Nation-Building Elevated

[Steve the Planner]

Dayuhan:

Like Mike, I think soldiers are just first responders, not builders or operators.

But the current set in Afghanistan, is, as I reckon it---5,000 civilian experts, based on a Carr Center figure, of which 1000 are US civs, set to "explode" to 1300. Most heavily hampered by movement security, resources, etc... so their ability to get out and about and o things in far-afield Afghan areas will always be very limited, even if security were no an overwhelming issue.

Fact is Afghanistan is remarkably logistically constrained. And the math of sending 1000 new civilians (plus terps and security) is fabuluous strain on the limited resource paths.

If thousands of new soldiers are coming soon (September accdg to Petreaus) they are going to be the major thrust and asset. If they don't move toward becoming effective first responders, then they must be there as guards to other first responders, doubling the logistical hurdle, and delaying responses.

My guess is that if there is a good reconstruction civ, he should be in Haiti very soon, so that military can move out, and back to primary AOs. In large part because, with limited training and support, they could easily do a more effective job of service expansion and aid delivery than a highly constrained civilian.

As for standardizing packages for schools, all over the US, school systems use uniform standards, but they are both locally built and with local design and materially. Establishing that, say a classroom, should be 500 square feet and generally a rectangle laid out for 20 or thirty students does nothing to affect local design, content, building materials or local labor and contracting opportunities.

On the other hand, recognizing that (1) about 30 percent of current afghan schools are tents of informal places for the 60% or so of eligible students currently enrolled (6 million), suggests that thousands of schools and classrooms may/will be built.

If there is a consolidated plan for desks, there is then a consolidated opportunity for local, regional and national desk manufacturing---rather than each NGO doing its own thing. And for specific amounts of books to be planned/made/delivered, and specific amounts of teachers to be trained/hired/housed by language/province/district/appropriateness.

From prior adventures, I believe a 20-30% efficiency and local content standard is a minimum goal. Mr. Ghani belives their is a 90% efficiency just by getting more national/local procurement focus. Given resource and logistical constraints unqique to Afghanistan, sending billions of dollars is not going to have POSITIVE effects so much as improving our efficiency of actual delivery (more planned and exploited local content, more dual use of military cross-trained for first responding).

First responding is, in most instances, no different than knowing when and how to call for a fire mission. You don't need to know how to fly or make artillery calculations.

But if soldiers are going to do COIN, and get to know and win relationships (if not hearts and minds), being able to coordinate basic services and assistance should be focused on the soldier in Afghanistan, and not the civilian (until way into the build phases).

I was once dispatched to assist an LTC assigned to Balad/DoS/PRT Satellite.
He was building relationships anyway he could with local folks. Bringing a higher ranking DoS grey-haired SME was not, we both agreed, the way to bolster his relationships or juice with the locals, and could, if not real careful, undermine it.

Translating the many missions and objectives in COIN in Afghanistan is no less easy. Better to have an empowered E-7 wiyth local juice and connections than a bunch of discordant civs/ngos undermining his shtick. No?

How do you really do this stuff effectively in the field?

As MA and Beelz both point out, standardizing and simplifying all this civilian aid/HA stuff is a well-trodden path for actual professionals in the field (UNDP, UNHCR, World Bank)---getting their basics and standards out there is the way to integrate and synchronize US civ and mil operations. Inventing new wheels takes up to much energy (and scarce logistics and head-space).

Steve

[Dayuhan]

Steve,

Dayuhan:

Like Mike, I think soldiers are just first responders, not builders or operators.

But the current set in Afghanistan, is, as I reckon it---5,000 civilian experts, based on a Carr Center figure, of which 1000 are US civs, set to "explode" to 1300. Most heavily hampered by movement security, resources, etc... so their ability to get out and about and o things in far-afield Afghan areas will always be very limited, even if security were no an overwhelming issue...

Yes, I see the point. This is why I was asking earlier what the purpose of the exercise is, which of course revolves around where it takes place. M-A's talk of trucking water in seems aimed at relief efforts such as that going on in Haiti; if we discuss Afghanistan we are largely limited to assessing what a military force can accomplish. Seems to me that until we narrow down the problem and clarify what we seek to accomplish and where, the conversation becomes almost impossibly general.

The problem with training soldiers in delivering water systems is that not every village needs one. Some may need a bridge, or an irrigation system, or any number of other things. Obviously it's not practical to try and train soldiers in the entire spectrum of development services delivery. Possibly it would be best to people going into the field to have some basic training in diagnostics - which in most cases comes down to asking people and sorting self-serving requests from genuine needs - and providing some sort of centralized technical capacity that the people in the field can tap into for whatever expertise their area happens to need.

I'm not entirely convinced that it's a good idea to undertake development projects in an active combat zone. In most cases these are driven less by development priorities than by a sort of thinly concealed bribery: we'll build you something if you don't shoot at us, or if you'll stop supporting our enemies. I'm not averse to a bit of bribery in the right time and place; sometimes it works, and what works is useful. One must be careful in applying that particular tool, though, as it may not always accomplish what we seek to accomplish. In the southern Philippines, for example, American-driven projects have left the Muslim populace with a much improved opinion of Americans, but have had little or no impact on their perception that the Philippine government would prefer to see them all dead in a ditch and is likely to go straight back to neglecting and abusing them as soon as the Americans are gone. This is the perception that drives the insurgency, and it's a difficult perception for Americans to address, since it's true. It will remain true even if we build roads and wells, and everyone in the picture knows it.

In an area that's actively or passively supporting insurgency, simply building projects is not likely to have much impact on that support. The key here is to identify what motivates that support, particularly if there is some particular local grievance that might possibly be addressed. If the people of a village see that the provincial government or HN military apparatus is dominated by a rival group and is likely to stomp them at the earliest opportunity, building them a well is not going to bring them into the fold. If the people of a village believe that the Americans will soon be leaving, that the Afghan Government will tumble when they do, and that the Taliban will then stomp whoever helped the Americans, building a well won't change that equation. Not to say it's a bad thing: if the goal is simply to provide clean water, that's achievable. If the goal is to win support, that's a different story.

In an active conflict zone, people are likely to be less concerned with progress than with survival, especially if the see their survival threatened. The first thing that has to be addressed is the threat. Development is much more and issue when the security situation improvesd to the point where day to day survival at least is relatively certain.

Steve

(Sometimes it seems that everyone in this discussion is Steve; I'm irresistably reminded of that Monty Python skit where everybody is named Bruce...)

[Ken White]

You have well encapsulated the major problems with the US approach (essentially "It's all about us...") in developing nations. I've seen it happen in half a dozen countries, every flaw you cited.

We need to stop trying to do this because we just flat do not do it well and usually do as much harm as good. Your point that development should not -- truly, cannot -- start until the security problem is resolved is spot on. I've watched us waste millions doing that stuff before the situation was resolved. Goos news is that we sometimes get to re-do it several times...

Military forces do military things -- development is not a military thing. You can use the military force to do that but it will do a mediocre job at best and too frequently, will just do a really poor job. I am familiar with all the arguments for 'why' the Armed Forces 'must' do this, to include the 'first responder bit. As I said, I've watched it many places -- and we have NEVER done it well, thus I believe most of those arguments to be fallacious and simply varied repetitions of 'that's the way we've always done it.' May be correct but that doesn't make it the best solution.

What is that old saw "If you're in a hole, stop digging..."

As Bob Killebrew said in his Blog post on the front page, "What we're doing now isn't working..." Too true. Yet we keep trying. I'm still wading through the over wordy and so far not terribly coherent offering from the great thinkers at CNAS (also on the the Front page) but I really get the impression that too many people think we should just keep doing things that do not work...

[M-A Lagrange]

Hey Dayuhan, all the Steve, Mike and the others

You have well encapsulated the major problems with the US approach (essentially "It's all about us...") in developing nations. I've seen it happen in half a dozen countries, every flaw you cited.

Well I think we are not speaking about the same thing.
State Building as a tool in Stabilization process is part of a greater plan.
You have 2 main issues on this. Most of the people tend to see Stabilization as a continuum that goes as follow:
Emergency/humanitarian => recovery/reconstruction => post conflict/pre development => development.

State Building is integrated at all stages with various tasks. What I developed in my previous mail is clearly located in Emergency/Humanitarian while what Dayuhan is addressing is clearly located in Post conflict and/or development.

This is the basic sheme for stabilization following the Rostow approach: a continuity in development from disaster (Prehistoric stage) to development (Full capitalist economy with democratic regime).

But conflicts are not homogenous. They are composed of a mosaic of situations that can be labeled in all the categories. Rather than mosaic, I prefer the concept of islands as the limits are porous. So you end up with a various rabge of micro contexts which can be extremely different: emergency in one village and development in the next one.
This is close to the edge concept that Surferbeetle was talking about.
In humanitarian “science” this is called a contiguum. This theory has been developed by a French guy based on urban emergency actions in the Balkans. I, basically (with others) extend it up to the village level.

So if the country as a whole is following the steps of the continuum, it is divided in a unlimited number of islands with a contiguum of situations going from war to stabilized economy for each of those island. The conytinuum situation of the country as a whole is determined by the prevailing situation in the majority of island. If it is emergencies then the country is still at the war/emergency stage. If it is development then the country is at the development stage.
So the first thing is to identify which box the place you are working in fits. Then when you know in which box you are then you can start pretty much standard actions. In emergencies all is covered by SPHERE Standards and NGO practices. In development, it is mostly best practices from USAID and other development actions. In the middle, then we can come with what we, as the practitioners part of SWJ, think are the best practices, the do and do not do.
And from that we can look at what CIMIC can do and how it is integrated into COIN or Population centric COIN or even POPULACE centric COIN.

And to respond to Steve
Yes, I think that a Civil/Military for the dummy hand book is what we, at SWJ, can contribute with.

[Dayuhan]

This is close to the edge concept that Surferbeetle was talking about.
In humanitarian “science” this is called a contiguum.

Humanitarian "science"? First time I've heard of such an animal, tell us more...

So the first thing is to identify which box the place you are working in fits. Then when you know in which box you are then you can start pretty much standard actions. In emergencies all is covered by SPHERE Standards and NGO practices. In development, it is mostly best practices from USAID and other development actions. In the middle, then we can come with what we, as the practitioners part of SWJ, think are the best practices, the do and do not do.

I have my doubts. I don't see any standard actions that are universally or even widely applicable even within these "boxes", and based on return on aid invested to date I've no particular trust in "best practices" coming out of the aid industry. Emergency relief situations, I agree we have a clue there, simply because the objectives are limited and clear. Moving to the development side, I don't think "best practice" has accomplished much.

All too often the principal constraints on development are not the technological or financial ones addressed by development aid, but direct resistance to and subversion of development efforts by a nexus of local and national elites and military forces that have a powerful vested interest in the status quo and see their interests and even their lives threatened by what we would call development. The people who have built their fortunes and their power on the status quo are not going to simply give up and walk away, and for development to progress these forces have to be challenged and defeated. Sometimes this requires insurgency, and this is why we need to stop seeing insurgency as something that must reflexively be countered.

[Steve the Planner]

Be skeptical. Be very skeptical. Make each proposed effort justify itseld in the actual circumstance.

Reconstruction, in the real world, means fixing things that are broken, putting the shelves back up and the dishes back on them. In Iraq and WWII, physical infrastructure damage (accumulated from Iran/Iraq, embargos, us (but not just us)) was huge, complicated and expensive. Not so in most Afghan areas.

Development is making some thing happen that has not happened before. Especially when applied to Afghanistan, the burdens and challenges of any success must be incrementally built on a solid foundation, Doing so while security, corruption and lack of framework/context is almost spitting in the wind, and with very little reasonable expectation for bug strides.

Oneof my first bewilderments in Tikrit was arequest for scads of generators. So I asked, how many generators have been deleivered to that little village in the last five years. The answer: Who knows? That went out at the last Riptoa. All we know if that we are here now and these folks say they need generators, and you have funds for that.

The answer was: the village needed a generator, but had no mechanism to "own it," maintain it, keep it in fuel. So when the fuel went out or it broke down, somebody sold it for scrap, and they came back for another.

The solution to a sustainable generator was for some identifiable party to take responsibility for it, and the government to agree to maintain, supply it. Otherwise it was a waste of time.

Dayuhan only gave a piece of the Phillipine-style story. Load them with fancy amercian projects that cannot be sustained, or even afforded, by local government, and you make the local government look incomptent, by default. In large part these places have limited development, infrastructure and services because there is no system to male them valuable and sustainable. The trade-off will not always be the same if the choice is "give up your traditional ways and customs so that you can become prosperous enough to use/support new and expensive infrastructure." Some will just teach you what they told the Russians" Nyet!

The first big lesson of Appalachian Redevelopment---the Kennedy Plan to revive the Appalachians, involved building great new roads into the Appalachians to stimulate trade by linking them to city regions. It never occured to them that it was easier, and more successful, to follow the road to the city than to try to develop the Appalachians (a US version of the same constraints faced in Afghanistan). How many of these big projects create substantial unintended consequences---like shifting rural poor to urban poor.

Yesterday was a conference at CSIS, and a British and Norwegian Ambassador explained the upcoming London Summit. Security aside, an hour is assigned to SUBNATIONAL Governance.

In theory, the Afghan gov is expected to deliver it's proposal to the nations for creating and implementing subgov structures in Afghanistan. Although many at the national level are skeptical about creating subgov (and especiially effective subgov) is that it diverts their power.


Back up the truck a sec. There is no effective sub-national governance structure, and, if needed to be built, you can do the math as almost as big a separate effort as training police and soldiers---let alone the hundreds of offices, desks, cell phones, bicycles and bongo trucks needed for that. Now, we have an hour scheduled to hear how (if) the new Afghan government wants to pursue this objective, and whether int'l aid will accept/support their plan.

An ineffective national government, no effective sub-national governance structure, or credible plan for one, and, at the bottom of that pyramid, soldiers are supposed to build local governance to hand off to the national system that does not exist.

Two things are missing. If there was a subnational gov plan, us civ/mil could synchronize efforts to focus on support for implementation, but there is none, and there is no entity to either link or hand it over to.

A district with a $6 budget, no staff, and no cell phone is hardly going to be able to accept a hand-off of responsibility for an island of villages "redeveloped" by the US, and certainly cannot sustain or support any level of infrastructure/projects.

Same in Iraq. The US declared provincial governments, but did not provide the road maintenance shops, equipment and staffs to make them so. Without an independent tax base, either in Iraq or Afghanistan, all local governance is small and ineffective.

The US cry was about "Taxation without Representation." Afghanistan has no resources except those we give it, and those it chooses to distribute...

What's Schmedlap's rap: With a plan this compicated and full of wholes, success is assured?

Steve

[Steve the Planner]

Be skeptical. Be very skeptical. Make each proposed effort justify itseld in the actual circumstance.

Reconstruction, in the real world, means fixing things that are broken, putting the shelves back up and the dishes back on them. In Iraq and WWII, physical infrastructure damage (accumulated from Iran/Iraq, embargos, us (but not just us)) was huge, complicated and expensive. Not so in most Afghan areas.

Development is making some thing happen that has not happened before. Especially when applied to Afghanistan, the burdens and challenges of any success must be incrementally built on a solid foundation, Doing so while security, corruption and lack of framework/context is almost spitting in the wind, and with very little reasonable expectation for bug strides.

Oneof my first bewilderments in Tikrit was arequest for scads of generators. So I asked, how many generators have been deleivered to that little village in the last five years. The answer: Who knows? That went out at the last Riptoa. All we know if that we are here now and these folks say they need generators, and you have funds for that.

The answer was: the village needed a generator, but had no mechanism to "own it," maintain it, keep it in fuel. So when the fuel went out or it broke down, somebody sold it for scrap, and they came back for another.

The solution to a sustainable generator was for some identifiable party to take responsibility for it, and the government to agree to maintain, supply it. Otherwise it was a waste of time.

Dayuhan only gave a piece of the Phillipine-style story. Load them with fancy amercian projects that cannot be sustained, or even afforded, by local government, and you make the local government look incomptent, by default. In large part these places have limited development, infrastructure and services because there is no system to male them valuable and sustainable. The trade-off will not always be the same if the choice is "give up your traditional ways and customs so that you can become prosperous enough to use/support new and expensive infrastructure." Some will just teach you what they told the Russians" Nyet!

The first big lesson of Appalachian Redevelopment---the Kennedy Plan to revive the Appalachians, involved building great new roads into the Appalachians to stimulate trade by linking them to city regions. It never occured to them that it was easier, and more successful, to follow the road to the city than to try to develop the Appalachians (a US version of the same constraints faced in Afghanistan). How many of these big projects create substantial unintended consequences---like shifting rural poor to urban poor.

Yesterday was a conference at CSIS, and a British and Norwegian Ambassador explained the upcoming London Summit. Security aside, an hour is assigned to SUBNATIONAL Governance.

In theory, the Afghan gov is expected to deliver it's proposal to the nations for creating and implementing subgov structures in Afghanistan. Although many at the national level are skeptical about creating subgov (and especiially effective subgov) is that it diverts their power.


Back up the truck a sec. There is no effective sub-national governance structure, and, if needed to be built, you can do the math as almost as big a separate effort as training police and soldiers---let alone the hundreds of offices, desks, cell phones, bicycles and bongo trucks needed for that. Now, we have an hour scheduled to hear how (if) the new Afghan government wants to pursue this objective, and whether int'l aid will accept/support their plan.

An ineffective national government, no effective sub-national governance structure, or credible plan for one, and, at the bottom of that pyramid, soldiers are supposed to build local governance to hand off to the national system that does not exist.

Two things are missing. If there was a subnational gov plan, us civ/mil could synchronize efforts to focus on support for implementation, but there is none, and there is no entity to either link or hand it over to.

A district with a $6 budget, no staff, and no cell phone is hardly going to be able to accept a hand-off of responsibility for an island of villages "redeveloped" by the US, and certainly cannot sustain or support any level of infrastructure/projects.

Same in Iraq. The US declared provincial governments, but did not provide the road maintenance shops, equipment and staffs to make them so. Without an independent tax base, either in Iraq or Afghanistan, all local governance is small and ineffective.

The US cry was about "Taxation without Representation." Afghanistan has no resources except those we give it, and those it chooses to distribute...

What's Schmedlap's rap: With a plan this compicated and full of wholes, success is assured?

Steve

[M-A Lagrange]

Dayuhan,

Humanitarian "science"? First time I've heard of such an animal, tell us more...

Apparently it’s a French delicatessen… Well, actually in France you have 3 Universities teaching humanitarian actions and humanitarian Rights and Laws.
Plus one more university teaching logistic/administration… all the NGO administration stuff.
This came to the point they are developing humanitarian anthropology which is based on different bases that development anthropology.
Myself, in order to be much more bankable, I just passed a master in Crisis management: humanitarian and development actions at la Sorbonne, Paris.
But you have the Oxford Master program… There are some stuffs being developed on Humanitarian action as a “science” integrating civil security, emergency management, legal issues, rule of law…

“Science” is the only work that comes to my mind actually concerning this. There are already devastating bad effects: you see coming in the field young guys and girls thinking they know everything because they have been taught to do so and have a degree on it.
Sometimes, I’ll just like to sunk them in concrete, head first, just to remind them the hard way “we”, the stupid guys with long years spend in the field, we have learn our knowledge the hard way.
They do the same mistakes as us but now have a degree to back it up…
But the good thing is that some quite interesting theories as the continuum/contiguum have come out. Also some analyses of Culture as a tool to legitimize “civil society” disconnected from politic.

May be not a Science but certainly an Art

Steve,

An ineffective national government, no effective sub-national governance structure, or credible plan for one, and, at the bottom of that pyramid, soldiers are supposed to build local governance to hand off to the national system that does not exist.

Two things are missing. If there was a subnational gov plan, us civ/mil could synchronize efforts to focus on support for implementation, but there is none, and there is no entity to either link or hand it over to.

A district with a $6 budget, no staff, and no cell phone is hardly going to be able to accept a hand-off of responsibility for an island of villages "redeveloped" by the US, and certainly cannot sustain or support any level of infrastructure/projects.

We can give all the advices of the world to good guys trying to do their best to build local governance capacity (a local administration basically in a good governance cheap dress). But without plan and vision of where to go by the Afghan… We build a white elephant. No doubts on that.

But anyways, I still think that there are best practices coming from the field. It’s may not be plug and play projects but rather how to build a project, what to do for assessment, what to look at, what to not do…
Still, it’s best practices that will help to have a better use of the money, time, energy… And may be achive results in the end
Standards are not meant to be: 1 you build a school 2) you build a well 3) you build a road…
Standards can be: 1) you assess the local production and markets. 2) you dress the gender task division. 3) you conduct focus groups…
Standards can be approaches…

This, it self is a debate. But once you have decide what you want to support then you have a good list of stupid stuff to not do, just like the Appalachian example.

[Dayuhan]

Be skeptical. Be very skeptical. Make each proposed effort justify itseld in the actual circumstance.

I'd agree with that... and I'd add that skepticism should be matched by the will to not act when circumstances don't justify action, especially when to act would simply mean throwing money at a problem that money will not solve and could exacerbate.

Development is making some thing happen that has not happened before. Especially when applied to Afghanistan, the burdens and challenges of any success must be incrementally built on a solid foundation, Doing so while security, corruption and lack of framework/context is almost spitting in the wind, and with very little reasonable expectation for bug strides.

This runs back to my initial comment about trying to build things that have to grow. All too often, in all too many places, we've assumed that if we build the concrete evidence of administrative and organizational capacity, the capacity will somehow be summoned into being. The result has been billions of dollars tossed down black holes, and all manner of expensively constructed artifacts rusting in peace in odd locations.

In theory, the Afghan gov is expected to deliver it's proposal to the nations for creating and implementing subgov structures in Afghanistan. Although many at the national level are skeptical about creating subgov (and especiially effective subgov) is that it diverts their power.

Back up the truck a sec. There is no effective sub-national governance structure, and, if needed to be built, you can do the math as almost as big a separate effort as training police and soldiers---let alone the hundreds of offices, desks, cell phones, bicycles and bongo trucks needed for that. Now, we have an hour scheduled to hear how (if) the new Afghan government wants to pursue this objective, and whether int'l aid will accept/support their plan.

Is there really no subgovernance structure at all, or simply none that falls into categories that we recognize? Are the villages without any form of governance? No councils of elders, no village headmen? No traditional system for resolving inter-village disputes? Instead of imposing a top-down structure of subgoverenance according to our model, why not start with what exists (I suspect there is something) and try to provide minimally invasive assistance aimed at letting it grow upwards... accepting of course that this will take a lot of time.

If there is an existing system of local administration, they may be comfortable with the idea of being rebuilt according to somebaody else's priorities. They are likely to be reluctant to see their power diluted by national government intrusion and they are likely to be very uncomfortable with the idea of being handed over to anybody.

[Rex Brynen]

I have my doubts. I don't see any standard actions that are universally or even widely applicable even within these "boxes", and based on return on aid invested to date I've no particular trust in "best practices" coming out of the aid industry. Emergency relief situations, I agree we have a clue there, simply because the objectives are limited and clear. Moving to the development side, I don't think "best practice" has accomplished much.

All too often the principal constraints on development are not the technological or financial ones addressed by development aid, but direct resistance to and subversion of development efforts by a nexus of local and national elites and military forces that have a powerful vested interest in the status quo and see their interests and even their lives threatened by what we would call development. The people who have built their fortunes and their power on the status quo are not going to simply give up and walk away, and for development to progress these forces have to be challenged and defeated. Sometimes this requires insurgency, and this is why we need to stop seeing insurgency as something that must reflexively be countered.

Absolutely agreed. Indeed, I've often that we should spend far less time on "best practices," with all of the potentially dangerous baggage of external omniscience that it sometimes carries with it, and spend a little more time trying to understand "worst practices"--that is, how well-intentioned efforts can go awry, and what can be done to to mitigate those risks (or, at the very least, what questions ought to have been asked).

[M-A Lagrange]

Dear Dayuhan and Rex,

I see clearly your point on best practices. In some how, we do agree and words are probably what separates us.

Absolutely agreed. Indeed, I've often that we should spend far less time on "best practices," with all of the potentially dangerous baggage of external omniscience that it sometimes carries with it, and spend a little more time trying to understand "worst practices"--that is, how well-intentioned efforts can go awry, and what can be done to to mitigate those risks (or, at the very least, what questions ought to have been asked).

For me (And it's a personnal understanding) best practices includes DO and DON'T DO. And it's most of the time easier to find all the DON'T DO than even 1 I recommand you to process that way...

In some context, as emmergencies, you do have standards actions with basically: you do that way and no others for technical responses (Food distributiojns, water distributions, camp management...).
But I agree that it is limited for what I know best: immediat emmergencies responses. The "first box" if I can say so.

Even for recovery, (The very next box) you have "better" approach/practices and "practices to avoid" rather than a omniscient knowledge that you just drop on the people. Nothing is worst than a solution droped from the moon.
After, comes stages of "development" I have no clue of what could be a best practice or even a project. (I have no clue of what you do in rural development of a low developed country as Burkina Faso for example.)
If we go on a SWJ Experiment project that looks at providing a compilation of this community knowledge for State Building some steps can be just recommandations of what to not do with illustrated real cases.

The example of Dayuhan is basically a very good one, once you have clearly expose the context, of what to not do, how to not approach the problem...

But this example is may be something that is too far from the target we are looking at: advices for civil/military projects/actions.
We probably should be able to define the limits of such action and build the pre requirement of the advice: at that point you redraw and handover to the civilian development agencies, the local administration and step back until the local context falls back in a need for military action.