The Foreign Service Journal, March 2006

over time. Flexibility was a key aspect of the PRTs’ effec- tiveness, but at times it seemed to be a euphemism for ambiguity. A November 2002 briefing from the Coalition headquarters was vague in its description of the mission: (1) “Monitor ...” (2) “Assist ... coordinating bodies” (3) “Facilitate cooperation... .” The impression was that the PRTs were to observe and facilitate everything — be all things to all people — but not actually accomplish any- thing vital to the political or military missions. The initial PRT organizational chart focused on the military structure, with a dotted line connecting to “Afghan government, U.S. government organizations (e.g., USAID), State Department, NGOs and U.N.” lumped together at the far end of the page. Later charts proposed integrating State and USAID, as well as the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education and Agriculture, and other agencies. For many months, competing PRT orga- nizational charts floated around Washington, the U.S. Central Command and Coalition headquarters. In their first months of life, PRTs struggled to be rele- vant to the broader political and military mission, but suf- fered from limited resources and civil-military tensions. PRT military personnel used DOD’s Overseas Humani- tarian Disaster and Civic Aid funds to build schools, dig wells, repair clinics and so forth. But OHDACA was lim- ited in its application to basic humanitarian projects, iden- tical to those performed by NGOs. OHDACA authorities did not provide the PRTs with the flexibility to implement projects like repairing major infrastructure, building police stations or prisons and training or equipping secu- rity forces. The teams had no other resources for projects. Their resources for operations were completely inade- quate. Communications were poor, and their few vehicles came straight from a post-apocalyptic “Mad Max” movie: a motley assortment of dirty, duct-taped SUVs. High demand for vehicles, communications and dedicated mil- itary personnel limited the ability of civilians —who relied on the military’s vehicles and security escorts — to pursue their own objectives. A vague mission, vague roles and insufficient resources created significant civil-military tensions at the PRTs, par- ticularly over mission priorities. Many of the State Department personnel and other civilians on the team had military experience, but this did not reduce tensions. In fact, some of the harshest criticisms of the military per- sonnel on PRTs came from retired military members of the team. During one of the author’s trips to a PRT, a member of the team confided: “Those briefing slides look good, but this place is completely dysfunctional.” Civilians complained that the military personnel on the PRTs were reluctant to support them and treated them as outsiders. Military personnel were discouraged that civil- ians showed up with no resources, little authority vested in them by the State Department or Embassy Kabul, and sometimes little understanding of their role. PRTs often had only one civilian, frequently a junior-level person compared to the lieutenant-colonel level of the PRT com- mander. That civilian was sometimes on a 90-day visit, which was not enough time to develop situational aware- ness, much less play any kind of leadership role. Military personnel frequently asked about finding civilian agency representatives with technical skills who could assist in reconstructing Afghan agriculture, education, health-care and justice systems, but often had to make do with a junior-level diplomat and a busy USAID representative. After these first months of limited operations, the PRT mission began to coalesce around three basic objectives: enhancing security, strengthening the reach of the Afghan central government and facilitating reconstruction. Though they could not simply “create security,” as some observers demanded, they eventually helped defuse fac- tional fighting, supported deployments of the Afghan National Army and police, conducted patrols and rein- forced security efforts during the disarming of militias. They strengthened the reach of the central government by having Afghan officials serve on the PRTs and by pro- viding monitoring, registration and security support for events like the constitutional convention (the Loya Jirga) and elections. They facilitated reconstruction by funding projects like school repairs or, more important over time, by helping the State Department, USAID and F O C U S 64 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 Michael J. McNerney is the director of international policy and capabilities in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations. He visited six of the first eight provincial reconstruction teams while working on PRT policy for the Office of the Secretary of Defense from October 2002 until July 2004. This article is excerpted with permission from his fully documented study, “Stabilization and Reconstruction in Afghanistan: Are PRTs a Model or a Muddle?,” published in Parameters (Winter 2005-2006). The complete article is available at http://carlislewww.army.mil/usawc/Para meters/05winter/mcnerney.pdf.