The "Small Wars Journal Empire" might not want its name in the title; but Lessons Learned could be one product. Or, something more concrete might develop.
Mike
MA-
Maybe not a big market, but definitely a book (or source) that has to be created.
Is that where we can contribute?
The SWJ Civil/Military for Dummies Handbook with lessons learned.
Steve
Hi Steve
The "Small Wars Journal Empire" might not want its name in the title; but Lessons Learned could be one product. Or, something more concrete might develop.
Mike
Quick note...via the ipod
Restoring basic services is key. *Focusing for a moment exclusively upon water SMEs could assess the condition of existing pipe networks (via visual, dye, smoke, camera), pumping systems (booster stations, lift stations, well houses, river intakes, treament plants),*storage sites (tanks and facilities) and treament sites (package plants and dedicated treament plants) SCADA systems, and trucks (delivery tankers, vac trucks, and maintenance). *Target is to provide a clean 7 to 15 liters/person/day and treat the resultant wastewater. * **
Sapere Aude
Sometimes you need to just look the local authorities in the eye and say "no, we will not fund that project". If the circumstances on the ground are not conducive to development tossing money into ill-conceived projects is not going to accomplish anything.Originally Posted by M-A Lagrange
There's a difference between "humanitarian aid" and "development aid". Humanitarian aid is about keeping people alive in extreme conditions; it's what we're trying to do in Haiti and in parts of Africa. Often in these conditions it's simply not possible to bring development aid into play effectively. Development aid to me is something that has to be carefully applied and used in plces and times where there's an opportunity. Tossing it around loosely ends up with the old paradigm of "poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries", which is not what we want to do.
Steve, when I ask "what's the goal, I guess the core of the question is this: are we working toward recovery after a disaster? Are we trying to mitigate an existing insurgency situation or prevent a potential one? Or is it a pure development problem? It will make a huge difference in how we proceed...
Last edited by Dayuhan; 01-23-2010 at 05:06 AM.
Along with a brief explanation of why that 7 to 15 is important, and its variabilities (temperature, etc...). And simple version of how to treat water, or detect water borne illnesses.
And some basics about wells, karsks, etc...
And about "water rights" and an overview of what of the farmework and implications of that concept are at a local level.
All the dumb stuff in one place,
Makes any soldier capable of being a fairly decent first level responder.
Now back to the structure. If you had this Dummies book, can you also arrange that upstairs is somebody who can serve as the basic second level responder (has access to water table, soils maps, rain fall stuff to assist, support the first level responder, and a framework for him to get dumb things deployed like chlorine tablets and simple test kits, or to coordinate testing processes (a good civilian business/employment opportunity---one per district or something). Somebody somewhere to make sure that each of the first and second level responders are on track, and not, trhough too much of one strategy, marching off a cliff.
I've seen plenty of really simple diagrams for the hydro cycle, water tables, stuff like that. But how does a person in the field link to find out what actually applies where he is, what typical local systems and components to understand and target, what NOT to do (drill lots of wells and collapse the aquifer).
Water for Dummies
Then Schools for Dummies, Health Clinics for Dummies, and Electricity for Dummies, and you start to have all the pieces for a component approach, less first time learning, and more synchronization and planning/resource/logistics options.
Anyone building or maintaining a school system knows that you try to standardize all the parts, equipment and FFE (furniture, fixtures and equipment---desks, flourescent tubes & starters, chalk boards, etc...) in order to improve service and cut costs.
Same stuff is just basic to health clinics, etc..., better to have five that are identically equipped and easily resupplied, maintained, operated, than ten that are all different and won't be sustainable beyond a year or two.
And that standardization is the essence of training for teachers, clinic staff, and maintenance workers for wells, power, etc... Common systems and common equipment supply chains... Now you can plan, train, employ and manage....improving the service of local government the way local governments actually do it.
Hey Dayuhan,
Our geographic choice drives our problem and solution sets. Afghanistan, although a mosaic situationally, could be generalized as trending towards COIN TTP. Haiti, although presently needing aid TTP, may trend towards development as info operations continue. Haiti seems to be more accesible for our purposes.
Here are some more water centric tech support thoughts.
Infiltration flows may be an issue for both water and wastewater piping systems depending upon their current condition, baseline + earthquake damage. *Crosscontamination (fecal) and the introduction of anthropogenic sources (chemical etc.) are a concern for treated water that is being piped. *Wastewater quantities to be treated may increase due to infiltration. *An additional caveat to wastewater treatment quantities would be a combined sewer system. *In this instance both wastewater and stormwater are carried by the system and quantities to be treated are greater than those resulting from a system limited to just wastewater.
The appropriateness of a CMOC or CIMIC is not addressed in this note but I would like to come back to that in later post. In this note I have crossed from aid to development and assume that local inhabitants are in the lead of that effort, again, we are functioning in a tech support role.
Once the water systems have been triaged project management skills will be needed to rehabiltate things. *We have touched upon how Walt Whitman Rostow's linear evolutionary development model has echos in maturity models employed by business and engineering communities. *However, for us, things start to get a bit nonlinear for the next portions of solution development. *Using the water system assessment a work breakdown system, which describes tasks, roles, and responsibilities would be developed. *A cost estimate (often close hold) project schedule, statement of work (operations order), specifications, and design are developed in concert with a variety of professions to include maintenance personnel, planners, legal personnel, community members, NGO, IO, and military - aka the CIMIC - something in between the hood of a truck and a facility.
Sapere Aude
Steve:
There are still plenty of little bugs for Macs.Even my Win/Mac w/Parellels gets some things that are fluky. Maybe a patch or update?
Re: Water
All well and good. but reducing contaminant issues for first responders to:
Is the Water in Your Area Safe and Clean Enough?
And a few simplified ideas of what to look for, and a pre-planned and supported protocol (Send samples to your next level for testing, or use this kit to get a green on the stick) would make it happen.
A three pager with illustrations, plain language and explicit simple steps would really create a Eureka moment, and allow the upstream alignment to consistent responses, and plannable, cost-saving, locally sustainable solutions.
Steve
Some questions to explore
In regard to the SWC "Experiment" in this thread, attached is a pdf file, with some introduction to terms and many questions, which would have to be addressed to reach longer-range targets. Basically, an edited cut and paste with only a few comments by me.
It might be helpful for internal use in setting directions.
Regards
Mike
Let's not reinvent the wheel
DayuhanThere's a difference between "humanitarian aid" and "development aid". Humanitarian aid is about keeping people alive in extreme conditions; it's what we're trying to do in Haiti and in parts of Africa. Often in these conditions it's simply not possible to bring development aid into play effectively. Development aid to me is something that has to be carefully applied and used in plces and times where there's an opportunity. Tossing it around loosely ends up with the old paradigm of "poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries", which is not what we want to do.
Concerning that matter, unfortunately: NO.
Too often humanitarian aid is turned into giving poor people money from rich countries to rich people in poor countries at war.
The man who supplied WFP in Goma for years made a good amount of money (with 6 zero). And the local authorities took their part too.
In Chad, the "prefet" received a water tank of 20 000L for his personal use as proof of good will and cooperation from a very well known NGO.
In Lebanon, NGO distributed aid to Palestinian camps which were not even affected by the war. Several important families with strong hands in politic received through their foundations huge bulk of medical aid which they sold instead of distributing it.
In Liberia, WFP food smuggling was organized by the police.
I am thousands of examples. I even bought a refugee cart at my name for 500 US$ once and was registered under my real name into by HCR...
What you point out is just what we have to be careful of.
Steve,
Concerning water:
Have a look on Merlin and Oxfam web sites.
Basically assume that water is NOT DRINKABLE! portable water blazzer (5000, 10 000 L) will do the trick. compte 20 L per person/day.
Chlorine (you know the swimming pool stuff) will do the trick to clean the water and keep it safe. But the water must be kept out of sun light.
Form comities among the population to protect the water points around the water blazzers and explain to the people how to use the tapes.
Train people to chlorinate the blazzer when water is delivered.
There is no water tank trucks? Put a water blazzer 5000 L on a truck 2/3 full maximum (so it wont damage the blazzer when moving). You also have semi hard water blazzers (the bottom is in hard plastic) they are great for such use.
Blazzer must be 1 m higher than distribution point at least. Also build a bed of sand for the blazzer so you do not break it when you refill it.
Put you water point at least 10 m far from the Blazzer.
I highly recommand to NOT USE ROOF to set up water blazzer (1 L water = 1 KG: 5000 L = 5000 KG).
Roofs and buildings are fragile for the momment in Haiti.
Avoid distributing the big 100, 500 L drums. People will fight to get one.
When you install a blazzer, distribute jerricanes to the community around. 1 jerrican of 20 L per family. (if some receive 2... What the ####)
Also what comes with water is hygiene and latrines. In NGO/UN speaking language this is called watsan. UNICEF organise a watsan cluster every day, week, 2 days...(?). People have to participate! This is the main point where info is exchanged! ALL NGO ARE PARTICIPATING: NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL... So should military acting in watsan! The same for shelter, food distribution, health... (I know, some UN agencies are better than others! But in the case of Haiti, I hope they will move their hass for once!)
All this is standard and in SPHERE.
For all possible activities, always have a look to the SPHERE standards from United Nations.
This is the basic international standards for emergency interventions. What the people have to receive at least to keep their dignity. (And Human dignity is cheap, believe me, even according SPHERE standards.)
When a guy says but who said the people have to have SPHERE standards water: just smach him! He is an idiot!
That's all for my practicle advices.
Mike,
Very usefull your pdf.
M-A
Why would we want soldiers building water systems? We've spent prodigious amounts of time and money training and equipping them to be soldiers, let them do what they are trained and equipped to do. There are plenty of people out there trained and equipped to do water work. If immediate supply is a problem there are fast solutions available, for example biosand filters; easily made or delivered, long-lasting, and effective. You don't need to understand water tables or water rights or the hydro cycle at that level; that comes later, when you're looking for a long-term solution... and that's not a job for soldiers.
Not trying to put down soldiers here, it's just not what they do. You don't ask a dentist to do brain surgery, or a neurosurgeon to do root canal.
To some extent... however, I'd prefer to see buildings, furniture, and anything else possible contracted to local labor, even at the expense of identicality. Large procurement contracts seem more efficient but they draw vultures faster than a decomposing elephant carcass on the Serengeti; opportunities for corruption are rarely passed up. Local contracting puts money into the community, and when people have a role in building something they tend to see it as theirs, rather than something an outsider took out of a box. They also know how to fix it when it breaks.
The single most important variable in making a school or a clinic work is competent, motivated staff.
Steve, re this:
Are we still talking about a village? For a village setting this seems way over-engineered. You want it as simple as possible. If possible you want to be able to build everything with local labor and local skills: again, if they build it they know how to fix it. You don't need piped house-to-house water and sewage collection systems; small wells at strategic locations, or springbox systems with standpipes in key locations, do fine. The biosand filters are very useful and can be locally made. Water-seal toilets over septic tanks are quite adequate for village needs.Infiltration flows may be an issue for both water and wastewater piping systems depending upon their current condition, baseline + earthquake damage. *Crosscontamination (fecal) and the introduction of anthropogenic sources (chemical etc.) are a concern for treated water that is being piped. *Wastewater quantities to be treated may increase due to infiltration. *An additional caveat to wastewater treatment quantities would be a combined sewer system. *In this instance both wastewater and stormwater are carried by the system and quantities to be treated are greater than those resulting from a system limited to just wastewater.
The appropriateness of a CMOC or CIMIC is not addressed in this note but I would like to come back to that in later post. In this note I have crossed from aid to development and assume that local inhabitants are in the lead of that effort, again, we are functioning in a tech support role.
Once the water systems have been triaged project management skills will be needed to rehabiltate things. *We have touched upon how Walt Whitman Rostow's linear evolutionary development model has echos in maturity models employed by business and engineering communities. *However, for us, things start to get a bit nonlinear for the next portions of solution development. *Using the water system assessment a work breakdown system, which describes tasks, roles, and responsibilities would be developed. *A cost estimate (often close hold) project schedule, statement of work (operations order), specifications, and design are developed in concert with a variety of professions to include maintenance personnel, planners, legal personnel, community members, NGO, IO, and military - aka the CIMIC - something in between the hood of a truck and a facility.
With enough money you can bring any village up to western standard, but then you have a few thousand more villages... a project has to be replicable to be anything more than a showcase and a windfall for the selected village.
When I went into the Peace Corps, back in the dim distant recesses of the last century, there was already an enormous base of literature on village-based water and sanitation systems; by now I'm sure it's increased a hundredfold. There are people out there who specialize in that field, so if you want the expertise, it's there. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Is anyone here familiar with community-driven development, originally created by the world bank in Indonesia (now over 10 years, $1 billion spent and over 30,000 villages touched) and now implemented in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. It's not national government building, but it is intended to strengthen local governance and reduce poverty. Good article on subject is:
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/I...KDP-Crises.pdf
Soldiers doing civilian things
Hi Steve (in fact, hi to all the Steves)
We don't (at least I don't; except for their own use); but ...from Dayuhan
Why would we want soldiers building water systems?
"instability situations" (where the US takes enough interest in an insurgency to intervene via "stability operations") are "insecure" - bang, bangs. Our civilian capabilities in those situations are either limited in fact (STP has spent 400+ posts describing those limitations) or foreclosed by charter (Peace Corps).
So, the Army's civil affairs units (and lesser so the Marines' two units) end up being tasked because they have the bodies and funding. Join in DoS and USAID (a shadow of its former self) components, such as STP (a armor commander in a former life), and that pretty much sums up the deployable components to build water systems in "instability situations".
No doubt that the US has a very large civilian capability to build water systems - and all other aspects of local governance. My own Copper Country could be stripped out (of its local governance folks) and they would make a very large "civil affairs" unit. The reality is that won't happen (for many reasons); and those USAian capabilities are not easily transferred to a foreign environment.
So, we are left with deploying military units, such as our local combat engineering company which has had multiple deployments (e.g., here and here). And, yes, we do recognize the effort - and that 40+ PHs were pinned, out of the 120 combat engineers who deployed (here).
One purpose of this thread is to find a better way - and, if PHs can be avoided or lessened, so much the better.
Regards
Mike
Dayuhan:
Like Mike, I think soldiers are just first responders, not builders or operators.
But the current set in Afghanistan, is, as I reckon it---5,000 civilian experts, based on a Carr Center figure, of which 1000 are US civs, set to "explode" to 1300. Most heavily hampered by movement security, resources, etc... so their ability to get out and about and o things in far-afield Afghan areas will always be very limited, even if security were no an overwhelming issue.
Fact is Afghanistan is remarkably logistically constrained. And the math of sending 1000 new civilians (plus terps and security) is fabuluous strain on the limited resource paths.
If thousands of new soldiers are coming soon (September accdg to Petreaus) they are going to be the major thrust and asset. If they don't move toward becoming effective first responders, then they must be there as guards to other first responders, doubling the logistical hurdle, and delaying responses.
My guess is that if there is a good reconstruction civ, he should be in Haiti very soon, so that military can move out, and back to primary AOs. In large part because, with limited training and support, they could easily do a more effective job of service expansion and aid delivery than a highly constrained civilian.
As for standardizing packages for schools, all over the US, school systems use uniform standards, but they are both locally built and with local design and materially. Establishing that, say a classroom, should be 500 square feet and generally a rectangle laid out for 20 or thirty students does nothing to affect local design, content, building materials or local labor and contracting opportunities.
On the other hand, recognizing that (1) about 30 percent of current afghan schools are tents of informal places for the 60% or so of eligible students currently enrolled (6 million), suggests that thousands of schools and classrooms may/will be built.
If there is a consolidated plan for desks, there is then a consolidated opportunity for local, regional and national desk manufacturing---rather than each NGO doing its own thing. And for specific amounts of books to be planned/made/delivered, and specific amounts of teachers to be trained/hired/housed by language/province/district/appropriateness.
From prior adventures, I believe a 20-30% efficiency and local content standard is a minimum goal. Mr. Ghani belives their is a 90% efficiency just by getting more national/local procurement focus. Given resource and logistical constraints unqique to Afghanistan, sending billions of dollars is not going to have POSITIVE effects so much as improving our efficiency of actual delivery (more planned and exploited local content, more dual use of military cross-trained for first responding).
First responding is, in most instances, no different than knowing when and how to call for a fire mission. You don't need to know how to fly or make artillery calculations.
But if soldiers are going to do COIN, and get to know and win relationships (if not hearts and minds), being able to coordinate basic services and assistance should be focused on the soldier in Afghanistan, and not the civilian (until way into the build phases).
I was once dispatched to assist an LTC assigned to Balad/DoS/PRT Satellite.
He was building relationships anyway he could with local folks. Bringing a higher ranking DoS grey-haired SME was not, we both agreed, the way to bolster his relationships or juice with the locals, and could, if not real careful, undermine it.
Translating the many missions and objectives in COIN in Afghanistan is no less easy. Better to have an empowered E-7 wiyth local juice and connections than a bunch of discordant civs/ngos undermining his shtick. No?
How do you really do this stuff effectively in the field?
As MA and Beelz both point out, standardizing and simplifying all this civilian aid/HA stuff is a well-trodden path for actual professionals in the field (UNDP, UNHCR, World Bank)---getting their basics and standards out there is the way to integrate and synchronize US civ and mil operations. Inventing new wheels takes up to much energy (and scarce logistics and head-space).
Steve
Steve,
Yes, I see the point. This is why I was asking earlier what the purpose of the exercise is, which of course revolves around where it takes place. M-A's talk of trucking water in seems aimed at relief efforts such as that going on in Haiti; if we discuss Afghanistan we are largely limited to assessing what a military force can accomplish. Seems to me that until we narrow down the problem and clarify what we seek to accomplish and where, the conversation becomes almost impossibly general.
The problem with training soldiers in delivering water systems is that not every village needs one. Some may need a bridge, or an irrigation system, or any number of other things. Obviously it's not practical to try and train soldiers in the entire spectrum of development services delivery. Possibly it would be best to people going into the field to have some basic training in diagnostics - which in most cases comes down to asking people and sorting self-serving requests from genuine needs - and providing some sort of centralized technical capacity that the people in the field can tap into for whatever expertise their area happens to need.
I'm not entirely convinced that it's a good idea to undertake development projects in an active combat zone. In most cases these are driven less by development priorities than by a sort of thinly concealed bribery: we'll build you something if you don't shoot at us, or if you'll stop supporting our enemies. I'm not averse to a bit of bribery in the right time and place; sometimes it works, and what works is useful. One must be careful in applying that particular tool, though, as it may not always accomplish what we seek to accomplish. In the southern Philippines, for example, American-driven projects have left the Muslim populace with a much improved opinion of Americans, but have had little or no impact on their perception that the Philippine government would prefer to see them all dead in a ditch and is likely to go straight back to neglecting and abusing them as soon as the Americans are gone. This is the perception that drives the insurgency, and it's a difficult perception for Americans to address, since it's true. It will remain true even if we build roads and wells, and everyone in the picture knows it.
In an area that's actively or passively supporting insurgency, simply building projects is not likely to have much impact on that support. The key here is to identify what motivates that support, particularly if there is some particular local grievance that might possibly be addressed. If the people of a village see that the provincial government or HN military apparatus is dominated by a rival group and is likely to stomp them at the earliest opportunity, building them a well is not going to bring them into the fold. If the people of a village believe that the Americans will soon be leaving, that the Afghan Government will tumble when they do, and that the Taliban will then stomp whoever helped the Americans, building a well won't change that equation. Not to say it's a bad thing: if the goal is simply to provide clean water, that's achievable. If the goal is to win support, that's a different story.
In an active conflict zone, people are likely to be less concerned with progress than with survival, especially if the see their survival threatened. The first thing that has to be addressed is the threat. Development is much more and issue when the security situation improvesd to the point where day to day survival at least is relatively certain.
Steve
(Sometimes it seems that everyone in this discussion is Steve; I'm irresistably reminded of that Monty Python skit where everybody is named Bruce...)
A truly outstanding comment and one that many need to read and heed, Dayuhan.
You have well encapsulated the major problems with the US approach (essentially "It's all about us...") in developing nations. I've seen it happen in half a dozen countries, every flaw you cited.
We need to stop trying to do this because we just flat do not do it well and usually do as much harm as good. Your point that development should not -- truly, cannot -- start until the security problem is resolved is spot on. I've watched us waste millions doing that stuff before the situation was resolved. Goos news is that we sometimes get to re-do it several times...
Military forces do military things -- development is not a military thing. You can use the military force to do that but it will do a mediocre job at best and too frequently, will just do a really poor job. I am familiar with all the arguments for 'why' the Armed Forces 'must' do this, to include the 'first responder bit. As I said, I've watched it many places -- and we have NEVER done it well, thus I believe most of those arguments to be fallacious and simply varied repetitions of 'that's the way we've always done it.' May be correct but that doesn't make it the best solution.
What is that old saw "If you're in a hole, stop digging..."
As Bob Killebrew said in his Blog post on the front page, "What we're doing now isn't working..." Too true. Yet we keep trying. I'm still wading through the over wordy and so far not terribly coherent offering from the great thinkers at CNAS (also on the the Front page) but I really get the impression that too many people think we should just keep doing things that do not work...
continuum and contiguum; the edge war theory
Hey Dayuhan, all the Steve, Mike and the others
Well I think we are not speaking about the same thing.You have well encapsulated the major problems with the US approach (essentially "It's all about us...") in developing nations. I've seen it happen in half a dozen countries, every flaw you cited.
State Building as a tool in Stabilization process is part of a greater plan.
You have 2 main issues on this. Most of the people tend to see Stabilization as a continuum that goes as follow:
Emergency/humanitarian => recovery/reconstruction => post conflict/pre development => development.
State Building is integrated at all stages with various tasks. What I developed in my previous mail is clearly located in Emergency/Humanitarian while what Dayuhan is addressing is clearly located in Post conflict and/or development.
This is the basic sheme for stabilization following the Rostow approach: a continuity in development from disaster (Prehistoric stage) to development (Full capitalist economy with democratic regime).
But conflicts are not homogenous. They are composed of a mosaic of situations that can be labeled in all the categories. Rather than mosaic, I prefer the concept of islands as the limits are porous. So you end up with a various rabge of micro contexts which can be extremely different: emergency in one village and development in the next one.
This is close to the edge concept that Surferbeetle was talking about.
In humanitarian “science” this is called a contiguum. This theory has been developed by a French guy based on urban emergency actions in the Balkans. I, basically (with others) extend it up to the village level.
So if the country as a whole is following the steps of the continuum, it is divided in a unlimited number of islands with a contiguum of situations going from war to stabilized economy for each of those island. The conytinuum situation of the country as a whole is determined by the prevailing situation in the majority of island. If it is emergencies then the country is still at the war/emergency stage. If it is development then the country is at the development stage.
So the first thing is to identify which box the place you are working in fits. Then when you know in which box you are then you can start pretty much standard actions. In emergencies all is covered by SPHERE Standards and NGO practices. In development, it is mostly best practices from USAID and other development actions. In the middle, then we can come with what we, as the practitioners part of SWJ, think are the best practices, the do and do not do.
And from that we can look at what CIMIC can do and how it is integrated into COIN or Population centric COIN or even POPULACE centric COIN.
And to respond to Steve
Yes, I think that a Civil/Military for the dummy hand book is what we, at SWJ, can contribute with.
Humanitarian "science"? First time I've heard of such an animal, tell us more...
I have my doubts. I don't see any standard actions that are universally or even widely applicable even within these "boxes", and based on return on aid invested to date I've no particular trust in "best practices" coming out of the aid industry. Emergency relief situations, I agree we have a clue there, simply because the objectives are limited and clear. Moving to the development side, I don't think "best practice" has accomplished much.
All too often the principal constraints on development are not the technological or financial ones addressed by development aid, but direct resistance to and subversion of development efforts by a nexus of local and national elites and military forces that have a powerful vested interest in the status quo and see their interests and even their lives threatened by what we would call development. The people who have built their fortunes and their power on the status quo are not going to simply give up and walk away, and for development to progress these forces have to be challenged and defeated. Sometimes this requires insurgency, and this is why we need to stop seeing insurgency as something that must reflexively be countered.
Be skeptical. Be very skeptical. Make each proposed effort justify itseld in the actual circumstance.
Reconstruction, in the real world, means fixing things that are broken, putting the shelves back up and the dishes back on them. In Iraq and WWII, physical infrastructure damage (accumulated from Iran/Iraq, embargos, us (but not just us)) was huge, complicated and expensive. Not so in most Afghan areas.
Development is making some thing happen that has not happened before. Especially when applied to Afghanistan, the burdens and challenges of any success must be incrementally built on a solid foundation, Doing so while security, corruption and lack of framework/context is almost spitting in the wind, and with very little reasonable expectation for bug strides.
Oneof my first bewilderments in Tikrit was arequest for scads of generators. So I asked, how many generators have been deleivered to that little village in the last five years. The answer: Who knows? That went out at the last Riptoa. All we know if that we are here now and these folks say they need generators, and you have funds for that.
The answer was: the village needed a generator, but had no mechanism to "own it," maintain it, keep it in fuel. So when the fuel went out or it broke down, somebody sold it for scrap, and they came back for another.
The solution to a sustainable generator was for some identifiable party to take responsibility for it, and the government to agree to maintain, supply it. Otherwise it was a waste of time.
Dayuhan only gave a piece of the Phillipine-style story. Load them with fancy amercian projects that cannot be sustained, or even afforded, by local government, and you make the local government look incomptent, by default. In large part these places have limited development, infrastructure and services because there is no system to male them valuable and sustainable. The trade-off will not always be the same if the choice is "give up your traditional ways and customs so that you can become prosperous enough to use/support new and expensive infrastructure." Some will just teach you what they told the Russians" Nyet!
The first big lesson of Appalachian Redevelopment---the Kennedy Plan to revive the Appalachians, involved building great new roads into the Appalachians to stimulate trade by linking them to city regions. It never occured to them that it was easier, and more successful, to follow the road to the city than to try to develop the Appalachians (a US version of the same constraints faced in Afghanistan). How many of these big projects create substantial unintended consequences---like shifting rural poor to urban poor.
Yesterday was a conference at CSIS, and a British and Norwegian Ambassador explained the upcoming London Summit. Security aside, an hour is assigned to SUBNATIONAL Governance.
In theory, the Afghan gov is expected to deliver it's proposal to the nations for creating and implementing subgov structures in Afghanistan. Although many at the national level are skeptical about creating subgov (and especiially effective subgov) is that it diverts their power.
Back up the truck a sec. There is no effective sub-national governance structure, and, if needed to be built, you can do the math as almost as big a separate effort as training police and soldiers---let alone the hundreds of offices, desks, cell phones, bicycles and bongo trucks needed for that. Now, we have an hour scheduled to hear how (if) the new Afghan government wants to pursue this objective, and whether int'l aid will accept/support their plan.
An ineffective national government, no effective sub-national governance structure, or credible plan for one, and, at the bottom of that pyramid, soldiers are supposed to build local governance to hand off to the national system that does not exist.
Two things are missing. If there was a subnational gov plan, us civ/mil could synchronize efforts to focus on support for implementation, but there is none, and there is no entity to either link or hand it over to.
A district with a $6 budget, no staff, and no cell phone is hardly going to be able to accept a hand-off of responsibility for an island of villages "redeveloped" by the US, and certainly cannot sustain or support any level of infrastructure/projects.
Same in Iraq. The US declared provincial governments, but did not provide the road maintenance shops, equipment and staffs to make them so. Without an independent tax base, either in Iraq or Afghanistan, all local governance is small and ineffective.
The US cry was about "Taxation without Representation." Afghanistan has no resources except those we give it, and those it chooses to distribute...
What's Schmedlap's rap: With a plan this compicated and full of wholes, success is assured?
Steve
Be skeptical. Be very skeptical. Make each proposed effort justify itseld in the actual circumstance.
Reconstruction, in the real world, means fixing things that are broken, putting the shelves back up and the dishes back on them. In Iraq and WWII, physical infrastructure damage (accumulated from Iran/Iraq, embargos, us (but not just us)) was huge, complicated and expensive. Not so in most Afghan areas.
Development is making some thing happen that has not happened before. Especially when applied to Afghanistan, the burdens and challenges of any success must be incrementally built on a solid foundation, Doing so while security, corruption and lack of framework/context is almost spitting in the wind, and with very little reasonable expectation for bug strides.
Oneof my first bewilderments in Tikrit was arequest for scads of generators. So I asked, how many generators have been deleivered to that little village in the last five years. The answer: Who knows? That went out at the last Riptoa. All we know if that we are here now and these folks say they need generators, and you have funds for that.
The answer was: the village needed a generator, but had no mechanism to "own it," maintain it, keep it in fuel. So when the fuel went out or it broke down, somebody sold it for scrap, and they came back for another.
The solution to a sustainable generator was for some identifiable party to take responsibility for it, and the government to agree to maintain, supply it. Otherwise it was a waste of time.
Dayuhan only gave a piece of the Phillipine-style story. Load them with fancy amercian projects that cannot be sustained, or even afforded, by local government, and you make the local government look incomptent, by default. In large part these places have limited development, infrastructure and services because there is no system to male them valuable and sustainable. The trade-off will not always be the same if the choice is "give up your traditional ways and customs so that you can become prosperous enough to use/support new and expensive infrastructure." Some will just teach you what they told the Russians" Nyet!
The first big lesson of Appalachian Redevelopment---the Kennedy Plan to revive the Appalachians, involved building great new roads into the Appalachians to stimulate trade by linking them to city regions. It never occured to them that it was easier, and more successful, to follow the road to the city than to try to develop the Appalachians (a US version of the same constraints faced in Afghanistan). How many of these big projects create substantial unintended consequences---like shifting rural poor to urban poor.
Yesterday was a conference at CSIS, and a British and Norwegian Ambassador explained the upcoming London Summit. Security aside, an hour is assigned to SUBNATIONAL Governance.
In theory, the Afghan gov is expected to deliver it's proposal to the nations for creating and implementing subgov structures in Afghanistan. Although many at the national level are skeptical about creating subgov (and especiially effective subgov) is that it diverts their power.
Back up the truck a sec. There is no effective sub-national governance structure, and, if needed to be built, you can do the math as almost as big a separate effort as training police and soldiers---let alone the hundreds of offices, desks, cell phones, bicycles and bongo trucks needed for that. Now, we have an hour scheduled to hear how (if) the new Afghan government wants to pursue this objective, and whether int'l aid will accept/support their plan.
An ineffective national government, no effective sub-national governance structure, or credible plan for one, and, at the bottom of that pyramid, soldiers are supposed to build local governance to hand off to the national system that does not exist.
Two things are missing. If there was a subnational gov plan, us civ/mil could synchronize efforts to focus on support for implementation, but there is none, and there is no entity to either link or hand it over to.
A district with a $6 budget, no staff, and no cell phone is hardly going to be able to accept a hand-off of responsibility for an island of villages "redeveloped" by the US, and certainly cannot sustain or support any level of infrastructure/projects.
Same in Iraq. The US declared provincial governments, but did not provide the road maintenance shops, equipment and staffs to make them so. Without an independent tax base, either in Iraq or Afghanistan, all local governance is small and ineffective.
The US cry was about "Taxation without Representation." Afghanistan has no resources except those we give it, and those it chooses to distribute...
What's Schmedlap's rap: With a plan this compicated and full of wholes, success is assured?
Steve
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