At the intersection of development and war

... there is no true banking system in place yet, so it's a cash-based economy, which is a bit challenging for most people; there's no such thing as normal loans.

Pundita is still chewing over aspects of the Crocker-Petraeus testimony that she found striking (see post on war trigonometry).

Microfinancing is not new, micro-development projects are not new, and neither are USAID projects to help a country develop or strengthen democratic government processes. Yet there is something about the approach that David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker discussed at last week's congressional hearings that strikes me as a new development approach for the US government.

The State Department has essentially bypassed Iraq's central government to set up micro-development projects that emphasize democracy building. Of course State has the Iraq central government's nominal blessing for the PRTs (provincial reconstruction teams). But America's position in Iraq during a war situation gives the PRTs a great degree of autonomy from Iraq central government oversight.

More significantly, the State-led approach, which involves several US agencies, emphasizes projects that aim to institute genuine grass roots democracy. This is a departure from the kind of democracy 'stage show' that first-world governments tend to establish in developing nations as a matter of convenience.

It's almost as if, freed from the constraints of going through a central government, the US is able to focus on the genuine article of democracy. Yet Iraq may present a unique situation because development projects launched by a foreign government or international development banks must go through the central government in the recipient country. America's authority in Iraq can't be replicated in other countries.

And yet -- I would love to see State's approach in Iraq morph into America's very own Democracy Development Bank. Of course, such a bank would still have to run projects through a country's central government. But to mount development projects that are better funded than USAID and without going through the drill at the IMF and World Bank, EBRD, etc. -- that would be a huge move in the right direction for US development policy.

Okay, Pundita will stop wool gathering. Now to some data:

The State Department is leading an effort to issue a draft version of a counterinsurgency guide in the next four to six weeks to help Washington-based government agencies and departments defeat future subversive movements. A final doctrine is expected next year. The effort follows last year's Army and Marine Corps manual on the same subject.

The new guide -- "Counterinsurgency for U.S. Government Policymakers: A Work in Progress" -- is an educational, strategic-level primer for senior policymakers, according to a State Department official in the bureau of political-military affairs. [...]

"The United States and its allies are fighting two counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively, prompting the establishment of new doctrines based on lessons gained from these battles…"(1)

Now back to that war trigonometry. Here are some observations from John A. Nagl, in the preface to his Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. I'm quoting from the paperback edition, which includes Nagl's discussion of his experiences in Iraq. Thanks to ZenPundit for recommending that I read Nagl:

The United States is working diligently in Iraq, as it did in Vietnam, to improve the lives of the people. Dollars are bullets in this fight; the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP), which provides field commanders funds to perform essential projects, wins hearts and minds twice over—once by repairing infrastructure, and again by employing local citizens who are otherwise ready recruits for the insurgents. CERP is helping with the painstaking process of building relationships with the Iraqi people, resulting in some intelligence from those we help—but not enough, not yet."

"Those who contend that “American forces have lost the support of the Iraqi population and probably cannot regain it” are incorrect; in fact, the majority of the Iraqi population prefers the American vision of a democratic and free Iraq to the Salafist version of Iraq as Islamic theocracy. The key challenge is empowering the intimidated majority to enable Iraqi and American security forces to eliminate the criminal insurgents." [...]

[...] Iraq is but one front in a broader war against Salafist extremists dedicated to eliminating Western influence from the Islamic world; winning the struggle may take decades. There is a growing realization that the most likely conflicts of the next fifty years will be irregular warfare in an “Arc of Instability” that encompasses much of the greater Middle East and parts of Africa and Central and South Asia. To cope more effectively with the messy reality that in the twenty-first century many of our enemies will be insurgents, America’s armed forces must continue to change. [...]

However, the fight to create a secure, democratic Iraq that does not provide a safe haven for terror is not primarily a military task. Counterinsurgency requires the integration of all elements of national power—diplomacy, information operations, intelligence, financial, and military—to achieve the predominantly political objectives of establishing a stable national government that can secure itself against internal and external threats.

Now back to State's effort. From John Lubin's article for ON Point, September 2007:

There are two “Surges“ being implemented in Iraq today. While the military surge commanded by Gen David Petraeus is responsible for regaining control of the country from the various insurgent and religious militias, the economic surge led by 25 Provisional Reconstruction Teams are only a half-step behind the Marines and soldiers as they provide the after-surge political and economic support that is designed to keep the cities and provinces clear. The PRTs are an important tool in achieving our counterinsurgency strategy by bolstering moderates, promoting reconciliation, fostering economic development and building provincial capacity
A State Department brainchild, there are 15 PRT’s in every province of Iraq, along with 10 ePRT’s (embedded ) in selected important cities such as Ramadi and Fallujah. The PRT mission is a simple one: they are helping rebuild the Iraqi city and provincial governmental infrastructure. The teams assist the provincial and city governments with developing a sustained capability to govern, they promote increased police and judicial presence, and most important, they supply an economic development mechanism as well as building the necessary infrastructure to meet the basic needs of the population.

Since the teams are involved in everything from sheep markets to electrification to installing new sewer and water lines, the manpower needs are diverse; each team’s personnel is drawn from the State Department, USAID, Coalition military personnel, Department of Justice and Agriculture as well as the Gulf Region Division of the Army Corps of Engineers.

In the last week, ON POINT talked with four of the team leaders about the economic, security, and political situations in their areas, and today presents two of them:

Diyala Province: John Jones:

We're a Provincial Reconstruction Team. The team was stood up in April of 2006. We work closely with the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry, and they provide our security. We're a group of approximately 45 or 46, and we're both civilians and 10 military -- USAID, Department of Justice and Department of Defense personnel. Our job is to work directly with the provincial government -- the governor and the elected provincial government, which is the legislature here. We are trying to provide some guidance and some advice to them on how to stand up a democratic form of government. [...]

Right now we're talking to the central government about playing a larger role in just making sure that the promises that come from the various ministries are, in fact, enforced at the province level. We're here in Baghdad today with the governor of Diyala and three other governors from the northern provinces to sit down with the deputy prime minister and eight of his ministers and to talk about the problems that exist in the northern provinces.

And I think the key thing for everyone here today was that there is sort of a disconnect. The central government understands that it's going to make promises and so forth. The guys at the provincial level are waiting for action. And so we see our role here as facilitating the contact, making sure that when the deputy prime minister says he's going to give a certain amount of money to the province to rebuild destroyed houses, that there is a method, that there is a way that the province governor and the provincial council can get access to that money. It's just that basic.

So we see us as being in a position to try to facilitate the actions or the statements of the central government and put them into action at the provincial level.

... you sort of have to look at the history here, and that is that the folks out in the provinces for 35 years have been accustomed to a centrally directed economy. They were directed in all the facets of governance. And so now they're being asked to step up and make decisions, and they're not accustomed to doing that, unfortunately. Those decisions are normally going to be centered around tribe and district and so forth.

And so we've got to try to break that barrier down, and I'm not sure whether the central government fully appreciates that. I think they're trying to give a picture of an organization that is going to be able to run the entire country, and I think they've skipped that step of having to deal with the sectarian groups and tribes.

Kirkuk: Howard Keegan:

We've been making great advances in several different areas. The rule of law system here is just moving forward at a tremendous clip. We're opening up a new major crimes courthouse within next week. We've opened up two courthouses recently, with one more to handles more of the general-type crimes.

We've taken the lead on training the leadership here as well as jail -- our prison guards, jail guards, that sort of thing so that we can hopefully introduce human rights into the corrections system.

On the economic side, it's a bit more of a challenge in Kirkuk. The security situation here has actually gotten a bit worse within the past few months, and so the commercial trade activity within the province has probably dropped off by about 50 percent. The system -- there is no true banking system in place yet, so it's a cash-based economy, which is a bit challenging for most people; there's no such thing as normal loans. But there are a couple of banks that there are agreements with, so at least they're able to do business on an international basis -- funds transfers, that sort of transaction.

We are also heavily involved in microfinance operations.

Economically, we need to look larger-scale than just at the provincial Level. There's lots of opportunities that want to come. Unfortunately, the security situation prohibits a lot of it. [...]

Kirkuk itself was a province that was -- it was decimated by Saddam Hussein and his attempts to basically eliminate the Kurdish population. He destroyed hundreds of villages, and most of the infrastructure within the city is crumbling or was never installed. We've got a city that's got over a million people, and there is no real sewage system. And the water system is vastly overloaded, along with the electrical grid. It's in pretty bad shape, so we've got quite a bit of work to do on that. [...]

These are the issues facing Iraqi reconstruction today. A lack of electricity, no banks, a cash economy, a fluctuating security situation, sectarian strife, and a central government that is either inept or disinterested. On the ground level, the PRT’s are making progress as they solve one administrative and economic problem after another. But if the problems the United States has taken on in Iraq are indeed generational, then Washington needs to clarify and quantify a generational solution.

1) Via Small Wars Journal