THE successful invasion of Iraq was followed by a postwar “strategic vacuum”, the Ministry of Defence admitted yesterday.

The acknowledgment that there had been insufficient planning for bringing postconflict stability came in an official MoD response to a report by the Commons defence committee.

The MoD did not blame the US for the lack of preparedness for the insurgency, which has led to several thousand deaths since the end of the war. However, in the first hint of the frustration over postwar policies, the MoD said: “This has been one of the first times in recent history that the UK has had to take on the obligations of an occupying power and operated as a junior partner in a counter-insurgency.”

The report, published in March, had accused the MoD and the US-led coalition of failing to foresee that the presence of foreign troops in Iraq “would be resented by some Iraqis”. The MoD admitted that an “insurgency on the scale that subsequently followed was not foreseen before the end of major combat operations [on May 1, 2003]”.

Although John Reid, the Defence Secretary, has said that British troops could start withdrawing next year, yesterday’s report admitted that considerable “time and effort” would be needed before responsibility for maintaining security in Iraq could be handed over to the Government in Baghdad.

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