A JOURNEY

by Blair, Tony

  I went back to Downing Street. Everyone assumed the US would begin its bombing campaign the next day. In fact, the action started with British forces, including special forces securing the oilfields to prevent an ecological disaster.

  We were at war. How long, bloody and difficult was soon to become apparent.

  FIFTEEN

  IRAQ: THE AFTERMATH

  The problem with a military campaign to which a large part of opinion – public and most important media – is opposed is that this part continues to have a point to prove. Unless they can be somehow co-opted at least to a neutral position, then they approach the conflict with a strong desire, conscious and subconscious, to see it fail. I don’t say that in the sense that they wish for disasters to befall coalition troops or the local people; but they are unreconciled. They feel forcefully that the campaign is wrong. They want to say: we told you so. However much they try to resist it – and in the case of Iraq, some didn’t try hard – they see each setback as a rebuke for those who advocated the action. This had crucial consequences for the later phases of Iraq.

  Right from the outset, I was keen to put the operation back under a UN badge as swiftly as possible, and to reunify the fractured transatlantic alliance. If the going got tough, we would need that alliance.

  That the planning for the aftermath was inadequate is well documented. The lessons, set out in the compendious US Inspector General’s Report in 2009 and in the Rand Report of the same year, have been pored over, examined and, to a great extent, learned.

  The military campaign of conquest was a brilliant success. The civilian campaign of reconstruction wasn’t. But disentangling what was avoidable error, what were the unpredicted and unpredictable challenges and what effect each had, is difficult even now. The US has admitted that its plans for reconstruction were poor. We in the British sector could have done better; but frankly for the area for which we were responsible, the plans were adequate and in any event were quickly ramped up and any inadequacy addressed.

  The problem is that even if there had been the most intensive and fully adequate planning for the aftermath, all that would have meant was greater concentration of effort on things that ultimately weren’t the cause of the bloodshed.

  The pre-war preparations threw up three principal areas of concern. First and foremost we feared a humanitarian disaster, as a country dependent on food coupons lost the tightly controlled system of government distribution. This occupied most of our thinking and was the subject of numerous interactions inside government and between the US and its main allies.

  When people say that there were warnings that the planning for the aftermath was not up to the mark, that is absolutely true. What is forgotten, however, is that those warnings were about eventualities that fortunately didn’t materialise. Somehow, despite the inadequacy, there was no humanitarian disaster. The food was distributed. The system worked.

  The second principal concern was over the possible use by Saddam of chemical or biological weapons. We spent much time and money trying to protect people against such a possibility. In the event, for obvious reasons, that never happened.

  Finally, we were concerned that Saddam would set fire to the oilfields and spark a major ecological disaster. This was prevented by timely and targeted intervention early in the campaign by British troops.

  Had we not done so – and we discovered the oilfields were indeed mined and ready to be fired – the effect would have been to pollute the entire area of the south of Iraq, its marshes, its biology and wildlife and the surrounding sea. Saddam had driven the Marsh Arabs – over 100,000 of them – from the marshlands that they had helped preserve, and so already there were signs that the marshes were deteriorating. But an oil slick would have been horrific in its consequences.

  However, of course, what troubled us most was the military campaign itself. Above all, in terms of our armed forces, we worried whether the Saddam army whose Republican Guard, in particular, had had the run of the country, with highly privileged positions of power, would fight to the last. The casualties in such a scenario would be large.

  So the operation began. In a statement to the House of Commons on 24 March, following the European Council of 21–22 March, I set out our aims and initial action undertaken.

  We are now just four days into this conflict. It is worth restating our central objectives. They are to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and to ensure that Iraq is disarmed of all chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes, but in achieving these objectives we have also embraced other considerations. We want to carry out this campaign in a way that minimises the suffering of ordinary Iraqi people, brutalised by Saddam; to safeguard the wealth of the country for the future prosperity of the people; and to make this a war not of conquest, but of liberation. For this reason, we did not, as some expected, mount a heavy bombing campaign first, followed by a land campaign. Instead, land forces were immediately in action, securing oil installations and gaining strategic assets and retaining them, not destroying them. The air campaign has been precisely targeted. Of course, there will have been civilian casualties, but we have done all that we humanly can to keep them to a minimum. Water and electricity supplies are being spared. The targets are the infrastructure, command and control of Saddam’s regime, not of the civilian population. We are making massive efforts to clear lines of supply for humanitarian aid, although the presence of mines is hindering us.

  By contrast, the nature of Saddam’s regime is all too plainly expressed in its actions. The oil wealth was mined, and deep-mined at that. Had we not struck quickly, Iraq’s future wealth would even now be burning away. Prisoners are being paraded in defiance of all international conventions. Those who dare speak criticism of the regime are being executed.

  Now let me give the House some detail, if I may, of the military campaign. In the south, our aim was to secure the key oil installations on the Al Faw peninsula; to take the port of Umm Qasr, the only Iraqi port to the outside world; and to render Basra, the second largest city in Iraq, ineffective as a basis for military operations by Saddam against coalition troops. In the west, in the desert, our aim is to prevent Saddam from using it as a base for hostile external aggression. In the north, our objective is to protect people in the Kurdish autonomous zone, to secure the northern oilfields, and to ensure that the north cannot provide a base for Saddam’s resistance. Then, of course, the vital goal is to reach Baghdad as swiftly as possible, thus bringing the end of the regime closer.

  I hope that the House will understand that there is a limit to how much I can say about the detail of our operations, especially those involving special forces, but with that caveat, at present British and US troops have taken the Al Faw peninsula; that is now secure. The southern oil installations are under coalition control. The port of Umm Qasr, despite continuing pockets of resistance, is under allied control, but the waterway essential for humanitarian aid may be blocked by mines and will take some days to sweep. Basra is surrounded and cannot be used as an Iraqi base, but in Basra there are pockets of Saddam’s most fiercely loyal security services, who are holding out. They are contained but still able to inflict casualties on our troops, so we are proceeding with caution. Basra international airport has been made secure. The western desert is largely secure. In the north, there have been air attacks on regime targets in Mosul, Kirkuk and Tikrit. We have been in constant contact with the Turkish government and the Kurdish authorities to urge calm.

  Meanwhile, coalition forces led by the American 5th Corps are on the way to Baghdad. As we speak, they are about sixty miles south of Baghdad, near Karbala. A little way from there they will encounter the Medina division of the Republican Guard, which is defending the route to Baghdad. That will plainly be a crucial moment. Coalition forces are also advancing on al-Kut, in the east of Iraq. The two main bridges over the Euphrates south of Baghdad have been taken intact. That is of critical significance.

  The air campaign has attacked Iraqi military installations,
the centres of Saddam’s regime and command and control centres. More than 5,000 sorties have taken place, thousands of Iraqi soldiers have surrendered and still more have simply left the field, their units disintegrating. But there are those, closest to Saddam, who are resisting and will resist strongly. They are the elite who are hated by the local population and have little to lose. There are bound, therefore, to be difficult days ahead, but the strategy and its timing are proceeding according to plan.

  The European Council began with tragedy. I got in to Brussels late on Thursday night. We were staying overnight on 20 March in the UK Representative’s home, a lovely old house on a nineteenth-century Brussels terrace. There are very beautiful parts of Brussels (unfortunately not including any of the EU buildings) and this was one of them. It is that very particular mid-century architecture, large rooms with very high ceilings and those plain, long, thin double doors.

  I was woken early on Friday morning to hear that eight British marines and four US soldiers had been killed in a helicopter collision in Kuwait. It was an ominous sign. Up to then, in the combined operations in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, we had lost only a handful. The horrible feeling that this was going to be very, very tough returned to me. As ever, I imagined the families, the knock on the door, the grieving widow, the fatherless children, the sheer tragedy of it all.

  Both Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder came over to me at the beginning of the Council and gave their condolences in a sincere and touching manner. I was very grateful for it. It also allowed us to discuss how we might now reunite the international community.

  My aim was to persuade the US that as soon as the fighting stopped, the whole political process should be put under the UN. They could then supervise the elections. They would have the formal power of decision-making, even if obviously the de facto power rested with the US. We could then say: OK, we all disagreed over removing Saddam. But now he’s gone, let us agree we all have an interest in a stable, friendly and well-governed Iraq.

  In this regard, the Council went better than expected. It agreed on the need for oil revenues to be held in trust by the UN and for the Iraqi people. It agreed that the UN should have a strong post-conflict mandate, and that the new provisional government should, for the first time in decades, be generally representative of all sections of Iraqi opinion. Since the 1960s, the Shia (60 per cent of the population) and the Kurds (20 per cent) had been effectively excluded from power. Now was the chance for them to participate in the running of their country.

  The US was harder to persuade. Colin Powell was very much in favour, pretty much for the same reasons as me. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and much of the administration thought the UN bureaucracy would just snarl things up. The task, as ever, was to persuade George. We were due to meet on 27 March. I wrote him a detailed note explaining why the UN had to be involved. I stressed once again the seminal importance of the Middle East peace process. When we met at Camp David, we went through the note pretty much line by line. Once he had studied the note carefully it was clear that he would end up coming down on the UN side. That was good, but the fact that it was a struggle indicated the nature of the problem.

  The Americans’ belief was that the UN got in the way. My belief was that you had to construct a coalition to win and the UN was the easiest conduit to such a coalition. This isn’t simply a matter of waging a war that is a guerrilla campaign rather than a conventional war. There have been guerrilla wars fought before. It is that, with modern technology and modern news and communication, the reality of war is played out in real time in people’s living rooms across the world. It is a spectacle. What the spectators see – and, above all, the lens through which they see it – is a vital component of winning or losing. Of course, public opinion has always played its part in warfare. But now, there are embedded media with the front-line troops. Everyone gives a running commentary. The collective news footage is not just vastly greater; it is of a quite different nature from what has gone before. I sometimes wonder whether some of the wars of old, including the Second World War, could have been fought in the way they were if the media of today had been there with the technology they now have. Think of Dresden or Hiroshima.

  The point is that the visual impact of real war completely eclipses analysis, context or explanation. It becomes its own story because the images are so shocking. In those circumstances, it is of the essence that the narrative about why we are doing it, the purpose, the objectives, the moral as well as geopolitical rationale, is clear and sufficiently agreed and accepted so that it can overwhelm the visual force of the images of war.

  This is so for virtually any modern military engagement. It is abundantly so for any engagement that will take time. That is why building a coalition to topple Saddam mattered; it is why, above all, reuniting the international community post-Saddam was going to be vital. If the post-Saddam Iraq could be made a task for all of us, then, yes, it is true there would be irritating amounts of UN bureaucracy, but there would be the immense bonus of international buy-in. Or, at the least, a greater prospect of it.

  It was a hard sell with George and even harder with Dick. But in the end we got agreement ‘in principle’ that the UN should come in.

  I tried to mend fences by going from Camp David straight to New York to see Kofi Annan. I had and have a great respect and liking for Kofi. His position throughout Iraq was quite impossible. He did his level best to steer a sensible course. He was, personally, I am sure, opposed to the action, but he saw entirely the sense of the UN coming back into it and was grateful I had made the effort to see and consult him.

  In the light of what came to be a familiar criticism of UN exclusion, and because it provided Clare Short with the ostensible reason for her resignation a few weeks later, it is worth pointing out that from the outset Kofi made it clear he did not seek the ‘lead’ role for the UN. He wanted the UN to be at the centre of things but thought (rightly) there was no way the UN could take the lead until the country stabilised. What he wanted – a ‘central’ or ‘vital’ role, as it came to be called – was what he got.

  In the days and weeks that followed, there was a continual round of meetings, updates, conference calls and the steady progress of the forces on the ground.

  I used to meet the core group – the Chief of Defence Staff, the heads of intelligence, Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon – early in the morning; and then have the War Cabinet at nine. The War Cabinet meetings were marked by Clare’s continued agonising over whether she should stay in the government or resign; and usually very detailed debates about individual items. I tried to keep it focused but it was difficult, frankly. However, it kept everyone bound in. There is a charge – bolstered by some of the Civil Service grandees (though not others) – that there were mistakes in Iraq because not enough was discussed in the bigger Cabinet. It really is nonsense. I wasn’t there during the Second World War or the Falklands, but if Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher used to do everything through formal Cabinet meetings, I would eat my proverbial hat. It’s like any other walk of life. You can’t take decisions by vast committees of people. You can debate, discuss and absorb views that way, but you can’t run a war, organisation or company that way. It just doesn’t work; at least, not in my experience. But then again, that might be my fault . . .

  The American and British forces performed brilliantly. Indeed, from 19 March to the effective end of Saddam’s government was less than two months. In fact, on 14 April in a statement to the House of Commons, I said that though the conflict was not over, in essence the regime had already collapsed. It had been an extraordinarily well-executed and brisk military campaign. I outlined what had been achieved so far:

  The south of Iraq is now largely under British control. The west is secure, and in the major town of Al Qaim fighting is diminishing. In the north, Kurdish forces have retired from Kirkuk and Mosul, leaving US forces in control. US forces are in and around Tikrit. They are meeting some resistance. But in essence, all over
Iraq, Saddam’s forces have collapsed. Much of the remaining fighting, particularly in Baghdad, is being carried out by foreign irregular forces. In Baghdad itself, the Americans are in control of most of the city but not yet all of it.

  As is obvious, the problem now is the disorder following the regime’s collapse. Some disorder, frankly, is inevitable. It will happen in any situation where a brutal police state that for thirty years has terrorised a population is suddenly destroyed. Some looting, too, is directed at specific regime targets, including hospitals that were dedicated for the use of the regime. But it is a serious situation and we need to work urgently to bring it under control.

  Basra shows that initial problems can be overcome. I am particularly proud of the role that British forces, ably led by Major General Robin Brims, have played in Basra.

  Iraqi technicians and managers are now making themselves known to British forces. Together we are restoring many key services. Most public health clinics are operational. UK forces have supplied oxygen to Al Basra general hospital and are providing other medical support where they can. About two hundred policemen have reported for work. Joint patrols started on 13 April. In surrounding towns, looting has either ceased or is declining, local patrols are being re-established and cooperation with city councils is going well.

  The casualties on the British side for such a military operation were mercifully slight – fewer than thirty deaths, each one a personal tragedy, but an extraordinary low count on such a major undertaking.

  As the army moved through the south, taking out Iraqi resistance, mopping up any renegade elements, they were, through the excellence of the engineering unit, also repairing bridges, electricity, water and power infrastructure. Detailed plans were developed for rehabilitation and repair work. Though it is true that Clare’s attitude did hamper the civilian efforts, the army commitment more than made up for it, and in any event, frankly, any failings of Clare could have been easily remedied, had the security situation remained benign.