Examination of Witnesses (Questions 2060
- 2079)
WEDNESDAY 21 JANUARY 2004
MR EDWARD
CHAPLIN CMG OBE, MS
CAROLYN MILLER,
AIR VICE
MARSHAL CLIVE
LOADER OBE AND
MR IAN
LEE
Q2060 Mike Gapes: If you have
hotlines. I do not think you have.
Mr Lee: No. That is a level of
operational information that I do not have to hand.[8]
Q2061 Mike Gapes: Perhaps
you can write us to if you find out?
Air Vice Marshal Loader: I suspect
there to be a whole range of routine contacts which the military
commanders have with people on the ground and the Iraqi civilians
in town hall meetings. There will be other less overt means but
I do not know off the top of my head but you can be sure there
will be a full gamut of contact, including, I am sure, taking
appropriate recognition of people who give important information
who, of course, will be in danger so it will be done in ways that
I would prefer not to discuss here.[9]
Q2062 Chairman: It is a little
bizarre because the policeman that Mike referred to who spoke
us to and expressed hope that the community would respond with
a large number of police officers. When we went to Bosnia every
copper in the world had a brother who was there, from people who
looked as though they were off the set of In the Heat of the
Night to those from Georgia with sunglasses on, Pakistanis,
Malaysians, the RUC, the MoD Police, it was an incredibly impressive
international operation. What Mr Gapes rightly said was it did
not appear to materialise. The private sector industry responded.
It seems rather strange that the private sector has reacted very
strongly to going in, some of who are unarmed. This is a rather
sad day.
Mr Lee: I think there is definitely
an issue here about deployable police, which is something that
there is not enough of internationally. The Balkans is a more
stable environment where arrangements have developed for putting
policemen into Bosnia and elsewhere. The situation we are talking
about here is a much more rapidly deployable force of international
policemen and it is a problem really that such a thing does not
exist. We get round it in different ways either by volunteers
from different places or the fact that some countries have carabinieri
type of forces who are part military and part police. We have
certain specialised forces who have extra capability. They are
used to carrying arms as a matter of course. Generally speaking
the United Kingdom does not have a force of that sort. It is something
which in this wider lessons learned process of how to deal with
all of these sort of conflicts and the aftermath period of conflict
which will come more to the fore as an issue, as the sort of civilian
resource that needs to be on hand, planned for. I believe that
police officers in the United Kingdom who are deployed would go
as volunteers. They would have to go as volunteers. They cannot
be ordered to go in in the same sense as the military.
Q2063 Mike Gapes: What particular
additional allowance and so on they would get?
Mr Lee: I am afraid I do not know
the terms and conditions, we would have to enquire through the
Home Office I suspect.[10]
Chairman: Thank you.
Q2064 Mr Hancock: I have some
questions to ask on that subject or related to that. Can I ask
when you write us to on the question that Dai asked you about,
the mine clearance and munitions, I was very interested in the
figure you gave, it was very impressive, that 600,000 munitions
have been destroyed, it would be a good indication for the Committee
if we know out of what sort of proportion is it 10 million munitions
expected to be found there. 600,000 is impressive but it is no
good if 600,000 bullets were destroyed and a considerable number
of landmines are still effectively laid. I was under the distinct
impression the Government were funding private mine clearing operations
in that part of the world, is that true?
Ms Miller: We funded two NGOs
and the UN.
Q2065 Mr Hancock: Are a private
organisation that specialises in mine clearing a bit like the
police we were told about earlier. Are we not involved in funding
private mine clearing?
Mr Lee: I just do not know. We
can include that in the note.[11]
Q2066 Mr Hancock: Can I go
back to the policing bit and Mike Gapes' question, the same as
in the Balkans, George Robertson had to virtually shake the NATO
countries and the EU, shake them up and say, "you have to
deliver your component of the MAPE exercise". It was undersubscribed
and took several years to get enough confidence in the police
force for countries to be willing to allow their personnel to
go in. We need to establish for the record what the British government
are doing. Like the Chairman I remember being in Albania meeting
Essex policemen teaching people community policing when at the
same time the kids were trying to sell us Kalashnikovs for $50.
They were talking about community policing in schools and kids
were selling guns in the street. The point here is, if you are
going to have confidence in the police in an area like Iraq, is
it wise to continue with the existing police force where people
would have seen them very much as part of the old regime? Is it
possible to continue to use these people?
Mr Lee: That is the question,
as to whether they would have been seen as part of the regime,
or would they have been seen as a necessary part of providing
a secure environment. In surveys that have been done in Iraq,
people's number one concern is security; having a secure environment.
They might well have taken the view that the Iraqi police service
providing that service would have been something they would have
welcomed, even though some elements, in a sense, would have been
associated with the old regime. As it was, as we have said several
times, the Iraqi Police Service disintegrated so they did not
have to face that question. Can I just say there is a fundamental
difference between the military forces and police forces? It is
an obvious one, I know, but we hold military forces as a contingency
force who are, by definition, there in order to be deployed to
trouble spots around the world. Generally speaking, countries
do not hold police forces as a contingency force, they have them
for policing in their own countries. So any deployment of policemen
overseas is taken at risk to local security in whichever country,
which is obviously going to be more of a problem. Whether countries
should have more police contingency forces which are maintained
for deployable purposes, I feel, is obviously a question that
does need to be addressed in the light of recent experiences.[12]
Q2067 Mr Hancock: Can I go
on to the question of the way in which you have given, as a government,
instructions to our military commanders, in the area where we
are responsible, for the way in which they co-opt local groups
to take control of the situation and how you prevent them being
seen to be very much the puppets of the coalition, and then resentment
builds against them. Then we are deploying troops to secure their
security. What is the advice?
Mr Lee: That is something which
we certainly agree can be done and can be a very useful method
of spreading the security effect. So that if it is possible to
identify local groups in a neighbourhood who are able to, on a
sort of "neighbourhood watch" basis, provide security
of a very basic type in an area and are deemed to be reliable
for doing that and not cause the sort of backlash that you are
referring to, then that is something that the commanders on the
ground need to judge and go ahead with. That is the sort of issue
which is very much delegated to the operational theatre and the
people there, who will know much better than we can from here
what the dynamics are of a local situation and whether the balance
of advantage is in allowing a certain neighbourhood to be more
or less self-policing. Obviously the overall responsibility for
security will remain, at the moment, with our forces, though they
will always retain the ability in Iraq to go in and sort something
out if they thought the situation was going off the rails. However,
it is not something we can dictate in a tactical sense from here.
Air Vice Marshal Loader: This
is the classic example of the British way of doing things on the
ground in the theatre; the theatre commander and his various commanders
beneath have their contacts with the local community, religious
and tribal leaders and so on, and they hold these town hall meetings
where certain initiatives are discussed: whether or not they are
practicable; what will be the reaction of the local populace to
them, and there is a sort of "taking ahead together".
So it would be clumsy to—and they do not—introduce
initiatives which will clearly get the back up of the majority
of the population; so it has to be movement forward together,
and that is the means by which it is done, very much this joint
council aspect that Ian mentioned earlier.
Q2068 Mr Hancock: You have
given us statistics about the numbers required and the fact that
in our sector it would appear that we have met the recruitment
levels and the targets we were set. When you write to us on other
matters, which you have been requested to do, can you write and
tell us about the retention of the people you have recruited—how
many of them have actually stayed the course—and could you
also tell us (and maybe you can answer this today—any one
of you) about the problems you have experienced where intimidation
is now forcing people to leave security forces once joined? We
understand, if you believe the reports that are coming out of
the Sunni triangle and more around Baghdad, and even now in northern
Iraq in the Kurdish areas, that police recruits have suddenly
started to leave in quite significant numbers because of threats
of intimidation on their family members and the wider family unit
is under quite distressing circumstances in the village somewhere—there
is widespread intimidation. Could you tell us whether or not that
is something you are experiencing now, what you can do about that,
whether or not you are forced into relocating these people so
that a policeman in Basra is not working in that area but somewhere
else? Is there a systematic system of giving them an opportunity
to serve in the police but, maybe, not where they are readily
identified—similar to what we exercised in Northern Ireland
for a long time?
Mr Lee: There is obviously a relationship
here between the overall security situation and this potential
problem of retention, or intimidation. If we can achieve general
improvements, by definition there will be less of a problem with
intimidation. I am not aware that we have a problem in our own
area of intimidation of the sort you are referring to. We can
certainly look into whether there are any examples of that and
what the retention rates are so far (it is early days, of course).
I think we have had reports recently, in the last few weeks, that
joining the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps is actually quite a popular
thing to do and is regarded at street level in Iraq as a good,
respectable profession. It is a new organisation and it is seen
as doing one's bit to provide renewed security, and it does not
have associations with the previous regime. So there are hopeful
indications on that front.
Q2069 Mr Hancock: Is there
any evidence at all that in the part that we administer British
authorities are turning a blind eye to the organised crime elements
that go on, in the sense of keeping them quiet? One of the press
reports that consistently comes up is that the Iraqi on the street
is unhappy because law and order has not been restored and that
crime now is the most significant element, particularly in our
area; where somebody is shot it is not for a political cause it
is because of settling a crime-related activity. Is there any
suggestion that we are unable to secure that criminal element
sufficiently to give you the confidence that law and order actually
does mean something?
Mr Lee: I would say quite the
reverse, actually. We have been quite active on this question
of dealing with crime. It is obviously a long-standing problem
in that area, where smuggling predates the conflict and probably
predates Saddam Hussein, but there have been a number of specific
operations targeted on dealing with criminals, and it is a very
high priority as a matter of course. Behind the additional battalions
that have moved forward into Iraq over the last three or four
months has been this question of providing capacity in order to
mount operations against criminals in addition to the mentoring
of the Iraqi police service, which obviously in itself is part
of the effort to deal with crime.[13]
Q2070 Mr Hancock: I only raise
this issue because one of the things that you hear consistently
in the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo, is
that despite the significant military presence, a very intensive
police presence and a retrained police force, the one element
that has flourished more than anything has been organised crime,
and the one thing that nobody has been able to deal with is the
fact that crime is still the biggest growth industry in the region.
It would be a terrible indictment on us if this were to be the
situation in Iraq.
Mr Lee: Indeed, I agree, crime
is undoubtedly a problem. The question is what is the answer?
I think our answer would be to deal with it in the short term
within the resources we have available and deal with in the longer
term by setting up indigenous Iraqi security forces and a whole
system of public administration in Iraq which can deal with the
problem. If you are asking me is it a serious problem, yes, I
would agree, yes, it is.
Q2071 Chairman: I have long
been interested in informal policing and non-state policing. A
good example of "neighbourhood watch" Iraqi-style is
the growth of militias who would not just give you a gentle reprimand
but might do far worse. In Maysan Province, clearly, militias
are operating, apparently under the authority of the British—or
the British are acquiescent to religious-led militias. If you
do not know perhaps you can find somebody that does, but to what
extent, certainly in Shiite areas, are there militias operating
and taking quasi policing functions—extreme Muslim style
or any other style—and are these to be equated with the
religious groups that one would find in Saudi Arabia or in Iraq—matawas?
Mr Chaplin: I do not think they
are equivalent to that, but on the extent to which militias are
operating in our area I will hand over to MoD.
Air Vice Marshal Loader: We will
have to come back to you, sir. In a time when, clearly, resources
in this regard, for maintaining law and order, are stretched,
then if they are producing the effect without undermining the
future civil structure of society—and here, obviously, CPA
and CPSL are important—then my suspicion is that it would
be allowed to carry on. I was aware of this a few months ago—
Mr Lee: It is definitely an assistance
in the short term. The quantification that you are after, I think
we will have to enquire about.
Q2072 Chairman: I think it
is Maysan Province. It is one thing having the good, old-fashioned
British style in India or in Nigeria, where you delegated to a
chieftain the responsibility for maintaining law and order, which
was done, but the worrying thing is if situations are fluid and
you delegate to somebody, either religious or political, and sub-contract
to him policing functions that you cannot control, then you are
not having delegated policing you are having purely self-serving
policing, for political or religious purposes, that takes on a
life of its own and is almost a prototype for a form of policing
that can take place at the time when the Americans or British
leave, which is not going to be Sir Robert Peel's London bobby
circa 1829.
Mr Chaplin: Just to make a comment
and a distinction there, I think when you are talking about militias
you are talking about paramilitary forces, of which the best known
operating in Iraq are the Peshmergas, the Kurdish forces in the
north, and in the south the Badr Brigade, so-called, associated
with SCIRI, one of the Shiite political parties. As the Air Vice
Marshal said, provided they are contributing and not undermining
the security of the areas they are operating in, they are left
alone and they will be subject to the process of building up a
new Iraqi army. There are plans at some stage to bring those militias
into the Iraqi army, and clearly that is going to take some time
and may have to wait until after the Iraqi government is established,
because that goes to the heart of what sort of armed forces they
are going to have, which is really a constitutional question.
Certainly the military will be taking action, I would guess, against
any armed group which was actively undermining security, because
our job is to provide the secure environment in which the political
process can take place of transition, according to the timetable
that has been set out for a transitional Iraqi government.
Chairman: The reason for this line of
questioning was an article we saw in the International Herald
Tribune on 15 July 2003 which said: "The British have
entrusted security in Maysan Province, which encompasses Amara
. . . to militia units called emergency brigades. These men answer
only to a self-appointed provincial council of Shiite religious
groups, which wants no one else to deal with the British. The
leader of the council, Abdul Karim Muhammadawi, has been named
to Iraq's new governing council . . ." etc. So that is something
that may be expedient in the short term but looks worrying in
the longer term. Just a few more questions to ask of another great
British success in Basra.
Q2073 Mr Havard: This follows
on, to a certain extent, the extent to which in trying to establish
civil leaders you end up choosing functionaries or end up reinforcing
personalised or otherwise networks—whether they be militias
or anyone else—and effectively just simply institutionalising
bodies that you, in a sense, were trying to get rid of in the
first place. From this whole question about, particularly, this
being problematic in terms of the idea of choosing potential Iraqi
governors, given this federal process (I do not want to go into
the detail of that, that is well-rehearsed) what lessons have
been learnt about how you go about identifying, choosing and anointing,
however temporarily or otherwise, potential and actual civic leaders
for the process?
Mr Lee: I think the lesson would
be "be careful".
Q2074 Mr Havard: I can write
that down!
Mr Lee: There is a tension that
exists between, on the one hand, wanting to get some contact with
local, responsible people quickly and, on the other hand, not
choosing someone who turns out to be the wrong person just because
you want speed. That is, I am afraid, something that can only
be judged in a particular circumstance at the time. I think, in
fact, the first person that was chosen as being the de facto
mayor in Basra turned out to be not acceptable.
Q2075 Mr Havard: An Iraqi
general.
Mr Lee: Initially he had appeared
to be quite respectable and it turned out that he was not. That
only emerged after a period of comments from his opponents and
so on. I do not think there is ever going to be an easy answer
to this; it is always going to be a short-term expedient in this
sort of situation and it is quite expressly that. I think the
important thing will be to make clear that it is a short-term
expedient and that one is trying to move towards some more legitimate
form of representative election, however that is organised—and
clearly there are complications with that but that must be the
aim—and some system which is organised and controlled by
the Iraqis themselves. These short-term arrangements have a place
in the whole life cycle of the operation but they are not going
to be a longer-term solution. They can have that risk of out-living
their usefulness if one gets too attached to them.
Q2076 Chairman: Hartlepool
chose a man dressed up as a monkey, so maybe as a nation—apparently
he turned out to be quite good—we are not too good at imposing
mayors or governors on anybody.
Mr Chaplin: I think one of the
things that the British Army is very good at is getting alongside
local leaders and feeling their way as to how to get the administration
going again. I referred earlier to the Provincial Council in Basra,
but that is an example of successful co-operation between the
military and the CPA, including some FCO people on the ground,
using Arabic language skills early on to talk to a wide range
of groups that were putting themselves forward as wanting to participate
in local government, and just by a process of shuttle diplomacy,
if you like, ensuring that one group was not completely unacceptable
to the rest and arriving at a Provincial Council which was broadly
acceptable and everybody working together as individuals rather
than representing political parties or factions in order to tackle
what was the most urgent priority, which was getting local government
up and running. That has been a success which has been replicated
elsewhere in other towns throughout the south and throughout Iraq.
Q2077 Mr Havard: That brings
me to the guts of what I want to ask, really, which is this difficult
question of what is being done to actually introduce a process
of political parties. If the declaration is an open, transparent
democracy with free elections, there may be arguments, which you
have just advanced, about expediency in the first term—take
what is available to you in order to create a stabilised situation
where you can introduce proper process—but what is actually
being done? I understand that this question was asked of our allies
in this regard, and certainly in America there were varying answers
given to it. We would like to know what is being done to move
on from the circumstances of immediate expediency to having a
party political democracy established.
Mr Chaplin: I think I have described
what we have been doing, and that is the first requirement and
that is all that is needed in this initial stage. It is not a
question of expediency, it is a question of finding a body of
local people who, as individuals, come together, form a local
council and are accepted. They are the instruments through which
money is spent on projects—money that is coming from the
Iraqi ministries in Baghdad. That is what is going on in the south
at the moment. The question of the formation of political parties
goes to the political process which only the Iraqis themselves
can decide. I do not think it is our job to encourage the setting
up of political parties. The drawing up of the law that would
regulate such political parties is something that can actually
only be decided upon by the transitional government. So the political
process as set out in the 15 November agreement by the Iraqi Governing
Council is designed to get to a situation by the end of June of
this year where you have a transitional assembly and then a new
transitional government, and only then will they be taking decisions
on the constitution and on what political structures you are going
to have, how you can run elections and the census that will probably
be needed to be carried out to prepare for those elections. That
all lies in the future. I think the key thing that we saw as our
responsibility was to create an environment in which preparations
for that process can take place.
Q2078 Mr Havard: So the objective
is not necessarily to set up a political-party-style democracy?
Mr Chaplin: No.
Q2079 Mr Havard: Why not?
Mr Chaplin: It is to set up a
process which allows Iraqis to choose what sort of political structures
they want. There are all sorts of questions in there, constitutional
as well as political questions, about whether they want a federal
structure, whether they want a centralised structure, the role
of Islam in the constitution, the protection of minorities—all
those things are sensitive matters on which it would be quite
wrong for outsiders to push one option or another; only Iraqis
can decide that. That process is going to take time.
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