Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360
- 379)
WEDNESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2005
MR MARTIN
HOWARD, LT
GENERAL JOHN
MCCOLL
CBE DSO, MAJOR GENERAL
NICK HOUGHTON
CBE AND MAJOR
GENERAL BILL
ROLLO CBE
Q360 Mr Cran: If I could go on, Chairman,
to the question of numbers. I know, Mr Howard, you rather dismissed
this and said you are not getting into that, but I rather would
like to get into that for just a second because others have. General
Abizaid himself in November 2003 said he thought there were around
5,000. General Shahwani, who as I understand it is the Iraqi intelligence
chief, says there are 40,000 hard core fighters, along with 200,000
part-time fighters, who provide intelligence, logistics, shelter
and all the rest of it. Have you made any estimates of this? Other
people are, but are you not doing it?
Mr Howard: We obviously do intelligence
assessments of the insurgency all the time but I do not think
we try to put any precise numbers. It is interesting that the
two numbers you have quoted, Mr Cran, are wildly different and
may equally be valid or invalid depending on how you measure it.
It is so hard: do you count someone as being part of the insurgency
if, because they do not have a job and because they feel they
are being excluded, they occasionally go out and take a pot-shot
at a passing convoy? Is that someone you would include in the
insurgency? I think that is debatable. At the other end of the
extreme, someone who is making bombs and planting bombs clearly
is part of it. Experience of insurgencies elsewhere suggests that
sometimes the hard core could be quite small, but I think it would
be very difficult for us to come up with a number that is really
very meaningful. But I have not actually sort of double-checked
on our most recent intelligence assessments. I will go back and
check again to see if we have come up with numbers, but my feeling
is that they would have to be hedged around with all sorts of
caveats. It is not a question of not wanting to give you numbers
or dismissing them, but it just is a precision which is not justified.
Q361 Mr Cran: I must say I am surprised
that you have not tried to estimate the numbers, if for no other
reason than as a policymaker, and perhaps the Secretary of State
for Defence, perhaps the Prime Minister, knowing that they would
like to get out of Iraq sometime, I would like to know whether
the insurgency is growing or getting smaller. Yet no estimates
of that have been made between our American allies and ourselves.
Mr Howard: I can double-check
to see if we have produced any numerical analysis, but actually
the more useful analysis for us is an analysis of incident types
and numbers. That is a better measure of the effectiveness of
the insurgency. The extent to which they are using new technology
in their weapons and things like that, is more useful to us in
measuring the strength in insurgency. It is actually more useful
to people on the ground who have to deal with it.
Major General Rollo: If I may
go back very slightly, while we all share an analysis of the three
different groups within the insurgency, they do of course apply
at different levels in different places. In the South-East, if
I may take them in turn: Zarqawi—where we had the bombs
last April and then virtually nothing until, as I understand it,
some things very recently around the elections—no attraction
there, no apparent interest in coming down there, and not much
of a welcome to be had, for fairly obvious reasons: he does not
like the Shia; they do not like him. The FRE—again, Sunni-based—at
present, certainly in terms of activity, at very low levels: one
or two bomb making teams, a trickle of incidents. They do not
go away, every now and again you catch some of them, and then
nothing happens for a period—which I think reflects on the
fact that the numbers you are dealing with are small, because
a relatively low level of attrition on them appears to have quite
a major effect on their activity. Then you have al-Sadr and his
militia or his organisation, which, seen from Baghdad, is definitely
a second order problem, but, seen from Basra, is clearly my principal
problem. Not an issue in June and July, because he was part of
the political process; in August, clearly it was a very big issue.
If you look at the number of incidents in August, there was a
huge great spike, and at the end of August, broadly speaking,
it went right back down to where it was. So the politics of this
are critical. If al-Sadr is within the political process and is
content with that, then, while he may have some people who do
not want to go along with that or continue to carry out a low
level of attacks just to prove they are still the big men or they
are still in town, essentially it is not a major security issue.
Were that to change, it would be, but this is where I would come
back to your point on numbers. In August, they were quite a strong
organisation, there were quite a lot of people around; after that,
in terms of activity and the number of people taking part in hostile
action to us, very small. How you estimate that in terms of numbers
is quite difficult.
Major General Houghton: There
is a fascination on numbers, both on how many numbers are within
the various insurgent groupings and, indeed, on the other side,
what is the numerical strength of the build-up of the Iraqi security
forces. But, in many respects, although it is interesting, because
you can put a numerical metric against it, it is not that relevant
to the pursuit of a counter-insurgency. It is actually to do with
the motivation of the leadership and the mechanisms that command
control, intelligence feed, and those sorts of things within both
the insurgent side of the equation and the Iraqi security force
side of the equation. Most things can move. A relatively small
number of people, well motivated, well led and with a good cellular
structure which is intelligence-fed, can be a significantly dangerous
insurgency but in numerical terms it can be quite small. I think
we ought to try to resist the temptation for a numerical quantification,
as if you only defeat an insurgency by attributing a certain numerical
strength within it. Clearly that is not the nature of the way
the counter-insurgency operation is conducted.
Q362 Mr Cran: I think you have all
convinced me. What you now have to do is to get all these other
generals to stop talking about numbers and then it will stop us
talking about numbers. Is it your collective view, based on where
we are at the minute, that this is containable; that is, the threat
that the insurgents pose is indeed containable. It is containable
not only when British and American forces are in Iraq but also
when we depart.
Mr Howard: That is our assessment.
We cannot sit back in a satisfied way. It will still require a
lot of hard work in terms of dealing directly with the insurgency
and building up the ability of the Iraqi security forces to deal
with it. But, yes, if that works and that continues—and,
crucially, the political process continues and has the broad support
of the Iraqi people—then certainly the insurgency is containable.
Q363 Chairman: I suspect the Iraqi
Government will be rather robust in seeking out those who are
trying to destroy it. I have one small question that you may or
may not be prepared to answer. They seem to have a limitless supply
of young men and women who are prepared to kill themselves and
anybody else within distance. Do you have any idea who is supplying
these people? Are they Iraqis? Are they external? Is it a mosque
that is the breeding ground for suicide bombers? Are you prepared
to disclose anything on that which you might have?[3]
Mr Howard: I think there are probably
limits to what we can say in open session about that. We could
look to see if there was any written material which we could provide
on a classified basis for that. But the one thing I would say
is that I do not think there is any single source of supply. The
suicide bombers have more exclusively been involved with Zarqawi.
He has been a major source of them. He has declared Iraq as a
key theatre, if you like, for a broader campaign against the West,
and so there is an element of people going to Iraq because that
is where the action is, where the fighting is—rather in
the same way as Afghanistan was 10 years ago. But I do not think
I would want to go into any more detail on that.
Lt General McColl: The analysis,
at least during the time I was there, was that relatively few
of the suicide bombers are Iraqis. The majority of those come
from elsewhere across the Middle East and from elsewhere.
Q364 Mr Jones: On this point about
numbers, I wonder whether it is a view shared by our US allies,
because, when David and I visited Afghanistan a year ago, the
head of operations from the US side in Pakistan was very much
talking about how he saw his role as that of counter-insurgency
and it was a body count. He referred to the fact. Is it a different
philosophy they have in Afghanistan from that in Iraq? Or are
the Americans saying one thing—
Mr Howard: There are obviously
differences in philosophy, in terms of how we present things between
the US and the UK, and I am not in any sense saying one is better
than the other. There is also a sense in your specific example,
Mr Jones, where a coalition force, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan,
is able to say, "We have killed or captured x numbers of
insurgents or terrorists" and that is clearly a perfectly
valid statement to make.
Q365 Mr Jones: He was far more open
than that. He saw this like a successful indicator of his operation.
He had photographs of "dead Taliban" as he called them,
"a body count". Certainly we saw that and we very alarmingly
said, "How do you know you have got the right people?"
Major General Houghton: I think
if you are talking about at a particular time, 12 months ago,
Taliban, then you are talking about a different nature of operation
and enemy. You are not talking about necessarily a counter-insurgency;
you are talking about relatively well-founded military capability
which was indulging in relatively conventional open tactic. In
that respect, an attritional approach to determining success does
have some merit in it. But, if you are talking about a relatively
covert counter-insurgency, then the attritional approach is not
the right one. I think we are contrasting two separate theatres
and enemies there rather than necessarily talking about the same
thing.
Lt General McColl: I would just
make the observation that the security line of operations, both
in Afghanistan and in Iraq, will really only serve to contain
the insurgency. Winning the insurgency is won along the lines
of governance and economy, and, within that observation, I do
not think it is particularly helpful to talk in terms of numbers
and body counts
Q366 Mr Havard: If I could turn to
the counter-insurgency operations, their conduct and so on and
the lessons we have learned as far as that is concerned. By accident,
I saw a programme on the television last night dealing with the
Americans in Vietnam. They started off by measuring business as
an attrition rate of the numbers of Vietnamese they were killing.
There are parallels in terms of how you deal with operations on
the ground, because there is a great difference between the methodologies
employed by the British and the Americans. As you know, this is
a matter of some contention. Mention was made earlier on of the
conduct of operations in relation to Fallujah, for example, where
the net effect or result of Fallujah may be to disperse people
or to undermine them and make them, as I think you said, General,
now to be "not a strategic threat". But the question
all the time is: Are the counter-insurgency techniques being done
in such a way that they are, if you like, killing it off? Fallujah
was at one point billed as the death blow for these people. Clearly,
it was not that. All the questions about proportionality of response,
human rights issues, how you deploy on the ground are obviously
the meat and drink of this discussion. I would like to know, in
conducting counter-insurgency operations, are there specific lessons
we are learning about how we change our own approach and how we
will deploy? Because future capabilities tell us that more often
than not in the future we will be in coalitions and very often
coalitions with the Americans. Are there specific lessons coming
off the ground and how are they being accommodated?
Mr Howard: In general, we are
always learning lessons, because, as the insurgency develops,
we develop new tactics to deal with it. I think at the heart of
it we need a clear campaign plan. I know that John, when he was
in Baghdad, was very heavily involved in producing the overall
coalition campaign plan for dealing with insurgency. Perhaps you
would like to say something about that, John, to give a background.
Lt General McColl: Just to give
some balance to the impression of the way the Americans consider
and think about the campaign. I particularly make the point that
when General Casey arrived and Ambassador Negroponte arrived they
were very clear that an integrated campaign which wrapped together
the security line of operation, the governance line, the economic
line and the information line, was absolutely critically. In fact,
when General Casey arrived, part of our initial conversations
was a comparison of the way operations were conducted in Vietnam
and the way in which they were conducted in Malaya and the lessons
that could be drawn from that and the requirement for this kind
of integrated approach. He set in train a set of work, in which
British officers were centrally involved, to produce a campaign
which did wrap together all of those lines of operation and, indeed,
which integrated with the Iraqis—because of course the Iraqis
were critical to this as well. So I think it would be unfair to
characterise the American understanding of the counter-insurgency
campaign as in any way being naive. Of course, there are—and
we have discussed this before—significant differences in
the way in which the Americans have to conduct their campaign,
by dint of the areas of Iraq in which they are based and the threat
with which they are faced.
Mr Howard: Just on Fallujah, which
you have picked up, Mr Howard, there is no doubt that in October
and November Fallujah had to be dealt with. One could argue about
the best way of dealing with it and the timing, but the point
I would make is that, firstly, it was ultimately the Iraqi Government
that said, "This has to be dealt with" and for very
political reasons it had to be dealt with. Secondly, I would say
that it was actually successful in dealing with the problem of
Fallujah. It had become a sort of ungoverned space, where terrorists
were able to operate freely, and that is no longer the case. There
are still lots of problems, in terms of restored services and
so on, and that work needs to go on, but it would certainly be
wrong to describe the Fallujah operation as a failure, because
actually it did succeed in what it was intended to do.
Q367 Mr Havard: I do not want to
debate Fallujah with you but I would say that you destroyed two-thirds
of the city, you knackered the infrastructure and murdered other
people—human rights issues. There is an alternative view
about what actually went on in order to achieve that success,
therefore, in relation to neutralising some capacity for insurgence.
So proportionality and how you do it, that is a different debate,
in one sense. But in a sense it is not, because it is how do you
win the hearts and minds thing; how do you conduct operations
that are hard operations to sort people out, pull them out of
the community, all of that, at the same time as doing that. This
is being done day-to-day on the ground as well. Fallujah is one
big incident, but there is a lot of that activity happening, with
small platoons out doing it day by day. I am trying to find out
what the lessons we learn are and how we view that coincidental
with the Americans. Because, if you are saying to me, "We
have one single area where the Americans are operating, which
is where all the bad boys are, and we have another area in the
South which is more benign and therefore we can afford to employ
different tactics," to some extent that would be true. But
that is not really getting at the question I was trying to get
at of how you are part of a combined approach, so that you get
some unity across the whole area in terms of the end result. Because
we are trying, as I understand it, to keep Iraq within its current
borders, not break it into three states.
Mr Howard: That is certainly true.
I think John made a very telling point in describing the development
of the campaign plan with its three or four lines of operation,
of which security is only one—and that campaign plan is
a national campaign plan for Iraq, but the point to make is that,
in different parts of Iraq, the emphasis inevitably will be on
different parts of the lines of operation. In areas such as MND
(SE), overwhelmingly the emphasis can be on governance, on economic
development and on the so-called "hearts and minds"
operations, and, elsewhere in Iraq, where indeed we do not operate
and where the Americans are operating very effectively, the same
thing applies. But when you are facing an insurgency which is
actually becoming very violent and very effective, from time to
time you will need to take the harder-edged security measures.
It so happens that they tended to be concentrated in particular
areas for reasons we have discussed.
Q368 Mr Havard: Could I step down
a level from the big picture to the operations on the ground.
The suggestion is that in the short term the US and UK operational
concepts are antithetical and in the long term are mutually exclusive.
What I am trying to get at is that we went on a number of occasions—and
we visited Northern Ireland last year, and essentially it is the
Northern Ireland experience, the Malayan experience, the Cyprus
experience of dealing with counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency—the
same sort of idea—and what you will see is this nexus between
the military and the police and how you deploy on the ground.
In Northern Ireland, you can see the way in which the British
would work: they would expect to deploy in a way that, once they
had an incident, they would tend to be more moving towards trying
to hand it over to the police service to deal with the crime.
So there is a question on how the Americans work and how the British
work day to day and what lessons there are on that.
Mr Howard: I think I might ask
one of my military colleagues to say a little about that. Shall
I start with you, Bill, and you can talk in general terms.
Major General Rollo: I suppose
my preamble would be that I did not feel I was conducting a counter-insurgency
in the South East. There was not an insurgency—there was
in August, but the rest of the time there was not. I had a counter-terrorist
campaign going on, against a very small number of people, and
quite a lot of what I did was designed to make sure I did not
have to do a counter-insurgency. The maintenance of consent was
always on our minds, and, fundamentally, we intended to win it
by making progress politically and on the economic side, which
would remove any underlying reason for .... We went back to motivation,
Chairman. But if you felt that part of al-Sadr's motivation and
ability to recruit was based on the fact that there were a large
number of unemployed young men, then clearly getting the economy
going at one end, and having a political process which is clearly
independent of us, was part of removing that motivation. That
is what we were doing. If I looked at my peer group, the American
divisional commanders, who I used to meet up with once a month,
and the sort of conversations we had round the table, there was
absolutely no doubt in their minds that they wanted to be able
to do the same thing, that money was ammunition. When I think
of General Corelli in Baghdad, he could not have been clearer
that the way to solve the issues there was by improving life for
the occupants of the North East. He would wax eloquent on it,
if I may put it as politely as that. He was vehement about it.
So there was no lack of understanding at that level about what
they wanted to do. If you look at the minor tactics, we were fortunate
in Basra in that we did not on the whole face a threat from suicide
bombers, and that allows you to treat people normally: soft caps
when you can, you drive normally. When you go to Baghdad, or,
indeed, when the Black Watch went up to North Babel, the threat
was different. If a car had driven around a roadblock in Basra,
you would not immediately think it was out to come up beside you
and blow itself up, which allows you to treat it in a number of
slightly different ways. In North Babel, that was different, and
the rules were different, and everybody understood it—both
the civil population and us—that that car was a potential
suicide bomb and had to be treated as such. People's response
had to sharpen up as well, and it was not so easy to play the
"soft caps/hearts and minds" side. To some extent, you
respond to the threat you face. I think we always understood it,
but going to North Babel made that very clear.
Q369 Mr Havard: So that was more
counter-insurgency than counter-terrorism.
Major General Rollo: Very much
so, yes.
Q370 Mr Havard: It was all a matter
of stopping it happening and—
Major General Rollo: Yes.
Lt General McColl: I would just
make the point that there is an element of attrition in counter-insurgency.
You do need to deal with the threat you are faced with and so
there will always be an element of attrition, and the degree of
attrition depends upon the threat—which really is the point
Bill has made. In terms of the synchronisation of the campaign,
there is a process in Baghdad for the synchronisation of the campaign,
to which Bill has just referred, which occurred once a month,
in order to make sure we were all following the priorities along
the lines of development. Interestingly enough, my recollection
of those synchronisation boards was that they were all about the
economic line of operation. It was all about how we could improve
the lives of the individuals. And, when there was not discussion
about that, it was normally about governance and the way in which
we were going to empower people. So, if there is what you might
regard as an over-reliance upon attrition in the American area,
it is not because that is what they want to do, it is because
that is what they have to do because of the circumstances they
are faced with. The final point: you mention police primacy. There
is a clear understanding in Iraq of police primacy amongst the
Iraqis and, indeed, with the Americans, but in order to do that
you need to have a circumstance in which the police can operate
and you need a police force that can operate, and in a lot of
the American areas neither of those two factors currently exist
and we are in the process of generating them.
Q371 Mr Havard: That was another
question I was going to tackle, as to how much influence you had
in relation to Baghdad, but you have already answered that. The
other thing we learned from British police officers on the ground—which
was the second point you just made, and it will probably come
out later on when we discuss the relationships with the police—is
the question of police supremacy and the fact that they cannot
cope. There was not enough forensic ability, there was not enough
ability to hand it over quickly enough. There seemed to be a huge
gap that British police officers were saying needs to be developed
and needs to be dealt with. But maybe that will come out in future
questions.
Lt General McColl: I would be
very happy to take it now.
Mr Havard: It is for the Chairman. Will
we be coming to the police service later on?
Chairman: Yes, please.
Q372 Mr Crausby: I would like to
come on to some questions about cooperation between the coalition
and Iraqi forces. It has been suggested that the American military
command were not prepared to enter into serious partnership and
interoperability with the Iraqi forces. Paul Wood, for example,
the BBC correspondent who was embedded with the US Marines, has
said that nobody trusted the Iraqi forces to "protect their
flanks", so, when the marines had conquered the city, the
Iraqis were bussed in to give the illusion of Iraqi involvement
in the operation. I have to say, having visited Iraq, I understand
where he is coming from: I am not that sure that I would want
Iraq forces to protect my flank. But it is quite an issue in the
longer term as to how we bring Iraqi forces on. Does that attitude
apply to UK commanders as well? For example, are we prepared to
cooperate with the developing Iraqi forces, sharing crucial intelligence
with them?
Mr Howard: I think there is a
basic point to be made on your first point, Mr Crausby, which
is that, ultimately, in carrying out a military operation you
need to take into account the capability of the units taking part.
In the case of Fallujah, which is the one you mentioned, clearly
there was Iraqi participation but that was limited to tasks which
both the coalition commander and the Iraqi command chain felt
they were capable of doing. So there is going to be an element
of being able to do what they can do, and, as we said earlier,
there is still quite a long way to go to develop UK forces. In
terms of UK soldiers working with Iraqis, I will ask Bill to say
a bit more about what went on in MND (SE), but I will repeat what
I said earlier on, that there is petty close coordination. I mentioned
that the Iraqi divisional headquarters is now co-located with
the British divisional headquarters. The issue of sharing intelligence
is obviously a potentially sensitive one. I think it would probably
be true to say—and Bill may want to comment on this—that,
where we are able to share intelligence, I think we will want
to do that with the Iraqis, but there is always an issue about
security—protecting sources and so on—and that applies
whoever you are working with and not just Iraqis.
Major General Rollo: Again, it
is all based on trust. We have one example of that in Fallujah.
I think it also depends on what the situation is and: Trust to
do what? It developed when, again in July, the cry from the Iraqi
security forces was, "Thank you very much, Brits, you have
got us here and we now have had transfer of authority and we want
to push on on our own." That did not mean to say we took
our hands completely off, and we continued to meet and support
and mentor and train. I think, after August, that cry became a
bit more realistic. But over the last two months that I was there,
there were an increasing number of operations where we were working
jointly. For instance, if we were doing search operations we always
wanted to have Iraqi police with us, and if an arrest were to
be made then ideally we wanted an Iraqi to arrest somebody. But
increasingly we produced more integrated operations, not only
between us and the Iraqis, where, for instance we might provide
a cordon and an element of Iraqi police would do the search, but
also to get the Iraqi forces to work with each other: so you would
have Iraqi police doing a search, with the National Guard doing
the cordon, and we would be further out or just in over-watch.
That feeling of mutual competence, both between them and us, and—frankly,
much more important for the future—between the police and
the National Guard, takes time to build and we had a number of
joint training programmes designed to build it. In terms of intelligence,
I think Martin has put his finger on it: source protection is
very important. That is an area which, I was quite clear, we needed
to improve, and we put in place mechanisms to share intelligence.
Part of the joint OPS for us was a section where intelligence
could be produced, stored and analysed, but I would certainly
say that is an area where there is further progress to be made.
But the most important thing I want is for the Iraqis to develop
efficient intelligence services for themselves. The more we can
step back and let them get on with it, the better.
Q373 Mr Crausby: What about Baghdad?
Do you have any comments from Baghdad?
Lt General McColl: I made the
observation that the Iraqi forces are of mixed capabilities, and
we do need to be careful about the ways in which they are committed
in order not to over-face them, and, indeed, also, in order to
ensure we do not expose our own troops. There, reliability is
a combination of a number of factors. It is a combination of training,
experience, threat, and, I think, critically, legitimacy: legitimacy
in the eyes of the people within which they are operating. I think
that is particularly so with the police forces and the Iraqi National
Guard, who are of course locally recruited. I come back to the
point that I made at the very beginning, which is that I think
the recent elections will be important in that respect. It will
not happen immediately but I think over time we will see an increase
in that legitimacy and, therefore, I hope, a significant increase
in their local effectiveness.
Q374 Mr Crausby: The future is obviously
the Iraqi National Intelligence Service to be improved, but we
are advised that their ability is, to say the least, limited.
What is being done to improve it?
Mr Howard: Perhaps I could say
something about that. You are right that INIS is relatively embryonic
at this stage. Of course, it is only part of the picture. That
is the intelligence service, and there needs also to be a broader
intelligence architecture which is able to task any agencies,
is able to analyse intelligence and reach useful conclusions for
analysis which helps policy-making and the conduct of operations.
That machinery at the moment is pretty embryonic and I think will
need developing. It is part of what I described earlier as developing
the higher level sort of superstructure of the Iraqi Government
to be able to conduct and direct operations. We believe that there
are things we can do to assist in that. It is certainly one of
the areas that the British Government and, I have no doubt, the
US Government will be looking at pretty closely during 2005 as
we try to develop these top structures. It is perhaps worth making
the point that the key ministries, if you like, have only been
in existence for a very short time. I mean, even at the most optimistic
end, when they were first formed, I do not think the Ministry
of Defence has been in existence for a year yet, and, from the
point at which sovereignty was transferred, it is only sort of
seven months. It is hardly surprising that the ability of organisations
like the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of the Interior
is still relatively rudimentary in such a short time, and, particularly,
in such difficult security circumstances. So there is a big task
there to be done, but we have identified it as one of our priorities.
Q375 Chairman: I am taking a question
out of sequence on detainees. In 2003 there were 130 internees
in the Division Temporary Detention Facility in MND (SE). When
we were there on 18 December, there were 18, although that figure
might have changed in the month that has elapsed. The continuing
need for this power was set out in the letters dated 5 June 2004
which were sent to the President of the United Nations Security
Council by US Secretary of State Powell and the Iraqi Interim-Government
Prime Minister Allawi, describing the tasks of the centre as authorised
by the UN Security Council resolution. We did not meet any of
the detainees, because that is forbidden—and rightly—by
international law, but we were told they are a mixture of former
Baathists, al-Qa'eda terrorists and a few "ordinary"
criminals who have been picked up during operations. The cases
of internees are reviewed regularly. The ICRC are informed regularly
and have unlimited access. I have several questions around this.
I am constrained obviously by constraints, as the court martial
is taking place. We are not allowed to ask any questions on the
individual cases of those facing trial or inquiry. General Rollo,
the US and the wider coalition has faced tremendous criticism
over the Abu Ghraib scandal and the abuse of the Iraqi detainees.
A High Court ruling has ordered an inquiry into the September
2003 death of an Iraqi citizen and a court martial is underway.
Have these incidents, scandals, whatever word one wishes to use,
made the job of UK forces on the ground more difficult? If so,
to what extent?
Major General Rollo: I was not
there when the Abu Ghraib stories broke, and nor, clearly, have
I been there recently. I was there when there was the flurry in,
I think, September when a bunch of photographs did appear in the
press alleging similar behaviour, and there were mixed reactions,
I think. There was not, certainly, a discernible change of mood,
but we obviously monitored the local press and the Arab television
channels quite closely and, on the one hand, there was: "Well,
told you so, they are all just as bad as each other" and,
on the other, the article that sticks in my mind was the one,
a really furious article, by an Iraqi, saying, "How on earth
can you compare the two? How can you compare—even as bad
as Abu Ghraib is—that with what Saddam does, or, indeed,
what happens elsewhere in the Arab world?"—his words,
not mine—and: "Who are we kidding? This is just posturing
and rank hypocrisy." I think people take them as they find
them. People on the streets of Basra know how they have been treated
and how British soldiers behave to them and they behave accordingly
and respond accordingly. People are human. I think the record
speaks for itself. We would not have the low level of violence,
the really—still, I think, on the whole—very amicable
relations we do have there, if there had been an overwhelming
belief that we were all like that. It just did not happen.
Q376 Chairman: General McColl, you
would have viewed the situation from the North. Did you detect
any deterioration in relations—really bad publicity, people
very, very angry at what had happened—(a) under the American
control and (b) in the area under our control? Was the job of
the troops more difficult?
Major General Rollo: I was in
Baghdad when the Abu Ghraib issue broke. I would reiterate the
point that Bill made, which is that there was significant commentary
making the observation that there was no comparison between the
treatment and the way in which we were conducting ourselves and
Saddam, and it was unreasonable for that comparison to be drawn
in Al-Arabiya and Aljazeera, which were the two major outlets
which were influencing Iraqis. Having said that, there was significant
exposure in those two outlets and others, and there is no doubt
about it that that did get across to the Iraqis at large.
Q377 Chairman: And to a wider Arab
and international community.
Lt General McColl: Indeed.
Q378 Chairman: Which was and still
is informed.
Lt General McColl: Of course,
it had an effect on the way in which the coalition, and the multinational
force, in particular, was regarded. Having said that, I sensed
that the majority of that criticism was focused on those who were
directly responsible; I do not think there was a general condemnation
of the way in which the force in general, and the British in particular,
were conducting themselves.
Q379 Chairman: Did it have an effect
on our Armed Forces, diverting time and energy away from what
they might otherwise have been doing either on operational or
reconstruction matters? Were there demonstrations, increasing
violence?
Lt General McColl: Some of the
incidents that took place, I think, could be attributed to the
adverse publicity which was associated with it, so, yes, I think
there were some aspects of the threat which could be reasonably
associated with that adverse publicity. But I am not in a position
to quantify it, I am afraid.
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