The Foreign Service Journal, January 2010

J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 19 But then he discovered that there is no USAID office in Mauritania. It closed in 1995. Such situations constitute further evidence of the press- ing need to begin rebuilding the leading civilian develop- ment agency in the U.S. government. Starved of staff to manage an increasing project budget, it has turned to con- tractors, not only to carry out its development work but also to oversee it. That process has not always been smooth or cost-effective for the taxpayer. Making matters worse, USAID has been asked to change from an infrastructure- building agency to one that builds democratic institutions. “They can’t do either with the number of people they have,” says Capps. “That’s the Gordian knot around USAID.” Pentagon Encroachment Meanwhile, as Capps found, other government agen- cies, most prominently the Department of Defense, have begun managing an increasing number of development projects. In recent years, the Pentagon has managed more than a quarter of all foreign assistance funding. The war in Iraq provided a perfect opening for the Pen- tagon to encroach on USAID and State’s turf. In the af- termath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Coalition Provisional Authority (controlled by the United States) granted broad discretion to military leaders to make use of Iraqi Ba’ath Party funds seized during the war. Two years later, in 2005, the Pentagon issued Directive 3000.05, which explicitly named development work as part of the military mission. The mandate was broad, directing com- manders to “rebuild indigenous institutions including var- ious types of security forces, correctional facilities and judicial systems” and to “revive or build the private sector, including encouraging citizen-driven, bottom-up eco- nomic activity and constructing necessary infrastructure” as well as “representative governmental institutions.” In 2006, Congress included language in its annual de- fense authorization bill providing explicit funding for such work, though it has declined to make the authority perma- nent. C O V E R S T O R Y