CMSBelt:

Agree that security and availability are overstated problems.

On the civilian reconstruction side, however, I think the same is true of post-conflict reconstruction.

I have read all the literature and manuals recently produced on the subject, but most miss the point. Most, IMHO, are assemblages of political and organizational slogans, but provide little if any guidance on the actual how to's needed for effective solutions.

Immediate reconstruction, ie, restarting what existed before, is neither complicated nor non-linear. In sum, very much adaptable to traditional mil approaches and resources. Rapid and effective reconstruction requires, more than anything, a systematic approach to understanding what was there before, and what needs to be done to get it operational again.

In Iraq, I put together a simple diagram---a triangle with Water, Energy, Mobility (WEM). Beyond security, these were the essentials to get back in place, and the pre-conditions (in varying degrees) for any business, factory and local economic restarts. Systems of roads and bridges, articulatedto identify local trade connections, patterns and dependencies, as an example, helps to prioritize which repairs are needed when, and which roads and bridges are essential to do first. Also, quick repairs and route/movement security are usually well within the military sphere--including construction resources.

So, there is a Level One which is deeply tied to military reconstruction for immediate and basic services.

Level Two is more complex, involving major repairs and system replacements---like engineering and constructing a major bridge replacement.

The place where things bog down is when people, organizations attempt to go beyond reconstruction into the sphere of development, whether social, economic or political.

At the first level, you have folks doing what they thing are "quick hits" like building schools and public health clinics, but these are actually local/provincial organizational and systemic changes that require, for sustainability, a level of organizational/institutional engagement that may, from the outset, assume levels of political stability and will that goes far beyond the immediately possible. The slippery slope to a higher level of problem/solution.

At the next level, you get into regional and national system change which, in any light, is a very advanced problem/solution set (nation-building) which, at it's core, involves every possible "wicked" problem.

Instead of rationalizing the levels and distinctions between immediate post-conflict reconstruction (a very military-oriented problem), and the distinctly different start down the slope of development, we operationalize a series of competing, and often conflicting, US and international agencies, armed with contractors and contract managers, to create a mix and muddle with little feasible sustainability or focus.

Minister Ghani and Stephen Hadley were discussing this at USIP on Monday. As the Minister indicated, a lot of US/Int'l reconstruction is just a mess, and far more expensive, rife with corruption, and ineffective than it should be. It is a dance of aid agency organizational imperitives, and not a genuine and focused reconstruction effort. Now, if you can't get the baseline reconstruction part going, how do you effectively leap to complex social and organizational development?

I spent time with Dr. Baban, Iraq's Minister of Planning, looking at the US effort, and shaking heads. Last month, he was quoted in the NYT as saying our $53 billion reconstruction effort left no marks---he was starting from scratch. I agree.

Notwithstanding, our Iraq Surge succeeded in getting us out, and begs the question of which parts, if any, of the failed $53 billion effort, actually contributed to the military and political problems we faced/addressed in Iraq.

This problem becomes uniquely important in Afghanistan where, unlike Iraq, our focus is not on a unity of indigenous government, but, instead on a complex, disaggregated approach to the body politic.

Add complexity to complexity, and immerse it in development missions with little focus, and you get what you get.

Steve