A Journey (83 page)

The other recurrent theme of the notes of meetings was the requirement for Sunni outreach. This is the third lesson. The politics must accompany the security and the reconstruction. The Sunnis were bound to be destabilised through losing their position of total power, though they were only a minority of the population. It took time for them to understand that we did not wish to replace a Sunni dictatorship with a Shia one. From the beginning, we made outreach a priority. But Saddam remnants and al-Qaeda cleverly exploited Sunni anxieties. Throughout the political process, in spite of all our efforts, there was a persistent sense of alienation among them. We knew, too, that some of the terrorism was being financed from outside Iraq by wealthy people afraid of Shia power. Then as the Shia started to retaliate, so their sense of being in a sectarian war increased. During 2006, people really did see Iraq as in a civil war. Some even suggested partition of Iraq was the only solution.

In the end, however, as Sunni areas tired of the constant fighting brought about by al-Qaeda activity, they started to look for a way out. During 2007 and 2008, with the strong participation of Major General Lamb, slowly but surely they struck deals with the multinational force and the Iraqi government and turned on the al-Qaeda terrorists who were causing them so much hardship and grief. Once that happened, in conjunction with the surge, the tide turned. Sporadic eruptions continued, but the ISF activity had weakened al-Qaeda badly and they began to lose heart.

Then Maliki showed in his actions against followers of al-Sadr that he was prepared to take on Shia as well as Sunni rejectionists. The progress of the constitution through 2009, with all its attendant problems, shows how fragile it all remains. But whereas even those Iraqis who supported the war were increasingly pessimistic during 2006, by 2008 they had recovered their optimism. ‘It will take time,’ one remarked to me, ‘but it will be done.’ I pray he’s right.

My last meeting with Maliki was in late 2006. He still generates a lot of internal dislike (some described him as a sectarian underneath it all, and he was plainly struggling with the scale of the challenge); but as we sat in his room, one to one, we had a frank and friendly conversation. As ever, I had flown in by helicopter from the military airbase, circling around the danger areas and landing in the Green Zone, the fortified and isolated part of Baghdad housing the international community and the government. I visited the embassy where the day before mortars had fallen.

The government building was a former Saddam palace. Security was heavy. It was hard to believe real government could be conducted from there. As Maliki and I talked and I pressed him on the utter necessity of not just saying but demonstrating he was governing for all Iraq, not just Shia Iraq, he responded in very simple language. He told me he would show comprehensively that he would deal with anyone who took on the legitimate government. He said that some of the insurgents were former Saddam people who would never be reconciled and would be crushed; but also that he had had enough of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. ‘He will learn I will not tolerate this,’ he said. I wasn’t sure I believed him.

But I was wrong. He did indeed take him on and disarm him. In the 2010 election, Maliki and Allawi both headed units that crossed sectarian lines. President Talabani continues to play a pivotal, unifying role.

So: could we have had more troops sooner? Done more to build up Iraqi forces faster? Made more effort to reach out to Sunni groups earlier? No doubt there were failings in all these areas. But in truth, in all of them we worked as hard as we could to make it work. Our troops fought valiantly. We built an Iraqi Army in under three years. We tried perpetually to involve even the outermost limits of Sunni opinion.

In all of those areas – security, reconstruction, politics – we could have done more and done it better, that is for sure, but I have a feeling that this will always be so. There never has been, there never will be, a campaign of any nature that does not turn out differently from what is anticipated.

Our assessments of what to expect in Iraq were not casually made. The full array of experts were consulted. There were Iraqi exiles who added their knowledge, and though some had very clear personal agendas, others didn’t. We were told there would be a functioning Iraqi Civil Service. There wasn’t. We were told there would be a humanitarian disaster. It was averted. We were warned that Saddam might fight to the bitter end. He collapsed.

We were told that Shia/Sunni sectarian violence would be a factor. Actually, to begin with, it was much less than feared.

Above all, most people saw no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda; and little risk of Iran interfering except at the margins. And in this lies the biggest lesson of all.

Towards the end of my time as prime minister, I asked our military and intelligence people at a meeting in Downing Street: Suppose we had not had al-Qaeda and Iran as players in this drama, would it have been manageable? Without hesitation, the answer was yes.

It was this external threat linking up with internal dissidents that very nearly wrecked the prospects for Iraq. They conducted this attempt at destroying a nation with a wickedness and vicious indifference to human life and human suffering that almost defies belief. Suicide bombers sent into markets. Worshippers targeted at their place of prayer. Soldiers and police, there to help put the country on its feet, assassinated. UN officials, members of NGOs, civilian workers trying to assist the Iraqi people to a better life, gunned down, blown up, kidnapped and killed.

Yet after saying all this, my conclusion does not concern the bombers’ attitude to this carnage and misery inflicted with brutal deliberation, but ours.

When was there a single protest in any Western nation about such evil? Where was the moral indignation? And where were the Iraqis’ Muslim brothers and sisters at their hour of need? Who came to their aid? Where was the focus of criticism?

It was on the forces of the US and the UK who were trying to stop the carnage; not on those conducting it. Yet these agents of al-Qaeda and Iran are not confined to Iraq. Iraq became for them, and by their choice, the field of battle. Their influence is the same menace we face in Pakistan, in parts of Lebanon, in parts of Palestine, all over the Middle East and beyond it in Somalia, and even in parts of the Far East. It is what we face on our own streets, on our airways, in the meeting places of our own nations, each country now obliged to spend billions each year in protecting ourselves against terror.

So, my final conclusion is this. Whatever the planning, be prepared for this: to stand up and fight, if necessary in a long, protracted and bloody battle. Be prepared not just to rebuild a nation that has failed, but to do so in the face of an enemy doing as much wrong as it can to prevent us from doing what is right.

Are we up for this? Does our determination match theirs? That is the real question.

Had we foreseen what Iraq was going to be like following the removal of Saddam, would we have still done it? Should we have still done it? Many would say no. The cost in money and blood has been enormous.

My response, however, is very clear. Had this money and bloodshed been expended in removing Saddam, I would agree. But it wasn’t. It was largely expended in dealing with the consequences of extremism whose aim was not to implement the will of the Iraqi people, but to defy it.

What are we saying when we ask: Look at the bloodshed, how can it be worth it? First, consider who is responsible. It wasn’t UK or US soldiers. There was no inevitability about the violence. These were deliberate acts of sabotage. Had we conceded to them, we would have strengthened the wider ideology they represented. By refusing to concede and by supporting Iraqi democracy, we struck a blow against that ideology everywhere.

Perhaps, as Zhou Enlai said when asked for his assessment of the French Revolution, ‘It’s too early to say.’ All I know is that I did what I thought was right. I stood by America when it needed standing by. Together we rid the world of a tyrant. Together we fought to uphold the Iraqis’ right to a democratic government.

I still keep in my desk a letter from an Iraqi woman who came to see me before the war began. She told me of the appalling torture and death her family had experienced having fallen foul of Saddam’s son. She begged me to act. After the fall of Saddam she returned to Iraq. She was murdered by sectarians a few months later. What would she say to me now?

SIXTEEN

DOMESTIC REFORM

I
t is easy to look back on the early years of Iraq and think they were dominated by that event alone. In reality, it was precisely during this time when the domestic agenda moved forward most radically and most satisfactorily.

Through 2003–4 and the beginning of 2005, there were critical battles over foundation hospitals and NHS reform; tuition fees; the beginnings of the city academies programme; ID cards; and antisocial behaviour. The closest I came to losing my job, ironically, was not over Iraq but over tuition fees. The nearest I got to giving up my job voluntarily was during 2004, when I thought I had had enough and would yield to Gordon, since I felt he might continue the reform agenda. And the clearest I became that I should stay despite it all was when I realised he wouldn’t, and that I should therefore fight a third term.

So though the headlines were often dominated by the travails of war, the battle inside the government was over the issues of reform, which went to the heart of the New Labour project.

I have described a journey. At first we govern with a clear radical instinct but without the knowledge and experience of where that instinct should take us in specific policy terms. In particular, we think it plausible to separate structures from standards, i.e. we believe that you can keep the given parameters of the existing public service system but still make fundamental change to the outcomes the system produces. In time, we realise this is wrong; unless you change structures, you can’t raise standards more than incrementally. By the beginning of the second term, we have fashioned a template of the reform: changing the monolithic nature of the service; introducing competition; blurring distinctions between public and private sector; taking on traditional professional and union demarcations of work and vested interests; and in general trying to free the system up, letting it innovate, differentiate, breathe and stretch its limbs. Each aspect was subject to the most detailed searching enquiry and scrutiny. Each reform was painfully iterated and reiterated. Each was amended and adjusted; and occasionally – and each time to my chagrin – watered down. But together they added up to a substantial corpus of change and set the system in a new direction. They will form the essential basis of any future reform and where departed from, will, over time, be returned to.

For sure, however, each was harshly attacked, criticised and opposed. Perhaps the most fiercely contested was the change to university funding. The whole debate provided a fascinating glimpse into the difficulties of making change in the modern world, and almost led to my resignation. It aroused unbelievably tenacious dissent. It cost us several seats at the 2005 election, and what appeared like a poor result even with a majority of over sixty might well have appeared differently with those extra seats and a majority of over eighty. It split the government; but by the time the reforms were actually introduced in late 2005, they caused very little stir and the debate today is as much how to further them as how to dismantle them.

It is an object lesson in the progress of reform: the change is proposed; it is denounced as a disaster; it proceeds with vast chipping away and opposition; it is unpopular; it comes about; within a short space of time, it is as if it had always been so.

The lesson is also instructive: if you think a change is right, go with it. The opposition is inevitable, but rarely is it unbeatable. There will be many silent supporters as well as the many vocal detractors. And leadership is all about the decisions that change. If you can’t handle that, don’t become a leader.

And the lesson goes wider: it is about rising above the fray, learning how to speak above the din and clatter, and about always, always, keeping focused on the big picture. Rereading the daily news about the changes, I am struck by how fevered each story was at the time, and how forgotten each story is today. Tuition fees in particular had an extraordinary series of mini-crises, debacles and revolts attending its every step. Yet all that matters now is that a necessary reform was made; and having been made, it is the structure upon which future reforms will be built.

It began with the usual fraught exchanges with Gordon and the Treasury.

I had allowed David Blunkett to put in our 2001 manifesto that we would not allow top-up fees. This was somewhat against my better judgement, but there were sound political reasons: worries that we were planning this had been circulating among the PLP and NEC, and David felt we had to kill the story. It was one of the few compromises I allowed with the 2001 programme.

But shortly after the election the challenge for our universities became clear. I had come to the view then – and believe this even more strongly today – that the future of developed nations such as ours, relying heavily on our human capital (as we must), depends on having a vibrant, dynamic and world-class higher education system. In addition, a country like Britain with its traditions and its language is ideally suited for such a challenge. However, like so much else in this country, we can’t rest on our laurels. I looked at the top fifty universities in the world and saw only a handful in the UK, and barely any in mainland Europe. America was winning this particular race, with China and India coming up fast behind. The point about the US was especially telling. Their domination of the top fifty – and top hundred, for that matter – was not by chance or by dint of size; it was plainly and inescapably due to their system of fees. They were more entrepreneurial; they went after their alumni and built up big endowments; their bursary system allowed them to help poorer students; and their financial flexibility meant that they could attract the best academics. Those who paid top dollar got the best. Simple as that.