Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
RT HON
MARGARET BECKETT
MP, RT HON
DES BROWNE
MP, AIR CHIEF
MARSHAL SIR
JOCK STIRRUP
GCB AND MR
NIGEL CASEY
11 JANUARY 2007
Q80 Andrew Mackinlay: What did he
say?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
I am not here to talk about what other people have said but I
will tell you my own view.
Q81 Andrew Mackinlay: You are in
charge, are you not?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
When you deploy on these sorts of operations you always have a
certain level of consent to start with and that level of consent
over time tends to decline because people really would rather
get on with their own lives and not have other forces there. That
is absolutely a natural consequence in any environment you care
to name. At the same time, of course, the forces you have deployed
there are doing some important things in developing security and
helping that country back onto its feet, so it is always a question
of balance of cost and benefit. There will always be a downside
to having our forces there and there will always be an upside
and the question is are you getting more benefit than you are
not. So far we are still continuing, as I think I have demonstrated
with the statistics from Operation SINBAD, to contribute far more
than we are causing a problem.
Q82 Mr Crausby: As time goes on,
as you say, if they are there longer will they exacerbate the
situation more?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
As time goes on the level of consent inevitably declines and it
is important to finish the job before you get to that stage. That
has always been the case, it is not news, we knew it and we said
it when we started the operation.
Q83 Willie Rennie: What is the projected
drawdown of UK Forces in Iraq this year and next year?
Des Browne: The situation in relation
to drawdown is that we are still operating on a conditions-based
approach to this and I think it is important to say, without going
through all of the conditions, our position is that we will make
an assessment against the conditions that are now well-known and
everybody who has an interest in Iraq is able to repeat in terms
of threat, the ability to be able to deal with threat, the nature
of government and our ability to be able to respond to any requests
for support. When we get to that stage we will be able to move
to provincial Iraqi control as we have done in two of the four
provinces. When we get to that stage that will have consequences
for the number of troops. But there is the additional consideration
that we plan to redeploy our troops from a number of different
bases in Basra to one. It is well-known that we plan to do that
and that we are intending to do that over the immediate future.
Other than to say what I said in November, which was that it is
my expectation that we will be able to see that process through
and that over the course of the coming months in this year that
we are now in we can expect to see a reduction in our troops by
a matter of thousands, at this stage I am not prepared to say
any more. There are a number of reasons for that. One is that
when the work is done and we have made the assessments then I
will be able to report fully to the House and it does not seem
to me to serve the operational security of those who are working
and doing a very dangerous job there if we give people who have
a malign attitude towards our troops some kind of framework within
which to work. In particular, I am very reluctant to give them
the opportunity to claim that they have achieved what we plan
to do. I may just say in answer to the earlier point that was
being made that my understanding of the concept of presence exacerbating
is a function of that particular problem.
Q84 Willie Rennie: Assuming there
are thousands, as you say, getting drawn down, what will happen
to those troops? Everywhere I go when I do defence business I
get complaints from all the forces who complain about not really
having any guidelines—you would call it stretch, I would
call it overstretch—the real pressure upon training, which
is having an effect on morale. What is anticipated for those troop
numbers? Will they go off to Afghanistan to support there? Will
they be brought back? Will the pressure be taken off? What is
anticipated?
Des Browne: At the risk of getting
into this, with respect, somewhat tedious discussion about what
is the definition of "stretch" as opposed to "overstretch",
we all know what the situation is and there is no doubt that if
we were able to reduce our commitment to Iraq then bringing those
troops home we would be able to reduce the pressure on our own
Armed Forces at the moment in order to serve these two substantial
commitments which have been going now in each case for a period
of time. The deployment of troops into any operational theatre
is in response to the assessment made by the military of what
is necessary to carry out the task that is asked of them. That
is an evolving process. Even in the eight months that I have been
the Secretary of State I have seen the need to make changes, to
announce to the House that I am responding to circumstances that
come back, operations change, but these assessments will have
to be made in each theatre in relation to each theatre. At the
end of the day our ability to be able to deploy troops relies
on our having them to deploy, there is no question about that,
and people understand that. For example, in the near future we
are bringing troops back from Bosnia because the troops that we
have presently deployed in Bosnia are, in fact, doing policing
work there and that has moved on and it will not be necessary
for us to do that. Hopefully this year with the political process
in Northern Ireland we will look forward to being able to reduce
our commitment in relation to Operation BANNER and, indeed, perhaps
bringing it to a conclusion. If we continue to move along the
path we have been moving along we look forward to being able to
reduce our commitment in terms of numbers to Iraq and all of that
will have an effect on our ability to do other things that we
need to do.
Q85 Willie Rennie: Is it the intention
to learn the lessons about over-commitment? Is that the intention
and not to actually stretch our forces in the way that we have
been doing?
Des Browne: To learn the lessons
of over-commitment, the fact of the matter is our forces are being
asked to do what they are able to do. There is no doubt that if
we were to sustain that level of commitment over a period of time
then that would have a long-term effect on our ability to be able
to deploy forces at some time in the future. With respect, what
I have already said suggests that it is not our intention nor
our plan to continue with that level over the long-term, not even
over the next year. It is our plan and our intention to be able
to relieve some of that commitment and, of course, then to be
able to allow those troops who have been committed to rest, recuperate
and retrain and avoid the very dire consequences that some people
want to concentrate on rather than what we are asking our troops
to do at the moment.
Chairman: Moving on to the infrastructure
of Basra.
Q86 Willie Rennie: What progress
has been made in developing the facilities at Basrah Air Station
and are you satisfied with the level of protection provided?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
There is a very comprehensive and detailed programme of work to
bring the infrastructure at Basrah Air Station to the level that
is needed for its projected future occupation and, indeed, to
provide the appropriate level of protection for our troops. I
am absolutely satisfied that people are working 100% to do that
as soon as is possible.
Q87 Willie Rennie: What about the
Shaibah Logistics Base, when do you expect that to be handed over
to Iraqi control?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
I cannot give you a precise date at the moment because it is a
complex series of moves to relocate staff from Shaibah and one
or two of them have had to be delayed for a number of reasons,
but it will be in the not too distant future put it that way.
Q88 Chairman: Are we talking weeks
or months?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
We are talking certainly not more than a couple of months at the
moment.
Q89 Willie Rennie: When do you expect
all the UK Forces in South East Iraq to move to Basrah Air Station?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
We do not have a date for that at the moment.
Q90 Willie Rennie: Roughly?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
I would not want to speculate at the moment on a precise date
because the plans are currently being drawn up and we must let
the commanders on the ground do the detailed work rather than
impose arbitrary timescales on them.
Des Browne: Can I just say that
we also have to have discussions with the other members of the
coalition because there are other countries represented in the
area who work with us, we have to have discussions with them but,
most importantly, we have to have discussions with the Iraqi authorities,
the provincial government, the Iraqi Government, the Iraqi security
forces, all of these processes have to be gone through and until
they are we will not be in a position to make any announcements.
As soon as I am in a position to be able to say to Parliament
what we are doing then I will do that.
Q91 Mr Havard: It is heavily trailed
in the press today that you are going to have an assessment in
February of all of these sorts of aspects, is that right? Is that
when it is roughly going to happen, so from that we will get a
rough idea, or is the press being the usual press and it will
be tomorrow's chip paper?
Des Browne: If you had been present
at Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday you might have—
Q92 Mr Havard: I was not, no.
Des Browne:— had some indication
from the Prime Minister's answer that when it comes to the end
of Operation SINBAD there will be a process of assessment and
he himself said that he will make a statement to House. With respect
to Mr Harding in The Telegraph, it did not take a genius
to work out that something might be happening and a process of
assessment might be going on. It does not help until we have done
the preparatory work and in particular, and I am very conscious
of this, for the operational security of those who are deployed
in the South East for us to be speculating or suggesting because,
apart from anything else, there are people there who will take
advantage of that very set of circumstances to create a level
of attack so that they then can claim that they achieved it, is
not helpful. I cannot stop people speculating, I cannot stop people
guessing. There is quite a lot of information in the public domain,
people can work things out for themselves, but there are no announcements
about this and no decisions have been made.
Chairman: Can we now move on because
we have very little time left?
Q93 Mr Jones: Can I turn to security
sector reform? One of the important points about that transition
is going to be the effectiveness of the Iraqi Army and security
services. When we were there in June, we met General Latif who
is the commander of the 10th Division of the Iraqi Army and one
of the criticisms he had was lack of equipment and fire power.
Can you just give us an overview of where we are in terms of both
training and the reform, particularly ensuring that the Iraqi
Army is not just Shia but represents all the different parts?
One of the things which has been reported is the fact that various
groups will not operate outside their home areas and I wonder
if you could give us a response to that?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
I will speak about Ten Div in the MND South East area. First of
all, they are very well positioned with regard to the rest of
the Iraqi Army. They are well manned, they are 103% manned, but
there are of course some shortages, particularly of officers where
they are about 17% short and NCOs where they are about 39% short.
These reflect long-term structural problems which flow from the
history of the army itself and there is no way these can be fixed
overnight, it is a question of developing the skills and capacities
over time. Ten Division has in excess of 100% of each item on
its equipment table with the exception of one heavy water tanker
which is for expeditionary operations and so is not a serious
weakness for them at the moment. There are two further areas of
equipment development. The first one is in terms of protective
mobility and they have now taken delivery of 142 out of a total
of 242 armoured humvees which they will be equipped with. They
should get the remainder of those by March of this year. They
do have an aspiration for some further heavy weapons but it is
an aspiration and it is not actually part of their equipment table
at the moment and the Iraqi Army is looking at what they ought
to do in terms of scaling that. There is one additional point
which is of course that the Iraqi Army is being increased in size
overall and a fifth brigade is being recruited as we speak for
the division itself. So overall Ten Division is extremely well
placed. The Iraqi Army has on average greater shortfalls than
we experience in Ten Division. With regard to the levels of training,
as I said earlier, the experiences of Operation SINBAD have shown
an increasing capacity in Ten Div to take on increasingly complex
tasks. There are still weaknesses, they still require substantial
mentoring in terms of overall leadership, particularly for the
complex operations, and they still require a great deal of assistance
in terms of logistic support. With regard to the issue of deployability,
we have to remember the even-numbered divisions were originally
recruited purely as territorial forces and had no expectation
of being employed other than in the area in which they were recruited.
However, there have been a number of measures put in place including
additional training, including consideration of bonuses for deploying
out of your base area, and so the intention is to move the Iraqi
Army over time to a posture where all divisions will be deployable
across Iraq.
Q94 Mr Jones: In the Government's
response to our report last year, it was envisaged that operational
command would be transferred to Iraqi ground forces by December
2006. Has that happened?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
They are in the process of transferring command. The Iraqi Army
believes that it is able to take operational control of Ten Division
but that has still to go through all the formal processes before
it is done and dusted.
Q95 Mr Jones: What is the problem
and what is the timescale for transition?
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup:
It should be in the near future, but there are certain processes
which have to be gone through both in terms of the coalition and
in terms of the Iraqi Army itself and these can be somewhat bureaucratic,
but it is going through the process at the moment. It is on the
cusp, is how I would describe it.
Q96 Ms Stuart: One political rather
than military question. Since the war in March, April 2003, we
have gone through a whole series of stages from writing a constitution
to having elections, forming a government and handing over to
a government. In response to the Foreign Affairs Committee, Foreign
Secretary, when we asked how long our troops would be there, you
gave what on the face of it was a very straightforward answer,
you said, "Until the job is done." I fully agree with
what you have said about artificial deadlines and datelines, but
what are your parameters for determining when the job is done
as viewed from the outside? What are the kind of things we are
looking for where we could tell that security has been established
to such an extent? Or is simply that we are there until the Iraqis
ask us to leave?
Margaret Beckett: Actually I had
forgotten that I said that but I think the answer should have
been, until the job is done or indeed until the Iraqi Government
decide they do not feel they need our support any more, whichever
comes first. As the Secretary of State for Defence said in some
of his earlier evidence, there are the parameters that we use
to assess the process of handover of provinces, and they are in
part the kind of parameters we use for how long we are involved.
This is also something on which they may have something to say.
Basically, we are expecting that they will want us to continue
to help and support them even when the provinces have been handed
over to their formal control for a period of time. That certainly
seems to be their view at the present time and it is something
I think we should be willing and prepared to do. I cannot say
to you what the time line is for that. As to the judgment about
what we hope to be able to have achieved, it is that Iraq has
a properly functioning government, that it has a far greater degree
of security and stability than has been the case actually for
a very long time, not just in the recent past, and that we have
seen the process of repair of infrastructure, in the health service,
education, seeing the provision of electricity and water and all
of that and economic development all gradually taking effect.
I would hope too that one of the things we will see is the passage
of the hydrocarbons law which will give scope for new investment,
which is much needed in the Iraqi oil industry, and also will
give scope for some sharing of revenue of a kind which has not
happened before. I know many of those who are particularly engaged
with economic development in Iraq feel that this is a very crucial
step which could be key not only to a better future for Iraq but
to shaping that Iraq in a way which is much more positive than
in the past. It has been put to me, for example, that one of the
things which allowed Saddam to take control in the way he did
was he was able to get his hands on all the oil revenue and control
it. A fair process of revenue-sharing would mean that nobody could
do that in the future and that would be a very good thing.
Q97 Ms Stuart: When we went to Iraq
what was quite clear was that to have fair revenue sharing what
would also be required would be the establishment of a functioning
taxation system. Do you have any information as to the extent
that is actually coming into place?
Margaret Beckett: I do not have
it at my fingertips. I will look at that, if I may.[8]
Q98 Mike Gapes: Can I ask you what the
implications will be for the withdrawal of our forces and the
running down of our forces in the south? Do you think it will
lead to an increase in Iranian influence? In that context, have
you been concerned at some recent reports, emanating from Saudi
Arabia, that they are involved in an internal debate—and
some personnel have been removed, including the ambassador in
Washington—about support for the Sunni community in Iraq
after the reduction or withdrawal of the coalition forces?
Margaret Beckett: First of all,
do I think there will be an increase in Iranian influence? I would
say it probably depends very much on how Iran plays it. I mentioned
earlier that different ministers, a number of ministers, in the
Government of Iraq have made plain to me that they have robust
exchanges with the Government of Iran at what they see as a very
negative role that Iraq has been playing in some respects. I think
there was a question earlier about whether or not there would
be a natural Shia to Shia sympathy which people in the south would
be likely to welcome. My impression is that people in the south
of Iraq, like people in the north or anywhere in Iraq, are very
much Iraqis and they have no greater desire to see another country
running their affairs than most countries in the world do. I think
that is an element which is perhaps overlooked and under-estimated.
My answer to you is that if the Government of Iran comes good
on the positive steps they have made about ceasing to interfere
negatively in Iraq, about being supportive of the Iraqi Government—which
actually we would argue is very much in their own long-term interests;
for the whole region and particularly for Iraq's neighbours, an
unstable, undamaged and insecure Iraq is not good news—maybe
they will have a friendly influence. But I do not necessarily
assume they will in some way behind the scenes be running Iraq.
Q99 Mike Gapes: If not, is there
not a real danger, as King Abdullah of Jordan said when he spoke
to both Houses in November, of neighbours of Iraq intervening,
whether it is the Saudis or the Turks, coming in because they
feel a disintegration, a conflict, internally will lead to outside
regional intervention in Iraq? Is that not a real danger at this
time?
Margaret Beckett: That presumes
that all the predictions and anxieties, which are understandable,
of the different communities in Iraq splintering apart do actually
begin to take place. It is my view as well as my hope that there
is actually a very strong recognition, perhaps an increasing recognition,
in all communities in Iraq that actually their best interests
lie in working to maintain a unified country and to support their
government. Some months ago I recall that it was felt there was
an imperative for us to encourage other elements in Iraqi society
to recognise that their best interests lay with supporting and
working with the government that they have. Certainly it is my
impression that that message has actually been accepted and understood
and that people are trying to work in the overall interests of
their country, as indeed one would hope they would.
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