Chilcot report: How Britain's military was 'humiliated' - sent unprepared and ill-equipped to fight the Iraq war

The role of British forces in the military occupation of Iraq was doomed to fail from the outset because of Tony Blair’s “wholly inadequate” planning for the aftermath of the invasion, Sir John Chilcot concluded.

In a devastating critique of the British campaign, Sir John concluded that the military had been left “humiliated” and ended the conflict “a very long way from success”.

Tony Blair arrives to deliver a speech after the publication of the Chilcot reportCredit:
Reuters

Troops on the ground had also been badly let down, Sir John concluded. The Ministry of Defence “was slow” to spot the danger posed by roadside bombs - known as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) - and that it took at least three years to identify and order medium-armoured patrol vehicles to replace out-of-date, unprotected Snatch Land Rovers. In total, 47 British soldiers died in IED explosions.

“It was not clear,” said Sir John, “which person or department within the Ministry of Defence was responsible for identifying and articulating such capability gaps. But it should have been.”

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Mr Blair had insisted in his evidence to the inquiry that he could only have known “in hindsight... that the military campaign to defeat Saddam was relatively easy; it was the aftermath that was hard”.

But Sir John, reserving some of his most damning criticism of Mr Blair, said that was blatantly not true. “We do not agree that hindsight is required,” said Sir John, “The risks of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuits of its interests, regional instability, and al-Qaida activity in Iraq, were each explicitly identified before the invasion.”

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02:07

He added: “Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam were wholly inadequate.”

In truth, Mr Blair himself appeared all too aware of the problems ahead. The Iraq Inquiry report reveals that Jonathan Powell, Mr Blair’s own chief of staff in Downing Street, had warned in a briefing note sent as early as September 2002 of “a terrible bloodletting of revenge after Saddam goes. Traditional in Iraq after conflict.”

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Sir Christopher Meyer, British Ambassador to the US, warned on September 6, 2002: “It [Iraq occupation] will probably make pacifying Afghanistan look like child’s play.”

And in January 2003 in a briefing note to George W Bush, Mr Blair himself wrote: “The biggest risk we face is internecine fighting between all the rival groups, religions, tribes, etc in Iraq when the military strike destabilises the regime. They are perfectly capable, on previous form, of killing each other in large numbers.”

A mass protest against the invasion of Iraq in 2003Credit:
REX/Shutterstock

Mr Blair was arguing for UN support during the six-year occupation and engagement that followed the March 2003 invasion.

He warned, with a hindsight he had ironically told the Iraq Inquiry he did not possess, that “we will get the blame for any fighting”.

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The Chilcot report says that in the rush to war “there was little time to prepare three brigades and the risks were neither properly identified nor fully exposed to ministers”.

Mr Blair was further blamed for his inability to “establish clear Ministerial oversight of planning and preparation” and of failing to “take account of the magnitude of the task of stabilising, administering and reconstructing Iraq”.

In the autumn of 2002, the report found that Mr Blair had ignored advice to set up a ministerial group for “post-conflict planning and preparation” while Clare Short, the International Development Secretary, was frozen out of discussions.

George W Bush and Tony Blair shake hands after a joint press conference in 2003Credit:
Reuters

The report concludes that the UK was bereft of any strategy for rebuilding the country following the fall of Saddam and that its only real goal was “to reduce the level of its deployed forces”.

Sir John said: “The scale of the UK effort in post-conflict Iraq never matched the scale of the challenge. Whitehall departments and their ministers failed to put collective weight behind the task.”

It singled out for criticism in the early days three senior commanders: Lt Gen Sir John Reith, the chief of joint operations in Iraq, and successive chiefs of the defence staff Adml Sir Michael Boyce and Gen Sir Michael Walker.

In 2003, around two million people attended a demonstration to ask the Government not to attack IraqCredit:
REX/Shutterstock

Adml, chief of defence staff until May 2003, had given “no instruction on how to establish a safe and secure environment if lawlessness broke out as anticipated” and no rules of engagement for dealing with rioters in Basra and southern Iraq which British troops controlled.

The report says that by the end of August 2003 “a deterioration in security could and should have been identified” by Lt Gen Reith and that by the autumn he should have concluded that “the underlying assumptions on which the UK’s Iraq campaign was based was over‑optimistic” and instigated a review.

An intelligence assessment in September 2003 that the security environment “would probably worsen over the year ahead” was seemingly ignored.

Relatives and friends of military personnel killed during the Iraq warCredit:
Reuters

“Despite that evidence,” states the report, “military planning under the leadership of Gen Sir Michael Walker proceeded on the basis that the situation in Basra would remain relatively benign.”

In 2005, the decision to deploy troops to Helmand province in Afghanistan was made but without a “rigorous analysis” of the effects on the ongoing conflict in Iraq.

“Decisions,” concluded the report, “were not based on a realistic assessment of the likely duration of either operation and were consequently flawed”.

Relatives of servicemen killed in the Iraq war had a two-hour private read through of the Chilcot report ahead of publicationCredit:
David Rose for The Telegraph

The report went on: “All resources from that point onwards were going to be stretched,” adding that the UK “did not have sufficient resources” to fight on both fronts.

Worse was to come. In 2007, the Chilcot report found that Britain had done a ‘humiliating’ deal with a senior leader of Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) militia, whom the report identifies only as JAM1.

The militia, which was backed by Iran, agreed to stop targeting the British military and in exchange militia detainees were released from British custody.

Protesters dresses as Tony Blair and George W Bush in London as the Chilcot report is publishedCredit:
EPA

“It was humiliating that the UK reached a position in which an agreement with a militia group which had been actively targeting UK forces was considered the best option available,” the report stated.

The secret deal also “had costs”. The UK military was able to withdraw from Basra Palace without loss of life but it meant the militia, better known as the Mahdi Army, was able to operate unfettered across the beleaguered city.

The report also highlighted the post-invasion equipment failings, centred on the inability to react when it was clear that lightly-armoured Snatch Land Rovers were not offering adequate protection against roadside bombs.

“The MoD was slow in responding to the developing threat in Iraq from Improvised Explosive Devices,” the report found.

A demonstrator dressed as former Prime Minister Tony Blair at a protest in London as the Chilcot report is publishedCredit:
Getty Images

The Joint Intelligence Committee had highlighted the threat of IEDs in three separate assessments in 2003 and by September, a decision was taken to send 180 Snatch Land Rovers, already in service in Northern Ireland, to Iraq.

The inquiry said the decision to use Snatch Land Rovers should have been no more than “an interim solution” but even by 2006 MoD officials were still struggling to source a medium weight armoured vehicle - or Protected Patrol Vehicle.

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01:20

The inquiry questioned “why it took so long to fill a capability gap that was apparent from the end of 2003”.

It wasn’t the only equipment failing but it was the most glaring. There was also a lack of helicopter support with military leaders unsure whether to use helicopter to move troops around or use them for surveillance missions.

The decision to go to war - not just in Iraq but also in Afghanistan - had left Britain unprepared to fight on the ground.