<!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:”"; margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0cm; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} @page Section1 {size:595.0pt 842.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

The Chilcott enquiry has caused me to look at what I thought at the time of the invasions and shortly before. My analysis proved more accurate than that of those in command of events. If I, with no access to privileged information, could be on the whole right, why did those who should have been so much better informed, get it on the whole wrong?

On Afghanistan I thought that the chance to be slim of establishing a stable unified government. No one had managed that before; the Russians could not despite the deployment of great numbers of troops and a puppet government. I thought also that the threat from al Qaeda was exaggerated and misunderstood. Al Qaeda was and is more a franchise than a single movement. I thought the camps were much more about indoctrination than about how to blow up people. The Twin Towers were destroyed by German residents trained in the flying schools of Florida. You can in any case learn how to make a bomb from the web. And indoctrination occurs in the Finsbury Park mosque and the madrassas of Pakistan; indoctrination does not need some secret hideaway. I thought we were heading for a morass and so it has proved. Invading Afghanistan was not a good idea.

I was initially against the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that an invasion would inflame other Arabs, both governments and people. In that I was wrong; neither was keen on Saddam although for different reasons. I came to think an invasion was worthwhile mainly because Saddam was a brutal dictator. We cannot get rid of all odious dictators but that does not mean we should not topple those that we can. I thought the prizes were a stable supply of oil and a stable country in an unstable region. There seemed to be small likelihood of Saddam having weapons of mass destruction although he could have made biological weapons easily enough. I thought that in any case Saddam would not have used them; to do so would have very foolish and Saddam was not a fool. The charge that he was in league with al Qaeda was ludicrous. Osama bin Laden’s chief enemies were not the USA and Britain but Saddam, the Saudi Royals and other “heretical” governments of Muslim countries. I believed that the second wave of the invasion, following in days if not hours, should be humanitarian; to create camps for the displaced, and provide food and medical care, repair bridges and so on. I said that martial law and a curfew should be declared immediately and any looters shot; it would not have been necessary to shoot many. I assumed that the first task of the invaders would be to secure the strategic services; television and radio, sewage, water supply, power supply, hospitals and, in the case of Bagdad, the museums. I failed to recognise the sectarian problem although I should have. There was already a semi autonomous Kurdish area under a “no fly” zone and I knew Saddam had brutally suppressed an uprising in the south after the first Gulf War. I knew also that after the 1st World War Britain had refused to give up bombing because we needed bombers to subdue outlying villages in Iraq; Iraq was then a British mandate. I have no doubt at all that in Blair’s place I would have called for an analysis of the problems we had faced in governing Iraq. There is no evidence that the Foreign Office prepared such an analysis; Blair would probably not have bothered to read it had the F O done so.

The invasion of Afghanistan was legal under international law; that of Iraq was not. I think that matters in the sense that the law ought to be obeyed. If international law did not allow the overthrow of Saddam or would not allow the overthrow of Mugabe, the law ought to be changed. So I regret that the invasion of Iraq was illegal and carried out on a dishonest premise, but no more.

My reluctant support for the invasion of Iraq was based on the assumption that there was a sensible follow-up plan. That there was not is the real crime. The crime was the same in Afghanistan. The difference is that in the former country, a plan could have succeeded whereas in the latter the chance of success, however good the plan, was remote. In Afghanistan using the northern warlords to do the fighting for us meant that we were in no position to execute a plan, had we had one. If I had been Bush or Blair I would have had a plan for Iraq and indeed I had one of a very general nature. Making plans is something I do all the time; some small and immediate, some grand and hypothetical. Perhaps it is part of my nature; perhaps it is the experience of setting up the Australian Plague Locust Commission and running control campaigns. Most likely I succeeded with the latter because of the former. I find it incomprehensible that no plans were made. Did Bush, Blair and their advisors somehow think that when “liberated” a stable democratic government would spontaneously appear? Rumsfeld’s declared, “We don’t do nation building.” -a remark of monumental stupidity.

Paddy Ashdown, who knows a thing two about such matters, has pointed out that liberators have three months goodwill to put structures in place. Not that this is a startling insight; a new government or a new president has a 100 days “honeymoon”. With Iraq I thought and still think there was a chance. The population is reasonably well educated, Saddam’s dictatorship was at least a secular state, oil is a source of wealth, and communications are relatively easy. We had the experience of Germany and Japan after the Second World War. You establish order from the first hours, you create a public service out of the one that previously existed, you appoint officials who you have reason to hope are honest and able, you impose a constitution, you get the oil flowing under contracts that ensure a fair cut for the country and renegotiable after not too long, you cut no deals. If we had studied the problems of governance under the mandate and the “tribal” structure of Saddam’s rule, we would have known what degree of regional autonomy to build into a constitution.

I cannot accept the excuse that we were the junior partner and assumed that the Americans had a plan. We would still have had to deal with our sector in the south centred on Basra, whether or not the U S had a plan. Why did the U K have no plan of its own? If the government did not have a plan why did the commander on the spot not take what seem to me, and seemed to me at the time, the obvious steps? Did no one on the commander’s staff point out the need for order from the start, the need for humanitarian aid and the urgent requirement to set up some sort of administration with local participation? Not the commander’s responsibility but what about the initiative the Army claims soldiering needs?

The justification for every action is that without it matters would have been worse. In Afghanistan and even more in Iraq, a large number has died who without the invasions would have been alive. Even discounting the deaths, is life better for those that have survived? In some ways perhaps, but worse in others. Has the threat of terrorism been reduced? Almost certainly not. And vast sums have been spent that could have been used more profitably.

What is the outlook? In a word, “murky”. As the countryman is supposed to have said when asked the way to some remote spot “If I were you I wouldn’t start from here.” We have effectively washed or hands of Iraq. The Kurds have a near autonomous state and I think that likely to survive. But as for the rest the omens are not good. A stable state will not occur if Syria and Iran wish otherwise. A stable state is not all that likely even with the good will of the neighbours. But I suspect both the key neighbours are already fomenting unrest. If either wanted Iraq to descend into chaos to provide a pretext for an invasion, they could certainly engineer that. The Middle East is now less stable not more.

Whatever remote chance there might have been of creating a stable Afghanistan, there is none whilst we are saddled with Karsai, and there is no simple way to get rid of him. Even if we did, his replacement though better, could not be near what is needed. I assume some sort of agreement will be patched up between the central government and the Taliban; we will declare that a great success and leave. Civil war will most likely break out which the Taliban will win, putting matters back to where they were before the invasion. Someone with the ability and charisma capable of suppressing the warlords and being the leader for all Afghans has yet to be born. For that we must I fear await the second coming.

Feb 2010