Ripley - Operation Telic: The British Campaign in Iraq 2003-2009

OPERATION

TELIC

The British

Campaign in Iraq

2003-2009

Tim Ripley

This edition published by Telic-Herrick Publicationsin 2016

Copyright Tim Ripley 2016

The right of Tim Ripley to be identified as the author

of this work has been asserted by him in accordancewith

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of thispublication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, inany form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording orotherwise without the written permission of the publisher.

Telic-Herrick Publications, 17 Fern Bank, Lancaster,LA1 4TT

www.operationtelic.co.uk

ISBN 978-0-9929458-0-0 (Kindle Edition)

Cover Design: Pagefast Print& Publishing Ltd, 4-6 Lansil Way, Caton Road, Lancaster, LA1 3QY,Lancashire, England

Operation Telic

Waging Britains Most Unpopular War?

The campaign in Iraq between March 2003 and June 2009 deeply polarised Britishpolitics, contributing to the fall from power of Prime Minister Tony Blair andseriously damaging the reputation, at home and abroad, of the British armedforces. Ten years on from the start of the war, it is now possible to put theBritish military campaign into a meaningful context and make sensiblejudgements about it. This book draws upon many new sources of information aboutOperation Telic, including:

* Contemporaryofficial military documents from British and Coalition units that participatedin the campaign.

* InternalBritish Army publications, giving first hand accounts of the campaign.

* Exclusiveinterviews with senior British commanders and military personnel.

Advance Reviews onOperation Telic

This is thebest I have yet read on Iraq.

Maj Gen JonathanShaw, commander British forces in Basra during 2007

Thought provoking...I hope peoplewill buy the book and debate the points its raises.

Lt Gen RobinBrims, Commander 1 (UK) Armoured Division during the assault on Basra in 2003

"TimRipley has done an amazing job piecing all this together - it is fascinatingand has great pace and an engaging narrative.

Lt Col NicholasMercer, Chief Legal Advisor to British Forces in Iraq 2003

Tim Ripley travelled extensively in Iraq and theMiddle East from 2002 to 2007 as a correspondent for Janes Defence Weekly andThe Scotsman newspaper, visiting British and US forces during the build-up tothe war. Over subsequent years he travelled into Basra, Al Amarah and Umm Qasrand visited many of the key battlegrounds in southern Iraq. He now writes ondefence for The Sunday Times and is a frequent broadcaster on military issues.

Table of Contents

Contents

Iraq 2003 (US CIA)

Iraq was a huge blow to Britain's moral andinternational standing. It changed, probably permanently, the relationshipbetween this country's people and their leaders. But, less widely understood,it was also a military humiliation for the UK. In the debacle that wasOperation Telic, one group of individuals - Britain's military leadership gotoff too lightly.

For years, the top brass has been essentially exemptfrom the kind of criticism dished out to other public servants. The failingsof Iraq are customarily blamed on conniving politicians or cheese-paringbureaucrats. Such people are not blameless, of course; but Tim Ripley's importantbook uses large quantities of previously unreported evidence to show why theblame must be more widely shared.

His is a nuanced portrait. It includes many accountsof good, even superb soldiering. It describes the frustrations felt by those onthe ground at decisions from Whitehall, and tells the true, more complicatedand fascinating story of Britain's failure to take on the Mahdi Army militia inBasra.But it makes clear, too, that many of the British Army's problems wereself-inflicted. Senior commanders complacently underestimated the task. Theyfailed to learn from their mistakes. And towards their political masters theyseemed to act like "military toadies," in the striking phrase of onegeneral quoted by Ripley, lacking the courage to speak truth to power abouttheir real operational needs.Iraq, as Tim Ripley points out, is the war thateveryone wants to forget. Many of the units which fought the hardest have beendenied even battle honours.

The Ministry of Defence made strenuous efforts to obstructthe author's researches - always an excellent sign that you are on tosomething. But as we witness the West's response, or lack of it, to events inSyria and now Ukraine, Iraq is starting to look like a war we cannot avoidremembering.

It is starting to look like the misconceived,ill-executed operations of Iraq and in Afghanistan have caused a strategicwatershed in the West, where political and public will to deal with egregiousviolations of international norms simply no longer exists. That is the realimportance of this book. If we are to recover the confidence to stand up forcivilised values, we must understand the truth about how we failed to do so inIraq.

AndrewGilligan

July2014

On a stormy November night in 2002, I stood on theKuwait-Iraq border looking into Saddam Husseins domain. A few yards away alarge sand berm or rampart could be seen, and beyond it a run-down Iraqi borderpost. A handful of very bored Kuwaiti border guards said no traffic had crossedfor several days. There were no lights on the Iraqi side, which gave the scenea certain unreality. This did not seem like the place where a globalinternational crisis would come to a climax. Yet only four months later,columns of British and American tanks would stream across border and head northfor Basra and Baghdad.

For much of the first decade of the Twenty-FirstCentury, my professional life and work was dominated by the war in Iraq. Aftercovering the build-up for war in Kuwait and Bahrain during 2002 and early 2003,I worked at the media centre of US Central Command in the Qatari capital Dohaduring the invasion phase of the conflict. Later in the year, I travelled intoIraq to visit British forces in al Amarah, Basra, al Faw, Majar- al - Kabir , Umm Qasr and Zubayr, as well as visitingRoyal Navy warships patrolling off the coast. The first signs of the insurgencythat would rack Iraq for the next decade were clearly in evidence. The names ofthe places I visited would soon became tragically familiar to the Britishpublic as they featured in news accounts of the deaths of 179 servicemen andwomen, until the summer of 2009, when the British combat troops finally leftthe country.

Over the pastdecade, during visits to British military units in the course of my work as acorrespondent for Janes Defence Weekly magazine, I met hundreds of servicemenand women who had spent time in Iraq. They were keen to talk about theirexperiences. The stories they told were remarkable. I listened to tales ofbravery, tragedy and in some cases crass stupidity.