The Foreign Service Journal, May 2010

42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 1 0 FSJ: Conflict prevention and mitigation are obviously key parts of your office’s mission. How are you pursuing those goals? JH: With USAID, we have put together a product we call the Interagency Conflict As- sessment Framework . The ICAF process helps people from different U.S. government agen- cies work together to understand a given country’s conflict dynam- ics and reach consensus on ways the U.S. can assist efforts to head off potential conflicts. To do that, we put together teams that visit the U.S. embassy in a particular country to act as facilitators. They draw out the people there who have policy expertise and substantive knowledge to come up with a comprehensive understanding of the situation on the ground. ICAF teams are often co-led by representatives from the Con- flict Prevention division of S/CRS and USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation, but that’s not a re- quirement. Last year we conducted ICAFs in Panama, Colombia, Pakistan, Cambodia and Ecuador. We also provided plan- ning assistance in Bangladesh — where, I’m pleased to say, our yearlong partnership with Embassy Dhaka (timed to coincide with the country’s transition to democ- racy after a two-year caretaker government) resulted in the State Department recognizing its Mission Strategic Plan as “MSP of the Year.” FSJ: What happens once the framework is drafted? JH: It’s important to realize that the team does not make any recommendations for program design. That is the role of the Sectoral Assessment which follows. Once our office has identified specific ways in which the United States can help, we draw on what are known as Section 1207 funds to implement the projects. Section 1207 of H.R. 1815 authorizes the Secretary of Defense to transfer funds to the Department of State — $350 million to date — to provide assistance in recon- struction, security or stabilization. The Secretary of State has delegated authority over those funds to S/CRS. Our very first use of this authority was in Lebanon during the summer of 2006 following the Israeli-Hezbollah War, but we have used it many times since then, in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Georgia, Morocco and many other countries. Now that we have dedicated funding and are in a better posi- tion to respond to requests, people are coming to us more than ever. One recent example is the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You may recall that last August, Sec. Clinton visited Congolese President Joseph Ka- bila and broached the idea of our conducting assessments in five different issue areas. We work closely with Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson when sending teams out, and we are always mindful that AF and the other regional bureaus have the policy lead. We just stand ready to offer expertise and resources. FSJ: How would you characterize the working rela- tionship between S/CRS and USAID? JH: Very good. At my request, for the last two years one of my deputy coordinators has come from USAID. We’ve also had many detailees from that agency working in our office. FSJ: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other sen- ior officials at the Pentagon have endorsed calls for the State Department and USAID to assume more responsi- bility for reconstruction work. Have you found that at- titude to be reflected at the working level of the military in places like Afghanistan? JH: In fact, I would say that the military has been the largest institutional supporter of S/CRS and our work across the board. Many of the projects we’ve carried out, such as working with the PRTs in Afghanistan, came at their request. For our part, in July 2007 we set up a Civil-Military Team to work with the Bureau of Political-Military Af- fairs and the Office of the Coordinator for Counterter- rorism, both within State, as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the uniformed mil- itary services, combatant commands and other defense F O C U S “Because no single U.S. government entity has all of the relevant expertise to deal with these threats, the Civilian Response Corps is a partnership of eight departments and agencies.”