Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600
- 619)
WEDNESDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2005
MR ADAM
INGRAM MP, MAJOR
GENERAL NICK
HOUGHTON CBE AND
DR ROGER
HUTTON
Q600 Mr Hancock: If I could just
follow on from James' last question. I could not see the sense
of allowing so many armed groups to bring themselves back into
being and to consolidate the position. Where you have as many
as maybe half a dozen uniformed and non-uniformed security forces
there is always a problem, is there not, associated with the fact
you might have the army under political control but who controls
the others and where is the political accountability? Does that
not in itself allow power to be concentrated maybe in the hands
of one or two very powerful ministers then or individuals who
actually get to the top of that? I am interested to know whether
there was any thinking along the lines of what this country needed
more than anything was a regular army supported by a proper police
force and nothing else.
Mr Ingram: That must be the eventual
desired position, but Iraq, as it currently stands, is facing
a number of pressure points around border security and so on,
riverine security. That is the logic of it, because that is what
applies in normal developed societies, that type of structure,
but that is not the stage we are at at present and, to make the
point again, it is evolving. There is no indication that private
armies are developing under the control of one powerful minister
to be used in the way in which Saddam Hussein would have used
his security forces. I think there is enough alertness around
within the Iraqi system, never mind what we would be conscious
of as a coalition force or even from the UK perspective, to allow
that to happen. I think they are more than conscious of all of
that in terms of private armies developing.
Q601 Mr Hancock: There is a controversy,
is there not, about what happened in the initial stages with the
Americans saying "We are going to disband the army completely
and start again" and people saying "Maybe we should
not have done that, we should have allowed a lot of it to have
stayed in the same command structures and we would have had a
much more stable military presence", and then you have got
my point of view which says you should not have allowed this because
I think it is harder to take power away from people when you have
allowed these militias to be created, or it is harder than we
think it is. Certainly that is what has happened in Eastern Europe,
is it not, where it has been very difficult to disband these units
which were there prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Major General Houghton: I think
it is fair to say that in the immediate aftermath of the conflict
phase judgments were reached that it was probably a mistake to
have a disbandment of the whole Iraqi Armed Forces root and branch,
as it were, but there was a tendency then for a local bottom-up
initiative to dictate the way in which Iraqi security forces were
first drawn up. You will recall there was a figure in the ICDC
that then translated into the ING and the ING is now being incorporated
more generally into the army. What we have seen slightly over
time, but against the background where the interim government
is not allowed to make destiny issues about the future size and
shape of Armed Forces and security force architecture, is there
has only gradually been the establishment of the setting up of
a security strategy where top-down policy driven from Baghdad
is meeting with a bottom-up initiative which was brought about
in the immediate aftermath of the conflict phase in response to
local circumstances. There has been some pragmatic use of militias
and then the desire to sweep these militias up within a more strategically
determined security force architecture. This is still playing
out. I think that the ultimate security force architecture will
not be determined until well into a fully elected Iraqi government
post its next transitional phase.
Q602 Mr Hancock: Can I take you back
to what you said earlier, Minister, about we were operating under
a UN mandate. I am interested to know what you think the current
role of the UN is, where you think they will go during the course
of this year and what role you think you play in the reporting
of what is actually happening on the ground there through the
responsibilities you have under the UN mandate.
Mr Ingram: Are you asking am I
satisfied that there is a sufficiency of UN buy-in on this? Probably
the answer to that is no. A lot of our effort, and it is the FCO
who lead on this, it is not an MoD lead, is to encourage all of
that. Again, part of the equation is that you then have to have
a relatively stable environment to encourage them in because they
were there and then, as we know, they tragically lost some people,
some of their senior personnel. Therefore, there is a reluctance
to engage too early in too great a number because they may become
a target as well because there is that insurgency out there that
would see that development taking place and say that is going
to be the next target. There has to be every effort made to try
to create a calmer environment that encourages the UN, encourages
them in and the NGOs as well, which then becomes crucial to a
raft of reconstruction effort because the allocation of resources
is there in money terms but the delivery mechanisms are not yet
in country because of that lack of human resource to take it forward.
That must be part of the development stage in all of this, the
UN increasingly becoming involved and that is what the wish is.
It is not a case of us holding them off, in fact it is the very
opposite, it is about trying to encourage them in.
Q603 Mr Hancock: I understand that.
Can you tell us just how you respond to the responsibilities of
that mandate back to the UN? Do our commanders have to report
through a process which allows the Secretary-General to judge
whether or not the mandate is being upheld in the way it was agreed?
Dr Hutton: I am not familiar with
any such process whereby the UK commanders—
Q604 Mr Hancock: There is no mechanism
that allows that. I am interested to know what value the UN mandate
is if the UN has no exercising control over whether it is being
exercised properly, there are parameters to it or what.
Dr Hutton: There will be close
liaison with Mr Karzai in Baghdad. On the ground there will be
discussions between MNFI and the UN. In that sense, of course,
there is close liaison. The UN will know precisely what is going
on on the ground through that and through various other mechanisms,
not least reporting back through the Security Council. The other
point that is worth making here is that the UN SR1546 places a
mandate on the UN itself to assist with the political process
and also with the reconstruction effort.
Q605 Mr Hancock: Then if I could
ask you to turn to the EU's role in Iraq and how we fit in with
that role, both in the military and the political sense.
Major General Houghton: The EU
at the moment is very tentatively exploring what it could do,
but my understanding is that it would be more on the non-military
line of operation where it would attempt to have its effect.
Q606 Mr Hancock: Just economically
or police equivalents?
Major General Houghton: Economically
at least. Governance across the whole piece of the Iraqi ministries.
Q607 Mr Hancock: Would you be optimistic,
bearing in mind our experiences of the EU picking up police responsibilities,
or their reluctance to do so elsewhere, that there will be an
enthusiasm in the EU to take that role on in a real sense rather
than a political sense?
Mr Ingram: Maybe a politician
should answer that. Is the EU perfect? No, it is not. Can it do
better? Yes, it can. Are we seeking to achieve that? Yes, we are
and will continue to do so because we have an EU focus and the
EU has the capacity to deliver substantial resources and weight
of effect if they so determine and it would be useful if they
did so. That is part of the discussion we are in with our EU partners
as well as our NATO partners.
Q608 Mr Hancock: But it is highly
unlikely that countries that are withdrawing fighting soldiers
from Iraq actually would be eager to replace them with police
officers, is it not?
Mr Ingram: Not necessarily. Some
will say that is what they are best able to deliver on. The very
nature of some of the forces which are around are better placed
in developing paramilitary style policing/army capabilities. They
will judge that is how they can best make their contribution.
It is horses for courses. If there are nations which think they
can deliver a powerful effect in a particular way then that is
to be encouraged. All we want is people to be engaged in the process,
it does not matter at what level they are engaged as long as they
are engaged in the process, and increasingly that is becoming
the case. There is a NATO Summit but other discussions are going
on bilaterally and multilaterally to achieve a cohesion of missions
in all of this. It is not a perfect structure in Iraq or anywhere
else where we have a presence.
Q609 Mr Havard: If I can turn to
the question of insurgency and counter-insurgency. There has been
a deal of criticism, particularly of the United States, in terms
of them not being prepared effectively for a long-term counter-insurgency
activity in Iraq. Their idea was that it was going to be a rapid
effect and there were numbers bandied about that they would drop
their forces back to 30,000 and so on, so it was not seen to be
a security effort in that sense. In what way were we looking at
this? Were the UK part of the coalition—we cannot speak
for the Americans but we can speak for ourselves—prepared
for that eventuality both in terms of manpower, training and equipment
and so on? The other question that comes from that is whatever
you say in terms of where we were, from our experience in the
last couple of years have we had to change our tactics and processes
as a consequence of encountering a particular form of counter-insurgency
which we see in Iraq which may be a different experience from
elsewhere?
Mr Ingram: I think the best answer
is that no matter what you plan for and see if it could happen,
you almost always tend to be surprised at the intensity and the
focus and the direction and ability and intelligence that they
bring to all of this. Then we have to quickly adapt and learn.
Even with all of our experience in Northern Ireland and Afghanistan
and the Balkans, this is a different manifestation in the sense
that you have suicide bombers, you have people who are prepared
to give their lives, and that is unusual from our experience because
terrorists do not want to give their lives, they take life. This
is a new development which we are having to increasingly address
in all of this. Do we have a good handle on it now? The General
can probably give you a better example of this but my feel for
this would be yes. If the demand seeks something to deal with
the problem, are our troops equipped to do so? The answer is yes,
we have the urgent operational requirements. If something new
emerges that we had not thought about then we quickly have to
marshal our resources to deal with that. There is nothing new
in this, that is the way it always will be. In the meanwhile,
we are trying to get on top of that problem, having that outreach
into the communities from which those people are drawn and working
away in that territory to try and create a different political
climate so that those communities then turn against that particular
problem themselves because that is part of any solution, the community
not wanting the terrorists, and in this case insurgency, within
their ranks. That goes back to an earlier question when you asked
about having human intelligence. People have to give you that
information that in that house they are storing it. We have been
doing that with some success and, again, I guess that will increasingly
improve over time and it may well be the conduit for that will
be the Iraqi forces themselves.
Major General Houghton: I agree
absolutely. The specifics of any insurgency always have the ability
to surprise you and the Minister used the example of suicide bombers.
I think there is a complexity in this insurgency, if only seen
within the context of the Sunni element of that insurgency in
its various component parts, some of which is terrorism that is
imported and to a certain extent manipulated from outside with
a wholly atavistic and nihilistic type desire and agenda, that
element which is potentially politically biddable through outreach
to the Sunnis, the former regime elements, and those perhaps whose
motivation to support the insurgency is no greater or less than
the desire to see foreign troops out of the country. I still think
necessarily that there are some enduring principles in relation
to counter-insurgency which are familiar ones, and that is that
there is not a straightforward militarily attrition-based approach
to defeating it, it is the treatment of the symptoms of it, whether
or not they are based on political aspiration, on the economy
or a desire for a better life and those sorts of things. I think
that is well recognised and that is why we attempt to have an
approach which is multi-faceted and has lines of operation with
the military only supporting those which are to do with politics,
good governance, economic reform and those sorts of things.
Q610 Mr Havard: That is interesting
because you anticipate my next question really. At one level almost
the indictment that is made is that the coalition's counter-insurgency
strategy is concentrated on the military side of the activities
and has not perhaps done some of the things that you have just
alluded to which might have been more successful in the longer
term in terms of political and economic initiatives. There is
a list of the use of things like local amnesties, negotiating
surrender to combatants, getting local councils elected underneath
governorships and so on, reconstruction activities, payments to
displaced people, the whole question of compensation for damages.
There is a whole series of these sorts of individual elements
that make up part of this broader strategy. The indictment, if
you like, that some people make is that has been neglected and
maybe that should not take prominence over some of the military
activity in order to achieve the end stage longer term objective.
Mr Ingram: I recognise the criticism
that has been neglected but then those who make that criticism
tend not to be those who then have to deliver those particular
missions.
Q611 Mr Havard: All the best players
are often in the stand.
Mr Ingram: Exactly. Therefore,
we have got to be in the real world in understanding this. All
those measures and all those triggers can be pulled but you then
need a point of contact, a subtlety of approach, you need to be
trusted and you need to have the confidence of the people. Clearly
the way in which we perform, again, fortunately because it is
a calmer environment we can do the hearts and minds activity and
we have got a range of initiatives which we then deploy. It never
ceases to amaze me how the British troops very quickly get out
of their protective gear and into soft hat and that soft interface
knowing, of course, if the threat is real they have got to return
to it. Their instinct is to reach out, it is not to put a barrier
up, even to the extent of learning Iraqi words and the Iraqi language
so they can communicate. These are all simple solutions but you
then need to be confident that you are not going to be shot at
or bombed as you do that, you do not put yourself at risk, although
we do take elements of risk in all of this, and that is a testament
to the high quality of the troops that we have and the way in
which they have developed their skills over the years. I recognise
that list. I used the phrase earlier about humanitarian space,
about the need for those who deliver into those environments to
want humanitarian space because that is a measure of success and
those who are delivering the humanitarian aid and building that
normal society do not like to do it at the point of a bayonet,
they cannot do that. You are not able to win people if it is "We
are here to give you a bowl of rice and you had better eat it
otherwise we will have trouble". You do not deliver humanitarian
aid in that way, it has got to be done in a much more subtle way
and it has got to be distant and remote from any military presence.
If there is any need for military action to resolve the issue,
that should be sitting round the corner to be able to deal with
that. Whether that is best delivered by coalition forces or by
Iraqi forces, again it seems to me it is better delivered by Iraqi
forces. I made this point about some of the indicators of success
coming out of the Iraqi elections and the way in which we are
picking up a good vibe from the Iraqi people saying, "Those
were our people on the street looking after us, helping us to
get to the polling stations". Those are the indicators of
change which we are increasingly seeing but, meanwhile, we still
have the problem with insurgency.
Q612 Mr Havard: It is true, is it
not, that in terms of military deployment, particularly thinking
of infantry soldiers in this regard, we send people out of the
British area, we send them up to Camp Dogwood into a different
area? We spoke to some of the soldiers when we were out in Iraq
before they came home and what was quite interesting, and we have
seen from other people, is the change in tactics because there
was some adaptation of tactics to deal with explosive devices
in cars and suicide bombers and so on. It took a while for the
Brits perhaps to make a change, a week or so, but they did come
up with different ways, novel ways, original ways, of dealing
with it. There must be lessons that they can learn from the military
side of it. The other disappointment, and we have made this point
on a number of occasions but I will make it again, is that what
we saw was one good example of perhaps all the political and economic
initiatives that could have been made, namely the water and sewerage
supply in Basra, not coming forward as fast as had been promised
because the money had been diverted off to the security sector
before. That seemed to suggest that somebody thought these two
things were mutually exclusive, which clearly they are not. There
must be lessons like this that can be brought forward and there
are particular examples of good practice but they have not got
an understanding somewhere along the line of actually doing the
second bit which is avoiding a military confrontation by doing
a political and economic activity.
Mr Ingram: I am not so sure about
the unwillingness for a lack of delivery of some of those key
infrastructure elements in terms of water and energy.
Q613 Mr Havard: Let me just say this.
What we saw was British troops forced back into a position again
where they were doing somebody else's job with different resources
or no resources, and so on, because they could not get on and
do the things they wanted to do because they were substituting
for something else. That is the sort of blowback we have in terms
of what the military can do because the other parts of the jigsaw
are not coming together.
Mr Ingram: That comes back to
creating an environment where part of the jigsaw can then be put
in place. The financial resources are available for so much more
but the delivery mechanisms are still to be developed.
Q614 Mr Havard: Frankly, to me, they
were dysfunctional.
Mr Ingram: I do not think they
are dysfunctional. They are maybe not functioning in the way in
which we would like but that does not make them dysfunctional
and I do not think they are necessarily in conflict. It is creating
the conditions so that you can move to the next point of delivery
and meanwhile trying to create the conditions which encourages
that to happen. It is much more subtle than just some linear equation.
This is not just bang, do this and the next bit follows.
Q615 Mr Havard: Absolutely, I accept
that, and that is why the counter-insurgency activity, as we have
seen with our own borders in the United Kingdom and elsewhere,
is the various bits that are working together, not just the military
response. As far as Fallujah is concerned, and there was some
reference to it earlier, on the one end of the continuum people
are saying this was the wrong thing to do there, effectively it
could even be described as a war crime because of the nature of
the activity that went on there, civilians were killed, two-thirds
of the infrastructure was destroyed. That is at one end of the
argument. What I want to find is answers to some of the questions
we asked earlier about how these sorts of processes go forward.
I presume that you would say some people would ask for an independent
investigation but that is not necessarily required, but at the
same time an evaluation of what went on is required. Is there
any particular evaluation that has been made about that?
Mr Ingram: As to the efficacy
and the return from that initiative?
Q616 Mr Havard: An indication of
how you might deal with counter-insurgency.
Mr Ingram: I am not sure I understand
the question because I was reading it in terms of was Fallujah
a success or not on the basis of the spectrum of comment that
is out there.
Q617 Mr Havard: In some regards maybe,
in some not.
Mr Ingram: There is no question
at all that there was a very clear need to deal with a major problem
in Fallujah. If that had not been dealt with then it may have
become a bigger problem and that then becomes a matter of judgment
as to how best that is dealt with. In terms of what you were saying
about civilians being killed, remember all Iraqis are civilians,
we categorise all of them as civilians, we do not put them into
different camps. Clearly there were people who where prepared
to stand and fight in Fallujah against the coalition force that
was going in. Did that then create the right condition to move
forward? I think the fact that we had successful elections means
the answer to that would probably be yes. There are always going
to be people who will analyse it differently because they do not
want to recognise success because there are those who are trying
to create a climate that says this is a failure, that we have
not succeeded, that we should not have been there in the first
place, and the fact we are there means that now they have got
to talk up every incident as being a disaster and ignore all the
other points of progress, of which there are a substantial amount.
On any spectrum of analysis we are making good progress. There
are good measures of success. I do not know who the independent
assessor of all this would be but we have an international body
that has that responsibility and that is the UN and this is a
UN mandate and there is a determination of will that remains within
the UN. I do not know who else would sit in judgment if not the
UN.
Q618 Mr Havard: Perhaps I could just
ask the question specifically. You made the point earlier on about
command and control targeting policy. If the Iraqis decide to
do this and we are involved, we keep saying it is really the Iraqis
who should be driving it, the Iraqis are involved in making decisions
about what should be done assessing priorities, and you said earlier
on about the C2 architecture—the phrase that you used—command
and control, decision making, proportionality, targeting and so
on, and then the orders process that goes underneath that, but
there is no mechanism by which they can do that, they rely on
the coalition process to do that. That is one lesson that we see
from the activities there. Are there any others that came from
a particular activity which in part do what you have described,
Minister, but also have the effect of dispersing insurgents into
other areas? If I was sitting where you are I would say but then
we have people to actually stop them getting into the British
sector, for example. There must be lessons that we are learning
about process that involves the military and how we act, the doctrine
and so on, that come from illustrations like this set inside the
politics of a particular incident.
Major General Houghton: In general
terms there is a constant dynamic lessons learned process going
on about all sorts of things militarily, both at a tactical and
operational level. There are operational level lessons relating
to Fallujah to do with command and control, to do with the precision
targeting, precision use of weaponry in built-up areas and all
those sorts of things. I think the big question that I sense you
are getting at is really the strategic lessons about Fallujah.
I think in many respects they have got to be bespoke to a particular
issue or incident within an overall campaign. The assessments
for Fallujah that went into determining whether or not it was
a correct political thing to prosecute the clearance of Fallujah
or not were essentially political in nature, not military. Clearly
Fallujah had taken on some totemic type stature as a safe environment
for insurgents from which they could deploy in a relatively safe
way suicide bombers out into Baghdad. It was effectively an insurgent
base which needed to be dealt with because it represented in a
totemic fashion discreditation. It was discrediting the power
of Allawi and his government. More than that, the military advice
was that there would be a lot of collateral damage but such was
the nature of the size of the insurgent force there that actually
the balance of advantage was in going to take it out seen against
the build-up to elections some two months later. Therefore, a
political decision based on the fact that there was a militarily
viable option and political advantage to be gained at the strategic
level was such that they should go ahead with it. You could then
switch to another potential city within the Sunni triangle but
the same circumstances would not apply: the nature of the enemy
disposition, the level of infrastructure still standing within
the city, the relationship of that to the credibility of that
government, the proximity to election security and the need to
put the insurgents on the back foot. What I am saying is that
one could say in retrospect that the strategic lessons learned
was that the political decision vis a" vis Fallujah
was the correct one. You would have to assess every operation
on its own merits in a strategic context, you cannot derive a
general lesson other than you have got to think through the strategic
implications of the prosecution of every operation of that sort
of stature and nature.
Mr Havard: Thank you very much.
Q619 Mr Viggers: I would like to
ask some questions about reconstruction and the Ministry of Defence's
role in reconstruction. Of the $18.4 billion allocated by the
American Congress, I understand that only about $10.4 million
was obligated, which is the word that I believe is used technically,
which means committed for use. Does the slow take-up of the allocated
funds concern you and are you involved in this? Can you do something
to accelerate it?
Mr Ingram: I do not know what
you were told this morning from DfID, I have not got a read-out
from this, but I heard your opening comments, Chairman, and I
know there is a willingness to give you as much information and
as much help as possible from DfID in all this. I do not know
precisely what they have said to you. I think I am going to repeat
myself a little, maybe because the answer is good and if it is
not you will question it. It is about the fact that the financial
resources are there in quite sizeable chunks waiting to be delivered.
The delivery mechanisms cannot quite be there because there is
not this—I have fallen in love with this phrase—humanitarian
space, and that is important. However, there are things that we
can do, and we are doing, in terms of military delivery through
the Quick Impact Projects. I think the figure there is about £30
million that has been allocated and we have used a very large
proportion of that and that is available at any point in time
simply to move forward and do something. If that becomes exhausted,
and I have got to be careful here because we have always got to
negotiate extra resources, and there is still a need for it to
be done then we will go back to the table and say that this actually
achieves things. It is true of any of the funds. That does not
mean to say there is a blank cheque for this problem but there
is provability in a lot of what we have been doing, certainly
in terms of military delivery because it is a case of our people
on the ground able to do things, able to deliver on these Quick
Impact Projects. Can be more done? The answer must be yes. Are
the resources available to do more? The answer is yes. It is matching
up that resource with that wish and that hope and that goes back
to creating the right conditions.
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