The Foreign Service Journal, March 2006

deployed with limited preparation for working with civil- ian government officials. Civilians deployed in an ad hoc manner, with only a few meetings at the Pentagon and around Washington for their preparation. The civilian and military members of the U.K.-led PRT in Mazar-e- Sharif, by comparison, trained and deployed together and understood that their mission was to support both military and civilian objectives. One example of the results of these different approaches was that while the Mazar PRT made it a priority to support civilian-led missions like police training, disarmament and judicial reform efforts, the team in Gardez initially resisted State Department requests for police training assistance. Civil-military coor- dination on the U.S.-led PRTs has certainly improved over time, but limited pre-deployment preparation, strained resources and confusion over priorities continue. Despite these challenges, the Provincial Reconstruc- tion Teams have been one of the few efforts in Afghanistan to approach civil and military stabilization and reconstruction tasks in a coordinated fashion at the tactical level. Military patrols, demining, school repairs (with either military or civilian oversight), U.N. assess- ments, police training and other tasks all take place with- in a single province. The diversity of nations, organiza- tions and personalities struggling to implement their par- ticular programs impedes even the most concerted efforts to pull things together. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan uses regional offices to share infor- mation, but real coordination is more than information- sharing; it is integrated action. Integration among nation- al, functional and civil-military stovepipes generally occurs only in the host-nation’s capital, at best. PRTs, however, have achieved at least some unity of effort in the field by serving as a hub for both military and civilian activities and by closely aligning their efforts with [those of] the Afghan central government. As with coordination, the U.K.-led PRT in Mazar-e- Sharif was particularly effective in building relationships. The team commander in September 2003 had extensive diagrams detailing frequently-changing factional loyalties and interactions. PRT members traveled extensively through their area of operations. When tensions rose, PRT members stepped into the middle of the action, sometimes physically placing themselves between armed groups. Their efforts prevented factional fighting from breaking out or escalating on a number of occasions. In contrast, the German-led PRT in Konduz could travel only within a 30-kilometer radius and was accused by U.N. and NGO staff of avoiding areas where factional ten- sions were high. Team members took a delegation (including the author) to visit the Konduz governor in February 2004, and described their close relationship with him. They did not seem aware, however, that the governor would be replaced the next day by the central government. Building Relationships The other challenge for the PRTs in building relation- ships was balancing carrots and sticks, both of which were quite limited. The U.S.-led PRTs used DOD’s OHDACA funds as their primary carrot until 2004, when State and USAID began to provide funds for projects tied to the teams. DOD also obtained Commander’s Emergency Response Program funds in 2004, a more flexible source of funds first used in Iraq. More diverse sources of funds were helpful in allowing the PRTs to address a broader range of local needs, such as repairing police stations and jails and purchasing police equipment. Ironically, the mil- itary’s lack of funds beyond OHDACA initially required it to focus on humanitarian assistance projects, while the State Department drew more on resources for security- related efforts like police training and disarmament. The U.K. military relied on its government’s Department for International Development for funding assistance pro- jects. While this limited the military’s freedom of action, it may well have been a blessing in disguise. U.K. military personnel coordinated closely with their civilian agency counterparts in order to access their funding. They also tended to focus more on building relationships based on security-related cooperation with local authorities. PRTs could, in extremis, call on the ultimate stick — bombs from above. But military air strikes lack subtlety, and even the threat of them was generally not helpful for day-to-day interactions. PRT members relied primarily on trying to reward good behavior, but there was one stick President Karzai used that the teams could reinforce, as appropriate, in the murky world of provincial diplomacy: job insecurity. Karzai was not shy about firing ineffective or corrupt governors and police chiefs. PRTs were in some cases instrumental in supporting leadership changes. For example, the team in Gardez helped the governor, a trusted appointee of President Karzai, to transfer the corrupt provincial police chief to Kabul. When the new police chief arrived with a well-trained F O C U S 68 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