that was to go through to September.
You mentioned 44 per cent is funded, and added to that has to
be the money which has come through the Oil for Food programme.
It seems to be a very fudged issue. My question is, are you being
consulted about the next flash appeal, which will take us through
beyond September? Are you formulating what is needed? Is it a
repeat of the $2 billion? Does it need to be structured in a different
way? Should there be more for mine-clearing, which we have not
mentioned? Does there need to be more emphasis on the fact that
UNICEF are asking for continuity in funding for dealing with water
and electricity? Are you being consulted on the next phase of
the appeal, and could you tell us anything about it?
Mr Aaronson: The short answer
is not yet. I can only say that I would have confidence that we
would be consulted. To the extent that the UN is in a position
to orchestrate an appeal, I am quite sure that we will be able
to input into that.
Q31 Mr Battle: We learned from some
of our evidence sessions that before the war some 60 per cent
of the people were dependent on food distribution, and the Minister
of State said that the food distribution system was resumed on
1 June. Is that your experience, and is it working?
Mr Aaronson: It is true that food
is now starting to be positioned for distribution through the
pre-existing food distribution network. That is a good thing.
Save the Children has done some survey work in some of the poorer
parts of Baghdad, and, if I may, I would just like to read a brief
paragraph recording some of the conclusions of that. This is from
a small sample of households, and it is from one district of Baghdad,
so I put a caveat on it in terms of extrapolating. The report
reads, "Of the 20 households surveyed, only 20 per cent had
sufficient to sustain a minimum standard of living, assuming that
their basic food energy needs are met by the ration, the remaining
households falling more or less below this level. The strategies
available to households are (i) to reduce consumption and expenditure,
(ii) to use savings, (iii) to sell assets and ration stocks, (iv)
to take loans or to seek gifts and charity. The picture which
emerges is of a general and continuing economic collapse, leading
to a wholesale fall in the standard of living, and a growing strata
of impoverished, and in some cases virtually destitute households."
I think the point about the food distribution is that it will
obviously provide a lifeline to families that have become progressively
impoverished over a long period of time, actually going back before
the war, and who are now reduced to selling their carpets as their
only means. They may have also lost a wage earner in the fighting.
We need to understand that it is vital that food distribution
resumes, but it will only keep those most destitute people alive
and it cannot in anyway be a substitute for kick-starting the
economy in a way that benefits the poorest people. It is as much
about poor people having some kind of purchasing power and being
able to trade—historically they have been able to trade
some of the food ration to buy other necessities, and that is
what they are not able to do at present. Although the food distribution
system is about to start again, I did want to highlight the extreme
precariousness of people in food security terms.
Q32 Mr Battle: Just to follow up
on kick-starting the economy, particularly the agricultural economy,
in Afghanistan after the conflict there, the food distribution
system did get up and going, but there was no real work put into
alternative seeds and crops, so what happened was that everyone
fell back into growing poppy, and we are back where we started
with acres of heroin coming out of Afghanistan. Are there any
proposals for seeds for farmers in Iraq? Are the farmers starting
to plant the next crop? Are there any signs of an alternative
economy?
Mr Aaronson: You are absolutely
right, and there is a critical issue right now, because planting
of some crops needs to take place fairly soon. There is undoubtedly
still a great shortage of seeds and other agricultural inputs
that will be needed for that. It is true that there is still not
really any medium-term strategy as far as food security is concerned.
Mr Guttmann: One of the things
that is very important, and I hope has actually happened, is that
the crops which were planted and in previous years sold to the
government—the Iraqi government purchased the lion's share
of wheat that was grown in Iraq—will be purchased by WFP
as they said they would. It is very important to make sure that
really does happen, so that funds from the food purchased can
go to the farmers who produced it, and there will still be an
incentive next year to plant. Historically, the government has
always purchased the lion's share of locally produced food.
Mr Jarrah: Also, in urban areas
there has always been a local economy of market gardening based
on grey water, growing vegetables. One of the side effects of
water quality going down is that that grey water is now blacker
and not even suitable for irrigation for market gardening crops.
Q33 Mr Battle: Refugees are returning.
Is that causing tensions, divisions into ethnic groups? Is that
an issue at all, or is it working out reasonably well?
Mr Guttmann: I think there is
a huge potential for difficulty in that area. Certainly, in the
north, Kurdish people forced from their homes over the last 20
or more years may well wish to return to areas which have been
settled by Arab populations from other parts of Iraq. There is
a huge potential there for difficulties in the future, and we
must all be very cautious about how we approach those problems.
It is likely that there will be problems, as we have seen in the
north and down to Kirkuk. Already there are tensions between the
Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen communities there. Also, with refugees
coming back from Iran, there will be dangers. As to how to deal
with it, I do not have any answers, but we must approach this
with extreme care.
Mr Leach: On the subject of kick-starting
the economy, can I also put before the Committee the point about
the value of Iraq's sovereign debt, which is an estimated $260
billion, and the fact that every citizen carries an $11,000 bill
for the debt. We feel very strongly that this is an unsustainable
level of debt and is fundamentally unpayable. Also, it should
not be paid on moral grounds. If we are talking about Iraqis recovering
some kind of livelihood, we think it is really important that
this issue is taken up.
Chairman: Thank you all very much. Without
wishing to put words in your mouth, what comes through is a situation
where clearly the humanitarian programme had not been thought
through at the time of the military campaign. It is now being
worked out on an ad hoc basis almost day by day. A lot is clearly
going to depend upon the Secretary General's Special Representative,
and just how effective he is in pulling everyone together and
helping provide you with the humanitarian space that you and others
need to deliver humanitarian aid. There is not an immediate humanitarian
crisis in terms of people dropping like flies; we do not have
the situation we had in Afghanistan prior to the intervention
there. On the other hand, it is uncertain whether the situation
is going to improve or deteriorate over the next few weeks and
months. The House comes back in September for a two-week period,
and what we would probably like to do is to reconvene some time
during that period to receive an assessment. Either you will be
able to come back and tell us very briefly that things are improving
and starting to mesh together, or the situation will be deteriorating
because, picking up something Raja said, people are losing goodwill
day by day and more and more Iraqis are feeling alienated and
it will have gone the other way. The Committee would like to revisit
this issue with you in September.
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