Nicholas Cannon
IRAQ: VISIT TO BAGHDAD AND BASRA
Together with John Scarlett and Nick Cannon, I visited Baghdad on Tuesday, and
Basra yesterday. Main impressions:
Brits everywhere are doing a remarkable job in difficult, sometimes
dangerous, and always physically uncomfortable circumstances. No
routine self-congratulation this. It has given us a distinct and positive
profile - for the moment - which adds to a strong folk memory of our role
in establishing Iraq;
Baghdad remains key; and the key to Baghdad is security. Only when the
security situation improves will people have confidence to go back to work
and rebuild their lives. But on the flimsy evidence of my 18 hour visit,
things did not seem as bad as painted by the media. We drove around in
landrovers with flakjackets but frequently stopped to talk to Iraqis, shake
hands etc. There was no sense of being under immediate threat. The
mood still seems either cautiously welcoming or at least acquiescent -
never hostile. But this could turn fast, if the security situation is not sorted
DECLASSIFED 235

they won t wat to do to"o"
six weeks.
come home in the next few days and morale will suffer if they miss their
well earned summer break. The Chiefs will let you have advice today or
tomorrow. Tony Piggott, who accompanied me to assess the problems at
firsthand, will recommend that 16 Air Assault Brigade should take this on
as long as the mission is clearly defined and is strictly time-limited. I have
no doubt that the impact of British troops training with, and working
alongside, Iraqis would be considerable. The hard-pressed Bremer is very
keen to have them.
ORHA is the shambles already described by John Sawers (who was with
me for much of my visit and is clearly doing an excellent job in working
with Bremer in Baghdad). A huge, disorganised, dysfunctional outfit,
ORHA gives little impression that it can organise itself, let alone
administer Iraq. But I found Bremer impressive. He will get a grip, and
wants our help. (It would be worth inviting him to come and see you for
half an hour when you are in Basta next week - it would bolster him
personally and the coalition overall). One way of helping him is to
DECLASSIFIED

be a DFID commitment to set up a Police Training College within the next
few weeks to build on whatever 16 Air Assault Brigade achieve, if they
are deployed. The Police Service of Northern Ireland should be asked to
help. This could be a potent package: high profile with quick impact;
Basra is way ahead of Baghdad. There are still worries about security,
services and infrastructure. But our military are on the case. I walked for
20 minutes (close protection but no flakjacket) through one of Basra's main
markets. It was thronged with people and well supplied with goods. It
could have been Cairo or Amman;
I did a meeting with the Iraqi political leaders
They are super
impatient for instant political progress, and for the emergence of a new
Iraqi government which they want to run but with a reassuring coalition
military presence supporting them in the background. I said we would go
as fast as possible; but that meant only as fast as was feasible and sensible.
We required them to be constructive and patient. I think they will be for a
bit yet. But we will face increasing tension between the need to do it fast
and the need to do it right. We must work hard to stay alongside the
different political leaders.
DECLASSIFIED

very fragile and we could be knocked off course by continuing failure to grip
Baghdad. We shall have the cooperation and support of the locals as long as they
see improvement in their daily lives and believe a political process has begun -
and they understand what it is. But if the momentum stalls, the prognosis will
become much darker.
. The UK military and
their political advisers say that there is so far little evidence for US worries about
Iranian Shi'ites under every bed. There is some predictable, so far low level,
Iranian meddling but no blueprint for a takeover. And according to the experts,
there is anyway only very limited sympathy among (far from monolithic) Iragi
Shi'ites for their Iranian counterparts. Home grown fundamentalism may be a
more real worry - something we still know comparatively little about.
We shall have to resist the US tendency to present the Iranian threat as
dramatically worse than it is. We mustn't be complacent: but we should counter
exaggerated fears from Washington. They could acquire a dynamic of their own,
and distort the political process in Iraq, as well as wider relationships with Iran.
Aand
DECLASSIFIED