Lord Garden: My Lords, I congratulate the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Walker of Aldringham, on a powerful maiden speech. It is a particular pleasure to welcome him; we were colleagues as fellow assistant chiefs of our services 15 years ago in the Ministry of Defence. He made a particularly powerful speech about the dedication of our servicemen. We tragically lost a Royal Marine in Helmand province yesterday to an anti-personnel mine, and we on these Benches offer our condolences to the families.

I also thank the Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, for giving us this opportunity to focus on so many issues about Iraq. His call for an inquiry is important and, as my noble friend Lord Alderdice said, we on these Benches support the call. We have had some discussion about the appropriateness of the timing of such an inquiry, but we need to learn lessons from our mistakes, both in the run-up to the conflict and after the war fighting period had finished, because if we do not learn those lessons, we shall repeat the mistakes. I argue that we are already in the process of repeating them; we are looking at benign outcomes when they may not be benign, and we are kidding ourselves about how easy the security situation is, even as we speak.

Noble Lords should be grateful to the United States, which publishes such comprehensive information for us all to read; a lesson in open government. The most significant document recently was the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was approved by the US National Intelligence Board on 29 January. I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm in his speech that the United Kingdom intelligence community shares the assessments of all its US colleagues who signed up. We have talked about whether a civil war is going on in Iraq. The key judgment in the estimate was: “The Intelligence Community”—that is, the US intelligence community,

• “judges that the term ‘civil war’ does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qa’ida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term ‘civil war’ accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements”.

The recommendation in this assessment of the problem of the population displacements, both internal and external, about which the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, spoke, is important. What are the Government doing in terms of taking our share of the international refugee burden that has resulted from these displacements?
The National Intelligence Estimate concludes that if the security situation does not improve in Iraq—it is fairly pessimistic about that possibility—there are three possible outcomes. First, we may get chaos leading to partition; secondly, there may be the emergence of the Shia strongman to take control of Iraq; or thirdly, there may be anarchic fragmentation of power. Those are the United States intelligence estimates about the way Iraq is going and those thoughts should govern us when we look at our strategy.

As other noble Lords have said, we look at commentators—official, academic and journalists—from the region, from Europe and from the United States. I have found that, of those, the most consistently reliable one has been Anthony Cordesman who holds the chair in strategy at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He has been particularly reliable at laying out options and their implications over the past four years. Earlier this month, he gave a very sombre assessment of the options and the likely outcomes in the light of President Bush’s new approach with the surge operation into Baghdad. I want to concentrate on one aspect of his analysis which plays into this question of whether the British Government and, indeed, the United States Government, are repeating previous mistakes by being overly complacent or optimistic about the situation.

We have been told time and again that the situation in Iraq is not uniformly bad; namely, that 14 out of 18 provinces are in reasonable shape, that the UK area of responsibility is progressively being handed over to Iraqi forces as it is so much less difficult than elsewhere, and so on. Yesterday, the Lord President told us that 80 per cent of the violence was around Baghdad. Last night, on “Newsnight”, the Defence Secretary said that 80 to 90 per cent of the violence was around Baghdad and the Prime Minister this morning on “Today” coincidentally used the figure80 to 90 per cent of the violence being in Baghdad.
Cordesman identifies this assessment as a misapprehension. He notes that the Iraq Study Group was correct when it said that,

• “official US reporting on the patterns of violence in Iraq may reflect less than a 10th of the actual struggle, and much of this violence is outside Baghdad”.

That is why looking beyond the headline suicide bomber deaths and the death squad murders in the capital is so important. Even if the United States strategy to gain control of Baghdad were to succeed, which the assessment considers to be fairly difficult, there is no plan for what to do beyond that to secure the remainder of the country. As Cordesman says:

• “So far, however, the US has not shown that it has a clear plan for taking control of Baghdad with the US and Iraqi resources it has available, or described a credible operational plan for moving from ‘win’ to ‘hold’ and ‘build.’ It has completely failed to set forth a strategy and meaningful operational plan for dealing with Iraq as a country even if it succeeds in Baghdad”.

Cordesman does what we call in military circles a “red team” analysis of the options open to the insurgents and militants. I trust that similar studies are going on in the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office. Among the various options open to them is the possibility that during this surge operation in Baghdad, they move their action away from the capital, which may of course have a direct effect on the UK region in the south. He also suggests that the Shiite militias may stand down temporarily, while the Sunni insurgents will have to continue operations, which will of course result in the United States and Iraqi security forces effectively fighting on the Shiite side. There is an outcome then which divides the spoils between the Shias and Kurds, and the worst chaos is averted. But it is a far cry from the democratic aspirations that we trumpeted originally and might give rise to the Shia strongman predicted by the National Intelligence Estimate. I wonder what the Government’s view is on that. Is that a least worst option as we see things now?

When we come to the British sector, just how well under control is it? We have been assured repeatedly that the handing over of our four provinces was on course. Maysan was the next to go, and indeed as recently as 22 November the Foreign Secretary said in the other place that she expected it to be transferred to Iraq authority in January. Yet as the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, told us on Tuesday, Maysan province is now so dangerous that we cannot recover a C-130 Hercules aircraft after a landing incident and instead must destroy it at a loss of £45 million. This does not seem to bode well for the security situation. So I ask the question again: are we not being too complacent? Indeed, today’s Los Angeles Times identifies a report from the Pentagon to Congress about American concerns about the state of play down in the south.

I turn now to what this means for the United Kingdom’s contribution in Iraq. Yesterday the Prime Minister outlined an indicative timetable for a partial withdrawal. The question is whether this is the right strategy. If the United States approach is yet again too short term and lacking the follow-through plan, a repeat of the mistakes we talked about back in May 2003, we need to consider where that leaves us for the UK forces. I share the deep concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, that abandoning Iraq to absolute chaos is not on, and it would probably mean that the neighbouring states would have to get involved with unknown consequences for conflict in the region. Yet I disagree with him about what that means for the UK forces. It does not mean that the UK forces are locked there for ever; they are not the essential linchpin to security in Iraq. They make up just 5 per cent of the multinational forces deployed and they will be even less after the forthcoming reduction. If they were totally withdrawn, as we have argued, their tasks would be absorbed by other forces, predominantly those of the United States, which has already indicated that given our drawdown it intends to provide a reserve and perhaps go into our area if it looks as though it is getting out of control. The United States would enjoy unity of command and be able to apply its strategy for good or ill across the whole of the country, and we would not risk the 5,000 or so remaining UK soldiers being held hostage on a single base in a worsening security situation, perhaps triggered by any military offensive against Iran, about which a number of noble Lords have spoken. Our coalition partners are obviously coming to similar conclusions. Just as the Statement was being repeated here in the House yesterday, the Danes announced that they will all be out by August. Our small force at Basra air station is going to find itself very vulnerable and an attractive target to insurgents.

This is not an abandonment of our ally, the United States, because we have a second challenging operation in which we are working together—in Afghanistan. We have today a relatively small but very professional military, and we all know what tremendous work they do. Dividing our assets between two campaigns is not a recipe for success in either. We have to supply two theatres and the valuable enabling assets such as airlift, both strategic and tactical, is in short supply. I do not expect the Minister, from his Foreign Office portfolio, to comment on the military wisdom of concentrating our forces on one campaign, but I trust he recognises that operating for so many years beyond our planned requirements is a matter of deep concern to those who value the capability of our Armed Forces. They have spent four years in Iraq doing difficult and dangerous work with their customary great skill, but it has taken a long-term toll on our capability. We are no longer sure what outcome the United States is aiming for in Iraq. It is time to concentrate our effort on that other difficult and important task in Afghanistan. As the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, said, the Government would be wise to plan now for the early withdrawal of all Armed Forces from Iraq.