Letter dfid junior official to rycroft iraq engagement with orha

/4 22 April 2003 Deer Matthew, IRAQ: ENGAGEMENT WITH ORHA Summary: Concerns over ORHA. Implications will need to be considered by the Ad Hoc Ministerial Group on Iraq. At the first meeting of the Ad Hoc Ministerial Group on Iraq, Ministers agreed that we should deepen our engagement with ORHA in tandem with claritying its legal remit. A DFID team visited Kuwait and Southern Iraq last week. DFID officials have been looking at options to support ORHA alongside other ways of supporting post-conflict recovery and reform in iraq. The team found that ORHA has little to offer in the immediate humanitarian/recovery phase of the crisis in Iraq - instead, the lead here. will continue to rest with the military and, security permitting, the UN system. ORHA may be in a position to make a stronger contribution to the reconstruction and reform phase, but its planning is still at an early stage. ... The visit report (enclosed) has clear implications for the planned Ministerial discussion on Thursday regarding UK secondments to ORHA. Given the competing claims on scarce resources to support Iraq, Ministers will wish to prioritise any staff deployments carefully. Ministers and Accounting Officers will also wish to satisfy themselves that any UK secondments to ORHA meet the usual standards of effectiveness and cost-efficiency. I am copying this to Sir Andrew Turnbull, Desmond Bowen (Cabinet Office), Simon McDonald (HMT), (DTI) and Carolyn Bartlett (Attorney General). Yours Private Secretary DECLASSIFIED er limited as however, almost all preparation has been done in a vacuum, with very limited information of conditions in iraq. It remains to be seen whether plans and contracts are flexible enough to allow ORHA to respond effectively to conditions on the ground. In the absence of an UNSCR an. the emergence of an lIA, legal advice will be required to define the limits of UK engagement in these reform areas. Background: Humanitarian Needs Broadly, the humanitarian crisis that was feared in Iraq has not materialised, The need for acute relief operations has been limited. In the South, localised needs are being addressed by the military and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). As soon as security permits, UN agencies and NGOs are ready to begin operations on the ground - this is already beginning to happen in South and North Iraq. In Baghdad and other central towns, the humanitarian situation is more difficult. However, there is an urgent need for recovery. Key issues here include restoring law and order, restoring water, fuel and power supplies; re-opening schools, medical facilities and other public services; restoring the underlying public administration including payment of salaries; restoring the public distribution systems -. for the OFF programme; and re-building pipeline imports of food, medical and other essential supplies. Without rapid progress on these recovery issues, an acute humanitarian situation could turn into a crisis within days. The UK military in the South are heavily focused on recovery issues and are building close relations with local administrators. Good relations have also been established with the ICRC and UNICEF. The UK approach is clearly informed by other recent experience in Afghanistan, Kosovo and East Timor; and is well supported by embedded humanitarian advisers from DFID. It is almost universally recognised that US forces have a very different approach, though a number of colleagues noted a willingness to learn from UK military experience. There is a strong risk that this may lead to a much slower recovery in Baghdad and other areas controlled by the US, possibly setting off a humanitarian crisis. 1 A DFID team - Moazzam Malik, - visited Kuwait 14-16 April 2003. The team had 12 separate meetings with ORHA officials, met UN and NGO representatives, and spent a day with UK 1 Div in Umm Qasr and Basra International Airport. The team is grateful to DFID staff in - who coordinated the visit; and to UK lower timary personner- including Generals. the cutent so sat; the overwhelming majority are from the US. Alongside these, there are 14 UK personnel - including one secondee from DFID - 6 Australians and 1 Dane. A number of countries are interested in seconding officials to ORHA, and there have been recent missions from Denmark, Spain and Japan. The eventual number of ORHA staff may grow to between 1000 and 1500. 9. ORHA is organised into three pillars working on humanitarian assistance, The reconstruction, and civil administration. An organogramme is attached. reconstruction working on political transformation is taking shape in Washington. Core staff will begin to deploy to Baghdad from 21 April, though it will take some days before Baghdad based staff are fully operational. Under each pillar, ORHA is preparing to "do whatever is necessary" to operationalise Iraqi public institutions. This could range from advising Iraq officials to directly assuming executive functions. Senior advisers (previously known as "Shadow Ministers") have been designated for each ministry Alongside the pillars, three regional tears have been set up. The South team under General (retd) Buck Walters deployed to Umm Qasr around 8 April with some 40 staff. The North team under Major General (retd) Bruce Moore deployed on 13 April. The 20-strong Baghdad Central team under Ambassador Barbara Bodine will start to deploy from 21 April. 12. As a "new" organisation, ORHA is still in its formative stages. The various tears and pillars do not appear to be well coordinated with each other or with top management. There is little sense of a unifying strategy. Internal communications and decision making processes do not seem to be well defined. 13. To date, ORHA has been reluctant to engage with UN agencies. The first meeting with the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq took place on 15 April: The limited contact with UN agencies is hampering ORHA's planning and preparation in all three pillars - in many cases the UN agencies are the only international bodies with detailed knowledge of Iraq. DECLASSIFIED Led by Ambassador George Ward, the Humanitarian Pillar seeks to facilitate humanitarian assistance. ORHA does not have any plans or resources to provide direct relief or humanitarian assistance itself, though it has a close association with US DART teams, and in time, may develop a close relation with civil military liaison 17. Plans are being drawn up for a "Baghdad Forum" to play a facilitation role in Baghdad covering both humanitarian and reconstruction assistance. Given the close the coordination function. In short, as recognised within ORHA, the humanitarian pillar should close within weeks, with any residual functions passing into the other pillars. ORHA: Reconstruction Pillar 19. The reconstruction pillar is led by Lewis Lucke, formerly Director of the USAID office in Jordan. The pillar is staffed mainly with USAID officials, and in located separately from ORHA in Kuwait City. It is intended that, in due course, the core USAID operation will become an independent entity led by Lewis Lucke. 20. The reconstruction team is heavily focused on specifying and letting large contracts in a range of areas from health and education to port management. Contractors will not be able to operate until there is a permissive environment for international civilians - this means most contractors will be unable to operate during the initial recovery phase. 21. These contracts have been largely specified on the assumption that the state will have disintegrated and without knowledge of conditions in Iraq. For example, there are plans to revise all textbooks, but these have been drawn up without any assessment of existing textbooks. It is intended that USAID contracts will be flexible enough to respond to differing conditions. However, this is yet to be demonstrated. In an early test, the USAID contract for the management of Umm Qas port has been unable to accommodate the need for urgent dredging. 22. ORHA plans under reconstruction are broad and not obviously limited to those of an "Occupying Power". In light of recent advice from the Attorney General, UK collaboration would requite leAStFIED capellene m tension economies. The team are gearing up to "tun" the Iraqi economy, with sections focusing on fiscal, monetary and banking policies. 25. The treasury team are also taking the lead in planning to pay civil service salaries for an interim period. Despite the urgent need for public sector workers to return to work, planning has been slow and poorly informed. Current plans for an emergency US$20 payment to each worker in Umm Qas are not well thought out, with inadequate preparations to identify those that are eligible, and little thought to the implications such a payment will have in the rest of the country. 26. The justice and security teams have similarly drawn up extensive plans covering law and order, transitional justice, longer term institutional reform in the justice sector and limited DDR. Justice sector plans have been developed over 2 years, are well thought through and, with the requisite UN authority, would provide an excellent basis for future work. The likely breakdown in public administration and the implications for law and order were identified before the Iraq conflict began. Unfortunately, this advice was disregarded by the US Administration and the Coalition military. 27. Again, as with the reconstruction pillar, ORHA plans under civil administration are broad and not obviously limited to those of an "Occupying Power. UK collaboration would require further legal advice. ORHA: Regional Teams 28. Three regional teams have been set up. Each team is likely to designate staff to cover individual governorates, though this has not happened yet. Discussions are underway on whether a fourth regional team should be set up. It has also been suggested that a fifth team - with the five tears mapping the UN regional areas - might be desirable. 29. Regional teams are intended to monitor developments on the ground, to inform policy development in ORHA headquarters, and to advise and facilitate interventions by USAID contractors and civil-military teams. To date, the South team has proved to be largely ineffective. UK forces had hoped that ORHA's deployment would support their recovery work, and facilitate an early handing over of responsibilities to ORHA. UK forces have now begun to plan on the basis that they will get little practical support form ORHA in the immediate recovery phase. DECLASSIFIED Iraq - Humanitarian Response and Coordination Team DFID 22 April 2003 ..? DECLASSIFIED to come. The key judgement is whether UK policy makers can influence an ORHA that is and will remain dominated by US DOD. The situation is not helped by the almost open hostility between US DOD and State Department. There is very widespread concern that the US military is simply not well equipped to establish and maintain civil order and effective public administration. forces did not want the interim governance role, have not prepared for it, and are now being driven by media pressure. There are two entry points to address this risk: (1) through Coalition military structures; (2) through ORHA. Ambassador Barbara Bodine is the best of the regional team leaders. She has a key role in leading Coalition efforts to establish a civil administration in Baghdad. Her close association with the US State Department may hamper her efforts to mobilise military and ORHA assets under DOD command Options for engagement for ORHA: • No engagement. This would cut across the move towards engagement in the rest of Whitehall. It would marginalise DFID in Whitehall and in ORHA - and by implication in many key policy debates. However, it would and political association. It safeguard DFID would also leave DFID to engage with UN/IFls and NGOs, and pursue a more normal DFID country operation. Full engagement as proposed by the Foreign Secretary and General Tim • Cross. Would carry grave risks • Limited engagement in carefully chosen areas, in an "eyes and ears" role as directed by the SoS. This would seek to balance the risks of no or full engagement. For DFID, limited engagement would amount to 3 or 4 secondments - preferably of regular staff rather than consultants. The key asset that DFID staff would bring ORHA is a familiarity and willingness to engage with the UN and IFs. The RESTRICTED DECLASSIFIED val poney areas varsiully allu take legal advice. Action points: a. Need to get to know the USAID contracts well. b. Link up with ORHA planning in key areas - eg finance, justice etc c. Consider case for secondments to ORHA. d. Prepare plans to set up a DFID presence in Baghdad and/or Basra. e. Consider additional support to UK military in the South. f. Consider support to UK military efforts to develop policing in the South. g. Consider funding for the dredging of Umm Qasr port. (Done). >) h. Consider consultancy support from Crown Agents to UK military on civil service salaries and payments systems. i. Decline Ambassador Bodine's request for DFID to fund Larry Hollingworth in writing. RESTRICTED DECLASSIFIED