The Foreign Service Journal, February 2009

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 27 fter what seemed like weeks, we mem- bers of the Diyala Provincial Recon- struction Team and the ground-holding battalion had finally gotten all of the pieces together to begin renovating the Diyala Vocational School. Ron Bonfil- lio, a State Department employee, and Lt. Colonel Ted Daley, a U.S. Army Reserve officer assigned to the PRT, had jointly decided on the site and had coordi- nated with officials in Baghdad and Baqubah to gain ap- proval for the school. As my unit’s civil-military plans officer, I was the one who gained us access to the giant checkbooks of the Comman- der’s Emergency Response Program and the Iraqi-funded I-CERP. We had even recruited a field artillery lieutenant fresh out of West Point with a mechanical engineering de- gree to bring some sorely needed practical knowledge to the process that we liberal arts types were missing. So I had a genuine sense of hope that I had felt very few times during my 15 months in Iraq: this project would be dif- ferent. It would be done quickly and efficiently and would be sustained by the government of Iraq. Most importantly, it would get the Sons of Iraq, the groups of mostly Sunni men that helped provide security and whose rejection of al-Qaida was so essential to recent success in Iraq, out of the business of standing on a street corner on the American taxpayers’ dime and into sustainable, long-term employment. These new, real jobs would hopefully prevent them from returning to militias and the insurgency. It wasn’t easy, however. The project planning had taken significant coordination between the PRT and the military unit responsible for the area, a process involving head- butting, gnashing of teeth and, to be honest, some hurt feel- ings on all sides. Speaking as a military officer recently redeployed from Iraq who frequently works with personnel from PRTs and the embedded PRTs that are assigned to support military units directly, I can clearly see that the cul- ture clash between members of the armed forces and State Department employees has a definite impact on the quality of work done by both organizations. Let me acknowledge that the military is far from blameless for the fact that our two organizations occasionally have a less than stellar working relationship. In fact, I would like to see a Foreign Service member of a Provincial Reconstruction Team submit a similar article to a military journal such as Pa- rameters in order to offer his or her insights on the situation. But in this article I want to provide some suggestions, from my perspective, for future Foreign Service PRT personnel on how that professional relationship can be improved. I MPROVING THE PRT-M ILITARY P ROFESSIONAL R ELATIONSHIP A U.S. A RMY MEMBER OF AN I RAQ P ROVINCIAL R ECONSTRUCTION T EAM OFFERS PRACTICAL ADVICE TO F OREIGN S ERVICE COLLEAGUES . B Y S EAN P. W ALSH Captain Sean P. Walsh deployed to Iraq from August 2007 to October 2008 as an infantry officer with the 2nd Stryker Cav- alry Regiment. After serving as a rifle platoon leader in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad, Capt. Walsh was assigned as his battalion’s civil-military plans officer and worked ex- tensively with matters related to economic development, re- construction and capacity-building in both Baghdad and Baqubah and supervised a Commander’s Emergency Re- sponse Program budget of over $15 million. A 2005 graduate of the United States Military Academy, he is now a student at the Maneuver Captains’ Career Course in Fort Knox, Ky., and is also a master’s degree candidate at Virginia Tech. The views presented here are entirely his own and do not represent those of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Army. A