BRITAIN missed the opportunity to stabilise Iraq following the invasion of 2003 and was too quick to shift resources to the conflict in Afghanistan, the head of the Army acknowledged yesterday.
General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, said the failure of coalition forces to take advantage of the "window of consent" in the immediate aftermath of the invasion had opened the door to the Shia militias.
He said they had not ke
pt enough troops on the ground – particularly as the focus of operations switched to Afghanistan.
His comments, in a keynote address to the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London, came as Whitehall is gearing up for the government's "lessons learned" inquiry on the Iraq War.
Gen Dannatt said one of the key lessons from the conflict was the need to achieve a "decisive effect" early on.
"In Iraq this meant acting while we had a window of consent to address the security and basic needs of the Iraq people, reconstruction, development and developing the capacity of indigenous security forces," he said.
"Our failure to deliver this through proper investment and a comprehensive approach and our early switch to an economy of force operation in favour of Afghanistan sowed the seeds for the dissatisfaction that followed and the rise of the militias supported so cynically by the Iranians in the south."
He said the coalition had also failed to ensure it had enough troops on the ground, "surging" the numbers when the situation demanded.
"In truth, we failed to maintain the force levels required, either of coalition forces or Iraqi forces, and particularly towards the later end of the campaign, by which time we were already committed to a new operation in Afghanistan."
Gen Dannatt said mistakes had also been made in the recruitment and training of Iraq security forces who were deployed too quickly, before they were ready.
Gen Dannatt said the success of operations in Sierra Leone, and East Timor showed it would be wrong to abandon completely Tony Blair's doctrine of "liberal intervention".
However he stressed future interventions should only be undertaken if they could be properly resourced.
"Not to do so risks repeating the experience of Iraq," he said.
