Global Development: Views from the Center
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April 09, 2008
The Other Surge: A Frontline View of Development in Iraq
Posted by Dennis de Tray at 11:46 AM
As General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker struggle through a marathon round of appearances before various Congressional committees, the questions they face focus on security and the effects of the U.S.'s "surge" strategy. This is as it should be, given conditions in Iraq, but there is another "surge" that in many respects may be more important in answering the "when can we leave" question: efforts under way to get Iraq on a more conventional development path.
I have just returned from a remarkable three-week visit to Iraq, remarkable because I was privileged to see more of Iraq than all but a handful of visitors have been able to see. I was part of a team brought together by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker to take a fresh look at Iraq's development efforts, most especially to see what more could be done that would support recent security gains by creating jobs and improving services.
With General Petraeus's and Ambassador Crocker's backing, we were able to travel extensively in Iraq and meet widely with Coalition and Government of Iraq officials. It is no secret that security is still a major issue in many parts of Iraq, so getting around the country and meeting with Iraqis is no mean feat. I now know more about body armor, Blackhawk helicopters, armored Humvees, Stryker and MRAP armored vehicles, C-17 and C-130 transports than I ever thought possible...or wanted to!
Based on my reading of recent post-conflict efforts and the good work of colleagues such as Paul Collier and Scott Guggenheim, I went to Iraq convinced that the path to short term gains in jobs and services would likely be through the provinces rather than from Baghdad. With this idea in mind, I was most interested in understanding the role of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraq. These teams, 26 in all, were set up around Iraq to provide immediate post-conflict reconstruction support.
The extraordinary support we received meant that we were able to visit teams not only in the more secure parts of Iraq – Kirkuk and Kut for example – but as well in the more fragile – Basra, Ba'Qubah in Diyala Province, Mosul in Ninawa Province. In fact, we were able to speak with members of all but one or two of the 26 PRTs. These visits were not ordinary field visits. In Iraq you travel from one military forward operations base (FOB) to another, and then helicopter or convoy in armored vehicles from there to secure zones in cities and provinces to meet with Iraqis. I never did get comfortable walking into a government office in a flak jacket, but our Iraqi counterparts were kind enough to act as if this was nothing out of the ordinary.
I have much to absorb and digest from this trip, but even now I am struck by a couple of key take-aways:
- Security gains will not stick without visible gains in what people care about, jobs and services.
- While Iraqi capacity is weak and will remain so for the foreseeable future, Iraqis must see their government, not the Coalition Forces as delivering for them. This is what state building is really all about.
- The great challenge to the world, not just the U.S., is to bring a sense of future to the Iraqi people. Provinces are the right place to push Iraqi development at least in the immediate term and the PRTs are the right vehicle for external technical assistance.
- But, to play this new role, PRTs must change from Coalition Provincial Reconstruction Teams to international Iraq Development Assistance Teams. They should transition from "doing development because local governments could not" to supporting local governments in their efforts to do development. This is already happening but needs support.
- All this notwithstanding, we have to start getting real about the pace of institutional reform and development in Iraq. Almost since day one, expectations about how quickly the Iraqi government could move from iron-fisted, top-down control to a decentralized, quasi-democratic system have been absurdly optimistic.
I left Iraq with two overriding impressions. The first was that our military is quite an organization. From the top to the bottom, I was impressed with the professionalism, intelligence, commitment and general decency of the military personnel with whom I worked and interacted. Second, a unique and likely never to be replicated set of state building and development experiments are taking place in Iraq on a scale that is hard to imagine for most development types. If we are not careful, we are going to lose a priceless opportunity to learn from these very out-of-the-box approaches to doing development.
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Comments
Extremely valuable message from the "front lines" in Iraq. CGD has become an indispensable voice for rationality on this and other issues. Kudos!
Posted by: David Mutchler at April 15, 2008 12:52 PM
Lots of things to comment on here, but just briefly: we have been contracted by the UN to review the results of the multi-donor trust funds (IRFFI) in Iraq, and the similar trust fund (ARTF) in Afghanistan. Field work in Afghanistan is just finished, the work in Iraq is starting up.
As in Iraq, Afghanistan has PRTs though they are led by many different countries and thus many different models - in part as a function of different security conditions. But the need to separate military/ security roles from development is recognized by most. Who the development actor should be is a more contentious issue.
One of DAC's 10 points for working in fragile states is "to focus on the state". In post-conflict states where governments are often (externally imposed) compromises among (often) some of the worst actors in the conflict itself, it may mean we are helping rebuild regimes with some strongly authoritarian and sometimes highly corrupt "islands of power" while not supporting a civil society and genuine business community that can both act as complements but also correctives and agents for change on the public sector. Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and other conflict states had important civil society actors during the conflict periods that in the rush to (re-)build the state in the immediate post-conflict situation were left behind, exactly at a point in time where they also required long-term and programmatic support.
In terms of what the civilian population wants, jobs and services are important but the first demand is often security - not necessarily of the military kind (protection against armed groups) but civilian: a non-corrupt, non-extortionary police force that maintains basic law and order, and then locally functioning conflict resolution mechanisms complemented by higher-level state organs that can resolve bigger conflicts (rights to water, trans-community conflicts over land etc). Reforming the army is important - reforming the police is critical.
The National Solidarity Program, NSP, in Afghanistan is an interesting model where the state is using NGOs to deliver community-based capacity development and supervise small-scale development activities but where the project resources are locally decided upon. There are a number of weaknesses in the model, but it is quite innovative in the mix of donor funds, government oversight and thus visibility, NGO delivery, and local mobilization that seems to address the combination of needs - political and developmental - that the situation requires. But the model is under political pressure, for a number of not always benign reasons, where the part that is most under threat is the NGO role.
The exact role of the military in this political-development nexus is not obvious to us, and it is of course more difficult in Iraq than Afghanistan. But the legitimacy of the foreign military is the key issue. If - as seems to be increasingly the case in Afghanistan - foreign troops per se are not considered legitimate actors, and in fact may create direct security threats to any locals who interact with them, then the entire issue of what role they can play is moot: there must be a totally different set of actors brought onto the field - like with the NSP.
What mitigates against this is the problem of corruption and rent-seeking, which is presumably the worst exactly in the most unstable areas (possibilities of control and response much lower). Direct implementation by the military, or under military supervision, may address this - but we probably do not understand the longer-term political consequences, both at local and national levels (and the two may be quite different - the local war lord that is taking a fair chunk of the pie in a region but ensuring stability may be seen as benign and supported locally but seen as corrupt and war criminal by other ethnic groups - and both would be right!). But there seems to be a trend - though not certain about this - that people are more and more impatient with corruption, mismanagement, etc (maybe because it is becoming greater, more abusive, or at least more obvious?) so that the excuse that "they may be bastards but they are our bastards" as an excuse by the donors/ military is less and less accepted by the population.
Anyway - will be interesting to hear what more concrete suggestions you will come up with! Good luck!
Posted by: Arne Disch at April 16, 2008 03:15 AM
I invite you to hear a personal plea to the US on Iraq.
[url]http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2007/08/pleasewhile-you-are-busy-leaving-iraq.html[/url]
Posted by: Per Kurowski at April 17, 2008 06:12 PM