Quote Originally Posted by Rob Thornton View Post

JCISFA is trying to help them out by providing an advisory course POI (the actual teaching of that would probably go to somebody else with capacity) targeting the skill sets for that level of advising. This is not easy. For a job of such importance you have to start with someone with a level of technical education appropriate to evaluate the existing system, the environment in which the system is supposed to work, how the system will facilitate and sustain the desired endstate - or a combination of all three simultaneously. We're talking high art here I think. This is not something that can be minted and sent out the door.

One of the best analogies I've heard is that of a gardener. Before you can advise somebody on how to garden in a manner that theperson being advised stands a good chance of being successful, the advisor needs to understand gardening pretty well himself. Nobody wants advice on a topic from someone who really has no practical experience in the area he's advising on. At the tactical level, this is challenging enough, but for the most part we get it about right, we and the Iraqis have enough capacity in that area that when a TT goes down range they can at least advise on the technical aspects. These ministry level advisors though are of a different nature - a strategic one.
Rob,

You have touched upon quite a few pithy and central points to the reconstruction effort.

Fortunately for the US we have Gen Petraeus on the ground. For an American, he probably has the truest grasp of the many, many changing variables involved and he is the best placed to bring about change.

Iraq is not America. It never will be. The American approach to Time does not apply. Relationships are established and tested before things begin to happen.

In addition to deep technical/technocratic skills, linguistic, and cultural skills for JCISFA teams will truly be key. Failure to have the first two have definite repercussions, failure to have the latter can get you and your team injured or killed. Some of the South Koreans, Bechtel, and ACOE folks found this out the hard way during my tour. These 'silver-bullet' teams would be the poster children for a 'low density MOS' and we would have to careful how they are employed.

Having said this I feel that Iraqi Human Capital is the key issue to the success or failure of our operation. Many of the people I worked with had options and I would be very surprised if they are still around. Many of the engineering directors that I worked with in Mosul during OIF 1 were western educated at the graduate level, multi-lingual, well spoken, and very astute. These gentlemen had been getting things done despite the sanctions and the very difficult political situation for many years...they were survivors, all of them.

These Iraqi Engineers were as effective as they were because they had some semblance of a governance and social network left that they could work with. This social network had options and I would be very surprised if they are still around. By American standards our progress was painfully incremental. I was very thankful for the CERP funding that we had, but in truth it was a bandage placed on arterial bleed. Nonetheless we functioned on the hope of some appropriate future funding to begin the rehabilitation of public infrastructure necessary for supporting a functional and civil society.

The JCISFA teams will need a secure AO, deep funding pockets, and significant time in order to reverse things using a top down strategy. The other possibility that I see is to attempt to quilt together militias for security, quilt together 'electricity-militias' for electricity (one generator/one block at a time), 'water-militias' for drinking water (small filters and a squad of water trucks for a block/neighborhood), tribes & imams for governance (again one block/neighborhood at a time) and a comprehenisve jobs program for each AO. From what I can see this appears to be the pathway that we are on/considering.

As an aside I wonder about the kids. They have seen much and they are the future of Iraq.

How then do we pull the three parts of the country back together or at least end up with functional portions? Perhaps an oil profits sharing program in which each citizen of Iraq gets a share of the countries oil revenue every quarter will be enough to ensure that some semblance of normalcy can return.

I do not know.

3 to 6 million barrels a day at ~$ 100 dollars a barrel can be used to fund the expression of a lot of anger. It can also be used to express hope for tomorrow.

As you indicated if it was easy it would already have been done.

Regards,

Steve