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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 918-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
IRAQ: THE ROLE OF HUMANITARIAN AGENCIES IN POST-CONFLICT SITUATIONS
Wednesday 14 July 2004 SIR JEREMY GREENSTOCK, GCMG Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 50
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the International Development Committee on Wednesday 14 July 2004 Members present Tony Baldry, in the Chair John Barrett Hugh Bayley Mr Tony Colman Mr Piara S Khabra Chris McCafferty Mr Andrew Robathan Tony Worthington ________________ Witness: Sir Jeremy Greenstock, GCMG, Former UK Permanent Representative at the United Nations and Former UK Special Representative for Iraq, examined. Q1 Chairman: Thank you very much for coming and giving evidence. We are a Committee which monitors and scrutinises what DFID does and, by and large, we are concerned with now and the future rather than the past. There is however one issue which interests us. The last time we met you as a Committee was in New York. We were primarily at that time looking at issues relating to the World Trade Organisation, pre-Cancún, and you and your team were extremely helpful. As it happened, it was just at the time of the run up to the second resolution. I suppose for us, as a development committee, one of the things which interests us is contrasting what has been happening in Iraq with what happened in Afghanistan, where it was all pretty much under UN cover. At just about the time when there was a failure to get the second UN resolution in March 2004, you were interviewed by The Financial Times and you said, "We needed the Council", which I assume is obviously the Security Council, "to understand that the Iraqis' possessed weapons of mass destruction, because we had so much evidence of concealment going on, with all the communications and other activity, we knew it was there but they kept moving it." Just a few days ago on Breakfast with Frost I think you said, "There is no doubt the stockpiles that were feared might be there are not there", and you continued, "The evidence is just not there." I would not wish to put words in your mouth and you must tell me if I have this wrong but I think that you said that if there was the wrong analysis it was because there had been too much reliance placed upon Iraqi exiles. With all your experience at the UN and in Iraq, do you think that we would have had, from a development and reconstruction point of view, a more steady course if we had had UN cover throughout? Was the fact that we did not have UN cover throughout because our allies doubted all along the evidence that we were purporting to rely upon? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: We would have benefited from UN support and full UN secretariat agency funds and programmes operations throughout. There is no doubt about that and we can all agree on that. It is a question of why the UN found it difficult to produce that and the reasons from my perspective were both technical, security related and political. The context within which you put your question assumes a direct correlation with analysis of the WMD scene which does not fully reflect the complexities at the time or indeed now. To answer your direct question about the involvement of the United Nations, I think that the American led administration of Iraq started very well with the United Nations. The Secretary General had a full intention of the UN playing a role so long as there was a clear enough and practicable mandate from the Security Council and so long as the circumstances on the ground allowed it. The relationship between the team under Sergio Vieira De Mello and the Coalition Provisional Authority led by Ambassador Paul Bremer was in many respects a very good one. That was the political partnership between the coalition and the United Nations forming on the ground, under very able leadership on both sides. It was much more difficult in the early stages and indeed as we have seen since for the full, orthodox - if I can use that word - team of the United Nations to deploy in the way that it has deployed in Sierra Leone, East Timor, the Balkans and other parts of Africa. We can see from those instances, and from instances earlier in the UN's history over Namibia and Cambodia that the UN can play a highly effective role across the whole range of its capabilities as an agency. I am not talking about it as a forum; I am talking about it as an agency under the Secretary General. It was difficult in Iraq because it is always difficult immediately after a war with the military in control and in the chaos that naturally results from a period of conflict, but it remained difficult in Iraq because the security situation remained very difficult for outsiders and the UN had a particularly dramatic and nasty shock - indeed, a tragedy - in the 19 August 2003 bombing of the Canal Hotel and the killing of Sergio and many others. Since then, the UN has been highly reluctant, for very understandable reasons, to be present on the ground with international staff. We can come to that later if you wish to discuss the role of Lakhdar Brahimi but that is more in the realm of the politics of this issue and not particularly connected with the development aspects. The UN would have been a great resource in this period and was prevented mainly for practical reasons, but there was also a feeling within the UN secretariat that there was not sufficient political legitimacy to the military operation in their view, and that if the UN was being asked to go in and help the American led coalition during this period they were doing something which they had a strong distaste for because it was to help - shall we put it in crude terms? - the Americans out of a difficulty which they had created for themselves and which the UN had not specifically authorised. That was the strong feeling within the hierarchy of the United Nations. I think that may cover the points you have raised. Q2 Chairman: The truth of the matter is that the security situation in Iraq for UN agencies was no better and no worse than the security situation potentially in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the Secretary General was able to deploy the full UN family of agencies but as you have very fairly said the reason that that did not happen in Iraq was because of concerns of legitimacy of the actions by the coalition. That would be a fair summary, would it? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: In many respects. You need to remember perhaps that in Afghanistan the UN found it very difficult to deploy way beyond Kabul. It was a much more limited area over which the UN representative had UN control, whatever that meant on the ground, and there was a strong difference in terms of international activity in the Kabul area and the rest of Afghanistan. In Iraq, we had to deal with the whole of Iraq and we can come to look at what happens in various parts of Iraq if the Committee wishes to cover that. You are also right in saying that there was a much clearer UN authorisation for the operations both of the coalition forces and of the UN itself in Afghanistan than in Iraq. Chairman: It seems that one of the issues on security with Iraq is who does provide security in the rest of the country when the coalition forces withdraw. In Afghanistan, those issues of security have always been there. It is just who could one get to deploy to do it. I do not think the intention was that it would just be restricted to Kabul; it was simply the need to get sufficient UN backed troops on the ground. Q3 Tony Worthington: We did not know beforehand what the security condition was going to be. The military activity seemed to come to an end and there had been an anticipation that everything would be basically okay, but surely there was a wrong decision in the first place by the United States when they were talking about the humanitarian and the rebuilding aspect in setting up the operation under General Garner, answering to the Pentagon, that was going to be unacceptable for many NGOs and for the United Nations. That surely should have been foreseen? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Clearly with hindsight the proper preparations were not made for what evolved on the ground in Iraq. It is my personal view that that relative deficiency in analysis and prediction of what was going to happen created effects in the immediate post-conflict period which allowed a much worse security situation to evolve than should have been the case. It is not, as far as I know - and I certainly do not know the full story - the case that nobody in the United States administration or in the British Government predicted in some sense that it would be much more difficult; but it is true that the Pentagon were in control of the post-conflict operation, as of the conflict operation, and that some decisions they made and some choices they made had to be changed and improved upon as the situation evolved. That was clear anyway and, in objective terms, from the removal of General Jay Garner and his replacement by Ambassador Paul Bremer and by the replacement of the Office of Rehabilitation and Humanitarian Affairs, ORHA, with the Coalition Provisional Authority. Bremer and the CPA to some extent got down to a late start and I might add that in my perception it was due to Ambassador Bremer's professional talent and dynamism that in many areas that situation was turned round, but he of course was not responsible for the military side of the operation. Q4 Tony Worthington: You have put that very elegantly but it was not with hindsight. I am totally certain you knew it was a mistake, as I knew it was a mistake, as the NGOs knew it was a mistake to set up the Garner operation answerable to the Pentagon, and you knew that before. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: We did not know. We might have had our own preferences but we were not in control of the operation. It was only with the evolution of events that we have seen it so clearly as a mistake. Nobody, as far as I know, in the British Government tried to undo the Garner operation because we were behind American leadership on that, but I cannot really comment, because I do not know enough about it, on the precise exchanges between London and Washington over the preparations. I was in New York at the time with a different perspective. Q5 Tony Worthington: When people are criticising the state of humanitarian preparedness, I do not think they should leave out the fact that there was that fundamentally flawed decision to start with that made it difficult for the UN and any NGO because it tied them umbilically to the military situation. They were camp followers of the military which is unacceptable. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I think we need perhaps a little bit of historical perspective here also. Perhaps Iraq is not comparable in all respects with the situations in Germany and Japan after the Second World War, but they were very definitely military operations and the humanitarian development and economic and social assistance that was brought to Germany and Japan after 1945 was brought within a context of territories run by military occupation. There has been a history and a tradition and maybe a certain amount of good sense in having a military administration immediately after a conflict because you are not quite sure whether the conflict is truly over or not. There is an experience of the military in both handling a war situation and a post-conflict situation. That experience I think is more formed and more developed in the British Ministry of Defence perhaps than in the Pentagon, but I do not think it is my place here or necessarily relevant to development issues to discuss why this is perhaps not the case in the American administration. Q6 Hugh Bayley: We and Government need to learn from hindsight. You seem to accept that the occupying powers did not adequately fulfil their responsibilities to get basic services like water, electricity, healthcare, maybe food distribution, back on track or on track for the first time in the immediate post-conflict situation. What were the obstacles to getting those basic services up and running again? What advice would you give a prime minister facing a similar decision in the future, preparing for a similar military operation in the future, to ensure that those humanitarian needs are better dealt with in a post-conflict situation in the future? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Enormous and very commendable efforts were made to get water and electricity and food going immediately after the conflict period. You will remember quite a considerable amount of media attention was paid to the south and our getting water first of all tankered in by road, then piped in and then delivered from Kuwait etc. I think the British forces did rather well in that respect. I doubt whether any Members of the Committee can point to anybody who died on the spot through famine or thirst in the post-conflict period. It was a very messy situation. I think both the American and the British military and other members of the coalition performed rather well. I think it is perhaps relevant to look also at this from the other perspective. The United Nations, under Kofi Annan in the secretariat, predicted up to ten million refugees and people needing to be fed on the spot, as it were, by relief efforts. He indeed called members of the Security Council together to tell them that in the weeks before 19 March. No such humanitarian crisis of that magnitude occurred. People did not flee away from their places of residence or rush backwards and forwards, looking for food and water. The food distribution points that had been running under the Oil for Food Programme continued to work. Food continued to be imported or delivered from store houses. Water was available. A certain amount of perspective is needed in discussion of these matters. Remember that the military both in the British area and in the American areas were accompanied by civilian affairs officers, who were extremely competent and in many respects under-praised for their efforts in bringing relief to local communities in areas where the military were operating. Kurdistan was a separate area and NGOs and other agencies have been able to work with more access there and more security. In any case, Kurdistan was in a better state than Arab Iraq under Saddam. Remember also that Saddam's Iraq was a trashed state, exhausted, the infrastructure broken in many respects, the oil fields running on sixties technology, the electricity not working more than a few hours a day. If you look at the facts of delivery of these commodities and utilities, the coalition in the circumstances got back to the same state as under Saddam very quickly. If it is compared with other post-conflict situations in other parts of the world at other times in history, the performance in Iraq was not at all bad. There were three parts to your question. The obstacles were the poor state of the infrastructure in Iraq, the relative lack of numbers of coalition troops and other helpers available on the ground to run the Iraqi state in all aspects after the conflict, which was one of the elements perhaps of mis-analysis of the needs before the conflict; a certain amount of resistance but not much in the early stages and a situation in Iraq where there was no previous communication between the state and outside agencies and institutions that you do have in most other parts of the world. There was no pre-positioning of a lot of the commodities that were necessary in the state of Iraq. As the situation went on, it increasingly became a security situation and the relationship between the coalition and the population did cause the problem but I come back to the point that those obstacles were not so great that people were dying from the lack of supplies, not only not in great numbers but hardly at all. The subsistence level was kept going throughout this period. As for advice to the British Government if this should occur again, this gets mixed up with a whole complex of other things that need to be deduced from the Iraq situation. I would have thought that the British Government, Parliament and people would be extremely reluctant to get into this sort of situation again in the first place unless circumstances were different and we had much greater international partnership and UN direct authority and mandate to do this. That is one point. Secondly, it is my strong belief that in a post-conflict period it is wise to over-insure in the same way as the American and British militaries tend to over-insure for a conflict that they are going to win because they have the overwhelming resources to do so against the threat. There is no reason in my mind why post-conflict should not be as important as conflict in that respect. I also believe that security as a sector must be given overwhelming priority because it affects everything else. The supply of all the requirements of life is to some extent useless if there is no security to move it about and deliver it to people. That needs some further thought. I would also say that there was one good example to follow in what happened in Iraq in that the United Kingdom had a discrete area of operation in the south, where we were able to apply our own supply lines, our own methods, our own traditions, and the close association between the Ministry of Defence, the military and the Department for International Development and other economic agencies of the government in a way which worked quite efficiently for us and produced I think a relatively good result on the ground. There are some points of advice. Q7 Tony Worthington: Many people talk about there being a humanitarian crisis in Iraq. I am talking about the situation now, not immediately post-conflict. What is your assessment of the nature of the ongoing needs? Is it appropriate to talk of them and to address those needs as humanitarian needs? Is it really right, given the current level of terrorist violence, to talk about Iraq as a post-conflict situation or should we be talking about it as an ongoing conflict situation? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: On your first point, I believe that the situation in Iraq is extremely unusual. If there are models, which I am sure there are in DFID and elsewhere, for addressing a humanitarian crisis they will not have necessarily fitted the Iraq situation. It is more than a humanitarian crisis and it is not really a conventional, if I can use that term, humanitarian crisis. People are not dying in greater numbers after the conflict than they were under Saddam, setting aside Saddam's oppression, brutality and murder of people. The health system, the delivery system and the agricultural system were all working in very low order, at a very low level of competence, under Saddam and, to some extent, continue to do so. It was more a question of massive human needs across the whole political, economic and social spectrum. We are still talking about that in Iraq. I start again with security because I do not believe that you can settle these things or reinvest in a productive way unless the country is secure or, in most parts, secure. If you travel around Iraq, as many of us did, as many journalists did and many humanitarian workers did, you will find quite a vibrant, economic community working at a low level of economic sophistication. The farmers quickly got back to growing their crops. The irrigation systems started to work again. The food basket delivery system continued to work. In the municipalities, the towns, the cities and the rural areas, groups got together and started organising themselves. Things were imported and delivered. The trucking industry got going and became one of the largest industries in Iraq. Things actually began to work and the souks were full of goods and activity and trading profits. It does not fit the description that we are familiar with, say, in Africa, in the Congo, of populations cut off from human needs or being heavily and continuously abused by armed gangs, the military or whatever. There is no doubt that Iraq has massive investment needs to improve the current situation. I do not think you can say that there is still a conflict ongoing. That is not to say that the needs of the people may not be rather similar after the conflict to the period within the conflict, but the security situation is one much more related to massive terrorism and, in certain areas, local insurrection, than to a conflict. It is somewhere in between a conflict and a settled, stable state and will be for some time. Q8 Mr Khabra: With your sort of experience, you have direct experience of working in very difficult circumstances. Security has been a major problem and NGOs find it very difficult to work under those conditions. They take all sorts of risks to provide a service which is needed by many people in Iraq. Is it possible to tell us what sort of relationship NGOs had with the CPA and did the CPA take advice from the NGOs when making decisions and prioritising areas of their activity? Can you give some examples? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: NGOs are not present in great numbers in Iraq with their international staff. They have had the same difficulties as the United Nations. Many of them have maintained headquarters in Oman and some in Kuwait and other neighbours, some from Cyprus, but they have not had offices and working teams on the ground in the way that you would have seen in East Timor, Sierra Leone or the Balkans. The main reason for that is security. That continues to be the case. The Coalition Provisional Authority was very open to NGO exchange, discussion and advice. Sometimes, leaders of NGO institutions came to Baghdad and looked in on the CPA headquarters but they were not numerous and they were not regular. I can remember being visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross and by a representative from Amnesty. I would have to look back over the records. I cannot remember many others. I was not directly responsible for operational activity in these areas. Perhaps this is a general qualification of my appearance before the Committee on Iraq. I was not within the CPA hierarchy; I was representing the British responsibility within the coalition, but I was not in Bremer's operation. Bremer and I agreed that. It was not my job to have direct communication with NGOs working on the operational stuff on the ground, but I think my general description is correct. There may have been several NGOs who did call on the constituent parts of the CPA, particularly those dealing with food, health, education and supplies. The CPA was very open and the Americans were very proficient in listening to other people. There were a lot of NGOs interested in and working on women's issues, to give you a particular example. My wife was involved in that for a few weeks in Baghdad. There was a very good communication between the CPA and the NGOs who were able to have a presence on the ground. We should remember also that Kurdistan was an area where NGOs were able to operate. If you wanted to question those who had experience of rather more orthodox NGO work in Kurdistan, you might want to talk to the NGOs who were present there and to some of the political officers who were operating in the north, but there was obviously a different security situation there which shows how clearly it was that security was the main reason why it was difficult for NGOs. You might also have a word with those who are operating in CPA south because our Baghdad experience was different from the south and from Kurdistan and maybe at some stage you will be talking to the British deputy administrators who ran the show in Basra under Ambassador Bremer's direction. There was no doubt that the work that NGOs might have been able to do in Iraq was heavily constrained by the circumstances. Q9 Mr Khabra: The NGOs' perception in public, from your own experience, is considered to my knowledge as a process of service provision by the occupying power, that they are part of the occupying power. They are not independent entities. Are NGOs seen by the CPA as well as part of that process or are they considered as neutral bodies operating independently? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It is probably the case that there is more suspicion amongst Iraqis of outsiders generally, including the United Nations and NGOs, than you would find as an average situation elsewhere - that NGOs could become identified with working with the Saddam government in the past, as the UN had to do to deliver the Oil for Food Programme; or working with the coalition if there were areas of Iraq which resented the occupation as they saw it. I think this was a constraint on NGOs but I did not hear of any reluctance by Iraqis to deal with NGOs when they had something to offer the local community, with the exception of those who turned to terrorist methods to get rid, as they wished, of anybody who was working for the new administration of Iraq or who were in any way associated with the coalition. Outside that area, in spite of their suspicions from the past, I think that Iraqis were learning that NGOs were there to help them and welcomed their help. Q10 Chairman: To what extent have we got the country now divided into three areas: Kurdistan, Baghdad centred Iraq and south Iraq? Are these roughly separate entities? Are they going to continue as separate entities when we are thinking of long term reconstruction and development? Are we really effectively dealing with three very different regions with different histories, different backgrounds, different responses and different needs? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Not necessarily politically. We could spend a lot of time on Kurdistan, where it might be going and where it has come from. Clearly, Kurdistan is a separate area but the Kurds at this moment, as I understand it, and certainly when I was in Iraq, wish to contribute to a unified Iraq. So long as they are not denied their own culture and traditions and, to some extent, their own autonomous administration, they will contribute. Since they preserved their own security from Saddam, they were not in the same situation post-Saddam. It is only as a matter of interest to the Committee as a UK parliamentary organisation and to the UK government that I refer to the CPA south as a separate area. The Americans to a great extent let us get on with our own arrangements there with our own funding and very little American funding went into the south. We did it in our own style and in our own way. The Department for International Development developed their own projects almost entirely in that area, but Iraqis would not particularly make that distinction. They were just looking for outside help. It was the case that many Iraqis at least said to themselves and to us that perhaps the British understood Iraq more as a previous colonial power, for which they gave us some plus points and some minus points, than the Americans who had not had any colonial experience in Iraq or indeed almost anywhere else. They perceived a difference in the understanding of the Iraqi mentality which may have helped us at odd moments, but when the angry became angry they were going to be angry with whoever stood in their way. It did not make much difference in terms of attacks. Remember also that the Shiite community in the south is a more homogeneous community than elsewhere in Iraq, apart from Kurdistan because of the history over the last 35 years and the greater repression of that community by Saddam and because of their greater religious unity in the south, although it is not 100 per cent religious unity. We were lucky perhaps or wise in our choice in looking after the south which was the first to be liberated, more homogeneous, more anti the centre, more prepared to work with us to improve their situation. They did also readily appreciate the methods that the British were using. In some areas of the American administrative territory, there was the same relationship. Major General David Patreaus and the 101st Airborne Division around Mosul and in the north west had a very good relationship with most of their locals and General Patreaus was extremely imaginative in the way that he dealt with the local population in a pro-consular fashion. Other American officers were equally or almost as imaginative and competent in the way that they dealt with the most difficult areas, including Baghdad. The problems were so much greater that they led to different outcomes. Q11 Mr Robathan: Could I explore a little further the blurring of lines between the occupying forces and those trying to give assistance there? You have rightly highlighted the central nature of security to everything that has been done in Iraq and how important it has been to everybody. When Sergio De Mello was murdered, I think some UN agencies pulled out, did they not, for a short time at least? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Eventually, all of them pulled out. Q12 Mr Robathan: Any NGOs giving humanitarian assistance were very much put on their mettle. We know there were bodyguards out there but to what extent do coalition forces protect humanitarian agencies that are still operating out there? To what extent does that make anybody doing humanitarian work a target? Were they protecting the UN when the UN were attacked? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: There are several different strands of activity and thought in your question. There are not many humanitarian agencies with international workers on the ground. Those that are there, like many companies that are there, get protection from private security companies like Controlled Risks or the Global Risks Group and that has proved on the whole a reasonable way of seeking protection particularly from terrorism. The military were not in a position to offer personal protection for teams or for individuals under their remit and I think that is quite normal. You will need perhaps to ask these questions also of the Ministry of Defence and the Department of International Development because they will probably have a greater collection of experiences of the precise workings on the ground. You mentioned the blurring of image or whatever between the military and humanitarian workers. I am not sure that there was any real blurring. The military were doing quite a lot of project work and those working in the humanitarian area needed protection but they went about their respective businesses in a common sense way. It was not just humanitarian workers who became targeted by terrorists when terrorist targets moved from hard to soft targets. All sorts of people were hit. On one or two occasions they even went for schools. They went for women working for the coalition. They went for recruiting lines for the security services. They went for contractors and their staff. They went for people repairing pipelines and electricity pylons. They went for anybody whom they thought they could dissuade from continuing the business of reconstructing Iraq. It was not just in the humanitarian context that things became dangerous. It is my view that we need to be quite careful about assuming that there was a blurring. There was a mix of activities on the same territory but I think Iraqis could distinguish who was who and who was doing what, just as much as we could. In some ways, there is a lot of sense, as we found in dealing with Bosnia earlier in the nineties, in having the development agency working very closely with the military. Even in Bosnia with ODA staff following in closely behind British military, they were distinguished from the military by the villagers and townspeople of Bosnia with whom they were working. I think these things can be done without endangering the humanitarian staff. Q13 Mr Robathan: That is very helpful. In summary, you do not think that humanitarian staff were compromised by association with the military? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Not unless everybody is compromised by association with the military. Q14 Mr Robathan: I used to be in the military so I am very compromised. You were our ambassador at the United Nations, I believe, and were closely involved with what was going on in the UN Oil for Food Programme or knew a lot about it. In March 2000, I think you made a statement about the alleged corruption within the Oil for Food Programme. Is that correct? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I would have to check the date but from time to time it came up in the Security Council. Q15 Mr Robathan: Why do you think no action was taken to investigate that by the British Government until April 2001? This was our major humanitarian input, if you like, into Iraq. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I would have to look at my statement again. I can remember making comments in the Security Council about the corruption of the Iraqi officials dealing with it and that is what we were talking about at the time. A very strong theme during part of my time at the United Nations was the premium being paid by oil traders to the Saddam regime, which was much higher than any premium of oil traded in other parts of the world. In other words, the regime was milking off money from each barrel of oil sold and using it for its own purposes. There was also a lot of corruption within Iraq about the delivery of the payment for the use of the materials that were brought in under the Oil for Food Programme. The problem was that the Oil for Food Programme could not have run inside Iraq without the cooperation of the Iraqi government which ran the place with a rod of iron. Some compromises had to be made in terms of the corruption and poor governance of the Iraqi regime. I do not believe we were talking at the time of any corruption amongst UN officials or the operators outside of the Oil for Food Programme. The 661 Committee - that is, the sanctions committee of the Security Council that handled all the detail; and my operator on that committee knew one hundred times more than I did about the details of this programme - did not as far as my memory serves me bring up any matters of UN corruption at that time. Q16 Mr Robathan: It is particularly pertinent, given the situation now, because it is said by people in Iraq - and you might correct this - that much of the money that was milked off the Oil for Food Programme by the regime is now funding the insurgents, call them what you will, that are attacking the coalition in Iraq. Do you have any knowledge of that as well? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: This is a rhetorical point. The Saddam regime had money from a number of sources. After all, there was a huge smuggling operation going on in whisky, tobacco, all sorts of luxury goods, quite separate from the Oil for Food Programme. They were no doubt earning money through other nefarious or perhaps indeed legitimate activities which they salted away under the name of the regime or of the Saddam Hussein family. Maybe some of that money has been used to fund the activities of the Saddam former regime loyalists who have been practising terrorist activity inside Iraq. To link terrorism with siphoning off stuff from the Oil for Food Programme is making quite an artificial, rhetorical point. The fact is that there is money in the system from whatever sources that is going into both sorts of terrorism, the Iraqi former regime loyalist terrorism and the non-Iraqi, Al Qaeda type terrorism. That money comes from a range of sources. Some of it might be traceable back, if you could follow a dollar like a drop of water up a river system, to a particular source that was the 35 cent premium from the Oil for Food Programme. Q17 John Barrett: I would like to move to the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the treatment of detainees. As you will be aware, the ICRC is a recipient of quite significant DFID funding and the job they do is important. Included in that is ensuring there is proper treatment of prisoners and detainees according to international standards. Given our position in the coalition, would you say that the UK had a duty to ensure that Geneva Conventions were upheld and that we had to ensure that the Red Cross could carry out its functions? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Those two things are different. Obviously the UK in international legal terms under Security Council resolutions had a co-equal responsibility with the other lead coalition members, the United States, for the proper governance of Iraq. Then it came to the structure of the administration which was 90 % American and 5 or 6 % British and other nationalities were there also. One could look at individual responsibilities in different sectors of the administration in a line management sense and follow that up if you wished. As far as detainees were concerned, they were in the hands of the American military. The British were concerned about the procedures of handling detainees and we made fairly constant representations about the proper process of handling detainees. You may wish at some point to talk to Ann Clwyd about this as the Special Envoy of the Prime Minister on human rights and humanitarian issues in Iraq. There was also an experienced foreign office lawyer, Dame Audrey Glover, who ran for a while this year the human rights section of the CPA. Both of them and indeed my deputy, David Richmond, visited Abu Ghraib Prison and other sites, although they were not invited into all parts of the prison, and made representations about the proper handling of detainees in the sense of processing them through the law, in getting them to court, getting them named, registered and declared to their tribes and families and all the rest of it. The support for the ICRC is a different issue. The International Committee of the Red Cross, as I understand their policy over the years, have remained as independent as possible in any theatre of activity. They do not ask for support on the ground in case they are compromised by it. They came and saw me on a couple of occasions when I was in Baghdad, once to discuss the general situation and have what I would call a normal conversation about what was happening and, secondly, after a bomb went off near their building to discuss their possible return or security issues and what advice I would offer them. In that context, they never at any point raised with me, as I remember, the abuse of prisoners and never referred to their report on that subject or themselves brought it to my attention. Q18 John Barrett: Could I ask a question about the ICRC and their ability to do their job? I believe it is true, because it came out in the Australian Senate Committee hearings, that the minute the ICRC produced the report on detainees, up to the point of producing that report, they were allowed to have free access to prisons and, from the point of that report, free access was stopped. Is that your understanding? The reason I ask that is that we are trying to ensure that the ICRC are able to do their job and we are funding them. One would have thought that to produce a report on what was going on in prisons would have necessitated their free access. Following the report, that free access was immediately stopped. We are trying to face in two directions at the same time. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I cannot comment on the truth or otherwise of that because I do not know. This was not in our area of responsibility. You will need to ask the American system about that and, if so, why it was stopped. The normal approach of the British Government, which I was following and I am sure Ann Clwyd was following, was to give the International Committee of the Red Cross every support that we could within the terms of their own practice and tradition, which is not to seek a lot of support from other governments. Q19 John Barrett: You appreciate that stopping them having free access does not seem to be assisting them in their work. I want to find out about the legal advice that was available to yourself in your role. I am aware that the Australians had a Major O'Kane who was an Australian military lawyer. This Major O'Kane, it appears, was in fact reporting to a British lieutenant colonel who has been unnamed in all documentary evidence I have read. I was wondering, if Major O'Kane was reporting to a British lieutenant colonel about events happening in prisons, where would his reports go to? Were they working their way through the system? Were they ending up with yourselves or were they going to the Ministry of Defence? Are you aware of what happened? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I have never heard of that Australian name. I do not know to which British lieutenant colonel you are referring. I do not know of one within my team, in the team that I was generally responsible for within the CPA, and this was a military matter, not a civilian matter and might not have come inside the Coalition Provisional Authority. There were distinct pillars of activity. Q20 John Barrett: I do not know who he was either. The reason I am asking is to find out who knew what and when. Obviously there have been reports. There have been questions about what information was available in prisons and in detention centres. There is a question about who knew what when. I cannot name the military officer, but it has been referred to on a number of occasions, again in the Australian Senate Committee meetings. You are not able to throw any light on that at all? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Not from your description, no. There was a British military lawyer inside the Coalition Provisional Authority office of the general, legal counsel to Ambassador Bremer. I seem to remember he was a member of the Royal Air Force legal department and worked on certain issues but was not brought into every matter inside that office. I had my own personal, legal adviser that I asked the Foreign Office for because I wanted advice on the legal side of political matters that I was dealing with. There was an Australian in that same general counsel office called Colonel Kelly, but I do not recognise the description or the hierarchy that you are describing in respect of detainees. Q21 John Barrett: Did any official raise concerns about detainee conditions and treatment with you or did you ever hear any unofficial information about mistreatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Basra or any UK or US run detention facility in your time? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: No, not before the end of March. Q22 John Barrett: Did the ICRC ever mention the prisoner abuse allegations to you formally or informally in meetings with you or your officials? Were you also aware of any other ICRC documents that were circulating, apart from the reports that have been specifically mentioned? Were there any working documents that were circulated? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: No to all those questions, but let me explain one aspect of the delivery of the ICRC report (that you concluded from that question) to Ambassador Bremer. I was not aware that the ICRC were calling on Ambassador Bremer; they did not make any mention of it to me or did not ask me to be there, or send me a copy of the report. The legal adviser who was in my office was invited at the last minute to attend the meeting. He was not given a copy of the report. Because he understood from the meeting that some British activity had been referred to in the report, he got a copy of the report and made sure that the parts of it that referred to British activity in the south over the holding of prisoners were sent back to the Ministry of Defence. He discovered that actually our military arm in Baghdad were indeed sending those back to the MoD, so he correctly double-checked that the British responsibility in this area was being followed up and investigated. The copy of the report that he had, he let me know that he had it in his office and he sent me a minute, or showed me a copy of the telegram that he had sent to London, reporting on the meeting and saying that there were paragraphs or sections that referred to the British holding of prisoners and that he had handled it in the way that he had done, which I judged to have been the correct way. Because he did not make any mention of the American side of the abuse story or bring it to my attention I did not follow it up. I wish I had done. It was not incorrect of him not to have done that, we were all doing many other things at the time. So the report would have been available for me to read if somebody had directly drawn my attention to it, but they did not and I only learnt about it later. Q23 John Barrett: Finally, would you accept that the detaining power - that we were in the coalition at the time - whoever arrested or took control of prisoners, if these prisoners were then handed over to our coalition partners would it not be the responsibility of the original detainee of these prisoners to ensure the well-being of these prisoners? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I would have to take legal advice on that in the precise circumstances. A common-sense answer is that those who are holding them within the coalition take over the responsibility for the correct and legal handling of those prisoners. Q24 John Barrett: Finally, would you say that you felt you were in the loop? There have been media reports of concerns that you felt out of the loop of major decisions. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, do you feel that you were informed and kept adequately informed of all that you ought to have been aware of? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: To do my job in the political arena, yes, there was no doubt that I was fully in the loop. Those media comments are speculative and even, on some occasions, mischievous. I had a close relationship with Ambassador Bremer, I was invited into a whole range of these meetings. We had very good relationships between my office and all parts of the CPA and I have got nothing to complain about in that respect. Q25 Chris McCafferty: Sir Jeremy, you stated in your Channel 4 interview with Jon Snow that reports of prisoner abuse were assessed on the basis of how they related to UK forces. If I could quote from the transcript, I believe Jon Snow asked how come you had never read the report - and you have just referred to that with my colleague. To quote: "I could have seen it, if I'd had nothing else to read that day. I thought there were bits about the Brits in there which I glanced at, which were the Ministry of Defence's responsibilities ... But nobody told me there was all this stuff about the Americans, the Americans got on with it within their own system and didn't want us involved." Well, my question to you would be, do you not think that detention issues being so important, even those concerning only the Americans - given that we were involved with the US as part of the coalition - had any bearing at all on your role in Iraq? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: No. I do not think you can draw that deduction, that conclusion, from it. The Americans were running the show. We had British secondees or British civil servants in a number of different jobs around the coalition; they were doing their job in their own area. I was not part of the Coalition Provisional Authority; what Bremer chose to tell me or not tell me was his own decision. He would use the British advice and British assistance in those areas where he thought it would be useful. Q26 Chris McCafferty: You do make it sound as though our role in Iraq was rather a subservient one, which to me, personally, is a matter of regret. Can you tell the Committee, did you ever make representations yourself to your US counterparts, the CPA and the combined joint task force about allegations of mistreatment and, if so, when and to whom? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I have already explained that I did not know about allegations of mistreatment before I left Iraq, so I was not in a position to do so. I have already said that Ann Clwyd and I and other Britons involved on the ground did press the Americans quite regularly over the processing of detainees - that is how quickly they were recorded as having been arrested, declared to their communities, brought to court or told of their charges and otherwise processed through the law. In respect of your earlier comment, I think it is worth pointing out, as I pointed out to government ministers a month after I arrived in Baghdad, it is quite difficult to expect the British to have equal responsibility and influence with the Americans in a situation like that - shall we say 50 % of the influence because we held 50 % of the legal responsibility - when we put in 2-3 % of the resources. If you want influence you must correlate that influence with the resources that you are putting in. That was not done. Q27 Chris McCafferty: It has been suggested that prisoner abuse was not picked up because of problems in the lines of communication. In fact, some people have alleged that there was a deliberate block - a firewall, if you like - in the lines of communication between the ICRC and the occupying powers, between officials and politicians, between the UK and the US. What would be your view of that? Is that fair comment? If it is true, what lessons could be learnt for the future? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I do not think I know enough about it. It does not ring true to me. I think there were problems of communication within the US military, between the US military and the US civilian operation and there was a disinclination to allow full access to international observers in all parts of the prison system. That was my impression from outside in a general sense and remains my impression now, but I was not aware of all the detail. Q28 Chris McCafferty: One last question then: do you think the International Red Cross could have done more to get the message across about prisoner abuse and should the procedures be reviewed? Or do you feel that they are satisfactory as they are? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I wish the ICRC had come to me directly. There was clearly not much thought given, as they handed over the report to the Americans, to how to make sure that that report was going to be taken seriously, because I was in a position to do something that they did not enable me in the way that they acted. We also have to remember that the ICRC has to be very careful about politicisation if it is to operate globally, and it is very careful about that and I think that this was a constraint on their activity and a reason for their relative secrecy about their handling of their own report, but you would have to talk to them further about it. Q29 Mr Robathan: Sir Jeremy, I think you would agree that the allegations of prisoner abuse and the photographs that appeared in the newspaper have done immense damage to the cause (which I have to say I supported, of war in Iraq), both in this country, in America but, particularly, of course, in the Arab world and Iraq itself. This is something that people need to know about. A report arrived in your office, and I would not have expected you to have read everything that came into your office, of course - I think of the piles and piles and reams of paperwork coming through. I have got a report, and can I quote one line? It has talked already about people dying through torture and ill-treatment - "being paraded naked, acts of humiliation, standing naked against a wall, women's underwear over the head, being laughed at by guards, including female guards." I was once a staff officer and if I had read that I would have been amazed, and it would not have been just that I would report it upwards, I would have talked about it with my colleagues. So there must have been a large number of people, I am sure, who knew that this sort of thing was happening. Now, how do you explain the failure that this never reached your ears or the ears of the Government? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I was as horrified as you were when I heard the details of what had gone on. I think the explanation lies, to some extent, in the division between the American military pillar and the American civilian pillar. The CPA was not in charge of prisoners. I think that the system that I witnessed within the CPA and the US military was quite hierarchical. I am sure that if people had known more widely about it it would have been very fully discussed. So, clearly, when the report was received it was kept within a fairly narrow circle within the CPA. I do not remember it ever being referred to or mentioned at a morning meeting of general issues. My view is that you should be asking those in the American system who know about the detail if you wish to know further about the detail; it is not, perhaps, for me to comment on it. However, my view, having heard and seen the evidence of the abuse is that this was not just abuse of human rights in a particularly despicable way, this was thoroughly counter-productive for the objectives of the coalition. I would have been horrified immediately on the spot and I would have taken it up. It was just a chapter of accidents, I suppose, that that did not happen. Q30 Chairman: There is rather an important point of international law here, is there not? You say, "Take it up with the Americans"; you did not know about it and there was only the Americans dealing with it. You, quite fairly, early on in your evidence said - and we will have to read back through the transcript to get the exact words - words to the effect that we might not have gone into this endeavour in this way again. The fact of the matter is that we were part of the occupying powers under the Geneva Convention. The fact that we were simply occupying one part of Iraq and the Americans were occupying another part of Iraq, we were still, collectively, the occupying powers, were we not, and equally and jointly responsible and, indeed, liable for any failure under the Geneva Conventions of any part of this occupying power? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It just did not cross our imagination that these things were going on. Q31 Chairman: I am making a rather important and pedantic point. The fact of the matter is that we were as much part of the occupying powers as the United States. It is no defence to us under the Geneva Conventions to say "Terribly sorry, guv, these were our allies, we didn't know about it." That might be some mitigation but it is not a defence to prisoner abuse, is it? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I think you have to distinguish the theoretical from the practical. We were not in charge on the ground, we did not prepare the plans, and we were not giving the instructions. We were not informed of everything that was going on. Q32 Chairman: Is that not putting us in the worst of all possible worlds? Perhaps that is not a fair question to you, as a former official, but is one for ministers. However, here we were as part of an occupying power (that is what we were, an occupying power under the Geneva Conventions) and, effectively, what you are saying is that we were part of an occupying power where we simply did not know what was going on. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It does not happen like that on the ground. Are you going to address that question ---- Q33 Chairman: With respect, clearly it did happen like that on the ground because you very fairly told us that you did not know what was going on on the ground. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It does not happen like that on the ground that every coalition partner is told of everything that is going on; there are too many things going on - rightly or wrongly. There are 39 other coalition partners who all had a political responsibility, not a legal responsibility under UN resolutions. The flow of information was not very strong. Q34 Chairman: In Freetown there is a special court being conducted under the auspices of the UN on war crimes. One of those on trial was effectively a former government minister - they are not all rebels. There came a point when his conduct was deemed to go over the norms of what was acceptable and to constitute a war crime. There must have come a point, or there may come a point, where the treatment of prisoners, prisoner abuse, ceases to be that which is acceptable and becomes a war crime. It is not a defence to us, as part of the coalition, in those circumstances, that we did not know what was going on. Is it? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It may be. You would have to take legal advice on that as to where the responsibility lies in a particular operation, the responsibility of which has been taken on by a particular part of the coalition and where direct orders may or may not have been given within that area. You cannot say that because you are a member of a group you take legal responsibility for everything that any individual member of that group does. It is a question of law in the particular circumstances as to whether or not that is the case. I am not competent to answer that for you. Chairman: Maybe one of the things that this Committee may need to look at is what are the responsibilities of occupiers under the Geneva Conventions because it does seem to have become an increasingly grey area. Q35 Hugh Bayley: Just an observation. I am not a lawyer, far less an international lawyer, and I have not looked at the responsibilities, but if you look, as an analogy, at the post-Second World War occupations there were undoubtedly some dreadful things done by the Russians. I have to ask the question of our witness: were we as a joint occupying power in Germany at the end of the Second World War responsible for the dreadful things done to people who were repatriated to Russia? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I am afraid, Mr Bayley, I take that as a rhetorical question. Q36 Tony Worthington: I hope you can give us some reassurance. We keep reading about things like why Guantanamo Bay should not have the application of the Geneva Conventions, or redefinitions of torture. Can you give us a reassurance that as far as any British personnel were concerned there were no attempts whatsoever to do anything other than subscribe to the Convention on torture or follow the Geneva Conventions; that none of our people were party to anything that was weakening the rights of prisoners? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I cannot possibly give you that assurance, from my personal viewpoint, because I do not know enough about what was happening in the British military in the south. You would need to talk to the Ministry of Defence about that because nearly all the things you have been talking about this afternoon have been in the military area. Within my team in Baghdad I never saw any evidence of anything but a very courageous, proper and principled approach. Q37 Mr Robathan: Sir Jeremy, I have great sympathy with your position because you cannot, of course, know everything that happens in your headquarters, but when you say that we the British representatives in Iraq did not know what was happening at Abu Ghraib, I put it to you that this report was sent in February 2004 to your headquarters. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Sent by whom? Q38 Mr Robathan: The ICRC report. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It was not sent to us. I have just told you that earlier this afternoon, sir. Q39 Mr Robathan: But you said that somebody raised the issues of British treatment of prisoners as well. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Yes, he found a copy of the report, having attended the meeting, as an afterthought, and followed up responsibly those areas that might be directly the British responsibility. Q40 Mr Colman: Listening to this, about three weeks ago I was in Bosnia Herzegovina and I was thinking about the responsibilities of the UN troops in Srebenecia for the terrible massacre there and the terrible things that went on in Bosnia Herzegovina. Clearly, the answer is not always to have the UN involvement, maybe. In the case of Bosnia Herzegovina it is very interesting that that went forward and has been relatively successful, if you like, in terms of particularly the UK and the United States, although there are arguments around this. If I can bring us back to the role of the United Nations in Iraq, you have mentioned the very high state of preparedness that there was prior to the war in March 2003, and I can verify that, having met with the senior people of OCHA in Cyprus in March 2003. You talked about the work that was done by UNHCR in terms of preparing for what was thought to be very high numbers of potential refugees that would be leaving Iraq, and they did not leave. I was extremely impressed at the high level of readiness of the UN agencies that came in as soon as the war came to an end. Given that you said that the UN institutions pulled out after 19 August after the terrible bombing of the Canal Hotel and the death of Sergio Vieira de Mello, to what extent had the UN got in prior to 19 August? Were they operating in Kurdistan? Were they operating in the centre? Were they operating in the south? Was UNDP there on the ground working on the waterworks? Was UNICEF working on health? To what extent did it happen? After 19 August you said that they all pulled out, but did you mean only in the Central Baghdad area or did they continue to operate in Kurdistan? Did they continue to operate in the south? What has the UN been doing, if you like, over this last year and a bit since the end of the official part of the conflict and the end of the war? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I arrived in Baghdad on 12 September 2003, so I did not have any personal experience of the UN operating on the ground before 19 August, but I understand that both in Kurdistan, Baghdad and the south the UN was building up its teams and there were people in Sergio Vieira de Mello's office and in the Canal Hotel who were directing the humanitarian and service side of the UN as well as the political side. They were building up their teams and people were beginning to come into the Basra area and form sub-offices there. Probably UNICEF, UNHCR and the other most forward UN agencies were beginning to form teams in that area. After 19 August the work was frozen in shock, first of all, and then gradually during the next few weeks the international staff of those agencies were withdrawn and work on the ground was left in the hands of the national staff, that is Iraqis on the ground, to try to keep some sort of activity turning over at a very low level. I think during the months that I was there that activity reduced to a dribble but some work was done by some very brave Iraqi national staff. Q41 Mr Colman: Even in Kurdistan? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Including in Kurdistan, but I think there were probably more international staff in the north than elsewhere. In the end there were none elsewhere. Lakhdar Brahimi and other members of the UN Department of Political Affairs came back on visits in the early months of 2004 but nobody came back to reside there. Ross Mountain was appointed acting Special Representative of the Secretary General working from an office in Cyprus eventually, although it took some time to set up after his appointment, and he too came on visits. I am not aware, I am out of it now so you would need to ask the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development for details for this, but even up to now there are very few international staff workers of the UN on the ground because the necessary security arrangements are not in place to protect them and the Secretariat of the United Nations has very strong feelings about the need for UN staff not to expose themselves to further risk in Iraq. In effect, after 19 August the UN international operation came to a grinding halt and has not been restored on the soil of Iraq. Q42 Mr Colman: That was not on the basis of not having a humanitarian mandate, that was purely on the basis of security? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: If you look at the terms of Security Council Resolutions 1511 and 1546, the first last October and the second in May of this year, I think, you will see that the Secretary General is mandated to do certain things on the ground, including international humanitarian work, if circumstances permit, which is a loose reference to the security situation. So far the Secretary General has judged that circumstances do not permit. Q43 Mr Colman: The situation is the same as in Afghanistan in terms of the humanitarian mandate of the United Nations to be carried out and has been so over the last year, year and a bit, since the end of the conflict? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Yes, it is comparable. Q44 John Barrett: Am I right in thinking that you said to my colleague, Mr Robathan, that the ICRC report was never presented to your office? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I said that and that is the case. Q45 John Barrett: There was a meeting on 26 February with Ambassador Bremer and officials from your office when the ICRC formally presented the report on the treatment of detainees by the coalition. This was then reported to London the following day. The meeting did take place. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I tried to tell the story and, therefore, make the distinction. The ICRC never told me, with my separate responsibility, that this report existed. My legal advisor was asked at the last minute to attend the meeting but the ICRC did not give him a separate copy of the report. He got a copy of the report from the Americans and established that there were things that the British Government had to follow up and ensured that the report went into the channels that would follow that up. He did not see the need, and probably correctly, as far as the British part of it was concerned to involve me personally in the following up of the ICRC report by the British Government. Because I was not brought into it that does not mean to say that the British Government did not get the report, at least the paragraphs about the British behaviour, and follow it up and, indeed, follow-up action was taken, investigations were pursued and disciplinary action was taken where necessary, as I understand it, but you will have to ask the Ministry of Defence. Q46 Chairman: Just looking very briefly to the future. Sir Jeremy, what was your impression of the potential for elected local government in Iraq? How are the institutions going to emerge from the ground up? Do you see any prospects for that happening in the near future? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I think the reconstruction of local government in Iraq is extremely important. Iraq is potentially quite a sophisticated society by the standards of its region. There are civil society institutions existing even from the Saddam regime, although they were not hugely active. They have reconstituted their activity very quickly. Local government is the same. There are doctors, lawyers, academics, farmers and women's groups that immediately got down to activity and started to re-form. They are desperate for funds; they are desperate for international assistance and contacts. I think that Iraq has a good potential for re-forming civil society in a way which will help the growth of democratic institutions. As for local government, there is a long history of local government, of tribal government, of municipal and provincial government, which the CPA fostered and, in some instances, renewed and in many areas there have been actual democratic elections for mayors and governors and provincial councils. Paul Bremer ensured that there was a good deal of activity in these areas and there were CPA officials in every provincial capital pursuing this. I am sure that the current Iraqi interim and, later, transitional governments will pursue this, it is what Iraqis want and they have a very strong sense of devolution and local administration. There is a lot for the international community to plug into in terms of assisting local government. Q47 Chris McCafferty: Sadly, there appears to be a rising tide of violence against women in Iraq. There are some perceived difficulties about getting all women registered to vote, and I am thinking in terms of the full democratic elections which we hope will take place next year. In your view, is that the case? Do you think that some special mechanisms perhaps could be put in place to ensure that women (a) can register so that they have a vote, and (b) will be able to vote when the time comes? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Again, you raise two subjects that may be linked but are distinct. The violence against women to some extent has been endemic in Iraqi society under the Saddam regime and it is to be regretted if that tide of violence has not declined. I am not sure that it has risen further in the last few months. Q48 Chris McCafferty: Perhaps they are more aware of it. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I think they are more aware of it, they are fed up that it is continuing. We, the coalition, were trying very hard to reduce it. In the end it is a matter of community law and order as opposed to anti-terrorism law and order that needs to be pursued more heavily and I am sure that the Iraqi security forces and police forces are doing that. Certainly when the police forces were under the training and direction of the British and American police officers, and we had a particularly courageous and senior and able officer in Assistant Chief Constable Douglas Brand doing that, a lot of attention was paid to women's issues. On the voting side, I think we have achieved in the transitional administration law and regulations quite a success in getting women recognised as needing to be candidates in the election, in setting down in the law a figure of 25 % for women's representation in the new National Assembly and ensuring outside that, through the activity of the Democratic Institutions Section of the CPA, that women's groups are formed to take part in political and not just community and social action, and women are very enthusiastic in following it up. It does depend on security, so you have correctly linked the two issues, but there is an enormous amount of thought, money and activity that has gone into it. Q49 Hugh Bayley: You told us earlier that providing security is the single most important thing to do because other things flow from that: the ability of development agencies to do their work; their ability to fulfil their obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Therefore, it seems with hindsight that one of the mistakes in the way that the post-conflict situation has been handled is that not enough troops have been put on the ground. Is that your view? If so, how do you assess the requirements for troops in these sorts of situations? Finally, are the troops that we have and the Americans have high tech, well armed troops, the sort of troops who are best for dealing with post-conflict situations, or might one do better with more low tech troops from less developed countries? Greater numbers with low tech troops. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It is my view that not enough troops were present on the ground for the post-conflict situation. I believe that one of the lessons we need to learn from this whole story is that you need to over-insure in the post-conflict period as in the conflict. I think this story has been taken up in the American context by the re-examination of the advice of General Shinseki who said before the conflict began to his bosses in the Pentagon, "You are going to need", I think it was "500,000 troops" or several hundred thousand troops, and that advice was not accepted. Perhaps that should be left to develop, and I hope it will develop, as a debate in the American system. That just happens to be my personal view, for what that is worth, you can take more professional views from the Ministry of Defence and from Government ministers. I think from a distant view the British troops were properly equipped. I am not talking about the availability of equipment, I am talking about the instruments that they had at their disposal for the job that they were doing. They did do it in a different style. Remember, they actually put down their equipment, took off their helmets and flak jackets and, as it were, went amongst the people. I think that the military lesson to be learned there may be, but it needs more professional military assessment, that taking that risk in the early stages saves lives of your soldiers later. It was predictable that in other areas the use of heavy force against pinpoint attacks or pinpoint threats against the coalition was in some respects counterproductive and dangerous in that the resentment caused amongst the wider area that felt the force of the attack, or the response, produced greater resentment and anger and, later, actual attacks. Perhaps Fallujah is the history of that, although I think Fallujah is the worse place so you cannot say that was the average result, that was the worst result. In Samarah, in Baquba and Tikrit, Ramadi and elsewhere, it was clear that after some fairly firm treatment that things began to improve. I also think that there needs to be the training at least of parts of your military machine to do the post-conflict situation and not apply conflict methods to a post-conflict situation. That is another lesson that must be learned in detail. The American military in particular have not gone down that route up to this point in history. I think the British have learned a lot from their colonial, Northern Ireland and other experiences. I commented earlier on the fact that we had a less difficult area in the south than the Americans did, so I am not making a pejorative American/British assessment here, I am just saying that we have had different experiences and our military have different training. It is not a high tech, low tech thing, it is a matter of what you use on the ground in a particular situation. You must have the high tech capability to make sure that you cannot be strategically defeated but you must have low tech, tactical practices that suit the situation on the ground. That is the distinction to make. Q50 Mr Robathan: Sir Jeremy, I am sorry to bother you with this again, I am being rather tiresome, but I am really somewhat dissatisfied with your response about the ICRC report. I have in front of me a letter from the Foreign Secretary dated 11 May to Michael Ancram and it states: "Ambassador Bremer and officials" - plural - "from the office of the UK Special Representative had a meeting with ICRC representatives on 26 February, at which the ICRC formally presented their report on the treatment of detainees". When you formally present a report, you do not just hand it over, you actually talk about it obviously because that is why you have the meeting. The meeting was reported to London in a classified telegram from your office, it was signed "Greenstock" in the usual way that telegrams are signed by Heads of Mission, you were not at the meeting. Whilst I am very happy to accept you did not know what was in the report, I think you will agree from this letter from the Foreign Secretary that officials in your office must have known the contents of that report. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: You will need to ask them because I never discussed it with them in the terms of your asking this question. What I know is that I did not know what was in that report. Since we were taking up, as it were, issues of less intensity with the Americans that we wanted to see improvements in, you can take it that if I had known it I would have taken this up. Mr Robathan: Thank you. Chairman: I think something that we can all agree on is, as you yourself have said, Sir Jeremy, whatever happened at Abu Ghraib it was very counterproductive and we would probably say it was something that actually stained us all in that I think we would never wish to see those sorts of incidents again in circumstances where we had a scintilla or a suggestion of influence. Sir Jeremy, thank you very much for coming and giving evidence this afternoon, for your candour on some quite complex issues, helping us understand the inter-relationships of various parts of this story. I think we will all read the transcript of what you have had to say with very considerable interest. We are very grateful to you for coming and appearing before the Committee, very many thanks. |