Here, we run the risk of mixing inappropriate metaphors.

Poverty reduction. Look at a map of US military interests, and national and sub-national poverty and humanitarian concerns are a direct mirror. Severe distress lays the context for current instability and future conflict.

Against that map of human misery, it is without possibility that US AID Missions and International Relief Agencies are making contributions.

Unfortunately, conflict & post conflict environments are materially different, as is the appropriateness and effectiveness of delivering aid under those other poverty-relief models in the areas of US military conflict engagement, including COIN.

At essence in COIN is the existence of open conflict, and the need to stabilize conflict (clear), secure post-conflict environments (hold)---then move development forward (build).

While build is a phase akin to current poverty allevaition systems, we are, too often, trying to do something entirely different in these military engagements. Clear so that some actors will pick up a tea cup, often while others want to shoot that tea cup. Hold against the tea cup snipers, and build to directly conflict the tea cup snipers.

As much as some may wish to say "we do poverty reduction and foreign aid," my question is specific to the military conflict zones: What does what they do have to do with how and what must be done in a conflict/post-conflict environment?

Steve