Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1 - 19)

WEDNESDAY 23 JUNE 2004

MR MARTIN HOWARD AND MAJOR GENERAL NICK HOUGHTON

  Q1  Mr Viggers: Thank you for joining us. I am sorry that you were kept waiting a few minutes, we had some important business to do and we also had to vote twice which delayed us for half an hour before we commenced business this afternoon. Mr Howard, would you care to introduce yourself and your colleague?

  Mr Howard: I am Martin Howard and I am Director General, Operational Policy, Ministry of Defence. My colleague is Major General Nick Houghton, who is Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Operations).

  Q2  Mr Viggers: Thank you. May I start by asking you to explain the legal authority for the presence of British forces now in Iraq and post-30 June? Can you try to put that in terms which we and even the public can understand?

  Mr Howard: I shall try and do that, Chairman. We are obviously concerned that this is dealt with properly and we are dealing with it in a number of respects. In the first instance of course, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546 provides part of the legal basis, together with the side letters from Prime Minister Allawi and the US Secretary of State, and with the combination of those two things we are very content that that covers our authority to be there, our authority to carry out operations including offensive operations where necessary and also, if need be, to detain people in the event of the precise words "imperative security need" There are a number of other issues that need to be resolved before 30 June to do with what we would call a status of forces agreement. These are issues such as jurisdiction, access to country and in-country real estate issues. Those issues are being discussed now between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Interim Iraqi Government. The IIG, if I can use that abbreviation, is aware of what we need and understands what we need and it is really a question of sorting out precise mechanisms for giving protection and cover to our forces in those areas that I have described. We think it is most likely that this will be done by amending Coalition Provisional Authority or CPA orders which already exist and which cover these sort of issues for us in the pre-30 June environment. The Transitional Administrative Law does allow for CPA orders to continue after 30 June so it seems very likely that with the agreement of IIG the amendments to those will give us the cover we are looking for. That is where we are at the moment. There is still some work to do—it looks like it is mostly tidying up—but we are confident that it will be resolved by 30 June.

  Q3  Mr Viggers: And resolution 1546: "Notes that the presence of the multinational force is at the request of the incoming Interim Government of Iraq."

  Mr Howard: That is right, yes.

  Q4  Mr Viggers: Which of course was effectively appointed by the occupying forces?

  Mr Howard: I think the membership of the government was endorsed by the United Nations as well.

  Q5  Mr Viggers: So will there be a lacuna on 30 June or do you envisage that the negotiations will resolve that?

  Mr Howard: We believe they will be resolved by 30 June.

  Q6  Mr Viggers: Are there any practical differences between the mandates under Resolution 1511 and Resolution 1546?

  Mr Howard: I do not believe there are any differences. I do not believe there are any.

  Major General Houghton: Perhaps if I were to say that from the point of view of the way in which the multinational force will operate, quite clearly, prior to 30 June the way in which the coalition forces operated was very much within their own chain of command and to a strategy that was laid down by that chain of command. The major difference in reality on the ground post the 30th is what is described in UNSCR side letters as a partnership will exist between what is now known as the multinational force and the Iraqi sovereign authority. So there will not be, as it were, allowance for independent action taken outside the consensus of that partnership. That will play out on the ground through a series of cascading committees, at the top of which will sit the Ministerial Committee for National Security, which will be chaired by Dr Allawi, the Iraqi Prime Minister, and will have broad representation on that group from, amongst others, the MNF senior commanders and also from the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Defence and that will cascade down now to a national security executive group who, if you like, will turn that general strategy for the campaign into more detailed orders, one set of which will pass down the Iraqi chain of command and one down the MNF chain of command to ensure that there is a unity of effort in what is being carried out. That will then cascade further down so for example at provincial level there will be a provincial security committee. This provincial level will be chaired by the local governor and he will have representatives from both the MNF but also from within the various elements of the Iraqi security forces and police and so on. Similarly they will ensure unity of effort in carrying out the nature of the overall mandated mission.

  Q7  Mike Gapes: Can I probe a bit further on this. Both Security Council Resolution 1511 and Security Resolution 1546 talk about a multinational force under unified command and you have mentioned, Major General, a unified command. Do you envisage changes in command relationships for British forces after 30 June from what they are currently?

  Mr Howard: Within the MNF?

  Q8  Mike Gapes: I will explore the different levels of this. Do you in general envisage changes?

  Mr Howard: In general within the MNFI within that construct I do not think we will see any changes but there are obviously changes in the overall way in which we work with the Iraqi Authority, as General Houghton described.

  Q9  Mike Gapes: We visited Basra five weeks ago and there seemed to be, at least from my point of view, a sense that there was some freedom of action for commanders in the south and I am interested in how much freedom of action British commanders will have in their area of operations after these changes?

  Mr Howard: I think I go back to what General Houghton has said about the new environment we will be in post 30 June. At one level within MNFI the command position will be the same but we will be in a different situation where we will be working in partnership with the Iraqi Authority. Exactly how that plays out on the ground in practical terms will vary from location to location. I think the advice that we are receiving at the moment is that in three out of the four provinces after 30 June it is very likely that the Iraqi Security Authorities will be very much the visible face of the security forces.

  Q10  Mike Gapes: That is three of the four provinces in the South.

  Mr Howard: The precise ones are Al Basrah, Al-Muthanna and Dhi Qar. The exception, and General Houghton may want to amplify this, is Maysan which is more difficult particularly around al-Amarah. Nick, did you want say something?

  Major General Houghton: There are probably three new dynamics post-30 June. One is this concept of partnership with the Iraqi Sovereign Authority both at the national level and the local level with the local governor. The second is, as it were, the different security situation across Iraq which clearly is not uniform. There are some places that you might consider to be hot areas. In MND(SE) the hot area would be Maysan province but in other provinces, to all intents and purposes, the secure environment can be provided exclusively by Iraqi security forces, both military and police. Perhaps the third variable is actually the nature, quality, capability and level of maturity of those Iraqi security forces. Clearly they are not uniformly competent across the country and across the various elements of that security architecture. In some areas they are relatively well developed, relatively well trained and well equipped and are able effectively to take the lead in providing local security. In other areas they will still need on-going mentorship and in those areas where the quality of Iraqi security forces is still relatively immature and the nature of the threat is still relatively hostile, I would envisage that the primary means of delivering security will still be through the multinational force.

  Q11  Mike Gapes: In that context then would British commanders after the change have freedom to ignore US orders on military or political grounds?

  Mr Howard: I do not think the relationship between UK commanders and US commanders will change; in that sense it will remain the same.

  Q12  Mike Gapes: That did not answer my question.

  Mr Howard: Yes, I realise that but what I am saying is that I think the point of your question was to ask whether the situation was going to be different from 30 June. In that respect I do not think it is.

  Q13  Mike Gapes: But would we have freedom to ignore US orders?

  Major General Houghton: I think that we always have enjoyed that freedom. Every coalition member within his own national element effectively has a red card over certain issues, and that red card would still remain. But from an exclusively UK perspective we have an appropriate level of command throughout the United States chain of command—we have the Deputy Commanding General of the MNFI force, we have the Deputy Commanding General of the Multinational Corps, and clearly we command in our own area where the vast majority of British forces are—we have the ability to influence in a positive manner the nature of the strategy and the orders that are being passed down. I think that the requirement at the local level to have to deploy a red card is unlikely but clearly it is there as an ultimate safeguard.

  Q14  Mike Gapes: It is not just used in the Iraq context. General Jackson used it in Pristina and it was very effective.

  Major General Houghton: Exactly, it is a standard feature of a multinational force.

  Q15  Mike Gapes: What about not deploying a red card but taking action without US approval in cases other than self-defence, if you like the green card?

  Major General Houghton: In that respect clearly doctrinally the UK army works to mission command and therefore we set the overall context of the mission and allow that to be interpreted at the local level in the most appropriate way. Clearly commanders will act in accordance with the rules of engagement but they do not have to obey slavishly specific orders. They can interpret the commander's intent and carry out whatever operations are necessary to deliver on the mission that they are given. Again I do not see the requirement to obey slavishly or disobey in that respect. I think the sort of discretion that for instance the Commander MND(SE) is given is fine.

  Q16  Mike Gapes: What about with regard to training, would we be able to introduce training methods based on UK practice rather than US practice or will there be an attempt to try to have a unified all-Iraq system?

  Mr Howard: I think the approach—and I do not know all the detail—is essentially pragmatic. We have been responsible for some areas of training, the US have been responsible for others, and we have tended to use our own methods but there is nothing laid down about that saying that there must be British methods.

  Major General Houghton: You are talking about the training of the Iraqi security forces?

  Q17  Mike Gapes: Yes we visited a place—

  Major General Houghton: Yes, I think you would be quite right to say probably at the time of your visit that the nature in which the Iraq security forces were being equipped, trained and developed did have an element of the ad hoc about it. It was being driven bottom-up in response to local circumstances. It was because of this that a number of people felt that an early statement of a vision by Dr Allawi about what the medium-term destiny and architecture of the Iraqi security forces across the piece would be would then enable a standardisation of development. This is what was captured in Dr Allawi's statement of last weekend where he set out his vision for the Iraqi security forces, the police, and the destiny for the ICDC being involved in this new Iraqi national guard. From this setting out of the advice, as it were, we are then able to develop many of the policy issues relating to such things as dress, as pay, as redundancy, as training standards and these sorts of things, and Dr Allawi in making that statement also identified the priorities for training and equipping, particularly within what you might call the high-end capability of the Iraqi police and the Iraqi civil intervention force particularly giving that whole range of public order training, the sorts of things you might have seen on your visit, and within the Iraqi national intervention force, the first division of the Iraqi national army, to give that priority for a slightly more advanced level of counter-terrorist capability

  Mike Gapes: I will leave it there and allow my colleagues to continue.

  Q18  Rachel Squire: Continuing to follow on the current line of questioning, can I ask you to be as specific as possible as to at what level and by whom policy and strategic decisions will be made in respect of the British Armed Forces?

  Mr Howard: You mean in Iraq?

  Q19  Rachel Squire: Yes?

  Mr Howard: Obviously overall security policy, as General Houghton has explained, will be set by the Iraqis through their Ministerial Security Committee and, as we have also said, US, UK and other MNFI forces will be working in co-operation with the Iraqi authorities. So that is the philosophy under which we are working. In terms of how command will be exerted that will be through the normal British chain of command and that does not change.

  Major General Houghton: The chain of command flows from the Chief of Defence Staff to Chief of Joint Operations in Northwood and then it goes two ways, one to the senior British military representative in Iraq, General McColl, who clearly has distinct responsibilities operating at the highest levels of the American in-theatre chain of command and on a second track down to GOC MND(SE), General Andrew Stewart. That is the British chain of command but clearly British forces within theatre, although they operate within that UK chain of command also are operating within a theatre architecture at the top of which henceforth from 30 June will be the Ministerial Committee of National Security headed by Dr Allawi as Prime Minister on which will sit senior ministers within the Iraqi Interim Government and senior commanders from both within the Iraqi security forces and the multinational force, hence that unity of command and unity of effort within theatre.


 
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