The Foreign Service Journal, March 2006

M A R C H 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 55 F O C U S O N I R A Q A N D T H E F S M ILITARY -C IVILIAN C OOPERATION : A F IELD P ERSPECTIVE n the fall of 2003, I was asked to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development’s assistance effort in Iraq because of my prior experience in high-threat, post-conflict recon- struction programs (I had also served in Vietnam as a U.S. Army officer). I therefore had a keen apprecia- tion of the critical need for USAID to be able to work in tighter coordination with multinational coalition forces in Iraq. But even with 25 years of development experience exclusively in conflict and post-conflict environments, I had never actually worked closely with the military on reconstruction efforts. In the Balkans, where there were large U.S. peacekeeping forces, some foreign assistance was coordinated with U.S. military civil affairs units, but nationbuilding was most often the province of civilian implementing agencies. The war on terror and the consequent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq introduced a paradigm shift, with a vastly increased role for U.S. and coalition forces in nationbuilding and reconstruction. U.S. civilian agencies, including USAID, were pre- sented with serious challenges in adapting to this new reality. Conflict and post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction operations are very different from “for- eign aid.” To be effective, they must be extraordinari- ly flexible and agile. Interventions that can be devel- oped over a period of months in a normal environment must be commenced in days or even hours. In Iraq, we often joked that every day was a Monday and that every workday in Iraq was equal to a week anywhere else. If you did not move quickly, you were irrelevant. During the 13 months I spent there, I found that the melding of two very different cultures — military and civilian — to achieve cohesive and effective imple- mentation of assistance was often painful and ineffec- tive. Nevertheless, we learned valuable lessons from the mistakes as well as from our successes. An Unwieldy Process The structure of the reconstruction effort in Iraq was unique. The unexpected continuation of state-of- war conditions in Baghdad and other parts of the country, together with the lack of prior planning for the complex and lengthy nationbuilding process that is characteristic of post-conflict transitions, led to ad hoc decision-making. This, in turn, resulted in waste of resources and inefficiency. Even before the start of hostilities in March 2003, USAID was an integral part of the Department of I A S HEAD OF USAID’ S I RAQ MISSION , AN FSO LEARNED VALUABLE LESSONS ABOUT MELDING TWO VERY DIFFERENT CULTURES — MILITARY AND CIVILIAN — TO DELIVER ASSISTANCE . B Y J AMES “S PIKE ” S TEPHENSON