Iraq Inquiry

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a former special adviser to the late Robin Cook when he was Foreign Secretary from 1999 to 2001, and to Jack Straw when he was Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2005. In that year I returned to the UN, where I was director for the Middle East in the Department of Political Affairs in New York. In all three positions I had much to do with Iraq.

Let me record my high regard for the work of Sir John Chilcot and his fellow commissioners, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Usha Prashar. The report is a forensic critique of the Iraq war, probably the most divisive issue in British foreign policy since the Suez war of 1956, to which the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, has just referred, and which, of course, brought down the Government of Sir Anthony Eden. But the legacy of the 1956 war, in the region and here at home, was not as profound as that of the Iraq war. Moreover, the UK death toll in the Suez conflict was barely 12% of that during the Iraq war.

In my remarks today I want to focus on the continuing effects of the war, 13 years after the invasion. An early indication and warning of what that invasion was likely to bring was the looting of the fabled treasures of the Baghdad museum in the early days of the 2003 war. The inability, or the unwillingness, of the invading forces to take adequate responsibility for the maintenance of law and order was a foretaste of the occupation to come.

On 2 July 2003, I accompanied Jack Straw on a visit to Baghdad. In addition to meeting with Iraqi politicians, we met with Mr Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, as well as the late Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations special representative. The two men could not have been more different. Although Mr Bremer had the title of ambassador, he reported not to the State Department but directly and only to Donald Rumsfeld, then the Secretary of Defense. His previous diplomatic experience was limited to postings in Norway and the Netherlands. The contrast with Mr de Mello could not have been more marked. Widely tipped as a future secretary-general, the Brazilian diplomat had served in the Congo, Mozambique and East Timor, as well as in Cambodia and the Balkans, where I worked with him. There was no senior figure in the UN who came close to de Mello in terms of his incomparable experience in conflict and post-conflict situations, as well as in humanitarian affairs.

De Mello hoped that the CPA would move quickly to allow a provisional Iraqi Government—after all, the Security Council Resolution 1483 envisaged the coalition as a temporary authority in Iraq—but he was not able to influence the United States and, as Sir John Chilcot tartly notes, neither was the UK. There was, chillingly, no reporting line from the CPA to the UK. Moreover, the US, as Sir John Chilcot again outlines, refused to accept a memorandum of understanding to establish procedures for working together on occupation issues. The UK’s ability to influence decisions made by the CPA was, Sir John says, not commensurate with its responsibilities as joint occupying power. It was under Bremer’s leadership that de-Baathification became a disaster and fatally wounded the Iraqi state, from which it has still not recovered today.

The subaltern position of the UK did not match the commitment that the Blair Government had made. It meant that from the very beginning the traction that London had on Washington was not adequate to the enormity of the tasks of the occupation.

For all its faults and crushing brutality, Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a nation state. It was a bulwark against Iran, with whom it had fought a bitter war. Since the invasion, Iraq has not become again a functioning nation state. We see the position of the Christians in Iraq. At the time of the invasion, their numbers were about 1,700,000. Today they are fewer than 20% of that number. Post-Saddam Governments have been less successful—or, frankly, less willing—in protecting Christians and other minorities from coming under attack.

It is important to look at the conclusions Chilcot outlines regarding post-conflict situations. In paragraph 859 of the executive summary he looks at the fundamental elements of post-conflict situations. The first is,

“the best possible appreciation of the theatre of operations”.

The second is,

“a hard-headed assessment of risks”.

The third is realistic objectives and the fourth is the allocation of the necessary resources. In paragraph 860 he says:

“All of these elements were lacking in the UK’s approach to its role in post-conflict Iraq”.

At the regional level in 2003 the UK, and Tony Blair in person, pushed strongly for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Now, 13 years on, we are no nearer that settlement. Indeed, the Middle East peace process, far from being advanced by the Iraq war, has for several years now barely existed. There have been no meetings between the parties for nearly three years. There was a fragile Middle East peace process in 2003. Now there is none.

Chilcot also shows conclusively that there were no links between the Baathist regime and al-Qaeda. It is, then, one of the cruellest outcomes of the Iraq invasion that since 2003 Iraq has been the source of many of the jihadi threats to the region and to the West itself. Today, Daesh or ISIS is stronger in Iraq than in any other Arab country, including Syria. Mosul, a city larger than Manchester, has been under ISIS occupation for more than two years now. It functions like a state and is an incubator for many of the plots and threats against the West. The situation is so serious that yesterday Ash Carter, the US Defense Secretary, announced that a further 600 US troops were being dispatched to Iraq, bringing the current total there to nearly 5,000. I ask the Minister: what is the UK Government’s view of the threat posed by the ISIS state in Iraq and are we considering further assistance to the Iraq Government?

Finally, I urge the Minister to make sure that the lessons of the Chilcot inquiry and, more importantly, its report, are fully understood and the policy implications absorbed across Whitehall, especially in the FCO, the MoD and DfID.