The Report of the Iraq Inquiry
611. DFID’s focus on poverty reduction and the channelling of assistance through multilateral institutions instilled a reluctance, before the invasion, to engage on anything other than the immediate humanitarian response to conflict.
612. When military planners advised of the need to consider the civilian component as an integral part of the UK’s post‑conflict deployment, the Government was not equipped to respond. Neither the FCO nor DFID took responsibility for the issue.
613. The shortage of expertise in reconstruction and stabilisation was a constraint on the planning process and on the contribution the UK was able to make to the administration and reconstruction of post‑conflict Iraq.
614. The UK Government’s post‑invasion response to the shortage of deployable experts in stabilisation and post‑conflict reconstruction is addressed in Section 10.3.
615. Constraints on UK military capacity are addressed in Sections 6.1 and 6.2.
616. The UK contribution to the post‑conflict humanitarian response is assessed in Section 10.1.
617. At no stage did Ministers or senior officials commission the systematic evaluation of different options, incorporating detailed analysis of risk and UK capabilities, military and civilian, which should have been required before the UK committed to any course of action in Iraq.
618. Where policy recommendations were supported by untested assumptions, those assumptions were seldom challenged. When they were, the issue was not always followed through.
619. It was the responsibility of officials to identify, analyse and advise on risk and Ministers’ responsibility to ensure that measures to mitigate identifiable risks, including a range of policy options, had been considered before significant decisions were taken on the direction of UK policy.
620. Occasions when that would have been appropriate included:
• after Mr Blair’s meeting with Mr Hoon, Mr Straw and others on 23 July 2002;
• after the adoption of resolution 1441;
• before or immediately after the decision to deploy troops in January 2003;
• after the Rock Drill (a US inter‑agency rehearsal for post‑conflict administration) in February 2003; and
• after Mr Blair’s meeting on post‑conflict issues on 6 March 2003.
621. There is no indication of formal risk analysis or formal consideration of options associated with any of those events.
