Iraqi officers at handover of Camp Rustamiyah (AP)
"The United States proposed some 18 benchmarks two years ago to help the Iraqis move forward and respond and begin the development of conditionality. … [T]he multi-lateralization of the process and the capacity of enforcement of these benchmarks was realized with the international compact."What are the most important lessons that we have learned from the reconstruction experience in Iraq?
Well there are tactical and strategic lessons that the Iraq experience has taught us. On the tactical front, it’s important that future U.S. contingency operations carry out reconstruction programs that are well-suited to the capacity of the country that is the target of the operation. That means they have to be scaled. That means not building beyond what the population of the country can operate, and unfortunately in Iraq, that happened and as a result there have been many operations and maintenance issues after projects have been transferred to Iraqi control.
A second lesson is that the United States must improve its contracting capacity, and there are several components of that. One is developing contingency rules for contracting—a Contingency Federal Acquisition Regulation that will ensure that there is uniformity, efficiency and simplicity in the contracting process in a war zone. The variety of federal acquisition regulations that were operating through the various agencies engaged in Iraq made it very confusing for U.S. contractors, not to mention Iraqi contractors, to comply and to be efficient in the contracting process. Another facet of the contracting challenge is the importance of reestablishing a strong contracting core within the U.S. government. Over the last 15 years the contracting officer numbers have dropped and we paid the price in Iraq, for that drop.
The third lesson learned is to ensure that data is properly managed with respect to reconstruction efforts. We found early on in our audit program in Iraq that there was no good system set up to keep track of all the projects among the various agencies. The Iraq Reconstruction Management System was created in response to those audits, and it’s done better, but it’s still not the proper solution. We shouldn’t have to invent a system while the program is going on. That’s the sort of thing that ought to be squared away before you lay the first brick in a contingency, and I know it’s a problem in Afghanistan. There is no good database that provides an account of what has been built in Afghanistan.
Finally, I think, speaking of commonalities between Iraq and Afghanistan, addressing corruption is a big issue, and we did not invest in the capacity of the Iraqi government to fight this battle against corruption and it paid the price in that regard.
What are the most important changes from these experiences that have been implemented over the past few years?
The most important change on the contracting front is the move away from design-build contracting. That is, switching from using large international consortia that carry out enormous programs and projects to direct contracting with Iraqi firms to do smaller projects that yielded efficiencies, reduced waste and built capacity within Iraqi society, injecting capital at the local level and providing employment—very important goals that were simply missing in the early stages of the reconstruction program.
What is the Iraqi government’s capacity to sustain the reconstruction efforts and is that affected by internal Iraqi politics?
We have been looking at this issue for a number of years through our audits and our inspections. On the inspection front, they have established a regimen called sustainment inspection, where my inspectors visit completed sites that have already been handed over, and the story that those inspectors tell is not a good one. There have been a number of sites we’ve visited where the equipment was simply not being used, where construction was breaking down, where operations were weak and the Iraqi people were not being well served by our investment. On the audit front, we will be issuing a new audit in the next couple of weeks on what’s called asset transfer, the process by which completed projects are given over to Iraqi control, and that audit, just like several previous ones on this issue, will underscore the fact that there is no good system in place for the transfer of assets. If you don’t have a good asset transfer program agreed to by the United States and Iraq, then the likelihood of breakdowns after transfer, the likelihood of operations and maintenance not being effectively carried out is high.
Can you specifically talk about the security forces and the capacity to maintain them?
This is an area in which the United States has greatly increased its investment over the past six years. During the CPA, it was a very modest program that sought to establish an Iraqi army of about 40,000 over roughly two years. That has been supplanted by a program managed by the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq, a Department of Defense entity created exactly for this purpose, and 600,000 Iraqis have been trained or equipped for service in either the police or the army. That’s an extraordinary expansion funded by the Iraq security forces; a fund of over 18 billion dollars appropriated by the Congress since 2005 for this purpose and it has paid off. While the Iraqi security forces completely failed in the spring of 2004 when they were prematurely deployed, they have over the last 18 months demonstrated success, in Basra, in Mosul and elsewhere, and that success is directly tied to the investment the United States has made in the Iraqi security forces.
How have U.S. reconstruction efforts affected the local governments in Iraq? Have they been a gateway to corruption, or have they served as an example for how things can get done?
The primary effort on local governance has been the Provincial Reconstruction Team, or PRT, program. Probably a better term, the provincial development team program, because those teams, comprised of civilian and military personnel—more civilian than military, which is different from Afghanistan—have focused on really two things chiefly at the local level, and that’s helping the provincial councils learn the process of democracy. This is something completely new that the United States brought to Iraq. It was imposed across the country by the Constitution of Iraq, and implemented by the the Provincial Powers Act when it was passed late last summer. It has taken a significant amount of work that has paid off, because I think that the success of the January 31 provincial elections is a tribute to the efforts of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. The other role at the local level that the PRTs play is helping the provincial reconstruction development councils execute reconstruction work. This work is funded in part by U.S. money and funded in part by Iraqi money, but it has the wise benefit of insuring that the projects chosen are fundamentally shaped by Iraqi needs and interests.
What, in your view, is the proper balance between military and civilian involvement in reconstruction and development efforts? Does the civilian side need to be expanded?
That’s a great question, and it’s about how contingency operations should be managed and I think the truth is that not withstanding the important progress of the last six years in Iraq, that substantial reform is still necessary. Substantial changes need to be made in how the United States approaches contingency relief for reconstruction operations. There have been some ameliorative measures implemented over the past couple of years on the Department of Defense side; DOD directive 3000.05 has resulted in a very robust effort under the rubric stability operations. I think that’s the third leg of the army field manual—offensive, defensive and stability operations—and the Command Emergency Response program is the most obvious evidence of that increase effort.
But is it well integrated with the civilian side? No, it’s not. So this solution continues the problem of balkanization regarding the management of contingency relief and reconstruction operations. On the civilian side, the Congress passed, last October, the Reconstruction Stabilization Civilian Management Act of 2008, putting virtually the entire onus upon the Department of State for planning and executing contingency operations with no provision there requiring integration with the Department of Defense efforts, and therefore perpetuating the problem of balkanization.
The issue is the unity of commands in a contingency, and when you have several departments engaged: Department of State, Department of Defense, USAID, being the primary players, in really the story of Iraq reconstruction, the story of the shortfalls in Iraq reconstruction can frequently be traced to the lack of integration among the operations of these agencies. Thus, still on the table, I believe, for the Congress and the administration, is the need to reform how the United States is going to achieve its goals through contingency operations, how it’s going to mange such operations, how it’s going to resource them and that strategic solution and structural solution ultimately must be an interagency one.
Can you talk about international engagement? How much impact has the International Compact on Iraq had, and how has that changed over the past few years?
Yes, it has had some impact in that it put some teeth in the benchmarks. The United States proposed some 18 benchmarks two years ago to help the Iraqis move forward and respond and begin the development of conditionality. What I think is that the multi-lateralization of the process and the capacity of enforcement of these benchmarks was realized with the international compact. Has Iraq met those benchmarks? No, but it has met some, and that’s some progress. I think the truth is that most of our aid was unconditional, most of the $50 billion provided was provided effectively as a grant, not requiring the Iraqi government to do much. That’s changing and part of the change has been effectuated by the international compact.
How has the role of the United Nations changed?
Well, the UN was playing a fairly robust role early on, in mid-2003, and then in August 2003 Sergio Vieira de Mello and a number of his colleagues were killed in Baghdad by a terrorist bomb, and that resulted in the closing of the UN office. The UN essentially had very little role in Iraq because of the non-permissive environment for several years thereafter.
Over the last two years, through UNAMI, their presence has expanded; the World Bank has begun to expand its presence, and I think that’s an essential precondition for long-term progress in Iraq. We’ve talked about corruption, the UN and the World Bank had been implementing anti-corruption tactics around the world for decades. I think the most significant challenge confronting the Iraqi government right now in trying to further national recovery is this corruption issue, because it fundamentally drains resources desperately needed across the country for electricity, water projects, schools, highways, capacity development of every sort, and until serious progress is made on the rule of law front, which I think the UN can help with, we are going to see corruption continue at the same significant levels as now.
How might the lessons learned in Iraq be applied in Afghanistan? How are they already being applied in Afghanistan? How different is it?
First of all, Afghanistan is fundamentally different from Iraq in several ways. One, it has rudimentary infrastructure; two, it has no significant resources to provide income; three, its governance system is much more diffuse and the central government has much more limited capacity.
Given that, I think that there are commonalties that are applicable. One is the need to develop the fledgling democracy through local governance programs, and that’s where the Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan can learn from Iraq. Interestingly, the PRTs began in Afghanistan and were brought to Iraq by Ambassador Khalilzad. I think they have evolved significantly under his leadership and some of those revolutions now need to be read back into the Afghanistan effort; specifically in building local governance capacity. As I’ve said, corruption is certainly a commonality and I think the lesson learned from Iraq that must not be repeated in Afghanistan is the failure to invest in building corruption-fighting capacity. Very little money was put into the Iraqi system. I think that if Afghanistan is going to make any sort of progress in fighting corruption, we need to deploy U.S. capacity-building resources to help them establish a meaningful rule of law.
