Cpt C,

I have not put on a military uniform, but I have spent some time in Iraq and other places in an international development capacity. From a capacity building and development perspective, there are a whole range of actors (contractors) out there doing various projects that all (sometimes loosely coordinated) attempt to improve the infrastructure, services or socio-economic environment. Related to Kilkullen's 4th point about organizing for inter-agency operations and 23rd point about practicing armed civil affairs, I would like to see more attention focused on learning who the other actors on your side and in the civil society are and coordinating with their efforts. These people often have an intimate knowledge of the communities they work in, their needs and are working to address them. They're not necessarily reaching out, so it's even more reason to extend to them. There are a lot of independent and ad-hoc examples of this and I've seen it work well, but it's not always systematic and therefore, opportunities are missed and efforts sometimes overlap and/or conflict with each other.