Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
TUESDAY 24 JULY 2007
RT HON
BOB AINSWORTH
MP, MR DESMOND
BOWEN CMG AND
BRIGADIER CHRIS
HUGHES CBE
Q80 Chairman: Welcome to this evidence
session on Iraq and, Minister, without meaning to say anything
about your team, may I say you are particularly welcome at your
first session before this Committee. We are conscious that you
are newly in post, but we are also conscious of the fact that
you have just returned from Iraq. We were in Iraq a couple of
weeks ago, as you know, and some of the people we met were in
the RAF Regiment which has just suffered those casualties in Basra
and, I must say, we were deeply impressed with the courage of
what the RAF Regiment were doing and of the sorts of trials that
they are all going through in Basra at the moment. The casualties
have risen and you will have been there last week, although I
do not know whether you were there when they were actually killed,
but thank you very much indeed for coming in front of our Committee.
May I ask you to begin by introducing your team, please.
Mr Ainsworth: Chairman, thank
you for your welcome. As you say, I have been in post for less
than a month, but I have managed to get out to both Afghanistan
and Iraq in the last week. With me, I have Desmond Bowen, who
is our Policy Director, and Brigadier Chris Hughes, who is the
Military Director of Joint Commitments. Chris not only holds that
position, but, prior to that, in 2005 he was Operation Commander
out in Basra, so he brings a knowledge probably far deeper than
yours or mine. Recognising the fact that I am pretty new into
the job, we will try to act as a team in order to try to give
you the maximum amount of information that we can. In coming up
to speed, I am trying as fast as I can, but I do not want my coming
up to speed to hinder your ability to get the information that
you need to get out of the Department in order to conduct the
inquiry. Your comments about the people out there, I was on my
way into the COB at the time that the attack took place, so my
arrival was actually delayed by what happened and, as I say, I
was just enormously impressed not only with the bravery of the
troops there, but the competence, the skill and the ability that
is required at every level of the operation by our forces out
in Iraq is tremendously impressive.
Q81 Chairman: Can I begin this evidence
session by asking what your general assessment is of the security
and political situation in Iraq as a whole. Do you think things
have got better or worse and what do you think the prospects are
overall for Iraq as a whole? We will come down to the southern
part later.
Mr Ainsworth: I did not manage
to get up to Baghdad. We laid the trip on at fairly short notice,
so that was not possible as people's diary commitments had taken
them off, so I would not try to pretend to the Committee that
my knowledge and assessment of the overall situation would be
as good as it is about the circumstances in the south-east area
where we have direct responsibility. We are in the middle of the
American operation, the Surge, and that has had success in some
areas, but it is far too early to say the degree to which that
has been successful and obviously there is the big report coming
up in September.
Q82 Chairman: We will come back to
the Surge itself in due course and we will ask some more detailed
questions.
Mr Ainsworth: I would say that
the nature of the problem in different parts of the country is
very different, as the Committee will know better than I. We have
got the sectarian problems in the Baghdad area in the centre of
the country dominating the situation and the need for the Iraqi
Government to reach out to the Sunni community is overwhelming
in terms of the necessity in that area. In our area of responsibility,
the nature of the problem is completely different where religion
is not part of the problem, potentially it is a force for unity
in our own area, but we are dealing with a different set of problems
and a different set of priorities in the south-east.
Q83 Chairman: If we can move on to
the south-eastern area, how would you assess the security and
political situation in the south-eastern area, particularly in
the Basra province?
Mr Ainsworth: I think the recent
appointment of General Mohan to command the Armed Forces in the
south-east and General Jalil to command the police forces in the
area is very important and a good sign of potential. Those people,
having been appointed, now need to be backed up. Progress with
regards to army capability and army capacity is a lot more reassuring
than it is in the area of the police. The police have got a lot
more work to do as the problems are far deeper and more difficult
to deal with, but Mohan has made a very good start, as has General
Jalil. The capacity of the Iraqi 10th Division is coming along,
it is being built all the time, and it will be absolutely vital
that that continues if we are going to be able to achieve provincial
Iraqi control in Basra, as we have in the other three areas. Meanwhile,
the position that we find ourselves in is difficult, as the Committee
knows. We are the people who are effectively providing the backbone
of stability and, therefore, those people in the area, no matter
what their motivations are, and there are so many different motivations
of different people in the Basra region through to people who
have very close associations with forces outside the country,
there are the patriotic kind of youth who are targeting our forces,
but there is also a huge, criminal element who are effectively
intent on pillaging their own country, people should not underestimate
the degree to which that motivates some of the forces in the south-east
area. Those people know that we are the ultimate guarantor of
any chance of progress and, therefore, it is not surprising, although
it is enormously difficult, that we are the people who are being
targeted overwhelmingly by those individuals concerned. That puts
us in some difficulty. Convoys into the Basra Palace are very
difficult to secure and the attacks on Basra Palace are regular,
as are attacks out on to the COB itself. Our presence there though
not only is a necessity in terms of the capacity-building, the
training that is going on in the area, but it also is our ability
to project force into the wider province which, until the assessment
is done that the Iraqi security services are able to take over,
is a necessity which will remain.
Q84 Chairman: You used one phrase
which I wonder if you could explain, please. You said "patriotic
youth". Are there Iraqi patriots there attacking our forces,
were you suggesting?
Mr Ainsworth: I think that there
are young people in the Basra area who are being used. Their motivation
is not necessarily the motivation of those people who are putting
them on the streets and who are using them in order to attack.
There are serious organised militias who have, as I have said,
different motivations and some of them are closely aligned with
forces in Iran and some of them have a clear, nationalist commitment
to Iraq itself, but nonetheless, want to attack us and some of
them are looking after their corrupt individual self-interest,
and I do not think we should downplay that, but not everybody
is of that mind. There are lots of innocent people who are being
used by those organisations who have not necessarily got that
motivation at all.
Q85 Mr Jones: Can I just pick up
a couple of points you have made. You used the words "ultimate
guarantor", "projector of force" and "we are
the backbone of stability". When we visited a few weeks ago,
it was my fifth visit to Iraq and my fifth visit to Basra and
my first visit was in July 2003 when we quite clearly had a footprint
in the city of Basra where we had people on the ground, you could
walk around, you had civic teams doing reconstruction and things
like that. Is it not the case that what we have now basically
is a force surrounded, I think, a little bit like cowboys and
Indians, at Basra Palace with the reinforcements, you could say,
at the COB at the airport? The idea that we are projecting force
or stability is just not the case. We are going in on basically
nightly suicide missions on occasions to go in to relieve the
palace and, once we withdraw from the palace, the city itself,
there will be very little need for us to go in and, if we did,
it would be extremely dangerous, so are we actually a stability
force or a projector of power anymore or are we actually just
really leading Basra itself to what it is, controlled by various
factions, as you have described?
Mr Ainsworth: As we get nearer
the point where people begin to appreciate that there is the prospect
of the Government of Iraq having the ability to control the situation
itself, then those people who do not want that to happen—
Q86 Mr Jones: No, but we are not
doing it like that.
Mr Ainsworth: Those people who
have a vested interest in ensuring that it cannot happen obviously
become pretty focused on what they have to do in order to try
to prevent that from coming about.
Mr Jones: But we are not doing that.
What we are doing basically, there are two or three lines or routes
into Basra Palace and we were told quite clearly by the people
who were going in that night when we were there a few weeks ago—
Mr Jenkin: That is confidential.
Q87 Mr Jones: Shut up, Bernard, stop
being prissy! Those lines or routes into the town were being attacked
not occasionally, but on a nightly basis going in.
Mr Ainsworth: We have to get convoys
into the palace and there are not that many routes by which those
convoys, and they are supply convoys, as you know, because you
have been out there more often than I have, so you have probably
got a far better understanding of this than me, but those convoys
are substantial and there are only a very few routes that can
be taken in there, so that is a massive operation to try to provide
force protection and to keep people alive while we manage to reinforce
the palace. Now, I am not trying to say that that is not a difficult
issue, but it is not true to say that our presence either in the
palace or in the COB does not provide the last guarantee of power
in the region and the 10th Division is not ready, although it
may be approaching that point, to assume those responsibilities
itself. Now, we are getting there and the capacity of the 10th
Division is coming up all the time, they are training 5th Brigade
now, they are beginning to be brought up to strength now, but,
for the time being, the ultimate guarantor or the biggest boys
on the block effectively are us and our presence there is felt
and it is felt where we need it to be felt. We are able, although
it is very difficult, to take forces into the city itself and
that happens on a regular basis, and we are able to deploy out
into the areas around the city, so it is not true to say that
our presence there is not a projective force in the area to a
considerable degree.
Mr Jones: Well, I would disagree with
you on that.
Chairman: I will come back to these issues
because they are very important.
Q88 Robert Key: Minister, I would
like to take a step back and look at the politics of this because
a lot of people in this country are now asking, "Why are
we still there and what are we trying to achieve?" The Iraq
Commission, in their recent report, concluded, "The initial,
over-ambitious vision of the Coalition can no longer be achieved
in Iraq", and, "The UK Government needs ... to redefine
its objectives". How do you respond to that?
Mr Ainsworth: Well, for some long
time now we have concentrated on the need for security and stability
and those have been a large part of our objectives. When you say,
"Why are we still there?", we are there in lower numbers
than we were some short while ago and we have managed to hand
over control of three of the four provinces that we originally
had direct responsibility for to the Iraqi forces themselves.
Basra is more difficult and it is more difficult than those three
provinces; there is no doubt about that. We are there in order
to achieve the conditions where they are able to take over the
job that we are currently doing. Now, there is hope among our
people out there at every level that we are approaching the situation
where that can be done, but we have got to look at the conditions
that apply on the ground, their capacity, and we have got to talk
to our allies and to the Iraqi Government about that. That cannot
be a unilateral decision on our part; it has got to be a proper
assessment of the conditions and the capability of the people
we are handing over to as well.
Q89 Robert Key: How do we make that
assessment then? How do we measure our success?
Mr Ainsworth: It has to be to
a degree subjective, but it has to be done in consultation with
Iraqi commanders and there is growing confidence on their part.
I even met General Habib who appears to be a fairly competent
commander of 10th Division and he is getting to the point where
certainly he thinks that his forces are able to take over in Basra
city in the near future, and that is where he is, so that conversation
is ongoing. Are we able to hand over in the city, are they up
to taking over not only the facilities that we have got, but doing
the job that we are doing as well and then are they able to take
over in the wider Basra province? That conversation is taking
place.
Q90 Robert Key: The Iraq Commission
said that the "handover should not be dependent on the prevailing
security situation". Do you agree with that?
Mr Ainsworth: No, I do not think
I do agree with that. I think that the security position cannot
be the whole picture, but it is a vital part of the assessment
of whether or not we are able to hand over. We cannot hand over
to a vacuum or to the forces that are going to destroy Iraqi Government
control and want to destroy Iraqi Government control in the south-east
of the country and, if we do not want to do that, then security
is absolutely key and the capacity of the people we are handing
over to is absolutely key to the timetable for handing over control
of the province.
Q91 Robert Key: So we will not be
driven out by a difficult security situation, but our objective
will be to leave in an orderly manner when the Iraqi forces can
look after themselves and their Government and people? Is that
a fair assessment?
Mr Ainsworth: Build the capacity,
assess the situation and check the confidence of the people we
are handing over to, and that is not to say that there are not
going to be problems the other side of the handover; there are
problems now. Iraq is not a benign environment, and those provinces
that we have handed over have not been trouble-free and there
have been problems in those provinces, but the important point
is that, when those problems occurred, the Iraqis dealt with it
themselves. They dealt with it themselves, they controlled the
situation and they coped with the problems. Now, that has got
to be what we have got to try and achieve in Basra.
Q92 Mr Jones: Can I return to the
military and ask quite a simple question to start off with and
a few follow-ups. What is the current military role for UK Forces
in Basra?
Mr Ainsworth: I think we have
talked about it already, although you disagree with me about what
the effect of that is. The role is to liaise, to train and to
build capacity in the Iraqi Forces themselves and to exercise
some projection of force out into the wider area in order to allow
that capacity to develop. I do believe that, if we hand over prematurely,
then that will be a major problem. Now, that is not to say that
we might not be approaching the point when we are able to do that,
and there are lots of people out there who hope we are getting
close to the point where the Iraqis would be able to take responsibility
for the province and, as I say, those conversations, those discussions
are taking place.
Q93 Mr Jones: One of the things that
we were told by numerous people in the military while we were
there is that 90% of the actual violence and attacks are actually
against Coalition Forces. Now, it chimes obviously with General
Dannatt's position, and I will come on to him in a minute, but
this is a quote from The Daily Telegraph which seems to
be the way that he now influences public policy by leaking things
to The Daily Telegraph rather than talking to ministers
or this Committee and it says, "The plain-speaking officer
... suggested that the British presence in Iraq was `exacerbating
the security problems' and warned that the Army would `break'
if it was kept there too long". What is your reaction to
that?
Mr Ainsworth: If you are intent
on mayhem and chaos, no matter what your motives are, whether
they are political or whether they are corrupt self-interest—
Q94 Mr Jones: We are talking about
General Dannatt now, are we!
Mr Ainsworth: I am talking about
those individuals who are attacking our forces all the time. Then
yes, it is right to a degree, and nobody denies this, that it
is a useful tool to be able to focus on the fact that there are
foreign forces in the area in order to be able to mobilise people
who would not necessarily share your aims and objectives, so it
is not surprising that people can be motivated to attack us, but
those are the motivations.
Mr Jones: But the concern which I have
and I think some others on this Committee have is that when you
have a senior general, like General Dannatt, making statements
like that, and it annoys me intensely because, whenever we have
any senior military general before this Committee and we ask about
overstretch, we are told that everything is all right and it is
no problem, but it does concern me as to who is actually in control
now. If we have a general who is leaking stuff to the newspapers
left, right and centre, trying clearly to influence whatever agenda
it is, is there a big fissure opening up between the politicians
and the MoD and General Dannatt because, if that is the case,
then I think that is very serious?
Chairman: It is not established that
it is General Dannatt who leaked it and you may wish to comment
on that as well.
Q95 Mr Jones: It is very strange
mail they seem to get regularly at The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Ainsworth: I do not think it
is any secret, with the amount of people that we have deployed
in Iraq and Afghanistan, that there are not huge reserves around
for contingencies and other things that might apply, and that
is basically the information that was put into the public domain.
There is not anything new in it. Now, we cannot control how the
media choose to report on something that has been known for some
long time. We have got two battle groups that are deployable effectively
in unforeseen circumstances at the moment and no more than that
because of the amount of commitment that we have got in these
two ongoing, as termed within the Department, "medium-sized
commitments", and that is a very large commitment. Now, the
reporting of defence matters often gets tweaked and gets taken
in all kinds of different directions. There were internal documents
that basically said what everybody has known for some time that
were, it seems, leaked to a newspaper and they chose to put it
on the front page, but when I read it, I was wondering where the
news was, where the actual news was in the story.
Q96 Mr Jones: Actually, I have to
say, I sympathise with General Dannatt's position, although I
disagree possibly with his methods of actually trying to change
the policy direction, but it was put to us in Iraq and, I have
to say, it is something I am actually now coming to myself, that
the real military objectives for us in Basra have actually finished
and that actually the process which is going to ultimately bring
security there is going to be a political one and the fact that
the only reason why we are actually not withdrawing more quickly
is because relations with the United States are actually influencing
that. Now, that, I think, is going to create problems not just
politically, but I think also militarily because quite clearly,
talking to people on the ground and the dedication which the Chairman
and you have already alluded to, if the military reason for them
being there is no longer there, you can understand them getting
pretty cheesed off pretty quickly. The concern I have is that,
if we are going to just pull back to the COB and sit there, we
are going to get unfortunately more tragedies like we had last
weekend. Now, is that a price worth paying for keeping US-UK relations
on some type of civilised basis or for saving face?
Mr Ainsworth: We are part of a
coalition in Iraq and we were voluntarily part of the Coalition
in Iraq and consulting with our allies about what we do, when
we do it and how we do it is an important part of being part of
the Coalition, indeed it is absolutely essential to being part
of the Coalition and, if there are people who are suggesting that
we ought not to do that, then the ramifications of that are pretty
profound, but what you are saying about Basra is true. It is the
politics and the economics that are important, but our presence
there has until now been needed in order to make those things
happen. Now, the very fact that we have been able to point up
to the Iraqis that we are serious about handing over to them and
the fact that we have handed over to them in three of those four
provinces has concentrated the mind. The appointment of General
Mohan and the appointment of General Jalil is a response from
the Iraqis, I think, to the recognition that their getting a grip
of their security arrangements in Basra is increasingly important
and that we are not prepared to hold on for ever while they get
to a position some time whenever, so there is a concentration
of the mind, yes, but the advance that needs to be made is in
the political and the economic area.
Q97 Mr Jones: But the fact that Mohan
is not actually getting control of the security situation and
is actually doing deals with the actual militia in the city, and
I am not criticising him for that, that is a political thing rather
than a security or military solution to it?
Mr Ainsworth: Well, in any insurgency
situation, you try to do an assessment of who the enemy is, what
their motivation is, who is winnable and who is irreconcilable
and, if you have any sense, you try to split them up and you do
not leave them as a consolidated front against you. If General
Mohan is doing that, then all strength to his elbow; that is the
job that we want him to do.
Q98 Willie Rennie: I have a slightly
different view from yourself of when we visited Iraq. I came away
with the firm belief that, with 90% of the attacks on our forces
and, if we withdrew, then the violence which would result would
be self-limiting over a relatively short period, we are now part
of the problem and not part of the solution. Now, whichever way
you look at it, whether you believe that our effort in the south
has been a success or whether you think it has been a failure,
I think you would come to the same conclusion that our broader
withdrawal is something that is quite urgent and would actually
resolve for the longer term some of the problems in the south
because, as you have recognised, the south is quite different
from other parts of the country. Finally, when we met the Prime
Minister, we asked him the question, "What would be the effect
of our withdrawal from the south?", and I am summarising
here, but he said that they could cope with the withdrawal.
Mr Ainsworth: I agree with what
you are saying, that the violence in the south appears to be self-limiting.
We do not see the suicide bombers and we do not see the degree
of irreconcilability to the institutions themselves of the Iraqi
State that we do in some other parts of the country. There are
other influences in Basra that are not conducive to nation-building,
but a lot of the people, and some of them are attacking us, their
fundamental aim is to make Iraq a successful country and, therefore,
there is potential there that is not in other parts of the area.
As to how quickly we can get out, I can only say what I have already
said and that is that it has got to be based on the conditions
and it has got to be based on the capability of the people we
are taking over from, but that debate is taking place now.
Q99 Mr Havard: This question about
the self-limiting violence should we withdraw and so on, it is
more nationalistic in the south and it is nihilistic in the middle,
as one way of describing it, around Baghdad and, therefore, these
political possibilities are there, but the question I want to
go back to is about this statement attributed to General Dannatt,
and I do not know whether he has leaked anything to anybody, but
it is in the paper and I want to know what the effects are because,
it seems to me, there is a series of phases. As you rightly say,
if we withdraw from the town, we are back in the base, but that
is not the end of the story and there are a number of other phases
that have to go in the story and the same with the US, but let
us be clear. The quote that was given before, he is said to have
said that our presence in Iraq "was exacerbating the security
problems" and he warned that the Army would "break"
if we were there too long. Now, that is not the Iraqi Army, that
is the British Army which would break if we were there too long,
so the question of timing of all of these developments is crucial.
Now, he is also reported as saying that he wants extra infantry
units. Now, if Iraq is, and it rightly is, stimulating a whole
discussion about our formation of forces and how many commitments
we can take on, et cetera, et cetera, can we actually have a proper,
structured discussion about that rather than it coming out in
the newspaper on the basis that it is currently doing because
I think, from talking to the personnel on the ground there, that
they know that? They know that their military utility is running
out and they say, "We are the wrong tool for the job. We
do not contest that the job needs to be done, but we are not the
best people to do it", so, if it is not them, who is it and
how do we have that debate?
Mr Ainsworth: The `who is it'
is the Iraqis themselves. Everybody recognises that.
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