Steve:

My observations come from serving in Baghdad as an Army National Guard colonel in CJTF-7 (I was Chief of Policy in the C-5 Directorate) in 2004 and then as a State Department civilian in the US Embassy Baghdad’s Joint Strategic Planning and Assessment (JSPA) office in 2006 and 2007. My academic background includes a good deal of work in Public Policy. (Before I decided to focus upon security studies, I was interested in urban planning.)

While you raise many good points and your “three stage” outline is a useful structure to prioritize post-conflict reconstruction activities, my argument is that:

(1) It may be getting close in some places, and some areas such as the Kurdish provinces have been mostly peaceful for several years, for the most part Iraq has not yet reached the “post-conflict” stage and is at best is currently a semi-permissive environment;

and

(2) Development/Reconstruction in conflict areas or semi-permissive environments has a quantum difference from those activities in peaceful areas or permissive environments. This is because our normal development and economic practices and models operate under the assumption of a relatively high degree of security, which is necessary for the spontaneous individual economic decisions and investment that are required to expand and link together the efforts of the government (and/or occupying forces and/or international development programs). As a sheer matter of manpower and funding limitations, centrally directed and funded efforts cannot do very much on their own. It’s not merely a matter of having funding, a good central plan, and sensible priorities--solutions also require the participation of individuals who contribute value and begin to “fill in the gaps” and can leverage the government/occupier/international community efforts.

The problem in a semi-permissive environment is that no logical person will want to invest in a business if the storefront is likely to blown up and its employees and customers frequently murdered. And, government/occupier/international community activities are attractive targets for terrorists, insurgents, and guerillas unless a high degree of security is provided. But, securing business areas, residential areas, and infrastructure requires a large force—whether military, contractors, or police—until the conflict is reduced to the point where the environment really becomes “post-conflict” and normal development/economic growth processes can be used.

During the interim period we recognize that jobs and economic opportunity play an important role in reducing incentives to engage in violence, but I do not believe it is at all clear how to integrate military/police security efforts with economic and civil society development efforts in manner that will help to push the environment into a “post-conflict” situation. To date, I think we’ve attempted to follow the processes and practices that are known to work in primarily peaceful environments but we either do not understand how to adequately adapt them to situations of high violence or have been unwilling or unable to devote enough resources to create enduring pockets of security within which the usual approaches will be effective.

In late 2003 and early 2004, when violence was relatively low compared to the peaks of 2006, the priority effort to restore electrical power to Baghdad in particular and across Iraq more generally seemed sensible and a great deal of expertise and money was devoted to repairing and enhancing the electrical infrastructure.

--Chris Schnaubelt