The Foreign Service Journal, March 2006

Defense’s planning effort. The agency deployed to Kuwait and Iraq with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which was initially tasked with implementing approximately $2 billion of assis- tance. Unfortunately, however, ORHA planners were more concerned with possible humanitarian crises that could be spawned by military operations, and had not planned for post-conflict reconstruction. ORHA was barely on the ground in Iraq in May 2003, when Ambassador L. Paul Bremer was appointed administra- tor of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and its resources and mission were subsumed by the CPA. By the time I arrived in February 2004, USAID was essentially an executing agency for the CPA. Congress had recently approved the FY 2004 supplemental appropriation that provided an additional $18.4 billion for Iraq reconstruction, to be managed by the CPA, reporting primarily to DOD. USAID had very little input in the development of the priorities contained in the supplemental request, and it was left to the CPA to determine what portions of the program would be implemented by USAID and other executing agencies. The FY 2004 supplemental — Public Law 108-106, hereafter referred to as “the 2207,” after Section 2207 of the law — essentially funded a list of large infra- structure projects in a dozen or so sectors. Congress limited the CPA’s authority to make adjustments between sectors and sub-sectors, and to delete or add projects. Even projects already contained in the 2207 had to be approved for execution by the CPA Project Management Office; the CPA senior adviser within whose ministry or area of responsibility the project fell; Amb. Bremer; and the Office of Management & Budget — a cumbersome and time-consuming proce- dure. Adding a new project could only be accom- plished by canceling an existing one. We saw much that was lacking in the program dic- tated by the 2207, at both the strategic and tactical level. In particular, I was deeply concerned at the heavy concentration of large infrastructure projects that would be slow to develop, generate little employ- ment, and be largely invisible to the average Iraqi. The whole approach ignored the lessons learned over a half- century of foreign assistance, particularly with regard to post-conflict transitions. There was virtually no funding for reforms in agriculture, economic policy, health, education, public administration and rule of law; and inadequate funding for democracy activities across the board, including election support. In my judgment, the 2207 resembled the Point Four program that the U.S. had implemented in the Middle East in the early 1950s — with little impact. But we were stymied in efforts to make needed adjustments by the structure of the CPA; the difficulty of making changes to the 2207; and the conviction of the CPA leadership and senior management that the reconstruction effort was on the right course. Meanwhile, On the Ground During the first year of post-conflict operations, mil- itary-civilian coordination in civil affairs at the policy level was virtually nonexistent. U.S. forces had, for the most part, adequate Commander’s Emergency Response Program funds, which were a combination of DOD ap- propriations and funds seized from the former regime. Accordingly, commander’s had less incentive to approach executing agencies for assistance. Although we reached out to the civil affairs commander at Com- bined Joint Task Force 7 (and later the Multi-National Force–Iraq), and he to us, meaningful cooperation was ad hoc and generally only occurred at the operational level. In mid-March 2004, a month after I arrived in Iraq, I was contacted by an aide to Major General Peter Chiarelli, commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division, which was deploying to assume responsibility for Baghdad and its environs. Gen. Chiarelli came to my office in the Republican Palace on March 28. He immediately made it clear that he was seeking a close working relationship with USAID. While I welcomed F O C U S 56 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 6 James “Spike” Stephenson, a recently retired USAID Senior Foreign Service officer, has spent 25 years in the field of development in conflict and post-conflict envi- ronments. He spent 13 months as mission director in Iraq (2004-2005) and until his retirement was a senior adviser to the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. He has also served as a USAID mission director in Serbia/Montenegro and Lebanon, and in a variety of positions in Egypt, Barbados, Grenada, El Salvador, the Philippines and Washington. He is now the senior adviser for post-conflict stabilization and reconstruc- tion at Creative Associates International, Inc.