Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience

[Rex Brynen]

Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders

New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ and T. CHRISTIAN MILLER
Published: December 13, 2008

BAGHDAD — An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

The NYT has published the entire draft 508 page report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction online at http://projects.nytimes.com/reconstruction.

[Rex Brynen]

Some of you will remember Biker Chicks #1 and #2, who attended a SWJ non-virtual get-together in Arlington in 2007.

Biker Chick #1 later moved on from researching jihadist IED techniques to working on Middle East civil society and elections issues, and is now deployed to Iraq doing something else. She recently passed on these insights into reconstruction efforts there:

We were asked to do a study on the economic and social effects of a recent Army development project where, for $140k, the Army had paved a 2 mile stretch of road to enable transportation of goods, services, etc. We had designed a research plan, a number of survey questions about how the paving of the road had affected the lives of local residents and business owners, and selected several sites along and just outside the route to conduct interviews....

The road had never been paved. The contractor had laid gravel, and then had stopped construction. Not only was it not paved, the Iraqi Federal Police had closed it indefinitely. Residents told us that the excuse that had been given was that it was an escape route for insurgents, and the loose gravel made an easy place to plant IEDs. We had been provided with a few blurry pictures of a ribbon cutting ceremony with the Iraqi Army as evidence that it was open, at least for a few hours, sometime in March. The brigade staff had no idea that it was unpaved or un-open; they were hoping for assessment of how their project had helped the local economy.

One of our team suspected the contractor was in Syria by now. He wasn't, however--he was still in the area, and managing several other construction projects for the US Army.

I'm getting the opportunity to look at how US reconstruction aid has affected the areas I work in. The stories get frighteningly repetitive, but it's nothing that you haven't read in the news before. We go out to four dairy production factories; the two that were privately funded and still functioning and half-staffed by Bangladeshis, the two funded by PRT or USAID are nonoperational. Massive poultry processing plants have been deserted, because no one did adequate studies on the availability of a market for local chicken in an area where the frozen Brazilian variety is the norm. Small projects are desperate for funding, and no one has reliable electricity or water, which makes it impossible to achieve basic standards of sanitation or refrigerate food or medicine. They often speak about a complete lack of connection and countless unanswered calls between their organization and local government or organizing bodies. There are proposals, statements assuring funding sources that x number of jobs will be created, and the US throws $120k at a project. Something doesn't work correctly, the owners cut their losses and split for Dubai, the factories empty, and squatters move in. We met families of squatters at our last project inspection, most of whom are former or 'current' members of the Sons of Iraq, and who are being run around the bureaucratic annals of the Iraqi government while waiting for jobs to open up for them. But then, that's a different story altogether.

[Rex Brynen]

Another update from Iraq, courtesy of Biker Chick #1:

One of the things that I consistently notice when I'm out on mission is how little soldiers interact with, well, anyone. I'm not talking about detailed conversations, just a simple word of acknowledgement. A 'salam', perhaps even a 'asalamu alaykum' if they were feeling ambitious. God knows the Army has spent enough money on Arabic language Smart Cards for soldiers to carry around in their pockets. Our PSD (Personal Security Detail) will walk straight past groups of people who are obviously perturbed or upset by their presence without a word. Several of us sat around talking about this tonight.

I told a few other team members about a mission I recently went on, where the first stop happened to be quick checkup on a Civil Affairs project where they had attempted to lay a 400 square foot patch of sod and grow grass at the local court building. We were in a series of four MRAPs (absolutely giant, but very very safe to ride in, vehicles) and parked in the middle of a main street, blocking three lanes of Iraqi traffic. It took about 30 seconds before horns started honking. As I was in the same MRAP as the CA folk, I tagged along. We walked straight past Iraqi Police guard checkpoints into the building without a word, as the IP stared at us in awe. I offered a friendly greeting, and they yelled down to me:

"Hey! Are you a translator?"

"No, um... I'm... I'm an analyst, but I speak some Arabic."

"What the hell is going on with the traffic! What are you guys doing here? Who is supposed to be controlling the security in this area; us, or you?!"

I am pretty sure that my response was, "I'm sorry. It will be five minutes, five minutes only. We are here... (I paused, unsure what to say...) to look at... some grass."

They took it well. I thanked them for their patience and they asked if I was married. But I couldn't help thinking, if I hadn't been there, would anyone have said anything? Would they just have walked in, walked past, blocked traffic, and left without a word?

My colleagues laughed sadly when I told them this story. One explained. "It's all about the way that you see the people around you. It's perfectly normal for a person to say a simple hello when they see another person. It's substantially less normal to say hello to a lawn chair. To most soldiers, Iraqis are simply the local fauna."

Another colleague says, "It goes both ways though. You know, I used to watch these Hizbullah anti-Israeli occupation cartoons on al-Manar (Hizbullah's satellite tv channel). And you'd notice, every Palestinian in the cartoon looked different - some were fat, some skinny, some had mustaches, some didn't, different hair colors... you get the picture. And for the Israeli soldiers, it looked like they just drew one, and used him to represent every soldier. We look equally 'the same' to most Iraqis."

I laugh. "Hell, I can't tell the guys on our PSD apart half the time. Everyone's tall, built, low body fat, buzzed hair, dressed the same, lots of body armor, and has eye-pro covering half their face. Our green-suiter research manager sometimes gets mad at me when I don't see him and sit with him in the DFAC. Honestly, I just can't pick him out from everyone else."

It's yet to be seen how the majority of Iraqis will remember our presence here. The experience I've seen the most is that people have had one or two positive interactions with individuals that they remember and respect, amid a wash of identical shapes, most of whom either ignored them or shouted at them in a language they did not understand.

----------------

The thing that shocks me the most here is just how much money is being injected into the system, and how little return USF and aid vehicles see in their projects. The assumption that aid is inherently good is alive and well here, with little understanding of how putting this much money into a limited number of hands and seeing how it spreads can affect the economic system of a district, or a country. There is an awful lot of 'doing', and pitifully little 'thinking', or attempting to understand potential effects of actions. Reports are a long list of accomplishments; $500k spent here, $150k spent there, this clinic built, this program funded, but very little analysis on why, or any measure of effectiveness. At times it delves into the absurd, such as the Beekeeping for Widows program that seems to be floating around here these days, or PRT's current plan to establish 4H Clubs throughout southern Baghdad.

It's not all humorous. The vicious cycle of aid unintentionally fueling conflict appears in all kinds of ways. The head of the Civil Affairs team told me that during his last deployment, he was literally given a large bag with stacks of $100 bills in it to pay Iraqi contractors with. Halfway through the bag, he started recording the serial numbers of the bills he was giving out. He asked our S2 (the brigade intelligence shop) to please send him serial numbers of money they found on detained insurgents, and found that the wide majority of money being used by AQI and smaller groups came directly from Civil Affairs.

"It was about a one week turnaround, and by that I mean one week in between me giving the contractor the money and it appearing in an insurgent's wallet. Of course, we'd call up the contractor and say, 'What the hell?' and he'd say, 'Well, if I don't pay 10% to AQI (or whoever) then they will attack my project and threaten my family.' " So what do you do? You can't just stop doing reconstruction projects. If it was a case of protecting myself and my family, hell, I'd probably do the same thing."

[Steve the Planner]

Rex:

Biker Chick has it down.

I thought she was writing about my usual provincial excursions.

In 2008, it was giving out refrigerated bongo trucks, and opening banks in Sammara.

Better to use a C-130 to push pallets of cash out the back door to save folks from having to sell the second hand bongo trucks at a discount to get cash.

On SME's salary for a day in a cash box left on the street was as best you could do in Samarra until fighting stopped. Once it did, they had their own baking going ASAP. What did we contribute?

Best lessons still came from lawrence---better they do it themselves. Facilitate that and you have re-built capacity.

[John T. Fishel]

Community Development 101!

We know how to do this. We have decades of experience in wartime and peacetime. The first step is always to find out what the local people say they need and then make it possible for them to get it.

My first experience with this was in rural Mexico in 1962; then in a poor Mexico City neighborhood in 64; then in Peru's mountains from 66 thru 68; finally in Honduras in 86. It ain't hard and always needs to begin by asking questions not by telling people what you think they need. You have to listen or you will fail.

As my Mexican friends would say, "Hijole!!!!"

JohnT

[Ken White]

18 and 19 year olds to be 'tough soldats,' place them in an area where the "local fauna" can be problematic if not outright hostile -- and then rather foolishly IMO expect them to be gregarious social networkers with said fauna -- who speak in another tongue and obviously won't say in English what they are saying in the local dialect. A few US Troopies can and will do that -- most will not...

Not likely to change. Not with the kids nor their NCOs. The NCOs live by these rules among others:

16. Don't drop your guard.
18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. (In God we trust. Everyone else, keep your hands where I can see them).
21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
22. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.

and the kids who stay alive tend to develop in their image. As they should...

Most officers will bend to do the necessary socialization it but even many of them will not and most that do won't really like it. There's a reason for the existence of MI and CA folks. There's an even greater reason we organized, developed and trained Special Forces the way we do -- or did. The relative maturity and cultural / language training is only a part of it.

The GPF is good at the job for which it is recruited, equipped, organized and trained. It can and will accept cross training to perform marginally in the FID or other role but it will never excel at that role. Nor should it.

Moral of that is do not use the wrong tool for the job and then complain about the unsuitability of the tool...