Empowering citizens Engaging governments Rebuilding communities
Empowering citizens Engaging governments Rebuilding communities
Empowering citizens Engaging governments Rebuilding communities
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<strong>Empowering</strong> <strong>citizens</strong><br />
<strong>Engaging</strong> <strong>governments</strong><br />
<strong>Rebuilding</strong> <strong>communities</strong><br />
IRAQ
<strong>Empowering</strong> <strong>citizens</strong><br />
<strong>Engaging</strong> <strong>governments</strong><br />
<strong>Rebuilding</strong> <strong>communities</strong><br />
International Relief & Development<br />
in Iraq<br />
2003–2009<br />
CASE STUDIES IN COMMUNITY STABILIZATION
Copyright © by International Relief & Development (IRD) 2012<br />
All rights reserved.<br />
The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Agency for International<br />
Development or of the US government.<br />
IRD is a nonprofit humanitarian, stabilization, and development organization whose mission is to reduce the<br />
suffering of the world’s most vulnerable groups and provide the tools and resources needed to increase their<br />
self-sufficiency.<br />
Design, editing, and production by Communications Development Incorporated, Washington, DC, and Peter<br />
Grundy Art & Design, London, UK.
Contents<br />
Foreword<br />
v<br />
Overview 1<br />
Chapter 1 Building community trust 6<br />
ICAP: The first step to rebuilding civil society 8<br />
Establishing services, assisting civilians, creating jobs 13<br />
Insecurity: Operational limitations in an unstable environment 16<br />
Chapter 2 A complete stabilization package 22<br />
CSP origins: A new approach for international development 23<br />
Breaking down CSP’s design 26<br />
The complete package: Programmatic and military integration 28<br />
Chapter 3 Successes and setbacks 34<br />
Community infrastructure and essential services: CSP’s entry point 35<br />
Business development programs: Light at the end of the tunnel 40<br />
Vocational training: “A sustainable program when we left” 44<br />
Youth activities: Different from everything else 49<br />
Chapter 4 Converting roadblocks into a roadmap 54<br />
CSP’s three-year life cycle as a “force multiplier” 56<br />
Strategic recommendations for future COIN programs 58<br />
Epilogue 66<br />
Acronyms 68<br />
Notes 69<br />
Boxes<br />
1 ICAP: Program and results 9<br />
2 Awni Quandour: IRD’s original elder statesman 11<br />
3 The evolution of ICAP, USAID’s longest-running program in Iraq 20<br />
4 CSP: At a glance 25<br />
5 CSP: Project development process 29<br />
6 CSP: Results 36<br />
7 Enhancing internal controls and program oversight 41<br />
8 CSP and the changing perception of sustainability 46<br />
9 Stabilization in Iraq: 20 tactical lessons 63<br />
Figure<br />
1 Self-sustaining project work cycle 31<br />
<br />
iii
In memory of Awni Quandour, whose<br />
relationships with local <strong>communities</strong> in<br />
Iraq were invaluable to making IRD’s<br />
programs work, and who was instrumental<br />
in establishing IRD’s presence in the<br />
Middle East. His legacy lives on through the<br />
organizational strategy he helped craft.
Foreword<br />
Recent civil stabilization successes can be traced to<br />
efforts launched in the Balkans in the 1990s. There,<br />
civil society groups became critical partners in sustaining<br />
and strengthening the peace. The communitybased<br />
model employed in that region is now being<br />
applied in other conflict and postconflict zones,<br />
including West Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan.<br />
A fairly new development is that NGOs now cooperate<br />
and coordinate directly with US and international security<br />
forces, along with bilateral and multilateral donor<br />
agencies. In places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the<br />
coordination has been so close that the NGOs’ work<br />
has been viewed as examples of effective counterinsurgency.<br />
As military and civilian leaders have pointed<br />
out, civilian agencies are best equipped to understand<br />
and work directly with local <strong>communities</strong>, and they are<br />
generally better received by local <strong>governments</strong> and<br />
populations. While some development organizations<br />
say “civ-mil” partnerships would compromise their<br />
neutrality, beneficiaries recognize the consistency of<br />
such partnerships with the NGO community’s mission<br />
to assist the world’s vulnerable populations—even<br />
those caught in armed conflict.<br />
This publication explores the Community Stabilization<br />
Program (CSP) in Iraq, a successful civ-mil partnership.<br />
This cooperative agreement between USAID and<br />
IRD initially funded stabilization activities in Baghdad<br />
and then expanded nationwide. At the height of the<br />
program, IRD had 1,800 staff (more than 90 percent<br />
local employees) in 15 cities and was implementing<br />
$21 million a month in programming. Where CSP went,<br />
multiple USAID audits, military, and USAID experts say<br />
that stability tended to follow.<br />
from its Community Revitalization through Democratic<br />
Action (CRDA) program in the Balkans. IRD applied<br />
lessons about mobilizing war-weary populations to<br />
reestablish self-governance, community organization,<br />
and democratic principles. CSP benefited from IRD’s<br />
on-the-ground presence and record of success in Iraq,<br />
as well as the earned trust of local <strong>communities</strong>. The<br />
program supported basic training on principles of<br />
governance, promoted civil society institutions, and<br />
instituted a rapid participatory appraisal process to<br />
get projects moving quickly. With this capacity development,<br />
Iraqi community groups developed action<br />
plans and implemented them in coordination with the<br />
military and local provincial reconstruction teams as<br />
well as local ministry officials—helping legitimize the<br />
government and establish lines of trust and communication<br />
between leaders and <strong>citizens</strong>.<br />
This publication offers an unvarnished examination<br />
of CSP and its precursor program in Iraq—the<br />
approaches, challenges, results, and impacts. The<br />
story is told in the voice of the many people who<br />
implemented it as well as by the beneficiaries who<br />
appreciated its contributions to improving security,<br />
government services, and the quality of life in conflictaffected<br />
areas. In my view CSP provides evidence<br />
to support the assertion that social and economic<br />
development does help sustain peace and stability.<br />
Dr. Arthur B. Keys Jr.<br />
CSP relied on more than civ-mil partnership, however.<br />
The program also built on the experience IRD gained<br />
<br />
v
Overview<br />
General David Petraeus, commander of the International Security<br />
Assistance Force, and IRD staffers meet with members of the Ramadi<br />
Women’s Center
“Stabilization and reconstruction missions occur in a range<br />
of circumstances—sometimes in hostile security environments,<br />
sometimes in permissive ones, and sometimes in<br />
environments somewhere in between. The mission to stabilize<br />
and reconstruct a nation is one that civilians must lead.”<br />
— John Negroponte<br />
Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks<br />
and subsequent US military operations in Afghanistan<br />
and Iraq, traditional relief and development programs,<br />
historically the province of a small group of civilian<br />
and voluntary agencies, expanded dramatically in<br />
scale and scope, touching nearly every government<br />
department, including the US military. Whereas the<br />
primary focus of assistance operations generally had<br />
been centered on providing humanitarian aid, rebuilding<br />
services, and enhancing civil society, the evolving<br />
efforts reached beyond basic relief measures, aiming<br />
to stabilize and rebuild populations during a period of<br />
conflict and, in some instances, while military operations<br />
were ongoing.<br />
At the same time that the US government was expanding<br />
into stabilization operations, American military<br />
leadership, informed by the ongoing wars in Iraq and<br />
Afghanistan, was recognizing its own need—and current<br />
structural limitations—in these areas. In 2006, the US<br />
Army and Marine Corps released a new field manual<br />
covering counterinsurgency operations, the first time<br />
in more than two decades that either had addressed<br />
counterinsurgency (COIN) exclusively in a manual. The<br />
primary purpose of the document was to lay out a<br />
blueprint for the military’s approach to a more contemporary<br />
form of warfare, an approach that General David<br />
Petraeus, one of the manual’s chief authors, recognized<br />
as inextricably tied to nonmilitary resources.<br />
A counterinsurgency campaign, Petraeus wrote,<br />
requires soldiers and marines “to employ a mix of<br />
familiar combat tasks and skills more often associated<br />
with nonmilitary agencies” and to be prepared<br />
for “extensive coordination and cooperation with many<br />
intergovernmental, host-nation, and international agencies.”<br />
The second chapter of the manual is devoted<br />
to integrating civilian and military activities, beginning<br />
with a kind of acquiescence to the limits of industrial<br />
might in unstable environments. Military efforts are<br />
necessary to fight insurgents, the manual states, but<br />
they are only effective when integrated into a larger<br />
strategy intended to meet the needs of the local<br />
population and win community support.<br />
Testifying before Congress in 2008, John Negroponte,<br />
the US ambassador to Iraq (2004–05), noted there<br />
had been 17 “significant” stabilization and reconstruction<br />
missions over the preceding 20 years in which<br />
“too much of the effort was borne by our men and<br />
women in uniform.” Negroponte was lobbying for<br />
State Department funding for what would become<br />
the Civilian Response Corps, but the message was<br />
clear—despite greater need, neither the military<br />
1
what made CSP stand out was the<br />
close cooperation between the US<br />
military and USAID’s implementing<br />
partner, IRD—a collaboration at both<br />
the strategic and operational levels<br />
nor the government had the necessary knowledge<br />
or capacity in conflict development and stabilization<br />
methods to carry out an expanded civilian-military<br />
partnership. “Our civilian-military partnership is strong,<br />
beneficial, and appropriate,” he said. But, he added,<br />
“the mission to stabilize and reconstruct a nation is<br />
one that civilians must lead.”<br />
Civ-mil cooperation: A new way forward<br />
With the military actively involved in trying to win<br />
hearts and minds in conflict zones, civilian agencies,<br />
such as the US Agency for International Development<br />
(USAID), were coordinating among themselves and<br />
with the military at unprecedented levels to push the<br />
new approach forward. That intersection of overlapping<br />
concerns is the centerpiece of “civ-mil” partnerships.<br />
One of the largest and most important examples<br />
of this new type of partnership was the Community<br />
Stabilization Program (CSP) in Iraq, a sweeping $644<br />
million initiative awarded to International Relief &<br />
Development (IRD) and designed to support quickimpact<br />
projects, a “nonlethal counterinsurgency<br />
program that reduces the incentives for participation<br />
in violent conflict by employing or engaging at-risk<br />
youth between the ages of 17 and 35,” according to<br />
the agreement language.<br />
CSP was a landmark investment in both time and<br />
resources. Not only did it mark USAID’s first largescale<br />
commitment to a stabilization program in an<br />
active conflict zone, it was also the largest USAIDfunded<br />
cooperative agreement ever to date. “The<br />
scale of this was unusual,” said Jeanne Pryor, USAID’s<br />
deputy director of Iraq reconstruction, at a 2009 US<br />
Institute of Peace symposium on CSP. Pryor noted that<br />
the amount of money devoted to CSP was “oftentimes<br />
appropriated for an entire continent, let alone one<br />
program in three years.”<br />
Aside from the funding, what made CSP stand out was<br />
the close cooperation between the US military and<br />
USAID’s implementing partner, IRD—a collaboration at<br />
both the strategic and operational levels that helped<br />
bring economic development and community stabilization<br />
in a conflict environment squarely within the US<br />
government’s COIN strategy. Unlike traditional relief<br />
and development programs where security may be one<br />
of many equally important factors, CSP operations<br />
depended wholly on some level of security to succeed.<br />
Collaborative decisionmaking among the many parties<br />
involved was crucial. Provincial reconstruction teams<br />
(PRTs) and local government entities often generated<br />
ideas that then became CSP projects, such as a<br />
fun-run sporting event for youth or the reconstruction<br />
of the Abu Ghraib Old Market in Baghdad, but that<br />
collaboration relied on a secure operating environment.<br />
In most situations, though, once the military<br />
had cleared an area in a city and secured its relative<br />
safety, CSP projects would begin immediate implementation<br />
by rebuilding the community’s physical and<br />
economic infrastructure.<br />
In short, CSP provided the final component of the military’s<br />
“clear-hold-build” strategy. “That very popular<br />
phrase, that was the sort of concept that drove<br />
the interrelationship between the military and what<br />
followed,” said James Kunder, a former senior official<br />
with USAID and now an advisor to IRD. “The CSP<br />
program kind of wove in through the hold and build<br />
phases. It was part of the hold, that people would<br />
have something to do and wouldn’t start firing at the<br />
forces that were trying to maintain security. But also,<br />
it could be the beginning of a longer term development<br />
program that might actually change the place.”<br />
CSP launched in Baghdad, but after only six months<br />
its early success led to a rapid rollout in other cities<br />
across Iraq, 15 in all. With the program quickly under<br />
way, CSP began focusing on Iraqi <strong>communities</strong> with<br />
the specific purpose of helping the military stabilize<br />
2
Through its ICAP work, IRD had an<br />
established base of operations in<br />
Baghdad and an important logistical<br />
springboard for launching the much<br />
larger and more complex CSP<br />
them. IRD’s rapid response for relief and reconstruction<br />
work, in both kinetic and nonkinetic environments<br />
and often alongside military personnel, exemplified the<br />
changing face of development and the role of nongovernmental<br />
organizations (NGOs).<br />
Earning local trust<br />
IRD was able to launch and expand CSP quickly<br />
because it had been operating in Baghdad for three<br />
years implementing the Iraq Community Action<br />
Program (ICAP). By going into some of Baghdad’s most<br />
dangerous and at-risk neighborhoods when no other<br />
relief agencies were around, IRD began to gain local<br />
favor as it assisted a war-weary population to rebuild<br />
civil society.<br />
ICAP began operations in May 2003, as a way to mobilize<br />
Iraqi <strong>communities</strong> after decades of repression and<br />
to help <strong>communities</strong> identify, prioritize, and address<br />
their most pressing civic needs. Projects focused on<br />
rebuilding economic and social infrastructure, boosting<br />
business development, and providing assistance<br />
to civilian victims of war. Most important, the projects<br />
weren’t decreed by IRD, but decided in conjunction<br />
with locally organized community action groups.<br />
In Baghdad neighborhoods, where no legitimate sense<br />
of grassroots activism or democratic engagement<br />
had existed for years, community action groups gave<br />
ordinary <strong>citizens</strong> a direct role in a kind of decentralized<br />
decisionmaking that had been mostly missing<br />
from Iraq. With the help of these community groups,<br />
IRD completed almost 2,400 ICAP projects between<br />
2003 and 2006, at a value of more than $73 million.<br />
The program required an in-kind Iraqi contribution<br />
of 25 percent of project funds, but that number was<br />
exceeded by almost $10 million—another sign of<br />
Iraqis’ eagerness to be involved in their planning and<br />
development processes. Through community action<br />
groups, IRD helped put individual <strong>citizens</strong> directly<br />
in touch with government leaders during a time of<br />
upheaval and uncertainty. Even tenuous links between<br />
public and private interests, IRD believed, would help<br />
<strong>citizens</strong> regain some sense of trust in their local<br />
political system and open doors to broader improvements<br />
in their <strong>communities</strong>’ physical and social<br />
infrastructure.<br />
IRD’s close working relationship with the community<br />
continued throughout the evolution of ICAP, which<br />
ran concurrently with CSP and continued for years<br />
afterward as an even more robust mobilization and<br />
participatory program. After three years of focused<br />
community interaction with civilians and local leaders<br />
under ICAP, IRD had enough credibility among Iraqis to<br />
take on a program as large and military-dependent as<br />
CSP—and to make it work.<br />
Stabilizing <strong>communities</strong><br />
CSP kicked off in June 2006, a few months ahead of a<br />
highly publicized military surge by US and international<br />
forces. It ended more than three years later, in late<br />
2009. Throughout implementation, IRD staff found<br />
themselves under pressure, pulled in a variety of<br />
directions by competing and sometimes contradictory<br />
demands from multiple stakeholders. But they also<br />
implemented hundreds of projects that brought order<br />
and economic revitalization to an oppressed population<br />
in the middle of a war zone.<br />
CSP’s main goal can be summarized in one statement:<br />
reduce or eliminate incentives for individuals to participate<br />
in insurgent activities by creating employment<br />
opportunities and fostering community engagement. In<br />
Iraq, people were desperate for jobs, so employment<br />
is where CSP focused its financial muscle. More than<br />
90 percent of the program’s funds were geared toward<br />
short- and long-term employment. As the implementing<br />
3
By the end of the program, the<br />
business development component had<br />
generated 74 percent of the 57,109<br />
long-term jobs documented by CSP<br />
agency, IRD was responsible for the civilian-led effort<br />
to reach CSP’s goal. IRD strove to provide a complete<br />
package of services that optimized the natural overlap<br />
between the four program components that made<br />
up CSP’s operational design: creating short-term<br />
jobs through community infrastructure and essential<br />
services, creating long-term jobs through business<br />
development grants, establishing robust vocational<br />
training and apprenticeship services, and engaging<br />
Iraqi youth through community and cultural programs.<br />
The IRD approach and program components linked<br />
CSP projects with military strategy and community<br />
needs.<br />
The Community Infrastructure and Essential Services<br />
(CIES) program component was divided into two<br />
general project areas—infrastructure rehabilitation<br />
and essential services work, which required unskilled<br />
labor on quick-impact projects such as trash collection<br />
and rubble removal. CSP supported scores of<br />
these projects during the program’s first year. By<br />
the middle of the second year, IRD began to transfer<br />
oversight of projects back to municipal <strong>governments</strong>.<br />
Approximately 1,600 CIES projects generated more<br />
than 525,000 documented person-months of shortterm<br />
employment—20 percent above the target. Given<br />
the high value placed on providing some kind of job to<br />
as many Iraqi men as possible, as fast as possible,<br />
person-months of employment was a critical indicator<br />
of immediate impact. By this calculation, CSP succeeded—the<br />
program exceeded this target during<br />
every year of operation.<br />
However, there were unavoidable challenges in<br />
implementing a rapid, cash-for-work component like<br />
CIES, including documentation. Generally, laborers<br />
were paid in daily financial transactions, but payments<br />
were not always possible to track or fully account for.<br />
Subsequently, the trash collection projects became<br />
a lightning rod for CSP critics. Some of IRD’s early<br />
administrative missteps also created obstacles.<br />
With the business development program, IRD aimed to<br />
provide long-term jobs, business training to grantees,<br />
and assistance to vocational training and apprenticeship<br />
graduates to transition into regular employment.<br />
Of the more than 10,000 grants awarded, 97 percent<br />
were classified in the micro and small categories,<br />
most commonly to family-owned businesses. By<br />
the end of the program, the business development<br />
component had generated 74 percent of the 57,109<br />
long-term jobs documented by CSP. Once the program<br />
was up and running in the different cities, the grants<br />
program produced most jobs fairly quickly, and about<br />
25,000 jobs were created during the first two years.<br />
Trade and service sector grants were found to be the<br />
most efficient: quick-impact but longer term employment<br />
opportunities proved extremely supportive of the<br />
COIN strategy.<br />
The primary goal of CSP’s vocational training and<br />
apprenticeship program, also referred to as employment<br />
generation, was to stimulate economic stability<br />
by providing Iraqis with employable skills that could<br />
lead to long-term jobs. That goal was reached, with<br />
more than 41,400 graduates completing course<br />
training in construction and nonconstruction trades.<br />
Through the innovative methods IRD used to link<br />
training courses to market demand and unemployed<br />
<strong>citizens</strong> to employment opportunities, more than<br />
8,000 vocational training graduates landed long-term<br />
jobs as a direct result of their training. Yet the vocational<br />
training program accomplished much more than<br />
reaching a benchmark. It also had a profound effect<br />
on Iraq’s institutional capacity—one of CSP’s most<br />
notable achievements.<br />
The CSP design, like the COIN strategy in general,<br />
presumed that the strength of Iraq’s cultural and<br />
community network was at least equal to employment<br />
as a factor in the country’s overall stability and<br />
social cohesion. Organizing safe and secure “communal<br />
activities” was perceived to be a critical step<br />
4
most important, <strong>citizens</strong> were impressed.<br />
A sizable number of Iraqis, regardless<br />
of whether they were directly involved in<br />
the program, credit CSP with improving<br />
security and government services<br />
in reducing sectarian strife. Therefore, CSP’s youth<br />
activities component aimed for something more personal<br />
than jobs—it aimed to help young Iraqis connect<br />
to their identity, culture, and community and to give<br />
them enhanced opportunities to form social bonds<br />
that would be stronger than the pull of the insurgency.<br />
Altogether, IRD’s youth activities engaged more than<br />
350,000 participants through soccer matches and<br />
tournaments and a wide range of other activities.<br />
A legacy of positive perceptions<br />
IRD staff, from field workers to leadership, exude<br />
pride when talking about CSP, but the program had<br />
many other fans as well. Former Deputy Secretary of<br />
State Jacob Lew said CSP was considered “one of<br />
the most effective counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq.”<br />
Arizona Senator John McCain, Connecticut Senator<br />
Joe Lieberman, General Petraeus, and others made<br />
visits to CSP project sites firsthand. And Ryan Crocker,<br />
during his 2007–09 tenure as the US ambassador<br />
to Iraq, repeatedly lauded CSP’s track record of job<br />
creation. “I’ve had discussions with the [Iraqi] government,”<br />
Crocker said in late 2007, midway through<br />
CSP’s implementation. “What they want, they want<br />
jobs. They want something that looks like a stable<br />
future. . . . They’re saying, ‘I want gainful employment.’<br />
And we know how to do this because we’ve done it<br />
with community stabilization.”<br />
Perhaps most important, Iraqi <strong>citizens</strong> were<br />
impressed. At the program’s conclusion, evaluators<br />
worked with two independent Iraqi polling companies<br />
to survey almost 1,400 CSP participants and nonparticipants<br />
about the perceived effectiveness of CSP<br />
activities, how well community needs were addressed,<br />
and the local support for those activities. While<br />
economic and security variables make it impossible<br />
to establish direct causality between CSP activities<br />
and a reduction in violence, the poll results show that<br />
a sizable number of Iraqis, regardless of whether they<br />
were directly involved in the program, credit CSP with<br />
improving security and government services:<br />
• 84 percent of CSP-type program participants said<br />
their community was safer in 2009 than in 2006<br />
because of CSP, an assessment shared by 70<br />
percent of nonparticipants.<br />
• 69 percent of program participants said CSP<br />
helped improve government services.<br />
• 60 percent of participants credited CSP with<br />
bettering relations between religious and ethnic<br />
groups.<br />
According to USAID’s Jeanne Pryor, the results showed<br />
that “It worked. All four components worked. Polling<br />
data, in addition to the outputs that had been measured,<br />
reported that beneficiaries did notice a positive<br />
impact in their community.”<br />
* * *<br />
This report revisits IRD’s work in Iraq from the beginning<br />
of ICAP in 2003 to the close of CSP in 2009.<br />
It is not a project performance assessment but an<br />
examination of the approach and the results, informed<br />
primarily by the people who carried it out. In considering<br />
the impact of ICAP and CSP, it’s important to<br />
consider factors in addition to outcomes and indicators,<br />
to grasp the weight of individual moments that<br />
made up the collective whole. These observations<br />
are important, because they put a human face on the<br />
anonymous “beneficiary” and the generic “staffer.”<br />
For an endeavor like CSP, heavily debated and controversial,<br />
they also offer a complete way of seeing the<br />
program—its accomplishments, its shortcomings,<br />
and, more importantly, its lasting impact.<br />
5
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
through action, empowerment, and commitment<br />
ICAP offered Iraqi women new skills to support their families
“Local leaders were not paying attention to everyday people.<br />
They would focus on their relatives or close friends. It wasn’t<br />
the real people in need. And with ICAP we went directly to the<br />
people in need.”<br />
— Iqbal al-Juboori<br />
Economic sanctions against Iraq following the 1991<br />
Gulf War meant fewer economic and political opportunities,<br />
while decreasing quality in public education led to<br />
a surge in adult illiteracy among Iraqi women—as high<br />
as 45 percent by 2000, according to United Nations<br />
(UN) estimates. After the US-led invasion in 2003, the<br />
Coalition Provisional Authority was charged to advance<br />
women’s rights and to leverage women’s “skill and<br />
knowledge” in the “revival of their country.” But in<br />
aftermath of the occupation, the reality on the ground<br />
was that huge numbers of Iraqi women had to support<br />
their families, and they had to do so after decades<br />
of diminished educational opportunities had severely<br />
thwarted their technical skills and capabilities.<br />
“Early on, I met a widow who was responsible for<br />
feeding her two sons and one daughter, her father,<br />
her mother, and her two sisters,” said Iqbal al-Juboori,<br />
who at the time was an IRD business development<br />
program officer in Baghdad. “She was the head of the<br />
family. Her parents were too old to work, her children<br />
too young, and her sisters couldn’t. Her husband was<br />
killed during the war, and she didn’t know what to do.<br />
Then she heard about IRD.”<br />
Al-Juboori, who is Iraqi, joined IRD in July 2005,<br />
two years after IRD had established its presence in<br />
Baghdad with ICAP. One of ICAP’s cross-cutting objectives<br />
was to encourage the inclusion and empowerment<br />
of women in all activities. The community action groups<br />
at the center of ICAP emphasized ensuring the equality<br />
of men’s and women’s voices, while program grants<br />
and employment programs gave women an opportunity<br />
to engage in the local economy. Internally, IRD hired,<br />
trained, and promoted women employees for nontraditional<br />
management roles with ICAP, including al-Juboori.<br />
IRD staff would often concentrate on widows, treating<br />
them as people in need. When determining grant<br />
awards, program officers would make home visits to<br />
meet them and assess the individual circumstances.<br />
When al-Juboori visited this particular widow, she<br />
found a home no larger than a shelter, a single room<br />
with little furniture housing the full family. The widow<br />
was receiving nominal help, such as used clothes and<br />
food, but as she met with al-Juboori, she remained<br />
defiantly prideful. “I don’t believe anyone can help us,”<br />
she said. “What makes you so special? What makes<br />
you so different? All I need is a decent income for my<br />
family.” As an Iraqi woman, al-Juboori knew that she<br />
had an exceptional opportunity to relate to this widow,<br />
standing there in the middle of her home. “You’ve got<br />
nothing to lose,” she said. “So try us.”<br />
As with many Iraqi women, the widow had no discernible<br />
skills or earning power. Al-Juboori described<br />
one of ICAP’s business development opportunities,<br />
a home-based sewing program in which IRD would<br />
7
“<br />
The community believed in what we<br />
were doing and in our ability to help”<br />
—Iqbal al-Juboori<br />
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
supply equipment as long as the recipient maintained<br />
consistent production. “You have to learn to be a<br />
tailor,” she told the widow. “If you’re good, and if you<br />
learn, then we’re going to come back and monitor<br />
you, and we’re going to ask you how much you’re<br />
selling.” This process was an established part of the<br />
ICAP program. But a more immediate problem quickly<br />
became apparent—the house was so small, there<br />
was no place to put the equipment. “All I have is this<br />
house,” the widow said. “And it’s only one room. So<br />
where am I going to do this?”<br />
IRD had access to revenue-generating equipment, procedures<br />
in place to disburse grants, and a results-based<br />
system of accountability to maximize a beneficiary’s<br />
chance at success. If an issue required a programmatic<br />
solution, IRD had an answer. But overcoming the physical<br />
limitations of poverty and an overcrowded one-room<br />
house? That was another issue entirely. Still, IRD found<br />
a solution. Once the widow’s friends and neighbors<br />
learned of her plight, they got together and found a<br />
workspace to donate, provided IRD followed through with<br />
giving her the grant. “The community believed in what<br />
we were doing,” al-Juboori said, “and in our ability to<br />
help. She got the grant, and then she learned to sew.”<br />
The widow began selling coats, and over the course of<br />
the grants process, IRD workers delighted in watching<br />
her grow professionally and personally. “The first time<br />
she received actual money from one of her coats, she<br />
came to me, crying, and she hugged me,” al-Juboori<br />
said. “And she looked at me and said, ‘I’ve struggled for<br />
my whole life, and no one has ever helped me like this. I<br />
don’t feel alone anymore.’”<br />
ICAP: The first step to rebuilding civil society<br />
Often called the cradle of civilization, modern day Iraq<br />
is a country steeped in rich cultural and historical<br />
heritage. Ancient Mesopotamia gave rise to some of<br />
the world’s earliest cities, including Hatra, the capital<br />
of the first Arab kingdom, and it’s where agriculture<br />
was born. The region boasted accomplishments in the<br />
arts, agriculture, architecture, law, and medicine. But<br />
Iraq’s rich heritage proved of little value for much of<br />
the twentieth century, as political turbulence and war<br />
took a severe toll. After post-World War I British rule<br />
ended, 58 separate <strong>governments</strong> ruled Iraq over 37<br />
years, until a 1958 revolution overthrew the monarchy.<br />
1 After the Ba’ath party took power in a 1963 coup,<br />
a brief period of stability and prosperity produced a<br />
secular state with a thriving oil economy, a rising GDP,<br />
and a burgeoning education system. After Saddam<br />
Hussein seized power in 1979 and almost immediately<br />
launched a war with Iran, the country’s economic and<br />
social infrastructure began to deteriorate.<br />
In a short time, Iraq descended from affluence to a<br />
country in which the standard of living was reduced to<br />
a “subsistence level,” according to the UN’s Committee<br />
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 2 As a closed<br />
society, Iraq’s GDP plunged by more than $50 billion<br />
in less than 10 years, food and agricultural production<br />
slowed, and 60 percent of the population depended on<br />
government rations. Malnutrition, a leading contributor<br />
to rising infant mortality rate, grew rampant. 3 Essential<br />
services slowed due to years of poor maintenance or<br />
outright neglect. Approximately half the population did<br />
not have regular access to potable drinking water, and<br />
even fewer households were connected to a functioning<br />
sewage system. Iraq was a failing state even before<br />
the Hussein government fell in March 2003.<br />
In April 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority was<br />
established as a transitional government. One month<br />
later, USAID awarded cooperative agreements to five<br />
American NGOs to implement ICAP, a central element<br />
of USAID’s overall relief and reconstruction mission<br />
in Iraq. ICAP was conceived as a community action<br />
and mobilization initiative to foster civic pride in Iraqis<br />
and to try and reconnect them to an operational civil<br />
society (box 1). IRD, chosen to implement the program<br />
8
Under the initial ICAP intervention, IRD<br />
completed 2,381 projects benefiting<br />
more than 20 million people and<br />
worth more than $73 million<br />
Box 1<br />
ICAP: Program and results<br />
1<br />
ICAP began in May 2003 as a mechanism to mobilize Iraqi <strong>communities</strong> to identify, prioritize, and address their<br />
most pressing civic needs. IRD oversaw operations in Baghdad; the rest of the country was divided among four other<br />
implementing agencies.<br />
IRD helped establish locally organized community action groups to drive project work, which was filtered through<br />
three broad program components: economic and social infrastructure to build and repair roads and public buildings;<br />
business development to provide grant support to micro, small, and medium businesses; and the Assistance to Civilian<br />
Victims Fund, which provided social and financial aid to innocent individuals and <strong>communities</strong> injured or afflicted<br />
by military forces.<br />
Building community trust<br />
Under the initial ICAP intervention (2003–06), IRD completed 2,381 projects benefiting more than 20 million people<br />
and worth more than $73 million—almost 40 percent of which was covered by Iraqi <strong>communities</strong> and the government<br />
through in-kind contributions. ICAP laid the foundation for the larger and more complex development and stabilization<br />
projects to come, and it<br />
yielded a number of positive<br />
Baghdad governorate districts and city districts<br />
performance measurements.<br />
At its conclusion, ICAP had:<br />
Al-Tarmiya<br />
• Generated more than 5,600<br />
short-term jobs and almost<br />
Taji<br />
Al-Istiqlal<br />
23,000 long-term jobs.<br />
Employment generation<br />
Adhamiya<br />
Kadhmiya<br />
Sadr<br />
City<br />
steadily rose for both short-<br />
9 Nissan<br />
and long-term jobs for each<br />
Abu Ghraib<br />
Taji Karkh<br />
Karada<br />
year of the program.<br />
Al-Mada’n<br />
Al-Rasheed<br />
• Established 441 community<br />
action groups with approximately<br />
5,500 members—a<br />
Mahmoudiya<br />
third of whom were women.<br />
• Completed more than 700<br />
infrastructure projects,<br />
including the construction or<br />
rehabilitation of 278 schools,<br />
75 health centers and hospitals,<br />
65 water and sewage facilities, 60 roads, and 38 sports and recreation facilities.<br />
• Invested $8 million in more than 1,100 business development projects, covering competitive grants, technical<br />
assistance, vocational and managerial training, marketplaces, cooperative grants, and handicap activities.<br />
• Aided more than 760,000 Baghdad residents through 515 projects assisting civilian victims.<br />
9
Community action groups stood at the core<br />
of ICAP. They were formed in conjunction<br />
with community mobilizers that IRD deployed<br />
in districts in and around Baghdad<br />
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
in Baghdad, began operations immediately, fewer than<br />
two months after the country’s government structure<br />
had been completely wiped away.<br />
Community action groups—a common thread for IRD<br />
IRD drew from some relevant experience in formulating<br />
its ICAP implementation strategy. At the time,<br />
IRD’s Community Revitalization through Democratic<br />
Action (CRDA) program in Serbia was nearing the end<br />
of its second year, and the organization had learned<br />
many lessons about mobilizing war-weary populations<br />
to reestablish basic concepts of self-governance,<br />
community organization, and democratic principles.<br />
As part of the CRDA design, IRD at the outset established<br />
community committees, chosen entirely by a<br />
larger population, to serve as implementation partners,<br />
before later establishing even larger municipal<br />
working groups to aid in the critical development of<br />
public-private partnerships. IRD succeeded under<br />
trying conditions during CRDA’s earliest months, and<br />
that record of accomplishment in postconflict Serbia<br />
played a role in USAID’s decision to award ICAP<br />
to IRD.<br />
Community action groups, the primary organizational<br />
tool of ICAP, bore a close resemblance to the community<br />
groups IRD helped organize under CRDA. The<br />
community groups, known locally as “CAGs,” stood at<br />
the core of ICAP. They were formed in conjunction with<br />
community mobilizers that IRD deployed in districts in<br />
and around Baghdad. The mobilizers provided basic<br />
training on civil society, rules of order, and a rapid<br />
participatory appraisal process to get ICAP-funded<br />
projects moving quickly. Using these newfound skills,<br />
the community groups worked to develop action plans<br />
based on their own prioritized needs. Like CRDA, the<br />
ICAP plan called for a rapid startup to show quick<br />
results, not only to the donors but to local <strong>citizens</strong>.<br />
Additional funding from the US PRTs aided in the<br />
ability to make a quick impact.<br />
Another commonality between CRDA and ICAP was the<br />
guiding principle that success depended on mutual trust<br />
between IRD and the community. In Serbia, IRD worked<br />
to build social capital among people who, due to a<br />
variety of factors, were predisposed to distrust. In Iraq,<br />
IRD faced a similar sociopolitical structure, albeit with<br />
a gaping difference: Iraq was not postconflict. Rather, it<br />
was an unstable, occupied country with rapidly shifting<br />
political and religious alliances. Still, in each setting,<br />
relying on community groups to build strong relationships<br />
proved productive in moving projects forward.<br />
In Baghdad’s local <strong>communities</strong>, where no legitimate<br />
sense of grassroots activism or democratic engagement<br />
had existed for years, community action groups<br />
gave ordinary <strong>citizens</strong> a direct role in a decentralized<br />
decisionmaking process that had been missing<br />
from Iraq for years. Offered this opportunity, <strong>citizens</strong><br />
responded. Within four years, 5,500 Baghdad <strong>citizens</strong><br />
were members of community action groups.<br />
Altogether, IRD helped organize 441 of these groups<br />
during the initial program phase that ran between<br />
2003 and 2006. (ICAP had been extended multiple<br />
times and continued to grow and evolve as a community<br />
empowerment program.)<br />
As the organizational engine of ICAP, the community<br />
groups were critical to project implementation. In<br />
the beginning, however, they were not easily formed.<br />
Each group had to have a minimum of nine members<br />
along with the community mobilizer, who typically<br />
lived in the local neighborhood as a show of commitment<br />
and, ideally, to win the confidence and trust of<br />
local leaders. Program design was easier said than<br />
done, since Baghdad’s political structure was still<br />
in a transitional state and many leaders viewed the<br />
community groups as a political threat. “At the time,<br />
there was some rudimentary selection process by<br />
Baghdad leadership for the city council members<br />
across all the districts,” said Awni Quandour, who<br />
filled numerous roles on ICAP, including chief of party<br />
10
Quandour joined IRD in June 2003, for the<br />
beginning of ICAP. He took a leap of faith with<br />
IRD, an organization barely 5 years old but<br />
under intense pressure to show quick results<br />
Box 2<br />
Awni Quandour: IRD’s original elder statesman<br />
1<br />
It was June 2009, and Gary Kinney had spent almost two months in Baghdad on temporary assignment, anxious<br />
to get home. “Neither sandstorms nor faulty documentation would have been welcome delays,” Kinney wrote in<br />
an email, detailing his bumpy exit from Iraq via Jordan. Kinney, who at the time was IRD’s contracts and grants<br />
manager, avoided a sandstorm, but his documentation proved more troublesome. Passport control officers at the<br />
Baghdad airport flagged his visa for being incomplete or incorrect. Whatever the reason, Kinney found himself<br />
stuck.<br />
“Two officers were in the booth, handing my passport back and forth, without any ability to solve the problem,” he<br />
said. Eventually, the men called for their supervisor, who came and led Kinney to a private airport office.<br />
Building community trust<br />
“Do you have a CAC card?” the official asked, referring to the Common Access Card issued as a standard identification<br />
by the Department of Defense. No, Kinney replied, he did not. “Do you have an MNF-I card?” he then asked,<br />
referring to another type of identification issued to workers entering and leaving Iraq. Kinney didn’t have one of those<br />
either.<br />
What he did have, however, was his IRD identification badge, which he pulled from his wallet. The Iraqi official gave it<br />
a quick glance and then, after verifying that Kinney was traveling to Amman, promptly returned the ID. Then, without<br />
further delay and in one brisk motion, he approved the visa, stamped the passport, and cleared Kinney to leave—with<br />
a parting message: “Tell Mr. Awni that Captain Zain sends his regards.”<br />
A few months later, Awni Quandour, 56, died of lung cancer at a hospital in Amman. Instrumental in helping IRD set<br />
up its initial operations in the Middle East, Quandour at the time was serving as IRD’s country director in Jordan,<br />
where his family had lived for more than 100 years and where he had built a respected reputation doing communitybased<br />
economic development work, including for the Noor Hussein Foundation. During a 2008 Capitol Hill ceremony<br />
celebrating IRD’s 10-year anniversary, Jordan’s Queen Noor publicly commended Quandour for his work. “Awni was a<br />
great man,” said Dr. Arthur B. Keys, IRD’s founder and president, “and a major source of insight and information to<br />
many, many key decisionmakers.”<br />
Quandour joined IRD in June 2003, for the beginning of ICAP. He had already spent a lot of time in Iraq, working for<br />
Catholic Relief Services during the 1990s, and he had an in-depth knowledge of the country and its people. He took<br />
a leap of faith with IRD, an organization barely 5 years old but under intense pressure to show quick results in an<br />
unstable country where it had no organizational footprint—or local staff. Quandour came on board anyway.<br />
He first met Keys in Amman, at a USAID organizing meeting for ICAP implementing agencies. IRD volunteered to<br />
work in the capital, where the needs were most widespread and immediate. “Awni and I traveled across the desert in<br />
a fast, unarmed convoy to set up IRD’s initial ICAP program in Baghdad,” Keys said. “We went out into the neighborhoods,<br />
visited families in their homes, visited mosques and universities.”<br />
(continued)<br />
11
“<br />
Many colleagues have told me<br />
that Awni gave IRD a lot of credibility<br />
in that region of the world”<br />
—Dr. Arthur B. Keys<br />
1<br />
Box 2<br />
Awni Quandour: IRD’s original elder statesman (continued)<br />
Building community trust<br />
At the time, aside from foreign military, they were the only non-Iraqis around. Quandour’s experience and familiarity<br />
with the country, however, proved crucial in getting ICAP and IRD’s regional operations established quickly. “Dr. Keys<br />
said that he wanted to go to the poor areas of Baghdad first, before the others,” Quandour said. “I told him that all<br />
the areas were poor.”<br />
Quandour and Keys knocked on doors and talked to the residents, and they learned that in some areas people were<br />
sleeping on their rooftops because their houses were flooded with sewage. With trash and debris everywhere, and<br />
with sewage backed up as high as a foot or more on some roads, “we determined that just cleaning the streets<br />
would be our first project, after listening to people talk about how they were living.”<br />
In the matter of a few weeks, Quandour and ICAP’s chief of party, Terry Leary, hired their staff, created a training<br />
plan, began street-cleaning and trash-removal operations, and started organizing ICAP’s first community action<br />
group. “People were desperate and wanted some type of sign that life would improve,” Quandour said. “We gave<br />
them hope.”<br />
Quandour’s first position with IRD was as ICAP’s community outreach director. Before long, he became the program’s<br />
deputy chief of party before assuming the chief of party role. He hired and trained IRD’s initial Iraqi staff,<br />
many of whom still work with IRD almost a decade later. He played a critical role in adapting the ICAP model on a<br />
wider scale-up when IRD began implementing CSP in 2006.<br />
In Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, and other locations, Quandour helped hone IRD’s project work in unstable<br />
environments, and many current staff credit him with being the founding father of IRD’s community development and<br />
stabilization programs.<br />
“Many colleagues have told me that Awni gave IRD a lot of credibility in that region of the world,” Keys said. “His<br />
relationships with local <strong>communities</strong> were invaluable to making the Iraq programs work. Local staff looked up to<br />
Awni as an elder statesman. He was ready to go back to Iraq, saying that when he regained his strength, he would<br />
return to that country.”<br />
While Quandour never had the opportunity to return to Iraq, his legacy and his work live on through the organizational<br />
strategy he helped craft and through his own personal ties—his daughter Zain and his niece Farah both work on IRD<br />
projects in Jordan.<br />
(box 2). According to Quandour, as the community<br />
groups flourished, tension developed between IRD<br />
and local political leaders, some of whom accused<br />
Quandour of “causing problems” and subsequently<br />
used their power to delay the approval of projects.<br />
“There was some rivalry between the council<br />
members and the community action groups,” he said,<br />
“because the CAGs suddenly had the ability to create<br />
projects that weren’t part of the council’s administrative<br />
structure.”<br />
12
The first few years of ICAP projects<br />
directly benefited more than 20 million<br />
Iraqis and generated 23,000 long‐term<br />
jobs and 5,600 short-term jobs<br />
With the help of these community groups, IRD completed<br />
almost 2,400 ICAP projects over 2003–06,<br />
at a value of more than $73 million. The program<br />
required that 25 percent of project funds be in-kind<br />
donations from local Iraqi <strong>communities</strong>, but this<br />
number was exceeded by almost $10 million—<br />
another sign of local <strong>citizens</strong>’ eagerness to be<br />
part of the planning and development of their<br />
<strong>communities</strong>.<br />
Establishing services, assisting civilians,<br />
creating jobs<br />
Once a community action group formed, IRD mobilizers<br />
would provide basic training on rules and<br />
procedures and a condensed form of the appraisal<br />
process. With this introductory training complete,<br />
members began writing bylaws to guide their work.<br />
Again, the mobilizers oversaw and helped run this<br />
activity. Throughout the program, IRD provided training<br />
to community groups on computer skills, core<br />
business skills, first aid, and conflict mitigation. This<br />
training incentivized members to continue their participation<br />
while bolstering the groups’ ability to create<br />
quality reports and applications and recommend grant<br />
candidates to IRD.<br />
Once trained, group members helped shepherd community<br />
projects through three main program areas:<br />
• Economic and social infrastructure projects to build<br />
and repair roads and public buildings as well as<br />
restore essential services.<br />
• Business development grant support to micro,<br />
small, and medium businesses.<br />
The first few years of ICAP projects directly benefited<br />
more than 20 million Iraqis and generated 23,000<br />
long-term jobs and 5,600 short-term jobs. 4 “ICAP was<br />
a unique program, at least in Iraq because it was<br />
community-based,” al-Juboori said. “We’d reach out<br />
to the grassroots level, and at that time, no one was<br />
representing anyone. There was no effective local<br />
government. Even though neighborhoods had a lot<br />
of needs, nobody was reaching out to those people.<br />
There was no government. There was nobody.”<br />
According to al-Juboori, even after the rudimentary<br />
Baghdad councils had been established, the basic<br />
needs of ordinary <strong>citizens</strong> were often overlooked<br />
due to the rampant nepotism or favoritism that<br />
had become ingrained in Iraqi political and social<br />
structure. “Local leaders were not paying attention<br />
to everyday people,” she said. “They would focus<br />
on their relatives or close friends. It wasn’t the real<br />
people in need. And with ICAP we went directly to the<br />
people in need.”<br />
A chance for <strong>citizens</strong> to rebuild basic services<br />
Many of those people in need lived in the Sadr<br />
district, one of the poorest and most violent neighborhoods<br />
in Baghdad. With little access to basic<br />
services, residents in two districts encompassing<br />
roughly 25,000 people formed the Al Bir community<br />
action group. In its first year, the group completed<br />
15 projects ranging from the administration of small<br />
business grants to the creation of public parks and<br />
playgrounds on vacant lots. The group also organized<br />
neighborhood cleanups and public health campaigns.<br />
In a very short time, the Al Bir group became a vocal<br />
advocate for its <strong>citizens</strong>, and, in doing so, formed a<br />
critical link between individuals and their municipal<br />
government leadership.<br />
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
• Assistance to civilian victims and <strong>communities</strong><br />
injured, impaired, or otherwise negatively affected<br />
by coalition forces.<br />
As part of its effort to boost the local infrastructure<br />
and business environment, the Al Bir community group<br />
reached out to create a dialogue with its neighborhood<br />
13
IRD’s health advisor referred Omar<br />
Mohammad Abas to a hospital that specialized<br />
in treating amputees, where he was fitted<br />
with an artificial leg and underwent an<br />
intensive five‐week physical therapy program<br />
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
advisory council, the local governing authority. In doing<br />
so, the group learned of an effort to provide needy<br />
families with cooking oil and propane. But that effort<br />
had not been extended to Al Bir due to the lack of<br />
municipal capacity—simply put, the local government<br />
had no way to distribute the goods. So the citizen<br />
group responded, first by conducting a house-by-house<br />
needs assessment, then organizing a distribution<br />
network consisting of donated warehouse space and<br />
vehicles staffed by volunteers. Once the network<br />
was in place, the community action group developed<br />
a distribution schedule and a publicity campaign to<br />
inform residents about the program.<br />
Through the community action group, IRD helped put<br />
individual <strong>citizens</strong> directly in touch with government<br />
leaders. Even tenuous links between public and<br />
private interests, IRD believed, would help <strong>citizens</strong><br />
regain trust in their local political system and open<br />
doors to broader improvements in the physical and<br />
social infrastructure. The Al Bir group, for instance,<br />
had a broad impact. In addition to helping distribute<br />
cooking materials, it also helped coordinate a public<br />
health campaign to provide safe and sanitary circumcisions<br />
for young boys. IRD assisted the group in<br />
organizing qualified practitioners and nurses to come<br />
directly to families’ homes and perform the operation<br />
free of charge. The program proved very popular in<br />
the community: it was both low cost, and it improved<br />
local capacity to deliver health and social services,<br />
especially for children.<br />
With Iraq’s essential services in poor shape even<br />
before the 2003 invasion, community action group<br />
members placed their greatest priority on initiatives<br />
that would, among other things, revitalize roads,<br />
schools, medical facilities, sports facilities, sewage<br />
systems, and electricity delivery. Even with the<br />
improvements needed for services like water treatment<br />
and power supply, more than a third of the<br />
economic and social infrastructure budget was<br />
directed to school rehabilitation. A total of 278 school<br />
projects were completed through the infrastructure<br />
component. But with so much work to be done and<br />
so many people in need, program components often<br />
overlapped. Years into the conflict, Iraq’s Ministry of<br />
Education built a school in the Sadr district for 500<br />
children orphaned by the war. But the ministry did<br />
not have money to purchase generators, computers,<br />
or administrative supplies. After being contacted by<br />
the local community action group, IRD furnished the<br />
school with its missing equipment through ICAP’s<br />
Assistance to Civilian Victims (ACV) program.<br />
Addressing the needs of innocent victims<br />
Omar Mohammad Abas, an Iraqi university student,<br />
was standing outside his family’s home in May 2003,<br />
when a gunner on an American Humvee opened fire.<br />
Abas was not the intended target, but the gunfire<br />
struck him in the left leg. His injury was severe, and<br />
doctors were forced to amputate above his left knee.<br />
Almost two years later, in February 2005, the community<br />
action group representing Abas’s neighborhood<br />
brought his story to the attention of IRD mobilizers.<br />
IRD’s health advisor referred Abas to a hospital that<br />
specialized in treating amputees, where he was fitted<br />
with an artificial leg and underwent an intensive fiveweek<br />
physical therapy program.<br />
IRD financed Abas’s treatment and prosthetic leg with<br />
ACV funds. Launched during ICAP’s second year, the<br />
civilian assistance program was conceived as a way<br />
to provide relief for Iraqi civilians who were harmed as<br />
a direct result of US military operations. The congressionally<br />
earmarked funds were intended to benefit a<br />
wide range of Iraqis, from individual <strong>citizens</strong> to large<br />
families to entire <strong>communities</strong>. Projects were divided<br />
into a number of categories—community-based activities<br />
included reconstructing or expanding local civil<br />
services, such as orphanages, hospitals, or centers<br />
for the disabled; rebuilding or refurbishing individual<br />
14
After being told of Marwa Naim’s<br />
situation, IRD staff began working on<br />
an assistance plan that ended with<br />
Marwa being transported to the United<br />
States for reconstructive surgery<br />
homes that had been damaged or destroyed by the<br />
military; and providing support and necessary equipment,<br />
such as wheelchairs or prosthetics, for medical<br />
procedures like the one that benefited Abas.<br />
The program, which was not part of the original ICAP<br />
design, enabled IRD and other ICAP implementers<br />
to build trust with Iraqis. The funds were made available<br />
primarily through the efforts of international aid<br />
worker Marla Ruzicka, who had successfully petitioned<br />
Congress to provide financial assistance to civilian<br />
victims of war. Ruzicka’s relentless efforts to focus<br />
international attention on civilian hardships made her<br />
something of a celebrity. She won over journalists,<br />
diplomats, activists, and politicians, including Vermont<br />
Senator Patrick Leahy, who pushed the victims’ compensation<br />
package through Congress and said Ruzicka<br />
was “as close to a living saint as they come.”<br />
The ACV program began in 2004, but in April 2005,<br />
Ruzicka was killed on a Baghdad road by a suicide<br />
bomber. Her death drew greater attention to civilian<br />
assistance efforts in general—Rolling Stone called her<br />
“perhaps the most famous American aid worker to die<br />
in any conflict of the past 10 or 20 years.” The organizations<br />
implementing ICAP were charged with putting<br />
the ACV funds to the most effective and efficient use,<br />
and IRD found no shortage of people in need. One<br />
year after Ruzicka died, the activist organization she<br />
founded, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict<br />
(CIVIC), played an important role in assisting IRD with<br />
one of its most high-profile beneficiaries, the young<br />
Marwa Naim.<br />
Much like Omar Mohammad Abas—and scores of<br />
other Iraqis—Marwa benefited from the commitment<br />
of her local community action group. Her father first<br />
learned of the civilian assistance program through<br />
his neighborhood group. Nearly destitute, he received<br />
a grant to open a small grocery store. As part of the<br />
monitoring process, IRD workers visited Naim regularly<br />
at his home. During one of these visits, someone<br />
from IRD asked about the shy girl who would always<br />
hide when visitors arrived. The girl was his daughter;<br />
she hid, Naim explained, because she was ashamed<br />
of her severe injuries. When coalition forces entered<br />
Baghdad in April 2003, an errant rocket struck the<br />
Naim home with the family huddled inside. Marwa’s<br />
mother was killed; Marwa, 9 years old at the time, was<br />
disfigured, losing part of her nose and her right thumb.<br />
Local doctors treated the injuries, but little else could<br />
be done to reconstruct her appearance. Sad and selfconscious,<br />
Marwa became withdrawn.<br />
After being told of Marwa’s situation, IRD staff began<br />
working on an assistance plan that started with a<br />
series of medical assessments and ended with Marwa<br />
being transported to the United States for reconstructive<br />
surgery. Working with two other nonprofits, the<br />
Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund and CIVIC, IRD<br />
located a surgical team at the UCLA Medical Center<br />
willing to perform the operations free of charge. In<br />
early 2006, doctors at UCLA reconstructed Marwa’s<br />
face in a series of surgeries conducted over four<br />
months. IRD also arranged for Iraqi foster families<br />
to host Marwa during her time in California. In 2009,<br />
Marwa returned to Los Angeles for a follow-up procedure.<br />
5 Her story garnered international attention for<br />
innocent civilian victims in need of help. In many of the<br />
<strong>communities</strong> where the ACV program was established,<br />
IRD and community action groups were the only ones<br />
offering social services and assistance during most<br />
violent period of the country’s insurgency.<br />
Through the initial ICAP period, the number of ACV<br />
beneficiaries soared to 770,000—a remarkable<br />
achievement for a total cost of $5.1 million. ACV<br />
continued to be a major part of ICAP’s ongoing work<br />
in Baghdad, and its impact grew even more. For<br />
example, more than 200 hospital and clinic renovations<br />
supported by ACV helped millions of Iraqi <strong>citizens</strong><br />
access more reliable healthcare.<br />
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
15
IRD placed a premium on diversity—<br />
not just gender diversity, but also a<br />
diversity of business and geography<br />
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
Small steps toward economic renewal<br />
Civilian assistance cases like Marwa’s were instrumental<br />
in creating community trust. But social infrastructure<br />
projects accounted for the bulk of IRD’s early<br />
work, totaling more than $31 million through ICAP’s<br />
first phase. These projects also generated the largest<br />
employment numbers, though ICAP’s business development<br />
program was designed specifically to target<br />
the need for jobs. The infrastructure and job components<br />
carried their own operational designs, but they<br />
clearly overlapped, which not only aided IRD’s efforts<br />
with ICAP but also served as a useful precursor to the<br />
even more integrated program design of CSP.<br />
IRD focused on job creation through small and<br />
medium enterprise development, such as giving<br />
private enterprise grants, forming cooperative societies,<br />
establishing market links, and extending technical<br />
assistance and business management training. Grants<br />
would range from a few hundred dollars to help supply<br />
a small shop to more than $100,000 to establish a<br />
new factory. Most grants, like the one Bakir Mohammed<br />
received, fell somewhere in between.<br />
Bakir, a livestock farmer in the rural but highly volatile<br />
Taji district of Baghdad, received a $24,000 grant<br />
in the form of cattle. He personally put up another<br />
$12,000 in facility rehabilitation costs to bring his<br />
farm up to standards and make it fully operational.<br />
Agriculture and livestock farms had always been<br />
primary contributors to Taji’s commercial engine, and,<br />
with this grant, Bakir was able to reestablish his farm<br />
as a local employer and as a sizable beef producer.<br />
Within a short time, Bakir hired a dozen workers,<br />
more than half women, and began producing enough<br />
meat products to meet the demand of nearly 15,000<br />
people.<br />
In working with community action groups to administer<br />
business development grants, IRD placed a premium<br />
on diversity. Not just gender diversity, though high<br />
value was given to ensuring equal opportunity for<br />
women, but also a diversity of business and geography.<br />
A slate of business opportunities was necessary<br />
to maximize employment generation. While staff took<br />
pride in helping an unskilled widow learn a trade and<br />
set up a small sewing business, larger agricultural,<br />
manufacturing, and service sector investments<br />
accounted for more than 80 percent of approved<br />
grants. Those grants provided the highest probability<br />
of large-scale economic renewal and, as a result, the<br />
greatest opportunity for community impact.<br />
For regional diversity, business grant opportunities<br />
were given throughout Baghdad. The total business<br />
development budget was spent disproportionately,<br />
the result of a variety of factors such as the dearth of<br />
viable entrepreneurs and different capacities between<br />
community action groups. The main issue, however,<br />
can be attributed to a lack of access due to insecure<br />
or nonpermissive working environments. This hurdle,<br />
unfortunately, was a common thread throughout all of<br />
IRD’s work in Iraq. While IRD tried to balance business<br />
development and spending as evenly as possible<br />
across Baghdad’s districts, the task proved difficult<br />
due to violence in some areas. Overall, IRD was able<br />
to maintain significant activity throughout the life of<br />
the program in all but two districts. Yet, even in those<br />
dangerous areas, community action groups functioned<br />
as intended, and the interrelated program components<br />
worked together to provide relief and support.<br />
Insecurity: Operational limitations in an<br />
unstable environment<br />
In the Ibn Zuhr neighborhood of the Mada’en district,<br />
IRD held a town hall meeting in May 2004 to form a<br />
community group. From that initial meeting, 19 local<br />
Iraqis were directly elected by their fellow <strong>citizens</strong> to<br />
represent the neighborhood. Working with the local<br />
16
Regarded as Iraq’s preeminent facility for<br />
the treatment of communicable diseases,<br />
the Ibn Zuhr Hospital was the country’s only<br />
hospital with specialized equipment and staff<br />
trained to treat patients with HIV or AIDS<br />
mobilizer, the group set about identifying and ranking<br />
needs to develop program proposals. They then<br />
worked with IRD to put together a realistic implementation<br />
plan for projects that the group could organize<br />
and fund through their own resources. The projects<br />
ranged from small neighborhood cleanups to work on<br />
a much larger scale, like the restoration of facilities<br />
at their renowned but war-damaged neighborhood<br />
hospital.<br />
Regarded as Iraq’s preeminent facility for the treatment<br />
of communicable diseases, the Ibn Zuhr Hospital<br />
was the country’s only hospital with specialized<br />
equipment and staff trained to treat patients with HIV<br />
or AIDS. During 2003, looters stole vital equipment,<br />
supplies, and drugs. They also started fires, smashed<br />
windows, and damaged equipment. After the looting,<br />
some hospital staff set out on their own to restore the<br />
facility’s capabilities by scrounging medical equipment<br />
from other Baghdad locations and, in some<br />
cases, purchasing supplies with their own money.<br />
The destruction of the hospital was a bitter blow to<br />
the community’s residents, who not only viewed the<br />
hospital’s work as a source of pride but also relied on<br />
the facility to provide emergency room services and<br />
primary healthcare. The Ibn Zuhr community group<br />
designated the restoration of the hospital, a vital<br />
piece of the community’s infrastructure, as its top<br />
priority.<br />
Group members met with hospital staff to determine<br />
the most urgent needs and worked with mobilizers to<br />
develop a proposal. ICAP provided the hospital with<br />
much needed equipment, such as diagnostic tools<br />
and machinery for sterilizing medical instruments. For<br />
the community contribution, the Ministry of Health<br />
provided the hospital with additional equipment and<br />
office furniture. At the same time, group members<br />
developed their own project to dovetail with the<br />
ICAP-backed project. Canvassing the neighborhood,<br />
members raised donations and signed volunteers to<br />
repaint rooms and make basic carpentry repairs. Using<br />
equipment donated from local businesses, volunteer<br />
electricians repaired the hospital’s damaged electrical<br />
system, not only restoring its functionality but also<br />
bringing the wiring up to international standards.<br />
The enterprising Ibn Zuhr community group, continuing<br />
its independent work, soon created its own NGO<br />
to provide assistance to the disabled. Relying solely<br />
on community donations, the newly formed NGO<br />
began providing clothing, wheelchairs, and medical<br />
care to hundreds of disabled children living in the<br />
Mada’en district. Members contacted IRD for ongoing<br />
guidance on projects and fundraising strategies,<br />
while mobilizers continued to provide capacity development<br />
support. “Those residents didn’t wait for<br />
someone from outside their community to tell them<br />
what they needed or how to proceed,” said Ernest<br />
Leonardo, the chief of party for ICAP. “They took the<br />
initiative to organize themselves and to get to work.<br />
This kind of grassroots activism is at the heart of<br />
civil society.”<br />
The Ibn Zuhr community group exemplified the positive<br />
outcomes that a program like ICAP, intended to<br />
reengage <strong>citizens</strong> through stronger civil society, can<br />
achieve. Just as impressive was the commitment<br />
of the Ibn Zuhr group to restoring order even as the<br />
larger societal fabric in the Mada’en district began<br />
to unravel. On April 20, 2005, less than a year after<br />
the formation of the Ibn Zuhr action group, 57 bodies<br />
were fished from the Tigris River downstream of<br />
Mada’en; residents said that hundreds more were in<br />
the water. Days before that discovery, insurgents had<br />
taken control of Mada’en district streets, and the local<br />
government reported 150 Shia men and women had<br />
been kidnapped. 6 The evidence pointed to a systematic<br />
killing believed to have taken place over several<br />
months, during the same time that Ibn Zuhr residents<br />
and IRD staff had been taking steps to rebuild the<br />
area’s civic pride and functionality.<br />
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
17
Whenever harm befell a community action<br />
group member, or a member of their own<br />
team, IRD staff would cope by banding<br />
together for encouragement and support<br />
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
Perseverance in the face of adversity<br />
IRD was not immune to violent incidents. Also in April<br />
2005, two community mobilizers were kidnapped<br />
as they left a scheduled community meeting in the<br />
Makasib neighborhood of the Rashid district. The IRD<br />
employees were held for 15 days and released after<br />
their families intervened. The evidence pointed to<br />
members of the community collaborating with the kidnappers.<br />
After the incident, IRD decided to terminate<br />
operations in the village and the surrounding area.<br />
While this incident came to a peaceful conclusion, this<br />
was not always the case. Musharaf Jabar Alwan, the<br />
Iraqi chairman of a community action group in Rashid,<br />
was executed along with his family “for working with<br />
the Americans,” according to local accounts. Altogether,<br />
seven community action group members were<br />
murdered for their involvement with community action<br />
groups and ICAP.<br />
As Iraq’s sectarian violence ramped up, the worsening<br />
security was a central concern for project management,<br />
which took a number of steps to try and ensure<br />
the safety of staff, participants, and beneficiaries.<br />
Security personnel were contracted and given<br />
ongoing training, and staff members were informed<br />
daily of security events throughout the city. When<br />
an area became too “hot” for project activity, work<br />
was stopped, and field staff were reassigned to less<br />
dangerous areas. Some of the numbers detail the<br />
danger:<br />
• 115 infrastructure projects worth $9.3 million were<br />
canceled for security reasons.<br />
• At least 40 employees resigned because of death<br />
threats.<br />
• Five employees were kidnapped: three were<br />
released, one was killed, and one was never<br />
found.<br />
• Five employees were killed outside work; four more<br />
died in work-related incidents.<br />
• While working on IRD projects, five contractors and<br />
six laborers were killed; seven IRD employees were<br />
shot or injured by shrapnel.<br />
Baghdad’s increasing violence cost the program in<br />
many ways. IRD spent $2.2 million for concrete blast<br />
walls, razor wire, security lighting, communications<br />
equipment, body armor, and guards and security<br />
coordination. Many times, offices had to be closed<br />
due to security concerns and curfews, with the longest<br />
closure lasting 23 days. Security closures cost an estimated<br />
$11,000 a day in salaries and other expenses.<br />
Aside from office shutdowns, individual staff members<br />
often had to take “security leave days” when circumstances<br />
prevented them from traveling to the office.<br />
During peaks in the violence, as much as 20 percent<br />
of labor was lost to curfews and security leave.<br />
Less quantifiable was the impact that fear and<br />
depression had on morale. Once, a mock improvised<br />
explosive device was placed adjacent to the IRD<br />
compound, an example of the intimidation directed at<br />
workers. Many staff were forced to move from their<br />
homes, sometimes in response to specific death<br />
threats. Nearly everyone lost a friend or relative to<br />
violence. Whenever harm befell a community action<br />
group member, or a member of their own team, IRD<br />
staff would cope by banding together for encouragement<br />
and support. In December 2005, Iqbal<br />
al‐Juboori’s house was attacked by militants, and they<br />
left with her brother, part of a mass kidnapping that<br />
day of men in her neighborhood. Dazed, shaken, and<br />
scared, she found herself walking directly to the IRD<br />
office, where she shared her ordeal with co workers.<br />
She was told to go home and rest, but she had no<br />
desire to do that: “I was already where I felt the<br />
safest—at work, with others.” Her brother was never<br />
found.<br />
18
Even with the insecurity and growing<br />
threats, significant reductions or<br />
elimination of operations in neighborhoods<br />
and districts were rare, and IRD<br />
remained committed to the project<br />
People had learned to trust us<br />
In 2006, the final year of ICAP’s initial program and the<br />
beginning of CSP, staff turnover exceeded 25 percent.<br />
The costs of recruiting, hiring, and training new workers,<br />
in addition to operating without a full staff, were high.<br />
During one two-month period, ICAP lost six of its seven<br />
monitoring and evaluation officers as well as its top<br />
three finance officers. Many staff members were called<br />
upon to help launch CSP, but the insecurity drove many<br />
others away. When CSP became operational, staff turnover<br />
and emotional distress became even larger issues.<br />
For one reason, CSP was nationwide, not just Baghdad,<br />
which, despite the insecurity, was still safer than many<br />
of the country’s other cities and provinces.<br />
IRD management continued to work to minimize risk by<br />
adjusting protocol and activities, and, despite protests<br />
from staff in some instances, canceling projects<br />
or ceasing operations in certain areas. When IRD<br />
stopped working in the Makasib region of the Rashid<br />
district after the staff kidnappings, more than a dozen<br />
home reconstruction projects had been completed and<br />
staff had to abandon a good working relationship with<br />
community members because one or two community<br />
members were conspiring with insurgents against IRD.<br />
Even with the insecurity and growing threats, significant<br />
reductions or elimination of operations in neighborhoods<br />
and districts were rare, and IRD remained<br />
committed to the project. “When I talk about that<br />
time, I compare IRD to the UN or Red Cross,” said<br />
Vigeen Dola, an Iraqi national who joined IRD as a<br />
monitoring and evaluation manager after CSP started<br />
up. Before that, he worked for the Red Cross while his<br />
wife was working with the UN. Both were stationed<br />
in Iraq. On August 19, 2003, Dola’s wife was at work<br />
when a suicide bomber drove a cement mixer into the<br />
side of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, killing 23,<br />
wounding more than 100, and collapsing three floors<br />
of the facility. 7 His wife was only wounded.<br />
Following the attack, the UN withdrew most of its<br />
Baghdad staff. After another attack in October left<br />
12 more workers dead, the UN pulled out of Baghdad<br />
completely. “The UN dropped everything and left,” Dola<br />
said. “They had no obvious activities in the conflictzone<br />
areas. They had activities in the peaceful areas,<br />
in the north. But people in these conflict zones didn’t<br />
even have drinking water; they didn’t have electricity.<br />
Two months later, the Red Cross was bombed, and<br />
they did the same thing; they pulled out. I was there,<br />
working with them. I was not only confused, but angry.”<br />
Iqbal al-Juboori, who had not yet joined IRD’s staff<br />
and was working for the UN, was among the 50 or so<br />
UN employees who remained in Baghdad after the<br />
first attack. All UN operations had been suspended,<br />
and she had to work from home, conducting business<br />
through email correspondence. Al-Juboori said she<br />
understood why the UN had to pull out: “It was not<br />
a light decision for them to withdraw from Baghdad.<br />
A lot of people had died.” However, like Dola, she<br />
said the UN needed to at least maintain some kind<br />
of public presence in Baghdad to send a message to<br />
the Iraqi people “as well as to those who intended<br />
to do them harm.” IRD, due in some combination to<br />
its size, flexibility, and organizational commitment,<br />
stuck around, even if it had to adjust operations.<br />
To local Iraqis and other aid professionals, such as<br />
Dola and al-Juboori, this commitment helped set IRD<br />
apart in the eyes of <strong>citizens</strong> who might be naturally<br />
disinclined to trust outsiders. “I joined IRD in 2005,<br />
and I’ve seen some really bad days,” al-Juboori said.<br />
“But whenever we encountered tragedy or trouble, IRD<br />
would become more fixed and determined, no matter<br />
what the obstacles or the challenges were. And there<br />
were great, great challenges. But people had learned<br />
to trust us.”<br />
IRD’s close working relationship with the community<br />
continued throughout the evolution of ICAP, which<br />
was extended and which not only ran concurrently<br />
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
19
Scheduled to wind down in 2012 after more<br />
than eight years, ICAP is USAID’s longest<br />
running development program in Iraq<br />
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
with CSP but also continued for years afterward<br />
as an even more robust mobilization and participatory<br />
program (box 3). Through its ICAP work, IRD<br />
had an established base of operations in Baghdad,<br />
which proved an important logistical springboard for<br />
Box 3<br />
The evolution of ICAP, USAID’s longest-running program in Iraq<br />
launching the much larger and complex CSP. More<br />
important, after three years of focused community<br />
interaction with civilians and local leaders, IRD had<br />
the credibility to take on a program as large and<br />
military-dependent as CSP.<br />
ICAP spanned the initial turbulence of postinvasion Iraq, the subsequent outbreak of sectarian violence and civil<br />
war, the flow of foreign insurgents, the US military surge, and the uncertain first steps of a new national government.<br />
But it originally was scheduled to end December 31, 2006. At the time, 68 projects worth roughly $2.5 million had<br />
not closed out, though some had ended operations. The others were near completion but had been prevented from<br />
closing out due to security problems. More than 90 percent of ICAP projects had been completed by the original<br />
close-out date, despite the surging violence.<br />
ICAP’s achievements, particularly the successful formation of community action groups (CAGs) and the groups’<br />
growing role in civil society, led USAID to extend the program, and IRD continued to play an important implementation<br />
role. USAID extended ICAP once, pushing its project total to more than 1,200 and the number of beneficiaries<br />
to more than 12 million. A second extension began in 2009 amid improving security conditions. Scheduled to wind<br />
down in 2012 after more than eight years, ICAP is USAID’s longest running development program in Iraq.<br />
With that eight-year record of bringing together <strong>citizens</strong> to identify their needs, mobilize resources, and lobby local<br />
government representatives, Baghdad’s community action groups grew into a lynchpin of IRD’s development legacy<br />
in Iraq. At the end of 2011, Baghdad had more than 120 CAGs with a total membership exceeding 1,800 Iraqi<br />
<strong>citizens</strong> across more than 100 residential <strong>communities</strong>. The organizational growth and development of the CAGs<br />
as a civil force is impressive. Since the original ICAP program began, the groups have evolved from committed but<br />
informal collectives to elected membership bodies that are governed by bylaws, hold regular public meetings, and<br />
abide by institutionalized processes that help give voice to millions of Iraqi <strong>citizens</strong>.<br />
“These groups are Iraq’s largest and most organized network of local change agents, from homemakers to professionals,”<br />
said ICAP Chief of Party Ernest Leonardo. “They understand local needs, and they advocate for those<br />
needs at the neighborhood and district government levels. In the process, they do more than provide a vital link<br />
between <strong>citizens</strong> and their government—they foster transparency, responsiveness, and, most critically, public<br />
confidence.”<br />
(continued)<br />
20
“<br />
Through ICAP, community groups have<br />
become a bellwether of democratic participation,<br />
giving everyday <strong>citizens</strong> an outlet to identify<br />
needs and the means to address them”<br />
—Ernest Leonardo<br />
CSP’s operational design incorporated many elements<br />
of ICAP, but, as a straight stabilization mission, it<br />
was fundamentally different. It was shaped by the<br />
near total collapse of Iraq’s internal political and<br />
social infrastructure and the ensuing breakdown in<br />
Box 3<br />
The evolution of ICAP, USAID’s longest-running program in Iraq (continued)<br />
security—the same elements that threatened ICAP<br />
and other relief and development programs. But unlike<br />
traditional relief programs, normally divided among a<br />
group of implementers, CSP was given only to IRD to<br />
manage and run.<br />
The community action groups, which remain at the core of the ICAP design, were able to change because the overall<br />
program mission changed. In the early days, with <strong>communities</strong> facing a critical lack of basic services, ICAP focused<br />
on quick-impact projects designed to stave off a range of impending crises, from outbreaks of cholera to widespread<br />
truancy. Thanks to the continuing dedication of group members, the CAGs moved from stop-gap measures and toward<br />
the kind of robust, participatory planning processes that create sustainable bonds between <strong>citizens</strong> and their leaders.<br />
1<br />
Building community trust<br />
By the end of 2011, all community action groups had completed comprehensive community action plans to inform<br />
long-term district development strategies for Baghdad’s 15 governmental districts. At week-long planning workshops,<br />
under IRD’s guidance, group members worked with government officials at the neighborhood, district, and<br />
province levels to outline long-term, districtwide strategies for improving basic services and livelihoods, especially<br />
for women, youths, and the internally displaced. By the end of its program date, ICAP was expected to shepherd<br />
more than 600 projects identified in the official action plans through completion.<br />
ICAP’s broader agenda not only sharpened the mission of community groups, it fostered more diverse program successes,<br />
including better assistance outreach for Baghdad’s internally displaced population, and enhanced measures<br />
to reach the estimated 5 million Iraqis who had Internet access by mid-2011. IRD worked with all 15 district<br />
councils to build dynamic websites featuring useful information on government services and contact details and<br />
spearheaded technology and skills training for information technology specialists from each council. And as part of<br />
a very inventive and groundbreaking “donor marketplace,” representatives from more than 20 international funding<br />
agencies—including the UN, the International Organization for Migration, the US Institute for Peace, and groups<br />
from Japan, the Republic of Korea, and northern Europe—gathered with community action group members to discuss<br />
funding priorities and local community needs. The ICAP-sponsored event was the first time donors had the opportunity<br />
to engage directly with community leaders around a locally owned plan for social and economic development.<br />
“Through ICAP, community groups have become a bellwether of democratic participation, giving everyday <strong>citizens</strong> an<br />
outlet to identify needs and the means to address them,” said Leonardo. “Their efforts, despite violence and limited<br />
resources, have helped make responsive, bottom-up planning a respected and acceptable practice in Baghdad.”<br />
21
2<br />
A complete stabilization package<br />
of programmatic and military integration<br />
A CSP soccer league holds its grand opening ceremony
“That dramatic difference that life was getting better, it all had<br />
to do with CSP. Neighborhoods were being cleaned up, soccer<br />
leagues were starting, and businesses were opening. It wasn’t<br />
all done by the military. The partnership with CSP made all<br />
these things possible.”<br />
— Andrew Wilson<br />
In his influential work, political scientist John Kingdon<br />
explored the “sources of initiative” that create unique<br />
opportunities for change, either incremental or radical,<br />
in the sociopolitical sphere. These “policy windows”<br />
present themselves when internal and external government<br />
forces come into temporary alignment. “Despite<br />
their rarity,” Kingdon said, “major changes in public<br />
policy result from the appearance of these opportunities.”<br />
To stakeholder participants, action is often<br />
imminent when an issue “is really getting hot.”<br />
By November 2005, as violence worsened in Iraq, the<br />
direction of US policy in the country had gotten very<br />
hot. The US Senate voted overwhelmingly to require<br />
that the White House submit quarterly, unclassified<br />
reports to Congress on the war’s progress and, in a<br />
rare show of bipartisanship, agreed that Iraqi forces<br />
should begin to assume the lead in the war effort in<br />
2006, calling for a “campaign plan” that would outline<br />
the phased withdrawal of troops. In the House, Pennsylvania<br />
Rep. Jack Murtha, a well-known ex-Marine<br />
who had supported the war, issued a public call for<br />
the immediate withdrawal of US troops.<br />
“The war in Iraq is not going as advertised,” he said.<br />
“It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American<br />
public is way ahead of us.” Murtha was referring to<br />
public opinion, which had moved solidly against the<br />
war. A Newsweek survey released the same month<br />
showed support for the administration’s handling<br />
of Iraq had reversed since May 2003. “We cannot<br />
continue on the present course,” Murtha said.<br />
In late November, The Economist declared this time<br />
America’s “most bitter period of debate over the Iraq<br />
war so far.” The policy window was wide open.<br />
CSP origins: A new approach for<br />
international development<br />
On November 30, 2005, President George W. Bush<br />
unveiled the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, a<br />
38-page plan outlining an endgame for the American<br />
military and an exit strategy intended to minimize<br />
further destabilization. The integrated strategy of the<br />
plan focused on a “security track” for neutralizing the<br />
insurgency, a “political track” for building democratic<br />
governance, and an “economic track” for creating a<br />
“sound and self-sustaining economy.” The strategic<br />
objectives underlying each track consisted of missions<br />
and tasks assigned to both military and civilian units.<br />
Although many had contributed to the document, The<br />
New York Times noted the strategy “strongly reflected<br />
23
As planning for CSP unfolded, the security<br />
situation in Iraq worsened, including the<br />
deadly bombing of the al-Askari Mosque<br />
in Samarra in February 2006. USAID<br />
had to move quickly, and it needed an<br />
experienced implementation partner<br />
2<br />
A complete stabilization package<br />
a new voice in the administration, Peter D. Feaver,” a<br />
special adviser to the National Security Council and a<br />
political scientist who had studied and written extensively<br />
on civilian-military relations. The US government<br />
recognized its objectives could not be accomplished<br />
through security interventions alone.<br />
Shortly thereafter, USAID released its Iraq Transition<br />
Strategy Plan (2006–08), which outlined three objectives<br />
in support of the administration’s security-political-economic<br />
delineation. The first of these objectives<br />
called for the “stabilization of strategic cities and the<br />
improvement of local <strong>governments</strong>’ ability to provide<br />
services” through short- and long-term job creation<br />
programs and through close working association with<br />
provincial councils. “Linking stability with development<br />
will reduce incentives for violence and integrate<br />
key cities into longer term development initiatives,”<br />
the plan stated. Out of this strategy, CSP was born<br />
(box 4).<br />
From the beginning, CSP differed from most international<br />
development programs and particularly from<br />
USAID programs. The scope of work said that: “Rather<br />
than focusing on traditional long-term sustainable<br />
development, CSP is a short-term COIN program”<br />
with a concentration on “employing or engaging mass<br />
numbers of at-risk, unemployed males.” Designed to<br />
be run “in close coordination with the [US] military,<br />
provincial reconstruction teams, and with local civilian<br />
counterparts,” CSP brought into one program the US<br />
government’s most comprehensive postwar strategy<br />
plan to date, as well as the military’s emerging<br />
outlook on civ-mil partnerships for carrying out COIN<br />
strategies.<br />
In January 2007, the president announced the<br />
stabilization plan during an internationally televised<br />
address, detailing how the embedded PRTs would<br />
place development experts inside brigade combat<br />
teams, the “civilian surge” to accompany the military<br />
surge of 20,000 troops. Initially, there was a struggle<br />
within the administration as to which department or<br />
agency would take the lead in civilian-led stabilization<br />
and reconstruction. Should it be housed at the<br />
Pentagon? Implementation cells could be placed<br />
within the combatant command responsible for Iraq,<br />
but concern was expressed over how much flexibility<br />
the civilian workers would have. Should it be housed<br />
at the State Department? At the time, the department<br />
did not have any scalable programmatic capability for<br />
stabilization—the Civilian Response Corps was still a<br />
few years away. But some high-ranking State Department<br />
officials pushed for it, arguing that the department<br />
was already overseeing democracy building and<br />
programs for internally displaced persons, and that<br />
those programs could be transitioned into stabilization<br />
activities.<br />
USAID, without a Cabinet-level voice, lacked the influence<br />
of other departments, but its mission practices<br />
offered an obvious alignment with CSP’s programming<br />
requirements. Not everyone in the administration<br />
agreed, of course. But after prolonged discussion,<br />
administration officials decided to house the program<br />
at USAID. “The reconstruction activities that were put<br />
forward for USAID to implement focused on the areas<br />
where the government believed it could get the best<br />
goodwill from Iraqi <strong>citizens</strong>, the best places where<br />
we could engage Iraqis in a constructive manner so<br />
they’re not taking up arms,” explained a senior IRD<br />
official.<br />
In the context of government decisionmaking, CSP<br />
was moving forward rapidly, despite the jockeying for<br />
oversight. Momentum for focused stabilization had<br />
been building, but as early planning for CSP unfolded,<br />
the security situation in Iraq worsened. The al-Askari<br />
Mosque bombing in Samarra in February 2006 led to<br />
an estimated 1,300 deaths, ignited ethnic tensions,<br />
and plunged Iraq into a spiral of violence. USAID had<br />
to move quickly, and it needed an implementation<br />
24
IRD oversaw CSP operations in 15 cities<br />
nationwide, reaching millions of Iraqis<br />
through employment, training, business<br />
development, and youth projects<br />
Box 4<br />
CSP: At a glance<br />
2<br />
Awarded to IRD by USAID in 2006, CSP grew into a $644 million delivery mechanism for quick-impact projects, a<br />
“nonlethal, counterinsurgency program that reduces the incentives for participation in violent conflict by employing<br />
or engaging at risk youth between the ages of 17 and 35,” according to the contract’s scope of work. In short, CSP<br />
was designed to address the root cause of the insurgency through a four-pronged strategy that focused on:<br />
• Assisting the government of Iraq at all levels in fulfilling its duties, thus improving <strong>citizens</strong>’ perceptions of government<br />
efficacy and legitimacy.<br />
• Mitigating the major economic factors contributing to the insurgency.<br />
• Stimulating preconditions for economic stability.<br />
• Facilitating constructive dialogue and peaceful interactions through civic education and community-oriented<br />
activities.<br />
A complete stabilization package<br />
To implement this strategy, IRD focused on activities intended to create jobs and rebuild relationships among young<br />
Iraqis from different ethnic backgrounds. Projects were closely coordinated with the military and local PRTs. In<br />
addition, CSP staff, the vast<br />
majority native Iraqis, collaborated<br />
with local and ministry<br />
CSP operations by city<br />
Kirkuk<br />
Nov 06–Mar 09<br />
officials as part of a larger effort<br />
Mosul/Tal Afar<br />
to legitimize the government<br />
Nov 06–Sep 09<br />
and establish lines of trust and<br />
Beiji<br />
Feb 08–Jun 09<br />
communication between leaders<br />
Haditha<br />
Tikrit<br />
Oct 07–Jan 09<br />
Feb 08–Jun 09<br />
and <strong>citizens</strong>. This community<br />
Samarra<br />
interaction played a critical role<br />
Feb 08–Jun 09<br />
Al Qaim<br />
Nov 06–Jan 09<br />
in building CSP. The years IRD<br />
Baquba<br />
Jul 07–Sep 09<br />
had spent cultivating relationships<br />
at the grassroots through<br />
Baghdad<br />
Hit<br />
Oct 07–Jan 09<br />
May 06–Jun 09<br />
ICAP allowed it to leverage its<br />
Babil<br />
Ramadi<br />
Jan 08–Mar 09<br />
resources and local standing<br />
Nov 06–Mar 09<br />
into a quick start in Baghdad,<br />
Habbaniyah<br />
Oct 07–Jan 09<br />
enabling a nationwide rollout of<br />
CSP within six months.<br />
Fallujah<br />
Nov 06–Mar 09<br />
Basra<br />
Nov 06–Jul 09<br />
Altogether, IRD oversaw CSP<br />
operations in 15 cities nationwide,<br />
reaching millions of Iraqis<br />
through employment, training, business development, and youth projects. Although IRD used the same program<br />
design in each of the cities, the funding and length of engagement varied widely based on a number of factors,<br />
primarily local need and level of local security.<br />
25
“<br />
There were no similar programs. CSP<br />
was historic from the first day. The scale,<br />
the ability, the necessity to work with<br />
the military in a kinetic environment”<br />
—Dar Warmke<br />
2<br />
A complete stabilization package<br />
partner with experience doing this kind of work and a<br />
host of other criteria as well, including a willingness<br />
to work with the military, rapid-start capability, and<br />
flexibility to manage a project that was expected to<br />
grow significantly over its life. On May 29, 2006, it<br />
chose IRD.<br />
USAID looked specifically at two key IRD credentials—<br />
its successful operation of ICAP in Baghdad, where<br />
CSP would be headquartered and where IRD already<br />
had established relationships with local councils<br />
and community leaders; and IRD’s work in Serbia<br />
and Montenegro under the CRDA program. However,<br />
Serbia and Montenegro were not the same as Iraq.<br />
The mission was not remotely on the same scale, and<br />
it was not the same model. IRD’s work in the Balkans<br />
took place in a postwar setting. Iraq, by contrast, was<br />
in full insurrection, and IRD was to work alongside the<br />
US military to provide relief and to help mitigate the<br />
conflict itself.<br />
“There were no similar programs,” said Dar Warmke,<br />
who ran CSP operations for IRD in Basra and, later,<br />
Mosul. “CSP was historic from the first day. The<br />
scale, the ability, the necessity to work with the military<br />
in a kinetic environment. . . . I worked through<br />
the whole Bosnian war, with another organization,<br />
but we were not trying to do stability work at the<br />
same time. There was no clear and hold.” CSP was<br />
unprecedented in its design, and the result was a<br />
stabilization program widely credited by military and<br />
diplomatic leaders for meeting its primary goals—<br />
creating jobs and helping make some of Iraq’s most<br />
devastated <strong>communities</strong> safer. It also stretched<br />
IRD’s capacity, wound down in controversy, and left<br />
many of the organization’s staff simultaneously<br />
praising it for its successes and criticizing it for its<br />
missteps. Ultimately, it offered a blueprint for civilian<br />
participation in COIN operations, and a case study of<br />
the complexities inherent in assisting the military and<br />
militarizing assistance.<br />
Breaking down CSP’s design<br />
As CSP was being designed, a consensus emerged<br />
that high unemployment contributed to <strong>citizens</strong>’<br />
negative perception of local and national government<br />
capacity. CSP focused primarily on males ages<br />
17–35 years because that group made up the highest<br />
percentage of the unemployed, marginalized, and<br />
disaffected and because they were most vulnerable to<br />
joining insurgent groups. By reaching the most-at-risk<br />
members of the population, CSP reasoned, violence<br />
would be mitigated.<br />
“At the end of the day,” said Michele Lemmon, an IRD<br />
senior program officer, “it was all about one thing:<br />
jobs, jobs, jobs. It wasn’t to do charity work, and it<br />
wasn’t to give handouts. It was to help people get<br />
back to what they were doing before.” Jessica Cho,<br />
an IRD field program coordinator, conducted a series<br />
of postprogram interviews with CSP beneficiaries and<br />
local staff. Cho said one of the clearest takeaways<br />
was a basic sense of appreciation for the “number<br />
of jobs that were created in some of these circumstances.”<br />
In most cities, Cho said, CSP was “truly<br />
successful in combining nonskill public works projects<br />
with rehabilitation of basic infrastructure, then using<br />
those successes to promote businesses development<br />
and vocational training. Together, it all led to longer<br />
term jobs and to some sense of stability.”<br />
CSP’s four core programmatic components—infrastructure<br />
and services, vocational training, business<br />
development, and youth engagement—closely<br />
resembled traditional development strategy. Yet the<br />
underlying goal in three of the four areas was that<br />
employment generation intended to:<br />
• Create short-term (fewer than 90 days) jobs through<br />
community infrastructure and essential services<br />
projects,such as rehabilitation of schools, streets,<br />
health clinics, public gardens, soccer fields,<br />
26
“<br />
At the end of the day, it was all about one<br />
thing: jobs, jobs, jobs. It was to help people<br />
get back to what they were doing before”<br />
—Michele Lemmon<br />
sewage and drainage canals, and water treatment<br />
plants for safe drinking water. These projects<br />
were the fastest to get off the ground and showed<br />
the quickest results, and they included the trash<br />
cleanup campaigns that were a hallmark of the<br />
early part of the program. Internally, this component<br />
was known as CIES.<br />
• Generate long-term (more than three months) jobs<br />
by establishing vocational training and employment<br />
service centers,particularly for young and<br />
unemployed Iraqi males. Other groups considered<br />
high risk for recruitment into insurgency, such as<br />
widowed women, were also targeted. Training was<br />
given for construction and nonconstruction trades,<br />
as well as in courses such as sewing and cosmetology<br />
intended to bring in women. Apprenticeships<br />
and follow-up employment assistance services<br />
were also offered.<br />
• Encourage business development and local ownership<br />
through management training courses and<br />
grants to new or current businesses in agriculture,<br />
industry, manufacturing, and trade services. These<br />
business development grants, which ranged from<br />
$500 to $100,000 and were in the form of equipment<br />
and materials, were based on the potential<br />
for job creation, higher incomes, positive impact<br />
on the community, and the grantee’s own contribution.<br />
Some of the most visible examples of these<br />
grants are the hundreds of shops that were rebuilt<br />
after being destroyed or damaged in violent market<br />
attacks.<br />
• Mitigate conflict by engaging Iraqis socially and<br />
culturally.Young men (and to a lesser extent<br />
women) were the intended targets, but IRD aimed<br />
higher, hoping its activities would also contribute to<br />
bringing together <strong>citizens</strong> from different religious,<br />
ethnic, and political backgrounds. In coordination<br />
with local community leaders and civic groups, IRD<br />
sponsored community programs, such as athletic<br />
events, art programs, computer training, and<br />
healthy living courses.<br />
Successful implementation depended on the ability<br />
of IRD’s program team to work with the provincial<br />
councils, neighborhood advisory councils, and district<br />
advisory councils to establish component-specific<br />
strategies. Although the partners varied between<br />
cities, CSP consistently worked through all levels of<br />
local government leaders to identify and implement<br />
projects. The councils were formed after the Coalition<br />
Provisional Authority took over administration of the<br />
Iraqi government, and they served as a primary governing<br />
body in many localities before eventually becoming<br />
part of the provincial government.<br />
A balance between military strategy and community need<br />
Although many IRD staff recalled extreme challenges<br />
while working with council members, including personal<br />
threats and bribe requests, the councils were necessary<br />
to the implementation process, especially during<br />
the first year. “CSP didn’t select the projects,” said<br />
Awni Quandour, who left ICAP to become a transitional<br />
chief of party for CSP. “They were strictly the choice of<br />
council members.” Quandour made regular visits to city<br />
officials in Baghdad to try and overcome one of the program’s<br />
earliest challenges—the city’s deep religious<br />
divides. Projects in Sunni neighborhoods still had to<br />
get approval from the Shia council members, and vice<br />
versa. “CSP tried to be as fair as possible,” Quandour<br />
said, but in some cases “it wasn’t fair; it was politics.”<br />
Because of the pressure IRD applied on local leaders<br />
to ensure the program moved forward, Quandour said<br />
they were able to proceed without alienating Sunni or<br />
Shia neighborhoods.<br />
“IRD always talks about its focus on communitybased,<br />
or community-led, development work, and I<br />
think that’s where it made the big difference,” said<br />
2<br />
A complete stabilization package<br />
27
the most successful projects were those<br />
in which there was tight community<br />
and national coordination between<br />
the different program components<br />
2<br />
A complete stabilization package<br />
Andrew Wilson, an IRD senior program officer. Wilson<br />
worked with CSP in Iraq as a civil affairs captain in<br />
the US Army, attached to several battalions working<br />
throughout Ramadi in 2006 and 2007. He said he saw<br />
firsthand the value of IRD’s experience in navigating<br />
local political structures and its connection with the<br />
grassroots. “You know in the military, we just went out<br />
there and made it happen. We’d go in and say, ‘Hey,<br />
who’s the elder?’ And some guy would raise his hand,<br />
and we’d tell him, ‘Okay, we’re gonna clean up these<br />
streets and now you’re in charge of this, and you<br />
need to tell us who’s who and what’s what.’ We were<br />
empowering whoever would stand up and raise his<br />
hand. CSP really took that to the next level, because<br />
IRD had experience working with the government,<br />
working with the mayors, or the different ministries.”<br />
In general, CSP strategies were passed down from<br />
provincial ministries to the directorate level, and the<br />
directorates for a specific city would then submit<br />
proposals. Working closely with local councils, PRTs,<br />
and the military, IRD would establish a general planning<br />
process for project work. Once that process was<br />
determined, each CSP program component worked<br />
with local partners specific to the city and setting<br />
(box 5):<br />
• Infrastructure projects were tendered competitively<br />
and awarded and implemented in coordination with<br />
the municipal <strong>governments</strong> in areas like park and<br />
recreational facility rehabilitation.<br />
• The CSP employment generation staff worked with<br />
councils, community groups, and local leaders<br />
to recruit students for vocational training and<br />
apprenticeships.<br />
Wilson said IRD linked CSP projects to military strategy<br />
and community needs, which helped “close the<br />
gap” between the objectives of the military and those<br />
of local populations. “Through CSP, IRD put an Iraqi<br />
face on [stabilization],” he said. “They started doing<br />
some of the soccer leagues and vocational training—<br />
things the military didn’t have expertise in. IRD made<br />
it hum, but the local people owned it.”<br />
The complete package: Programmatic and<br />
military integration<br />
Operationally, CSP comprised four distinct program<br />
areas, but IRD strove to provide a complete package<br />
of services that optimized the overlaps. For example,<br />
irrigation and canal restoration projects were<br />
undertaken in regions where residents could build<br />
greenhouses to grow and market fresh produce<br />
locally. “Economic zones” were identified so that<br />
roads and market areas could be rehabilitated for CSP<br />
grantees to open new businesses. A final analysis of<br />
CSP program data showed that the most successful<br />
projects were those in which there was tight community<br />
and national coordination between the different<br />
program components.<br />
28<br />
• The business development team distributed grant<br />
applications through the district and neighborhood<br />
councils. Applicants were then chosen by a committee<br />
of business development program staff.<br />
• Youth activities were coordinated through local<br />
sports clubs and the Directorate of Youth. In cities<br />
where the directorate was not fully functional, IRD<br />
partnered with local NGOs.<br />
“The first strategy was to get out there and employ<br />
people,” said Travis Gartner, IRD’s deputy chief of<br />
party for program operations with CSP. “From there,<br />
we could begin building on other components, such<br />
as talking about needs in other areas. Once the<br />
streets were cleaned, we started an infusion of cash<br />
to stimulate local economy. Then we looked at a small<br />
grants program, moving from a quick fix to engaging<br />
people on a medium term. We started looking for ways
Given the volatile sociopolitical<br />
environment CSP operated in, a planning<br />
process that included all relevant local<br />
leaders and officials was crucial<br />
Box 5<br />
CSP: Project development process<br />
2<br />
Given the volatile sociopolitical environment CSP operated in, a planning process that included all relevant local<br />
leaders and officials was crucial for expediting project work, demonstrating transparency, and promoting fairness.<br />
CSP activities varied from city to city; and even within cities, the development process would vary. Staff and senior<br />
leadership strove for as much consistency as possible, and all projects relied in some way on collaborative efforts<br />
with different stakeholders. CSP in Baghdad followed this basic development process for community infrastructure<br />
and essential service projects.<br />
Hold introductory meeting<br />
with provincial council and<br />
district and neighborhood<br />
advisory councils. Agree<br />
upon initial project ideas.<br />
Project<br />
idea<br />
Send project idea to<br />
Amanat, the local<br />
overseer of public<br />
works projects<br />
Send project idea<br />
to appropriate<br />
government ministry<br />
for approval and<br />
coordination<br />
A complete stabilization package<br />
Send scope of<br />
work to Amanat<br />
for approval<br />
Submit scope of<br />
work to appropriate<br />
government ministry<br />
for approval and<br />
coordination<br />
Develop scope<br />
of work with<br />
directorate general<br />
Send project idea to<br />
directorate general<br />
for approval<br />
Conduct technical<br />
review of project<br />
idea<br />
Complete project<br />
proposal packet<br />
Begin<br />
provincial<br />
program<br />
process<br />
Project<br />
implementation<br />
Tendering, contracting,<br />
performance, monitoring,<br />
completion, and handover<br />
to take cash-for-work laborers and move them into<br />
training programs and sports activities like soccer. We<br />
were looking for other means of engaging people and<br />
bringing them together, so we could talk to them about<br />
their needs and what they felt was really important.”<br />
This is our way forward<br />
Once the site of youth sports competitions, Tameem<br />
Quarter Soccer Field in Ramadi had become a dump.<br />
Garbage trucks couldn’t get to it because the town’s<br />
narrow streets were controlled by insurgents and<br />
littered with debris and improvised explosive devices<br />
(IEDs). Tameem Quarter’s field was just one example<br />
of how city services—and civil society in general—had<br />
collapsed in Ramadi by 2006. Homes and shops, from<br />
bakeries to clothing stores to kebab stands, were<br />
abandoned. Empty or shelled-out buildings lined desolate<br />
streets. “I remember projects that CSP conducted<br />
in our area, youth sports and the like,” Wilson said.<br />
“In part of Ramadi, they cleaned out whole areas of<br />
neighborhoods. That place was like Stalingrad. Every<br />
street you went down, every first row of homes was<br />
destroyed, blown up, almost in rubble. The streets<br />
29
“<br />
You are the future of Ramadi. You should<br />
never forget what you have seen and what we<br />
have been through. This is our way forward”<br />
—Latif Obaid Ayadah<br />
2<br />
A complete stabilization package<br />
had hundreds of IEDs, there were attacks happening,<br />
sometimes multiple times per day.”<br />
But by summer 2007, almost a year after what is often<br />
referred to as the Second Battle of Ramadi, the landscape<br />
began to change. Many shops had reopened<br />
and kebab stands were again filled with customers.<br />
And the Tameem Quarter Soccer Field, refurbished<br />
and reopened, was the site of the Tameem Championship,<br />
a citywide tournament. Before the final match<br />
between Tameem Quarter and the Qadasiyah neighborhood<br />
teams got under way, Ramadi Mayor Latif<br />
Obaid Ayadah walked across the new field and greeted<br />
the players. He shook hands with the young Iraqi men<br />
and congratulated them for making it to the finals and<br />
for helping restore normalcy. The event, and its community<br />
support, was “crucial in winning back the city,”<br />
he said. “You are the future of Ramadi,” he told the<br />
gathered players—and spectators. “You should never<br />
forget what you have seen and what we have been<br />
through. This is our way forward.” CSP sponsored<br />
many similar youth programs, holding sports events<br />
and tournaments in areas once deemed hot zones.<br />
But the Tameem tournament is illustrative of just how<br />
fundamental the element of integration was to CSP’s<br />
success: integrated programmatic components and<br />
integrated activities with the military.<br />
Capturing project progressions and linkages<br />
Four months before the tournament in Tameem<br />
Quarter, a cleanup campaign jointly organized by<br />
US military civil affairs teams and CSP removed<br />
the garbage, junk cars, debris, and other trash that<br />
blocked the streets and prevented kids from getting to<br />
the field. Through that community infrastructure and<br />
essential services project, IRD employed hundreds of<br />
local young men, many of whom were then organized<br />
into neighborhood soccer teams—with help from<br />
community leaders, sports union members, and local<br />
teachers—as part of CSP’s youth activities program.<br />
IRD provided the teams with equipment and uniforms<br />
and organized a series of games on local fields<br />
restored by CSP cleanup initiatives. The Tameem<br />
championship game was the culmination of more than<br />
a month of separate but interrelated projects that<br />
began with hiring temporary workers but ended with<br />
an organized public event that packed in local <strong>citizens</strong>,<br />
including the targeted young male demographic. Organizing<br />
and supporting similar programs in areas that<br />
had been cleaned up and secured, Mayor Ayadah said,<br />
was “the key to preventing insurgents from making<br />
their way back into the community.”<br />
This event was one of hundreds demonstrating how<br />
effective well-planned project links could be. In Mosul,<br />
two Olympic-size pools, restored as a CIES project,<br />
were soon crowded with kids and young adults taking<br />
part in swim meets or swimming lessons—activities<br />
planned and organized by the employment generation<br />
and youth unit. Similarly, CIES rehabilitated hospitals<br />
while the employment generation and youth unit would<br />
provide on-site emergency response and first-aid<br />
training. In Baghdad, newly constructed computer<br />
training centers hosted vocational training classes<br />
that consistently operated at full capacity. In Kirkuk,<br />
a major irrigation canal restoration project allowed<br />
struggling farmers to receive funds through the business<br />
development grants program. And with such a<br />
large number of youth employed on the canal project,<br />
IRD took the opportunity to promote Kirkuk’s Hawija<br />
Medina Soccer Championship, which drew more than<br />
2,500 spectators and participants.<br />
The final independent evaluation commissioned by<br />
USAID found that all four CSP components “were<br />
effective to varying degrees” but that intra-CSP<br />
coordination and “integration with other programs”<br />
was “notable in [its] impacting effectiveness.” Each<br />
program component had specific objectives, but by<br />
closely integrating project work across as many components<br />
as possible, IRD ensured its activities were<br />
30
A typical market project would begin with<br />
an intensive cleaning campaign followed<br />
by rehabilitation work to rebuild roads<br />
and infrastructure that had either been<br />
destroyed or fallen into disrepair<br />
mutually reinforcing, which enhanced the likelihood of<br />
a project’s lasting impact.<br />
Another consideration for IRD was the need to capture<br />
the progression and links between the various shortand<br />
long-term initiatives, so that the shift from service<br />
provision (such as debris removal) to economic<br />
development would not be abrupt and, ideally, would<br />
play out in a linear fashion, a chain of events that<br />
would reflect increasing stabilization. Another way to<br />
describe the complete package would be as a selfsustaining<br />
cycle (figure 1).<br />
CSP in full: Ramadi and the 17th Street market<br />
A typical market project would begin with an intensive<br />
cleaning campaign followed by rehabilitation work to<br />
rebuild roads and infrastructure that had either been<br />
destroyed or fallen into disrepair. Grants would then be<br />
awarded to help businesses in the revitalized market<br />
increase their stock and services to boost sales and<br />
generate new jobs. Such rehabilitations were not possible<br />
without secure neighborhoods, and perhaps no city<br />
in Iraq embodied the need for a joint civ-mil partnership<br />
more than Ramadi. The dramatic turnaround began in<br />
mid-2006, during the Sunni Awakening and the military’s<br />
subsequent push to win the city back from insurgents.<br />
“In 2006, Ramadi had been written off by the military,”<br />
said Gartner, the CSP deputy chief of party. “The<br />
level of destruction was huge. By that time, insurgents<br />
were parading openly up and down 17th Street, the<br />
main street though the city. They were on TV with their<br />
weapons announcing, ‘We own the city.’ So when the<br />
Marines cleared that, the insurgents just destroyed<br />
everything in their way. It was a hardcore battle.” Prior<br />
to 2003, 17th Street had been one of the city’s main<br />
commercial arteries. But the urban warfare, which<br />
had damaged shops and caused shop owners and<br />
residents alike to flee, transformed the corridor from<br />
a lively district into a wasteland. Before the military<br />
campaign to win back the area began, terrorists put up<br />
roadblocks and lined vacant buildings with explosives.<br />
After the military had regained control, there was not<br />
much to control other than the land.<br />
The military split the city into different zones, and<br />
within each zone a company or platoon of Marines<br />
2<br />
A complete stabilization package<br />
Figure 1<br />
Self-sustaining project work cycle<br />
CIES-funded public works<br />
projects boosted short-term<br />
employment and rehabilitated basic<br />
infrastructure (such as streets and<br />
markets), which allowed for . . .<br />
Development grants to help<br />
businesses in the revitalized<br />
areas rebuild economically,<br />
which boosted the need for . . .<br />
Apprenticeship and job placement<br />
services that linked reemerging<br />
businesses and contractors to newly<br />
skilled labor hires, many of whom started<br />
out on CIES-funded works projects.<br />
Vocational training to help young people<br />
acquire the technical and business<br />
skills to find permanent or long-term<br />
employment, which could be secured<br />
through . . .<br />
31
“[Colonel John Charlton] was the first<br />
person who bought into what CSP was<br />
intended to do. And that has to be stressed,<br />
that the military must buy into it”<br />
—Travis Gartner<br />
2<br />
A complete stabilization package<br />
would set up a smaller area of operations with a joint<br />
security station. The area could be as small as five<br />
city blocks, its total coverage often dictated by the<br />
military presence needed to clear and hold it. “The<br />
military’s idea was that you’d take over an abandoned<br />
house or compound, turn it into your safe house,<br />
secure it, and then start doing missions,” Wilson said.<br />
“But we also had to build relationships with the local<br />
leaders. We prioritized different quick-reaction projects,<br />
stabilization, COIN-type spending. We did a lot of<br />
that in the early days, like the trash cleanup. But you<br />
know, right after fighting, we didn’t have the capacity<br />
to do it on the right level, or with a local face. We filled<br />
the gap until a better option came along. That’s when<br />
CSP came into the mix.”<br />
By November 2006, the Marines had seized a multistory,<br />
dilapidated building at a key vantage point in<br />
Ramadi. Dubbed the 17th Street Security Station, the<br />
building became a critical outpost for US and Iraqi security<br />
forces. With an operational security base established<br />
for the military to hold the surrounding area,<br />
the exact window of opportunity CSP was designed for<br />
opened up. The CSP team and local Iraqi leaders came<br />
together to implement a joint revitalization project to<br />
clean streets, reconstruct buildings, and repair sewage<br />
and electrical lines. The $2.1 million infrastructure<br />
project filled holes in the road and repaved sidewalks. It<br />
created hundreds of local construction jobs. While that<br />
was ongoing, IRD moved quickly to award more than 60<br />
business grants to local entrepreneurs to encourage<br />
investment in the rebuilt market and create longer term<br />
employment. “CSP was looked at by the military as a<br />
great partner,” Wilson said, “because they were willing<br />
to take risks and make things happen. If they had<br />
slowed down and said, ‘Hey we can’t do this because of<br />
X, Y, and Z,’ I don’t think you would’ve seen the drastic<br />
turnaround you saw in Ramadi.”<br />
Colonel John Charlton, commander of the 1st Brigade<br />
of the 3rd Infantry Division, headquartered in Ramadi,<br />
was a vocal advocate for COIN-style community stabilization.<br />
In the 2008 Washington Post examination<br />
of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program<br />
(CERP) funds and revenue for reconstruction, Charlton<br />
reiterated the need “to win [Iraqi] trust” and the<br />
importance of investing in <strong>communities</strong> in tandem with<br />
securing the <strong>communities</strong>. “He was the first person<br />
who bought into what CSP was intended to do,”<br />
Gartner said. “And that has to be stressed, that the<br />
military must buy into it.”<br />
IRD’s strong local ties in Baghdad, and the organization’s<br />
adeptness at establishing community rapport,<br />
clearly played in CSP’s favor. “The IRD network in<br />
Baghdad and in the other provinces, especially in<br />
the very critical years of 2006 and 2007, was a<br />
difference-maker,” said Alaa Ismael, who oversaw<br />
CSP’s infrastructure and essential activities. “In<br />
some of the districts we were working in, in which so<br />
many violent incidents happened, sometimes even<br />
the military found it very hard to work there. . . .<br />
Through our local networks, we were able to move<br />
into very dangerous <strong>communities</strong>. We were able to<br />
face those challenges because our staff was there<br />
on the ground.”<br />
The heart of the insurgency was in Al-Anbar, and<br />
employing many people right away was the only option,<br />
Gartner said, to hold gains as they were made in<br />
places like Ramadi. “The military is about to clear, and<br />
we’ve got resources, and they understand that we’re<br />
going to work with the municipalities and that we’re<br />
going to employ Iraqis,” he said. “So they buy into<br />
this, because they know it has to happen, and then<br />
they don’t have to do it. Colonel Charlton kept asking,<br />
‘Where are your expats?’ Well there were no expats.<br />
There was me and $60 million in CSP funds. And I<br />
kept stressing to him point number one: that I would<br />
work with the Iraqis, and that we were gonna employ<br />
a lot of people, local people.” According to Wilson, the<br />
military “loved what CSP and Gartner were doing. They<br />
32
“<br />
The partnership with CSP made these<br />
things possible. Finally, people saw that<br />
it was worth kicking out al Qaeda”<br />
—Andrew Wilson<br />
never thought an NGO could operate like that, in that<br />
type of environment. We didn’t go through any training<br />
where we were taught, ‘Go find your local NGO. They’re<br />
going to help you win the war.’ They’d be stupid not to<br />
teach that now.”<br />
A year after the Ramadi stabilization effort began, in<br />
October 2007, Gartner and Charlton were among more<br />
than 400 attendees at a grand opening ceremony<br />
for the Ramadi Business Center. Local leaders,<br />
Iraqi government officials, business owners, military<br />
personnel, US congressmen, and media attended<br />
the ceremony, which Ramadi Mayor Ayadah called “a<br />
shining day in the history of the Al-Anbar governorate.”<br />
Within two years, the center had become a locus of<br />
economic development. In November 2009, more than<br />
4,000 entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate representatives<br />
from Jordan, Turkey, and the United Arab<br />
Emirates and other countries gathered at the business<br />
center for the Al-Anbar Trade Fair. According to USAID,<br />
which offers ongoing support for the business center,<br />
more than 300 Iraqis a month were receiving vocational<br />
skills training at the same location in courses<br />
that range from secretarial skills to corporate sales<br />
and accounting, from how to apply for a job to how to<br />
write a business report. Qassim Mohammad Abed,<br />
governor of Anbar province, praised the trade fair and<br />
the business center for demonstrating that Ramadi<br />
and the governorate of Al-Anbar were again “open for<br />
business.”<br />
“The 17th Street Market, that was a huge turning<br />
point,” Wilson said. “Before long, John McCain, Joe<br />
Lieberman, and people like that were coming to Anbar.<br />
That dramatic difference that life was getting better in<br />
Ramadi, it all had to do with CSP. Neighborhoods were<br />
being cleaned up, soccer leagues were starting, and<br />
businesses were opening. It wasn’t all done by the<br />
military. The partnership with CSP made these things<br />
possible. And when you add them up, it’s like the<br />
straw that broke the camel’s back. Finally, people saw<br />
that it was worth kicking out al Qaeda.”<br />
While many projects were driven by military or USAID<br />
considerations, the operational reality in Iraq was<br />
that close coordination of all CSP stakeholders was<br />
needed to complete projects. “In a stabilization<br />
program, relationships, particularly with the military<br />
but really with any involved decisionmaker, are key<br />
success factors,” Ismael said. “CSP was unique in<br />
that USAID was working right alongside the military,”<br />
Gartner said. “The key to CSP’s success was the<br />
military buying into it. If the military sees you as a<br />
resource, and you have resources to bring to the table<br />
to directly support counterinsurgency efforts, then it<br />
will work.”<br />
2<br />
A complete stabilization package<br />
33
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
in a counterinsurgency environment<br />
Local workers rebuild a destroyed market in Jurf al Sakher
“The ultimate goal was to engage people for two or three<br />
years, but in many cases, we made a successful transition to<br />
keep activities going on. And that was evident across all the<br />
program components. CSP created jobs. CSP engaged youth.<br />
But at the local level, it really achieved something special.”<br />
— Barzan Ismaeel<br />
CSP was originally known as the “Focused Stabilization<br />
in Strategic Cities” program, which was descriptive<br />
of the COIN philosophy of quick-impact relief and<br />
reconstruction with short, targeted missions. Unlike<br />
traditional development programs, CSP was fluid,<br />
scaling up or down in response to evolving priorities<br />
in the most insecure areas of key cities like Basra,<br />
Kirkuk, and Mosul. But as CSP evolved from concept<br />
to implementation, “focused stabilization” began to<br />
mean more than geography. IRD’s broader mission<br />
of trying to establish a wholly integrated stabilization<br />
program with discernible short- and long-term benefits<br />
led to a system of “checks and balances.” Individual<br />
program components were afforded flexibility to meet<br />
their goals, but they also maintained a focus on adherence<br />
to the complete package model. As CSP rapidly<br />
scaled up, this tightly integrated approach proved<br />
important.<br />
The initial cooperative agreement was for $265 million<br />
and six months of activities in Baghdad. Expansion<br />
was expected, but funding increased rapidly in<br />
response to Department of Defense and USAID needs<br />
to add cities to the program. These changes eventually<br />
pushed the total obligation to $644 million. At<br />
the height of the program, CSP had 1,800 staff and<br />
was spending an average of $21 million a month.<br />
Program operations easily could have spiraled out of<br />
control, but the overall design didn’t allow it. “When<br />
we started expanding to other cities, the initial processes<br />
and procedures were taken to those cities,”<br />
Michele Lemmon said. “But they had to be adapted,<br />
because each city had its own circumstances, different<br />
<strong>communities</strong>, and a different acceptance of the<br />
program. Remember, we were doing what the Iraqis<br />
wanted to do. All the programs were designed by the<br />
Iraqi staff, with a helping hand from us. Now, consider<br />
going from one city, Baghdad, to 15 cities in a matter<br />
of months. That’s how large we became. Really, the<br />
success we had in those circumstances is owed to the<br />
strong program design. It kept CSP focused almost by<br />
default.”<br />
Community infrastructure and essential<br />
services: CSP’s entry point<br />
CSP categorized employment as either short term<br />
(fewer than three months) or long term (more than<br />
three months). By traditional labor standards in a<br />
modernized country’s economy, three months would<br />
hardly seem long term. In an environment like Iraq,<br />
however, that measure helped differentiate between<br />
jobs created by traditional development tools such as<br />
35
CSP helped create a sense of normalcy<br />
among those who participated and<br />
across the population at large<br />
3<br />
Box 6<br />
CSP: Results<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
CSP had two overarching goals: increasing employment and mitigating conflict. CSP directly benefited Iraqi <strong>communities</strong><br />
in areas most “at risk” by creating jobs, helping families generate income, rebuilding infrastructure, and<br />
implementing youth programs. The program helped create a sense of normalcy among those who participated and<br />
across the population at large. At its conclusion, CSP had:<br />
• Generated more than 525,000 short-term jobs—120 percent of program targets. CSP exceeded its targets for<br />
short-term person-months of employment each year of operation.<br />
• Created or restored more than 57,100 long-term jobs—134 percent of program targets.<br />
• Completed more than 1,600 total projects that rebuilt, refurbished, or revitalized key pieces of community<br />
infrastructure.<br />
• Created or expanded more than 10,000 businesses through micro, small, and medium enterprise grants and other<br />
program interventions.<br />
• Provided business development and skills training to more than 15,000 entrepreneurs.<br />
• Graduated 41,443 <strong>citizens</strong> from vocational training programs developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Labor<br />
and Social Affairs and covering a wide variety of marketable skills, including carpentry, construction, sewing, and<br />
electrical repair. The graduated number of trainees represented 112 percent of program targets.<br />
• Placed more than 9,900 vocational skills trainees in apprenticeships, where they continued to gain valuable job<br />
training. Almost 20 percent of the apprentice placements went to women.<br />
• Engaged more than 350,000 at-risk Iraqis ages 17–35 in more than 500 youth participation activities, including<br />
team sports competition and arts training. The number of Iraqi youth taking part in CSP-sponsored events<br />
exceeded targets by 43 percent.<br />
business grants and skills training and jobs created<br />
in direct support of the COIN strategy. With CSP, each<br />
served completely different purposes. Long-term<br />
employment primarily supported the business community<br />
and the more skilled type of laborer who was<br />
unemployed as a direct result of the war—like a shop<br />
owner whose business was destroyed and employees<br />
put out of work. Getting these Iraqis back to work supported<br />
medium- and long-range COIN objectives.<br />
Short-term employment, by contrast, proved effective<br />
in supporting the immediate COIN objectives<br />
crucial to the clear-hold-build strategy. This type of<br />
employment targeted unskilled or semiskilled laborers<br />
who would otherwise be open to recruitment into<br />
the insurgency. It also injected much-needed capital<br />
back into war-torn <strong>communities</strong> and helped rebuild a<br />
sense of community. “If your city has been shot up,<br />
and somebody is at least sweeping up the rubble<br />
in the marketplace, it doesn’t guarantee that life is<br />
going to be rosy, but it gives you some fragment of<br />
hope in a situation that’s otherwise pretty hopeless,”<br />
said James Kunder, an IRD advisor and former acting<br />
administrator of USAID. A cash-for-work jobs program,<br />
which was the central tenet of the CIES component,<br />
“doesn’t eliminate the placement of IEDs and things<br />
like that,” Kunder said, “but it gives people something<br />
productive to do other than plant IEDs, and it also<br />
gives some sense of hope for the future.”<br />
“A rapid, highly visible, and tangible impact”<br />
The CIES program component was divided into two<br />
general project areas—infrastructure rehabilitation<br />
36
“<br />
A cash-for-work jobs program gives<br />
people something productive to do<br />
other than plant IEDs, and it also gives<br />
some sense of hope for the future”<br />
—James Kunder<br />
and essential services work, which required unskilled<br />
labor on quick-impact projects such as trash collection<br />
and rubble removal. CSP supported scores of<br />
these quick-impact projects during the program’s<br />
first year. By the middle of the second year, however,<br />
IRD began to transfer oversight of those projects<br />
back to municipal <strong>governments</strong>. If local <strong>governments</strong><br />
were willing to support the continuation of some of<br />
these services, IRD would continue its involvement<br />
in cleanup activities on a limited basis. But the lack<br />
of concern or unwillingness of many municipalities to<br />
devote resources to basic services like timely trash<br />
removal beyond IRD’s work worsened public opinion<br />
in many cities. Still, the short lead time needed to<br />
initiate service projects allowed cleanup and rubble<br />
removal to serve as a kind of spearhead for CSP as it<br />
expanded. “The trash pickup campaigns were critical<br />
for establishing CSP, not just because they were cleaning<br />
the streets but because they were labor-intensive<br />
projects that covered entire neighborhoods,” said Alaa<br />
Ismael, the head of program management for CIES<br />
activities. “I have no doubt the cleanup activities were<br />
needed for the stabilization program to work in Iraq.”<br />
In Ramadi, as previously noted, IRD launched a<br />
large-scale cleanup program directly on the heels of<br />
military action to remove insurgents. The goal was<br />
not only to provide immediate employment but also<br />
to restore frayed relations between local community<br />
leaders, tribal leaders, and the citizenry. The cleaning<br />
campaign was implemented through a local contractor<br />
responsible for providing laborers with equipment,<br />
organizing debris removal, and paying daily wages. For<br />
the Ramadi cleaning campaign, laborers earned $10 a<br />
day, which was the standard payment for CSP cleaning<br />
campaigns.<br />
Throughout Iraq, approximately 1,600 CIES projects<br />
generated more than 525,000 person-months of<br />
short-term employment—20 percent above the target.<br />
Given the high value placed on providing some kind<br />
of job to as many Iraqi men as possible, as fast as<br />
possible, “person-months employment” was a critical<br />
indicator of immediate impact. By this calculation,<br />
CSP exceeded its target in every year of operation. In<br />
addition, IRD found a great deal of qualitative evidence<br />
from interviews with local beneficiaries, media<br />
coverage, staff assessments, and final reports that<br />
the increase in short-term employment helped reduce<br />
violent incidents in some of the most unstable areas,<br />
such as Howija in Kirkuk.<br />
“The early projects had a rapid, highly visible, and<br />
tangible impact greatly appreciated by the local<br />
government,” said Alice Willard, formerly a senior<br />
monitoring and evaluation officer with IRD. “The same<br />
programs helped validate CSP to local authorities and<br />
opened the door to more diversified collaboration in<br />
a short amount of time.” That collaboration helped<br />
lead to widespread infrastructure rehabilitation, which,<br />
in contrast to essential service projects, relied on<br />
semiskilled and skilled laborers to help with rebuilding<br />
and construction projects relevant to local <strong>citizens</strong>,<br />
such as school restoration, hospital and health clinic<br />
refurbishment, irrigation canal restoration for agribusiness,<br />
and the rebuilding or enhancing of electricity,<br />
sewage, and water delivery services. These projects<br />
were undertaken with joint input from local community<br />
leaders, US military personnel, and PRTs. As IRD transitioned<br />
cleanup campaigns to local municipalities in<br />
the program’s second year, the focus of CIES component<br />
work shifted primarily to infrastructure projects.<br />
In many instances, a single project encompassed both<br />
the cleanup and rehabilitation phases of CIES. One<br />
example is the Mosul Social Club for Families. Before<br />
the war, the club was a popular gathering spot for<br />
dining, entertainment, and community celebrations—<br />
with on average more than 340 events a year. But as<br />
insurgent violence swallowed up Mosul, public socialization<br />
became too risky for most, and the number of club<br />
events plummeted to a few dozen. Before long, a lack of<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
37
the renovation of the Mosul Social Club for<br />
Families generated more than 1,800 days of<br />
short-term employment, and the reopened<br />
facility created at least 25 long-term jobs<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
funds made maintenance impossible and the facility fell<br />
into disrepair. As the security situation in Mosul began<br />
to stabilize, however, IRD staff believed that breathing<br />
new life into the club would be seen as a powerful<br />
symbol of Mosul’s resurgence and might help return a<br />
sense of normalcy to a divided city. So IRD embarked<br />
on an extensive CIES project that began with cleaning<br />
the club’s grounds and removing years of debris and<br />
continued with building a new children’s playground and<br />
information kiosks. Building rehabilitation required skills<br />
ranging from basic demolition and wall repair to more<br />
complex electrical engineering. Altogether, the renovation<br />
of the Mosul Social Club for Families generated<br />
more than 1,800 days of short-term employment, and<br />
the reopened facility created at least 25 long-term jobs.<br />
the fall of Hussein’s regime, the enforcement of that<br />
law ceased, and the natural cultural approach of a<br />
repressed population quickly took hold in Basra’s city<br />
streets, where thousands of goats and other small<br />
livestock began to subsist on garbage.<br />
“No matter how much effort you put into cleaning<br />
streets and installing trash receptacles, in the next<br />
five minutes all that rubbish would be on the streets,”<br />
Warmke said. “It was clear to me that if we were trying<br />
to make an impact, this was not the way to go forward.<br />
I discussed it with our provincial reconstruction team,<br />
with the military and with others on the ground, and<br />
it was clear that we didn’t see any value in taking our<br />
CSP money and doing cleanup.”<br />
38<br />
On the ground, adapting to what’s needed<br />
While the program’s general pattern was to start with<br />
cleanup campaigns before moving to infrastructure and<br />
rehabilitation work, not every CSP city followed the same<br />
template. In volatile, unstable environments, IRD’s city<br />
directors were responsible for balancing the realities<br />
on the ground against the CSP design. “In a city like<br />
Baghdad, it was essential to ensure that the streets<br />
were clean because of IEDs, and the whole military<br />
strategy there was to ensure that every effort was made<br />
to improve essential service delivery,” said Dar Warmke,<br />
who led the CSP expansion into Basra. “When I arrived,<br />
it was very clear that Basra was a neglected city, and<br />
had been for years, and I realized from day one that it<br />
would make no difference to launch cleanup campaigns,<br />
that it would be throwing good money into a black hole.”<br />
When CSP moved into Basra in 2007, the situation<br />
was not like Baghdad, Warmke said. “You had 1.5<br />
million people living in what was often referred to<br />
as the ‘Sadr city of the south.’” The area’s marshes<br />
had been drained under Saddam Hussein, and the<br />
district’s rural dwellers had been forced into the city,<br />
where they were not allowed to raise animals. After<br />
In Basra, the major concentration for immediate CIES<br />
work centered on cleaning and restoring canals, which<br />
the stakeholders determined to be the most urgent<br />
need, followed by rehabilitating schools and hospitals.<br />
Although Basra didn’t follow the same template as<br />
other locations, local Iraqis were still being employed<br />
on projects that would ultimately allow further CSPsupported<br />
work. When USAID and the local PRT asked<br />
IRD to rehabilitate the Basra Children’s Hospital as<br />
the area’s first project, for example, IRD staff also<br />
began designing a vocational training program with an<br />
eye toward future hospital staffing needs.<br />
So while CIES projects were often the most readily<br />
available stabilization tool in a COIN environment, they<br />
also functioned as the structural backbone of CSP.<br />
The cleanup campaigns yielded immediate dividends,<br />
while infrastructure repairs were often completed in a<br />
few months or less. They put Iraqis to work and, in the<br />
most successful cases, helped legitimize government<br />
services. They also laid the foundation for much of the<br />
later CSP work. Without streets free of debris or parks<br />
unencumbered by trash, or without basic civil infrastructure<br />
restored to some working level, the other<br />
CSP components simply could not have proceeded.
the trash cleanup campaigns were very<br />
high profile, immediately improved life<br />
quality, and, with the rare exception of<br />
a city like Basra, represented CSP’s<br />
initial foray into a community<br />
Overcoming the “messy” realities of a COIN environment<br />
IRD faced challenges in implementing a rapid, cashfor-work<br />
component like CIES, including the issue of<br />
documentation. Laborers were generally paid in daily<br />
financial transactions, but payments were not always<br />
possible to track or fully account for, due to the frenetic<br />
pace of operating and the unwillingness of many<br />
Iraqi men to give their full names and supply contact<br />
information. Subsequently, the trash collection projects<br />
became a lightning rod for CSP critics, and IRD’s own<br />
early administrative missteps—lack of staff capacity,<br />
inadequate record keeping, miscommunication between<br />
headquarters and the field—created additional obstacles.<br />
Internally, staff dealt with the frustration of having<br />
to balance bureaucratic requirements and IRD’s own<br />
administrative limits with the demands of creating jobs.<br />
the context of a COIN operation. The work also saved<br />
lives. “The trash cleanup crews found IEDs hidden in<br />
the garbage, right there on the streets,” said Andrew<br />
Wilson. “They’d be going along, cleaning a neighborhood<br />
out, and they’d find IEDs. That wasn’t necessarily<br />
rare. Right there, you’re saving lives, people’s lives.”<br />
However, “IEDs removed” was not an indicator of<br />
program success, and items that were, such as<br />
person-months of employment, relied heavily on<br />
documentation to show progress and justify the high<br />
expenditures. At one point, CSP was disbursing up to<br />
$1 million a day, and much of that was for the CIES<br />
cash-for-work activities. Due to the sheer size of CSP,<br />
and the chaotic environment IRD was operating in,<br />
tracking each dollar and verifying the honesty of every<br />
local contractor was difficult.<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
“In Ramadi, we wrote a work plan in December 2006,<br />
but our first cash-for-work for 1,000 people wasn’t<br />
until March 1. I was on the verge of losing all credibility<br />
with the military,” said Travis Gartner, IRD’s deputy<br />
chief of party. “They took me where I wanted to go,<br />
they were trying to engage the local government, the<br />
community leaders, and they are bringing me to meetings,<br />
learning about the community. Weeks and weeks<br />
start to go by and they start asking me, ‘Hey, when<br />
are you guys going to do something?’ You know, they<br />
had their CERP fund and would go to these <strong>communities</strong><br />
and say, ‘Who needs a job? Line ‘em up.’ And I’m<br />
working through a tendering process, and I have to vet<br />
a guy to make sure he’s not a terrorist.”<br />
For better or worse, the trash cleanup campaigns<br />
came to define CSP in many ways. They were high<br />
profile, immediately improved life quality, and, with the<br />
rare exception of a city like Basra, represented CSP’s<br />
initial foray into a community. Removing rubble, trash,<br />
and debris in the wake of insurgent control or military<br />
exercises showed how people’s most basic needs,<br />
including security, could be immediately addressed in<br />
“The cleanup campaign was effective but messy,”<br />
said Mamadou Sidibe, who joined IRD as its director<br />
of monitoring and evaluation in 2008. “Let’s say you<br />
hired 100 employees a day, for two months. If you visit<br />
a site, you’ll only see an average of those workers.<br />
Sometimes you’ll see 60, other times it could be 180.<br />
These are extremely hard to monitor.” But, Sidibe<br />
points out, cleanup activities are the kind of projects<br />
“that the military likes best because it keeps unskilled<br />
laborers busy.” CSP was designed the way it was for<br />
a reason, he said, and cash-for-work was an integral<br />
part of it, even if the ramifications weren’t completely<br />
thought through. “CSP was pouring money into<br />
cleaning campaigns to make sure people have some<br />
income rather than be hired by al Qaeda. At the same<br />
time, it opened the door to some corruption.”<br />
Even though CIES activities exceeded goals, serious<br />
concerns over the ability of cleanup campaigns to<br />
avoid fraud at the local level began to surface. In late<br />
2007, these concerns led to an overall audit of CSP by<br />
a regional inspector general for USAID. Some USAID<br />
workers on the ground, and even some military leaders<br />
39
By combining his personal savings with a CSP<br />
grant for $24,000 worth of supplies, Saad<br />
Kathem opened a bakery in Al Mussayib<br />
that had customers lining up every morning<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
who were not convinced of the program’s effectiveness,<br />
alleged not only that IRD was documenting “phantom”<br />
workers to boost its employment numbers but also that<br />
the inability to follow the money, so to speak, meant<br />
that CSP dollars were being taken by corrupt individuals<br />
and funneled back to insurgents. The inspector general’s<br />
office released the audit findings in March 2008,<br />
declaring parts of the program “highly vulnerable to<br />
fraud and exploitation” and recommending more than<br />
a dozen adjustments, but it did not present evidence of<br />
willful negligence or determine that a verifiable amount<br />
had been lost to corruption. Program operations in<br />
certain Baghdad neighborhoods were halted to mitigate<br />
the negative impact, and IRD took immediate steps to<br />
address the findings related to administrative shortcomings<br />
and poor communication (box 7).<br />
Some problems, especially with cash-for-work, were<br />
out of IRD’s control. Multiple staff in the field reiterated<br />
just how common corruption, favoritism, and<br />
nepotism were among some local neighborhood and<br />
district councils. “A lot of people were doing cash-forwork<br />
in the beginning of the program,” Sidibe said,<br />
referring also to the multibillion-dollar military CERP<br />
funds. Cash-for-work and cleanup had to be the starting<br />
point, he added, because those activities support<br />
the overall strategy of reducing violence. “There are<br />
only so many options available in a war. Once the level<br />
of violence starts going down, you can start doing<br />
more agriculture and development work. Then you can<br />
start building toward something.”<br />
facility, construct a drainage system, and purchase<br />
equipment to fulfill his dream of opening a full-service<br />
garage in Baghdad. After Dawood applied for CSP<br />
assistance, IRD awarded him a grant based on a business<br />
plan that would support at least 16 long-term<br />
employees. Within six months of opening, Dawood had<br />
more than 30 employees.<br />
Waleed Jan had been a musical instrument dealer in<br />
Baghdad’s Karrada district for more than 20 years. He<br />
also ran a successful music institute before insurgents<br />
burned down the institute’s building. Jan had<br />
a strong relationship with the local district advisory<br />
council, however, and council members put him in<br />
touch with IRD. Within three months, he had reopened<br />
his conservatory and again was offering music lessons<br />
and training, with a focus on helping Iraqi youth learn<br />
to play and sing in front of a live audience. Jan immediately<br />
hired eight staff to offer piano, violin, guitar,<br />
drum, and lute lectures and instructions.<br />
Saad Kathem believed he could run a successful<br />
bakery; he just didn’t have enough money to establish<br />
the business. He also couldn’t find a job making<br />
pastries and baking breads that would pay enough to<br />
support his family. By combining his personal savings<br />
of $21,000 with a CSP grant for $24,000 worth of<br />
supplies, Kathem opened a bakery in Al Mussayib that<br />
had customers lining up every morning. Within a year,<br />
he had hired 15 bakers, completed business development<br />
training, and begun laying the groundwork to<br />
open a second bakery in nearby Karbala.<br />
40<br />
Business development programs: Light at<br />
the end of the tunnel<br />
Amer Zaidan Dawood saw an opportunity to start a<br />
profitable, viable business for a large clientele. He had<br />
almost 20 years of experience managing car service<br />
centers in Jordan and Iraq, and he had $18,000<br />
saved. But he needed more than twice that to rent a<br />
Through CSP’s business development program, IRD<br />
awarded grants to more than 10,000 Iraqi entrepreneurs<br />
like Dawood, Jan, and Kathem. “The success<br />
stories that came out of those small grants were<br />
astonishing,” said Dar Warmke. “We believed we were<br />
creating longer term jobs by establishing businesses.<br />
The aim was to have a business running for as long as<br />
they were financially viable.”
IRD transported all its CSP records<br />
into a three-story facility that it leased<br />
for the express purpose of allowing<br />
any auditor from any organization easy<br />
access to review the program files<br />
Box 7<br />
Enhancing internal controls and program oversight<br />
3<br />
Managing CSP in an active conflict zone required IRD to continuously improve internal controls and create layers of<br />
accountability and transparency. IRD acted quickly to address potential abuses at the local level and administrative<br />
weaknesses at the international level. In fact, the organization enhanced enough of its financial and programmatic<br />
policies before March 2008 that six of the recommendations had already been addressed before the final audit<br />
was released. “We take any allegations of fraud and abuse extremely seriously and even more so when they involve<br />
concerns about the use of US taxpayer dollars,” IRD President Dr. Arthur B. Keys said at the time.<br />
In addition to the suspension of the program in one of the Baghdad districts, the major recommendations from the<br />
inspector general’s office included a comprehensive review of projects in other areas, enhancing coordination with<br />
program participants, establishing more detailed procedures for reporting potential system abuses, improving data<br />
quality management, and strengthening the program’s monitoring and evaluation processes. By September 30,<br />
2008, all recommendations had been fully implemented and certified by USAID and the Secretary of State. Speaking<br />
at a November 2009 symposium on CSP, Keys spoke about IRD’s commitment to stabilization. “We’ve been in Iraq,<br />
in the Red Zone, since June 2003, when the Iraq Community Action Program started,” he said. “The reason CSP<br />
was undertaken, and why it was such a big program, is because it was a big job that had to be done. And all these<br />
projects were done with a very professional approach. But [USAID] didn’t change the standards; they didn’t change<br />
the regulations for CSP versus any other program in the world.”<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
As stabilization operations in Iraq and Afghanistan became more politicized, CSP became an even larger target. So<br />
IRD took the unprecedented step of opening a data warehousing and auditing facility in Amman, Jordan. The organization<br />
transported all its CSP records into a three-story facility that it leased for the express purpose of allowing any<br />
auditor from any organization easy access to review the program files, documentation, datasets, and contracts in a<br />
secure facility across the Iraqi border. After the program came to an official end, IRD moved all its final documentation<br />
to the warehouse.<br />
Despite the strongest possible oversight efforts and close coordination among IRD, USAID, and military counterparts,<br />
preventing misuse of funds or small-scale corruption at the program level in a country like Iraq remained a<br />
laborious task. As CSP progressed, additional allegations of misconduct arose in Mosul. IRD responded swiftly,<br />
launching its own internal investigation with the help of outside counsel and sending to the site an experienced<br />
investigative team comprising both senior IRD and external experts. IRD staff were interviewed by the US government,<br />
and the allegations were not substantiated.<br />
A unique purpose in support of COIN objectives<br />
The business development program’s overall aim<br />
was to provide long-term jobs to those in CSP’s focus<br />
population, to provide business training to grantees,<br />
and, ideally, to transition vocational training and<br />
apprenticeship graduates into regular employment.<br />
The grants, awarded as equipment and services<br />
rather than cash, ranged from micro to small to<br />
medium, starting as low as $150 and capping at<br />
$100,000. Of the more than 10,000 grants awarded,<br />
97 percent were micro or small, most to family-owned<br />
41
Ninety-eight percent of grantee businesses<br />
up to that point were still operational<br />
one year after receiving their grants<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
businesses. “The small grants component was literally<br />
in-kind,” Gartner said. “If your storefront windows were<br />
missing, we’d help replace them. If your bread-baking<br />
machine had been stolen or destroyed, we’d get you a<br />
new one and get your business going. Of course, you’d<br />
need to employ two or three people to keep it going.”<br />
While business grants are a common development<br />
assistance tool, in CSP they served a unique purpose<br />
in support of COIN objectives. Micro grants, with a<br />
maximum allotment of $3,000, were largely designed<br />
for stabilization purposes to provide Iraqi households<br />
with enough activities to ensure basic food and<br />
economic security as the counterinsurgency program<br />
unfolded. Small grants, with a maximum award of<br />
$25,000, provided entrepreneurs the incentive and<br />
the means to invest in local economies and neighborhoods<br />
that had been cleared of insurgents. Medium<br />
grants extended to $100,000 and helped larger businesses<br />
willing to invest in Iraq’s industry sector.<br />
their grants. 8 After the program closed, a sample<br />
survey of CSP’s database determined that 89 percent<br />
of award recipients stayed in business during the<br />
critical first three to six months after their grants<br />
were completed. Given the inherent risks in small<br />
businesses, which are prone to early failure even<br />
in the most stable environments, the success rate<br />
of CSP-supported initiatives was very encouraging.<br />
“We had great success with business development<br />
programming, which was a bit shocking, because I<br />
intentionally kept our grants at an average of $3,000<br />
to $4,000,” said Warmke. “I didn’t let many $20,000<br />
proposals pass, because I didn’t believe we could do<br />
it properly and monitor results. With the micro grants,<br />
my original thinking was that we’d have some impact,<br />
but it probably wouldn’t be tremendous. I think I was<br />
proven wrong.”<br />
Dealing with weaknesses and those who wanted to<br />
“cheat the system”<br />
To secure a grant, applicants had to prepare a proposal<br />
that included a detailed business plan and list<br />
of operating costs. Each proposal projected its impact<br />
on employment, a critical factor in determining which<br />
grants were funded and at which levels. Each grant<br />
required a community contribution, either in cash,<br />
in-kind, or labor, and all recipients were required to<br />
attend business skills training—an adjustment IRD<br />
made based on lessons from the first year. “The<br />
people most likely to join the militias have limited<br />
education and few prospects for sustained income,<br />
and those were the people we had to reach,” Warmke<br />
said. “So we had to provide this segment of the population<br />
with more than financial assistance to start or<br />
grow a fledgling business. Basic skills training greatly<br />
enhanced the likelihood of their business succeeding.”<br />
IRD tried to staff the grants program in each city with<br />
workers who had specialized training in business,<br />
agriculture, and manufacturing. Sector specialists<br />
were best equipped to help applicants refine and<br />
review their proposal plans—a recurring need—and to<br />
provide counseling and assistance during the startup<br />
phase. Perhaps most important, sector specialists<br />
helped balance business diversity so that no neighborhood<br />
became saturated with too many similar shops.<br />
Location was critical: even a good idea like establishing<br />
a carwash would not be viable if another already<br />
existed. Innovation was equally important. If community<br />
members heard grants were being awarded for<br />
grocery stores, CSP staff would see a rush of applications<br />
for grocery stores. Coming up with new ideas<br />
was one of the program’s biggest impediments.<br />
42<br />
Most did. According to a sample survey conducted in<br />
2008, 98 percent of grantee businesses up to that<br />
point were still operational one year after receiving<br />
A required in-cash or in-kind contribution, which was<br />
equivalent to 25–50 percent of the grant, depending<br />
on the funding level, posed one of the program’s most
the aggressive grants program yielded<br />
very strong long-term job numbers even<br />
as it addressed the pressing need of<br />
stabilizing business <strong>communities</strong><br />
significant challenges. The provision was a rather standard<br />
development assistance tenet regularly followed<br />
by NGOs. But in Iraq, the stipulation proved to be a<br />
barrier. IRD made a concerted effort to encourage<br />
apprentices and new vocational training graduates<br />
to apply for grants and start their own businesses,<br />
but few apprentices could match the grant’s required<br />
25–50 percent contribution. “That was probably the<br />
weakness, the cost-share element, because it kept a<br />
lot of people out of the small grants program,” said<br />
Gartner. “There was a tendency among applicants to<br />
falsify documents to meet that cost-share criteria.<br />
[But] it wasn’t the right time for cost-share buy-in.<br />
That’s a traditional development approach, that the<br />
community should own it, they should buy into it. In<br />
Iraq, I don’t think that was appropriate at that time. I<br />
mean, let’s just get their shops open first.”<br />
In adapting to a COIN environment, the business<br />
development component faced challenges. Many<br />
stemmed from the same issues some CIES projects<br />
faced, such as the inability to fully police those who<br />
were out to “cheat the system,” as Mamadou Sidibe,<br />
IRD’s director of monitoring and evaluation, put it.<br />
Sidibe joined IRD in March 2008, toward the end of<br />
CSP’s implementation. His mandate was to clear up<br />
reporting inconsistencies and strengthen internal<br />
oversight of the monitoring process, especially crucial<br />
for ensuring the integrity of business grants. “CSP<br />
would give you a grant on the basis of how many longterm<br />
jobs you would generate, but people could cheat<br />
on their grant proposal,” Sidibe said. “A businessman<br />
might say he would create five permanent jobs, but<br />
once he got the grant, instead of hiring five, he might<br />
hire two. Or instead of opening the business he<br />
proposed, he might do something else.”<br />
Jessica Cho, who worked on IRD’s post-CSP review,<br />
cited generators as a perfect example because they<br />
were such a commonly requested item for in-kind<br />
grants—and in such high demand due to Iraq’s weak<br />
energy infrastructure. “Someone might say he had<br />
a small store and needed a generator to operate a<br />
freezer or refrigerator, but you know, you can use a<br />
generator for a lot of things,” Cho said. “They were not<br />
always used for their intended purposes, but because<br />
of the security situation, it was extremely difficult to<br />
monitor every specific item.”<br />
Most of the problems that the business development<br />
component faced involved small and micro grants,<br />
often in the more dangerous and less secure locations,<br />
which were sometimes impossible for IRD’s<br />
monitoring agents to visit regularly. For the kind of conflict<br />
environment in which CSP was operating, Sidibe<br />
said, it was simply impossible to eliminate every<br />
corrupt influence. And overall, the aggressive grants<br />
program yielded very strong long-term job numbers<br />
even as it addressed the pressing need of stabilizing<br />
business <strong>communities</strong>.<br />
Quick impact with a long-term view<br />
While the program sought to enhance knowledge of<br />
private enterprise, teach good business practices, and<br />
stimulate community-led growth, it focused primarily on<br />
shop owners whose established businesses had been<br />
destroyed or shuttered. In some cases, the shops<br />
had been abandoned. In others, the threat of violence<br />
drove shopkeepers away. And often, such as for street<br />
market rehabilitations, IRD used the grants program<br />
alongside CSP’s infrastructure program as a means of<br />
generating a rapid response for quick results.<br />
In early 2007, a suicide bomber detonated a truck<br />
bomb in Baghdad’s Sadriya Market, a popular commercial<br />
district with more than 300 shops, cafes, and<br />
kiosks. More than 130 people were killed and more<br />
than 330 wounded. The day after the attack, two IRD<br />
grants officers headed to the market to evaluate the<br />
damage and talk to shop owners about applying for<br />
CSP grants to help rebuild their businesses. “I just<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
43
Dr. Noor Abdul Aziz Baqir’s grant covered<br />
$3,800 worth of equipment, and it<br />
allowed her to quickly begin rebuilding<br />
her clinic, which was an important<br />
show of faith for her 19 workers<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
felt that the whole world was destroyed, my dreams<br />
and my life were destroyed,” said Dr. Noor Abdul Aziz<br />
Baqir, a dentist whose clinic had been at the market<br />
since 1983. “As I went to see my clinic, I felt, ‘This<br />
is the end of my career as a dentist.’ I couldn’t afford<br />
to reopen it.” Baqir’s grant covered $3,800 worth of<br />
equipment, and it allowed her to quickly begin rebuilding,<br />
which was an important show of faith for her 19<br />
workers.<br />
Reopening destroyed commercial districts like Sadriya<br />
often got high priority because of their visibility and<br />
importance to the community, but fast turnarounds<br />
like the quick grant Baqir received were not common.<br />
Given the intensive monitoring of the grant development<br />
and implementation process, a gap between the<br />
conception and execution of a grant was common. The<br />
minimum length was two months, but six months was<br />
the average. Still, the final evaluation of the program,<br />
conducted by International Business & Technical<br />
Consultants, Inc. (IBTCI), noted the important role that<br />
development grants played in the COIN effort to quickly<br />
normalize <strong>communities</strong> struck by sudden violence.<br />
kind of normalcy necessary to stabilize a community.<br />
“The small grants program worked very well because<br />
that got the businesses owners back,” Gartner said.<br />
“They wanted their shops back but they didn’t have any<br />
money to pay for all that damage, and besides, would<br />
you invest in reopening your shop? There’s a war going<br />
on. So here we are, encouraging them to come out and<br />
just provide us proof that they own it and will work at it.”<br />
When her dental clinic was destroyed, Baqir said she<br />
felt just like that. She wasn’t sure how she would<br />
continue to support her immediate and extended<br />
family, much less rebuild her destroyed business. But<br />
just one day after the bombing, when the two IRD staff<br />
approached her as she sifted through the rubble, she<br />
said her outlook changed, just that quickly. “I felt like<br />
there was a light at the end of the tunnel,” she said,<br />
not long after her clinic reopened—“in spite of the<br />
misery and sadness.”<br />
Vocational training: “A sustainable program<br />
when we left”<br />
44<br />
By the end of the program, the business development<br />
component had generated 74 percent of the 57,109<br />
long-term jobs documented by CSP. Even with the<br />
lengthy startup time between application and award,<br />
the grants program actually produced most jobs fairly<br />
quickly. Approximately 25,000 jobs were created in<br />
the first two years. Trade and service sector grants<br />
were found to be the most efficient at enabling this<br />
duality—quick-impact yet longer term employment<br />
opportunities, which proved to be extremely supportive<br />
of the COIN strategy.<br />
While they offered fewer macro links with the rest of the<br />
economy than did small-scale manufacturing or agribusiness<br />
grants, and though administering and monitoring<br />
them occasionally proved problematic, these grants<br />
resonated profoundly with Iraqis, offering a path to the<br />
In January 2009, IRD and USAID officers officially<br />
handed over administration of Iraq’s rebuilt vocational<br />
training program to the government’s Ministry of<br />
Labor and Social Affairs (MOLSA). The event coincided<br />
with the graduation ceremony for trainees in CSPsponsored<br />
courses at the Waziriya training facility in<br />
Baghdad. Ministry officials lauded IRD for rehabilitating<br />
the facility and restarting training programs. The<br />
handover was significant because it completed the<br />
swift rebirth of Iraq’s ability to create a sustainable<br />
workforce at the community level. In 2006, one year<br />
before CSP’s direct support, the ministry graduated<br />
7,000 vocational trainees. In 2007, after one year<br />
with CSP’s support, the number of graduates soared<br />
past 20,000. “We had to work through the ministry to<br />
achieve our targets, but we basically built their capacity<br />
to provide continuing training,” said Iqbal al-Juboori,
IRD helped revise the curricula of each<br />
training center it supported and introduced<br />
new systems for tracking student<br />
performance and training local teachers<br />
who worked in Baghdad as IRD’s deputy director for<br />
employment generation and vocational training. “There<br />
were no resources. Most of the centers were not even<br />
functioning properly. They didn’t have equipment. They<br />
had trainers sitting around doing nothing. We built up<br />
their existing centers, and we even rehabilitated the<br />
bombed ones, which was an achievement.”<br />
Training centers were sometimes targeted by terrorists,<br />
but many were destroyed or damaged simply<br />
because of their proximity to fighting. So even after a<br />
facility had been rebuilt, keeping it secure and operational<br />
was a challenge. Baghdad’s Al-Rashid Vocational<br />
Training Center had been looted and destroyed<br />
shortly after the war began in 2003. The center had<br />
been one of Iraq’s busiest training facilities and<br />
served roughly 60 percent of the city’s potential workforce.<br />
But the high-density location, “one of the most<br />
dangerous areas of Baghdad” according to al-Juboori,<br />
proved problematic, because such areas routinely<br />
drew terrorist attention. So when CSP undertook to<br />
rebuild the facility, the project was far from smooth.<br />
During the rehabilitation process, Al-Rashid came<br />
under attack on three separate occasions, leading to<br />
cost overruns, long delays, and apprehension among<br />
the contractors and workers trying to restore the<br />
building. But given its importance to the community<br />
and its vital link in the local job chain, work pressed<br />
on. Rehabilitation was completed in March 2007,<br />
and six months later the training center was handed<br />
over to the ministry. Upon opening, it offered a dozen<br />
vocational courses with a capacity to train more than<br />
700 people every two months.<br />
A lasting effect on institutions and processes<br />
The primary goal of CSP’s vocational training and<br />
apprenticeship program, also referred to as the<br />
employment generation program, was to stimulate<br />
economic stability by providing Iraqis with employable<br />
skills that could lead to long-term jobs (more than 90<br />
days). That goal was reached, with more than 41,400<br />
graduates completing course training in two general<br />
trade categories:<br />
• Construction (masonry, carpentry, steel structuring,<br />
plastering, roofing, tiling, plumbing, and electrical<br />
installation).<br />
• Nonconstruction (electronics, auto mechanics,<br />
welding, appliance repair, mobile phone maintenance,<br />
HVAC maintenance and servicing, computer<br />
maintenance and repair, and agribusiness equipment<br />
maintenance). Additional courses targeting<br />
women were offered in sewing, hairdressing, and<br />
cosmetology.<br />
The vocational training program had a profound effect<br />
on Iraq’s institutional capacity—one of CSP’s more<br />
notable but often overlooked achievements. IRD helped<br />
revise the curricula of each training center it supported<br />
and introduced new systems for tracking student performance<br />
and training local teachers. MOLSA was IRD’s<br />
principal partner during the first year of the project, but<br />
in the second year, a new alliance with the Ministry of<br />
Education enabled the program to expand its reach.<br />
IRD helped rehabilitate more than 45 training centers,<br />
both structurally and administratively, through the provision<br />
of new equipment and more thorough and efficient<br />
procedures. “When we came to the ministry and the<br />
venues, they didn’t have basic processes in place,”<br />
al-Juboori said. “For example, registering trainees—you<br />
might find documentation, and you might not find<br />
documentation on the students. How do you help them<br />
learn if you don’t even know why they’re there? So we’d<br />
sit down with [ministry officials] as they were meeting<br />
the trainee applicants. We worked with them and taught<br />
them how to follow protocols.”<br />
Even before the war, Baghdad had an established<br />
vocational program, but by most modern standards<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
45
all the training centers renovated under<br />
CSP were being used for some kind<br />
of vocational training more than two<br />
years after the program ended<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
it wasn’t effective. There were “a lot of key elements<br />
lacking,” according to al-Juboori, including the ability<br />
to pay trainee stipends or provide toolkits. Still, many<br />
residents in the capital were familiar with the benefits<br />
that vocational training provided, and that helped with<br />
recruiting. More than half the program’s graduates<br />
came from Baghdad, but IRD still graduated trainees<br />
in 14 cities total. And, except for a building in Ramadi<br />
that was involved in an ownership dispute among Iraqi<br />
ministries, all the training centers renovated under<br />
CSP were being used for some kind of vocational<br />
training more than two years after the program ended.<br />
“MOLSA continued the same way that we built it; they<br />
were doing everything we were doing,” al-Juboori said.<br />
“The systems that we put in place are inserted now<br />
within the ministry’s systems. Vocational training was<br />
a sustainable program when we left” (box 8).<br />
High demand and demanding challenges<br />
Even with four dozen renovated training centers and<br />
an expanded curriculum at each location, demand<br />
exceeded supply in the most popular training courses.<br />
The final number of vocational graduates exceeded<br />
targets by almost 4,000. While some courses lasted<br />
up to four months, many standard courses were<br />
condensed to two months so more could be taught<br />
over a shorter time. Some program workers, many with<br />
years of experience administering vocational training,<br />
expressed concern over the compressed schedule.<br />
Box 8<br />
CSP and the changing perception of sustainability<br />
Unlike results of many traditional COIN programs, CSP’s achievements in jobs created, infrastructure rehabilitated,<br />
and businesses opened appear to be long-lasting. The project’s final report notes this, as does the independent<br />
evaluation conducted by IBTCI, which commended CSP for evolving into a program “in which sustainability of the<br />
various components was given greater emphasis,” further noting that this sustainability was “essential to success.” 1<br />
USAID’s Office of Inspector General, as part of a program audit, also noted that “various elements of CSP provide<br />
a . . . foundation for more sustainable development activities.” 2<br />
Sustainability, an overriding concern of traditional development programs, was not a priority in the early days of<br />
CSP, which was designed, according to project documents as a short-term COIN initiative rather than a long-term<br />
sustainable development program. “USAID kept saying ‘This is stabilization, not development. Stabilization, not<br />
development,’” Jessica Cho said. “They made it clear that we were a quick-action solution, while other programs<br />
were focusing on development for the long term.”<br />
However, as CSP unfolded, it also became clear that the program could generate sustainable outcomes, bridging the<br />
gap between stabilization and development. While IRD didn’t work against donor wishes, many of CSP’s core activities<br />
had the potential for enduring impact. In separate studies examining the individual program methods of the CSP<br />
components, USAID came to a similar conclusion—IRD’s closely integrated design not only addressed immediate<br />
COIN support needs but naturally fostered sustainable outcomes. Graduating a certain number of Iraqis from vocational<br />
training courses, for example, fulfilled a key program mandate. But then those graduates took away skills that<br />
would serve them well beyond the CSP timeframe. And, as Iqbal al-Juboori explained, getting the vocational training<br />
centers up and running had the supplementary effect of increasing administrative capacity at the local and national<br />
(continued)<br />
46
“<br />
We showed the government the best ways to<br />
handle its services, we trained youth to think beyond<br />
the militias and about each other, and we trained<br />
business owners to market, grow, and expand their<br />
businesses. We accomplished things that would last”<br />
—Iqbal al-Juboori<br />
Yet they also recognized that the primary goal was<br />
to get as many people as possible off the street, as<br />
quickly as possible. This is one of many examples<br />
of traditional development thinking butting heads<br />
with CSP’s COIN objectives. Accepting the difference<br />
wasn’t incumbent on IRD’s implementation team<br />
alone. Despite the ministry’s cooperation, MOLSA<br />
expressed its doubts about the compressed schedule.<br />
“They would tell us, ‘We love what you’re doing, and<br />
we understand the importance of it, but let’s try to do<br />
something longer term,’” al-Juboori said.<br />
was complete, CSP supported half the costs of<br />
placing trainees in local businesses as apprentices.<br />
Apprenticeships were expected to provide a bridge<br />
from training to permanent employment. Almost 9,500<br />
trainees were placed in apprenticeships, but that<br />
number was lower than IRD targeted and less than<br />
25 percent of total vocational graduates. Even with<br />
CSP offering a 50 percent subsidy of the apprentices’<br />
stipends, local employers were reluctant to accept<br />
unknown persons as workers, preferring to hire friends<br />
or family members.<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
Another challenge was translating the high demand<br />
for vocational skills into longer term employment<br />
within the project’s short timeframe. Once training<br />
IRD tried to get around the obstacles in several<br />
ways. Staff made a concerted effort to encourage<br />
graduates to apply for grants through CSP’s business<br />
Box 8<br />
CSP and the changing perception of sustainability (continued)<br />
levels of government. The vocational centers also provided a way for <strong>citizens</strong> to engage directly with a government<br />
service that provided opportunities for individuals to turn their lives around. “Since all the work that was done under<br />
CSP was attributed to local government,” al-Juboori said, “we helped legitimize public officials.”<br />
The evolving perception of the importance of sustainability was perhaps best exemplified in the inspector general<br />
2008 review, which was undertaken to address issues related to worker documentation and IRD’s internal administrative<br />
process. Yet, of the audit’s two overarching objectives, one focused exclusively on whether CSP was<br />
designed and implemented to “ensure that Iraqis continue to benefit from its activities”—a question the original<br />
program design dismissed. The inspector general report praised the “linkages between various sectors” as a way to<br />
promote sustainability, including clauses written in subcontracts that required that a certain number of vocational<br />
program graduates be hired. Also noted were the numerous buildings rebuilt as permanent structures rather than<br />
as temporary facilities and the close involvement and education of province- and ministry-level officials in program<br />
operations.<br />
According to al-Juboori, “The real sustainability of CSP, even if it wasn’t written into the program design, was how we<br />
showed the government the best ways to handle its services, how we trained youth to think beyond the militias and<br />
about each other, and how we trained business owners to market, grow, and expand their businesses. We accomplished<br />
things that would last.”<br />
Notes<br />
1. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACN461.pdf.<br />
2. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACN242.pdf.<br />
47
IRD embarked on its own job placement<br />
program, opening what was officially<br />
known as Community Outreach Offices<br />
inside the districts and staffing<br />
those offices with field workers<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
development program and start their own businesses,<br />
though many graduates simply did not have the<br />
resources to meet the in-kind requirement. Individual<br />
CSP city programs promoted projects that would<br />
support vocational trainees as employees, but there<br />
was no formal transition process. “The apprenticeships<br />
and job placement, those were the biggest challenges<br />
because they were new concepts,” al-Juboori<br />
said. “Nobody had done job placement before. We<br />
tried to link it to the councils, but they had their own<br />
local contractors who would bring in their own labor,<br />
so they’d tell us to go talk to the contractors. Eventually,<br />
we started doing that.”<br />
As a result, some IRD staff became the equivalent of<br />
employment brokers, going to businesses or individuals<br />
to try and sell the skills of the program’s recent<br />
vocational graduates. Sometimes, it paid off. In one<br />
case, staff visited a contractor who had a contract to<br />
rehabilitate part of Baghdad’s University of Technology,<br />
one of Iraq’s largest schools. “We convinced him<br />
to hire our people, ‘for the good of Iraq’ we argued,”<br />
al-Juboori recounted. “And he took a lot of workers,<br />
so that was a success. But we definitely had to make<br />
adjustments.”<br />
Mini employment centers all over the district<br />
One of the most notable and successful adjustments<br />
IRD made was in Baghdad, during the final year of<br />
CSP, as an effort to get around the job placement<br />
roadblocks. Because so many local officials remained<br />
“attached” to local workers or contractors, vocational<br />
trainees were not getting fair assessments. So IRD<br />
embarked on its own job placement program, opening<br />
what was officially known as Community Outreach<br />
Offices inside the districts and staffing those offices<br />
with field workers. “We tried to directly serve the<br />
unemployed in that area, and, at the same time,<br />
convince local businesses to find jobs for those<br />
unemployed persons,” al-Juboori said.<br />
Although the setup may sound a lot like an employment<br />
agency, it wasn’t, at least not officially, because<br />
an actual employment agency was not allowed under<br />
labor ministry rules. And since no work of this kind<br />
could be associated with IRD, the offices publicly fell<br />
under the umbrella of the local government. When CSP<br />
began its closeout, district leaders contacted IRD field<br />
workers, asking that the offices remain open. The civilian<br />
and military support apparatus in Iraq backed the<br />
job placement plan as well. “A lot of PRTs loved the<br />
idea, and they even supported the outreach offices for<br />
two or three months when CSP phased out in some<br />
areas,” al-Juboori said. “They loved the idea, and<br />
they saw the impact. They were like mini employment<br />
centers all over the district. Register the unemployed,<br />
and at the same time, try to find them a job.”<br />
The job placement program was the logical extension<br />
of the community outreach efforts that the IRD<br />
employment generation staff made throughout the<br />
duration of CSP. In the beginning, IRD found that many<br />
people most in need of vocational training simply did<br />
not trust the labor ministry. So staff, on behalf of the<br />
ministry so as not to be identified as IRD workers,<br />
began directly calling potential participants to explain<br />
the benefits of the program. A promotional campaign<br />
in Baghdad, including billboards, flyers, and other<br />
types of announcements, tried to raise awareness<br />
and increase participation, especially in neighborhoods<br />
where training centers had been closed for a<br />
long time or where they had been destroyed. Perhaps<br />
most important to the overall success of the program,<br />
IRD sent staff into neighborhoods to talk directly to<br />
<strong>citizens</strong> and business owners to find out what kind of<br />
skills were in demand. “When establishing the vocational<br />
training program, IRD looked for the kinds of<br />
jobs available and if there was a market for the jobs,”<br />
said IRD’s Michele Lemmon. “The first training we did<br />
was for electricians or people to repair generators.<br />
Because most of Iraq had no electricity, everybody<br />
was buying generators, but no one knew how to<br />
48
Working with local NGOs and government<br />
officials, IRD organized a 10-day summer<br />
“peace camp” for 150 young men and<br />
women. Their hope was that the retreat<br />
might be a gateway to fostering tolerance<br />
maintain them. So we started vocational training by<br />
asking, ‘What types of jobs are needed?’”<br />
The business development component created many<br />
more long-term jobs than did the vocational training<br />
and employment generation component, as intended.<br />
The vocational training was intended to help at-risk and<br />
unemployed Iraqis gain marketable skills. But through<br />
the innovative methods IRD used to link training<br />
courses to market demand and unemployed <strong>citizens</strong> to<br />
employment opportunities, more than 8,000 vocational<br />
training graduates landed long-term jobs as a result of<br />
their training. In addition, the more effective registration<br />
and tracking processes for trainees that IRD put<br />
in place at all the rehabilitated training centers helped<br />
the labor ministry rebuild its capacity not only to teach<br />
Iraqis skills but also to help translate those skills into<br />
jobs. “We always tried to link the local market demand<br />
with what was provided at the vocational training<br />
centers,” said al-Juboori. “Because that was the<br />
objective. We needed to ensure that the unemployed<br />
youth would not be led back into the violence. We built<br />
the ministry’s training capacity 100 percent to stay in<br />
business. And they’re still in business.”<br />
Youth activities: Different from everything else<br />
Iraq’s Ninewa province is among the country’s most<br />
ethnically diverse regions. Tragically, that diversity<br />
helped fuel the rise of the sectarian violence that<br />
gripped the area in 2007. A suicide bombing in a Shia<br />
neighborhood of Tal Afar was blamed for more than<br />
150 deaths, making it at the time the single deadliest<br />
attack since coalition forces entered Iraq. The<br />
bombing led to a wave of retaliatory killings and kidnappings<br />
as gunmen stormed homes throughout Sunni<br />
neighborhoods. Meanwhile, in Mosul, the provincial<br />
capital, rising tensions between Arabs and Kurds led<br />
many Kurds to flee the city. As the situation deteriorated,<br />
Iraqi staff working for CSP in Ninewa developed<br />
a simple program with a lofty aim—to assemble area<br />
youth from different ethnic and religious backgrounds<br />
in an effort to bridge their cultural and religious gaps.<br />
Working with local NGOs and government officials, IRD<br />
organized a 10-day summer “peace camp” for 150<br />
young men and women from across the province. Their<br />
hope was that the retreat, on a small scale, might be<br />
a gateway to fostering tolerance between groups who<br />
were increasingly seeing each other only as enemies,<br />
not as fellow Iraqis.<br />
The first day of camp was a near-disaster. Muslims,<br />
Christians, Arabs, and Kurds were all along for the<br />
retreat, but the different groups refused to come<br />
together, mirroring the tensions so prevalent in the<br />
province. IRD staff spent the first day and night simply<br />
teaching the concepts of tolerance, acceptance, and<br />
religious understanding. “The youth programming<br />
was very different than everything else,” said Barzan<br />
Ismaeel, IRD’s national director for employment generation<br />
and youth. “The outcome was not necessarily<br />
employment, but we were still training people how to<br />
live and interact.”<br />
Through soccer, stronger social ties and teachable<br />
moments<br />
When asked to name CSP’s greatest success, IRD<br />
staffers repeatedly cited the number of jobs created.<br />
US political and diplomatic leaders, when discussing<br />
the program in public forums like congressional testimonies<br />
or media roundtables, used the same point<br />
of reference—jobs. Employment numbers, after all,<br />
offered the most quantifiable statistic in an environment<br />
where measuring results was an erratic, dangerous,<br />
often unreliable process. But the CSP design (and COIN<br />
strategy in general) presumed that the strength of<br />
Iraq’s cultural and community network was at least as<br />
important as employment for the country’s stability and<br />
social cohesion. Organizing safe and secure “communal<br />
activities” was a critical step on the road to reducing<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
49
CSP’s youth activities component aimed<br />
for something more than jobs—it aimed<br />
to help young Iraqis connect to their<br />
identity, culture, and community<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
sectarian strife. Therefore, CSP’s youth activities component<br />
aimed for something more than jobs—it aimed to<br />
help young Iraqis connect to their identity, culture, and<br />
community and to give them opportunities to form social<br />
bonds that might be strong enough to withstand the pull<br />
of the insurgency. “Thousands and thousands of people<br />
were unemployed, at all age groups, but especially<br />
among the youth,” Ismaeel said. “They were a tool that<br />
militias used. Many would be recruited just by being<br />
given a cell phone. ‘Here’s a phone, now you can work<br />
for us.’ Nobody else was paying attention to them.”<br />
CSP originally targeted young men and women ages<br />
17–25 for youth activities, but IRD recommended<br />
expanding the age range down to 12 and up to 35.<br />
Expanding the range allowed more activities to reach<br />
secondary schools and to capture a good number of<br />
unemployed, physically active men. In the eyes of the<br />
implementation team, all youth were assumed to be<br />
“at risk.” And since young males were far more likely<br />
to join a militia, most activities targeted ways to keep<br />
men engaged and occupied. Primarily, this goal was<br />
achieved with team sporting events and activities,<br />
most notably soccer.<br />
Before IRD’s intervention, a five-year gap in organized<br />
sports had existed in most Iraqi cities. The local<br />
directorates of the Ministry of Youth Services had<br />
staff but no operating budgets. Meanwhile, most<br />
parks and recreational fields were in disrepair. Cleaning<br />
up and restoring these fields, work that fell under<br />
the community infrastructure component, was quite<br />
common during CSP. During the first quarter of 2009,<br />
for instance, 11 playgrounds and nine soccer fields<br />
were constructed in one district in the city of Kirkuk<br />
alone. Restoring the fields provided short-term jobs<br />
and created a common pathway for the communal<br />
activities envisioned in the CSP design.<br />
with another NGO that had a relationship with Nike, IRD<br />
sent a shipment of some 8,000 soccer balls to Iraq in<br />
November 2007. Later, additional shipments of equipment,<br />
including sports shoes and athletic gear, arrived.<br />
But having a refurbished field or new equipment did<br />
not always guarantee the safety of the space. One<br />
particular soccer match in Ramadi, one of Iraq’s most<br />
unstable cities, ended with claims of cheating and<br />
unfair officiating. Unnerved by the rapid escalation of<br />
heated rhetoric, and spotting aggressive body language,<br />
IRD workers on site called Ismaeel to report a<br />
potential deadly conflict that was about to erupt. Local<br />
officials and CSP staff were able to diffuse the situation<br />
before it got out of hand, but the event led IRD<br />
to “embed” workers in other programs, like vocational<br />
training classes, to teach concepts like team building<br />
and sportsmanship along with employable skills. Since<br />
youth activities received less financial support than the<br />
rest of CSP, this kind of engagement was seen as a<br />
different way of mitigating conflict.<br />
The youth program activities represented only 10<br />
percent of CSP’s total funding for city programs, but<br />
many events, such as the popular soccer matches,<br />
had the spotlight and often benefited a large number<br />
of people directly and indirectly. According to Ismaeel,<br />
CSP was reaching 10,000 people a week through<br />
soccer matches and practices in Mosul. Mobilizing<br />
such larger numbers served a dual purpose: engaging<br />
different Iraqis in a common event and countering the<br />
militias. “The elements that were trying to destabilize<br />
the cities as well as CSP activities actually had a lot<br />
in common with us,” Ismaeel said. “They were using<br />
youth, and they were trying to reach, in a negative way,<br />
a large number of people. So we simply had to make<br />
the greater impact.”<br />
A broad approach to different needs<br />
50<br />
Even with fields repaired, a shortage of equipment was<br />
another hurdle to starting local leagues. By partnering<br />
Altogether, IRD’s youth activities engaged more<br />
than 350,000 participants. Soccer matches and
CSP was reaching 10,000 people a week<br />
through soccer matches and practices in<br />
Mosul. Mobilizing such larger numbers served<br />
a dual purpose: engaging different Iraqis in<br />
a common event and countering the militias<br />
tournaments were common high-profile events, but<br />
CSP sponsored a wide range of activities intended to<br />
challenge, engage, and unify. Some events accommodated<br />
hundreds, such as a 6K fun run in Kirkuk that<br />
drew 1,500 participants, while others appealed to narrower<br />
interests, such as a chess program in Ramadi<br />
implemented in coordination with local schools. Youth<br />
also took part in CSP-sponsored basketball games,<br />
boxing and wrestling matches, martial arts training,<br />
and swim meets.<br />
Not all organized events were sports-related. Life<br />
skills, culture, and art activities included programs<br />
that taught poetry, sewing, calligraphy, and pottery;<br />
training in first aid techniques, basic computer use,<br />
and Arabic literacy; video and music festivals; and<br />
a community theater run through the Iraqi Union of<br />
Artists. There also were programs limited for women in<br />
the more urban and progressive regions of Iraq, where<br />
such activity was considered culturally acceptable. In<br />
Salah ad Din, a volleyball tournament cosponsored by<br />
the Department of Education attracted 240 female<br />
students.<br />
“You couldn’t apply every type of activity or approach<br />
in all areas,” Ismaeel said, echoing a common theme<br />
among all IRD staff when discussing CSP projects.<br />
“It was critical that we respond to the needs of the<br />
people, what they wanted and needed.” One way that<br />
IRD did that was by stretching the boundaries for<br />
in-kind contributions, which most often were medical<br />
supplies or some kind of income-producing equipment—tools,<br />
appliances, machinery, and the like. With<br />
the World Vision organization, IRD supplied more than<br />
$9 million worth of McGraw-Hill books, according to<br />
Igor Samac, a senior program officer in IRD’s logistics<br />
and acquisitions department, to the University of<br />
Baghdad’s school library. With the Perkins School for<br />
the Blind, IRD supplied Perkins Braillers, essentially<br />
a Braille typewriter with keys corresponding to dots<br />
in the Braille code, to Baghdad’s Al-Noor School,<br />
the city’s only learning center for blind children. With<br />
the One Laptop Per Child organization, IRD supplied<br />
rugged, low-cost laptops to children throughout Iraq’s<br />
various elementary schools.<br />
Altogether, CSP’s in-kind gifts totaled $26.7 million,<br />
exceeding the goal of $20 million. According to Samac,<br />
IRD facilitated the shipment of 65 loads of goods to<br />
Iraq over the course of the three-year program—an<br />
average of almost one shipment every two weeks. Of<br />
course, most of the in-kind donations helped support<br />
the other CSP program components and their primary<br />
focus on job generation, but, as Samac pointed out,<br />
the distribution of items like soccer balls or library<br />
books had a broad impact on youth activities at a<br />
relatively low cost. “Many of these items were not<br />
of high value,” he said, “but they demonstrated a<br />
different approach to how in-kind contributions could<br />
address different needs. This shows a diversity that<br />
was important to carrying out CSP’s broad mission.”<br />
Tolerance as an alternative to violence<br />
To create a sense of local ownership and reduce<br />
corruption, CSP funded programs in collaboration<br />
with multiple government ministries, including the<br />
ministries of youth and sports, culture, environment,<br />
and health. In some areas, like Mosul, the working<br />
model was expanded to include partnerships and<br />
capacity building with local NGOs. These partnerships<br />
helped put an Iraqi imprint on the IRD-led activities,<br />
which was standard practice for CSP operations, and<br />
they taught local ministries how to efficiently organize<br />
sponsored sports teams, leagues, and events. One<br />
local civil society group in Haditha, following CSP’s<br />
lead, prepared a six-month “pipeline of activities” on<br />
their own, to plan, implement, and oversee once IRD<br />
had left. “Capacity building of NGOs and local leaders<br />
played an important role in our ability to stabilize<br />
these areas,” Ismaeel said. “In Haditha, they knew<br />
how to reach out. The ultimate goal was to engage<br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
51
most Iraqi <strong>citizens</strong> had an overwhelmingly<br />
positive association between CSP and<br />
reduced violence in their <strong>communities</strong><br />
3<br />
Successes and setbacks<br />
people for two or three years, but in many cases, we<br />
made a successful transition to keep activities going.<br />
CSP created jobs. CSP engaged youth. But at the local<br />
level, it really achieved something special.”<br />
IRD staff and USAID evaluators know the youth engagement<br />
program was well received; the sheer number<br />
of people who turned out for these events, as well as<br />
<strong>citizens</strong>’ consistent statements of support and gratitude,<br />
made that clear. What was unclear was exactly<br />
how far this work went in mitigating conflict. The IBTCI<br />
monitoring report suggested that future COIN-related<br />
programs should find a way to closely track changes<br />
in attitude and behavior, even though it acknowledged<br />
the difficulty in doing so, particularly in a conflict zone.<br />
Still, the report found that most Iraqi <strong>citizens</strong> had an<br />
overwhelmingly positive association between CSP<br />
and reduced violence in their <strong>communities</strong>. While the<br />
role of military and Iraqi security forces cannot be<br />
discounted or overlooked, all groups surveyed agreed<br />
that the program helped teach young people the value<br />
of tolerance as an alternative to violence.<br />
52
4<br />
Converting roadblocks into a roadmap<br />
for future stabilization work<br />
A new road is cleared, paved, and reopened in Mosul
“We had challenges, but with the challenges we also had<br />
great successes. We learned from our experiences, and we<br />
moved forward with a stronger and better understanding of<br />
stabilization.”<br />
— Alaa Ismael<br />
When asked to recall a single CSP project that stood<br />
out as unique, Barzan Ismaeel, IRD’s national director<br />
for employment generation and youth, picked the restoration<br />
of a playground and athletic field in Mosul’s<br />
Hay al-Thawrah neighborhood. At first, this project,<br />
which wrapped up in early 2009, might seem to be a<br />
mundane choice, since playgrounds and sports facilities<br />
were some of the most common projects initiated<br />
under CSP. But this particular project was different,<br />
Ismaeel said: “It seemed to engage almost everyone,<br />
in a profound way. And in that location, at that time.”<br />
By the beginning of 2009, Mosul could not be called<br />
a safe city, but it was nothing like it had been just<br />
a year before. In early 2008, Mosul was considered<br />
the last urban stronghold of al Qaeda in Iraq, with an<br />
estimated 2,000 insurgents involved in regular IED,<br />
suicide, and small-arms-fire attacks. An escalation of<br />
American military force culminated with an Iraqi-led<br />
security operation dubbed Lion’s Roar in May 2008,<br />
which was followed by Operation Mother of Two<br />
Springs, a continuing operation throughout the year to<br />
clear out insurgent forces. According to the Institute<br />
for the Study of War, attacks in Mosul declined from<br />
an average of 40 a day in the week before the official<br />
launch of operations to 4–6 a day in the weeks after.<br />
As the military transitioned from “clear” to “hold and<br />
build,” the CSP team was asked to immediately realign<br />
the focus of all projects to help establish water and<br />
sewage, electricity, trash collection, healthcare, and<br />
education services. Projects that were not COINrelevant<br />
were canceled while alternative projects were<br />
developed in direct coordination with the US military.<br />
According to quarterly reports, military units so often<br />
requested CSP’s direct assistance due to IRD’s<br />
“ability, experience, flexibility, and speed of project<br />
development.” From April to June 2008, amid these<br />
major kinetic operations, IRD completed 68 infrastructure<br />
and essential services projects in Mosul, even as<br />
the military was still wrapping up the “clear” phase of<br />
the stabilization strategy.<br />
The mayor of Mosul routinely visited CSP public works<br />
sites to support local workers hired as part of the<br />
CIES program and to pass out “I am Iraqi” T-shirts.<br />
At the same time, other CSP program activities were<br />
taking place in the same area, such as a ribbon-cutting<br />
for a vocational computer training center and the<br />
summer youth peace camp. As in Baghdad, Ramadi,<br />
or any CSP city, IRD was trying to respond to immediate<br />
COIN needs while also bolstering the local sense<br />
of community. With the Hay al-Thawrah playground and<br />
athletic field, Ismaeel, an Iraqi native very sensitive<br />
to his country’s ethnic divisions and tensions, saw a<br />
project that happened in the right place at the right<br />
time. Less than a year after some of Mosul’s most<br />
intense fighting, this park, he said, offered residents a<br />
55
“<br />
Many people came out and participated<br />
in this project, from all ethnic backgrounds,<br />
from all ages. I saw a paradigm shift<br />
of people coming together. It was more<br />
than anyone thought CSP could be”<br />
—Barzan Ismaeel<br />
4<br />
Converting roadblocks into a roadmap<br />
sense of cathartic relief and symbolized the idea that<br />
“they could move beyond the past” as a community.<br />
“Mosul is a city with a great variety of people,”<br />
Ismaeel said. “When we opened this space, we had<br />
Muslim Sunnis, Muslim Shias, Christians, all together.<br />
So many people came out and participated in this<br />
project, from all ethnic backgrounds, from all ages.<br />
And it was not just the youth. In many places in Iraq, it<br />
had not been allowed for people to mix this way. I saw<br />
a paradigm shift of people coming together. This thing<br />
I witnessed was not something normal. It was more<br />
than anyone thought CSP could be.”<br />
represented some of the most frustrating roadblocks.<br />
Although IRD acted swiftly to implement extensive<br />
revisions to its own internal administrative operations<br />
in the wake of the previous year’s audit, USAID’s<br />
inspector general in February 2009 said it was looking<br />
into new allegations of fraud in Mosul. The independent<br />
evaluator IBTCI reviewed some of the program<br />
components in that city and on June 30 announced<br />
that it had found some reporting “inconsistencies.”<br />
The program was scheduled to close out in some<br />
cities, including Mosul, the following year, but on July<br />
4, USAID suspended payments and called for an early<br />
shut down.<br />
56<br />
CSP’s three-year life cycle as a<br />
“force multiplier”<br />
Ismaeel’s recollection is one of the distinctly human<br />
observations that, in quarterly reports, are blandly<br />
referenced as “rehabilitations to a playground, a park,<br />
and soccer fields.” For any of IRD’s work on CSP,<br />
it’s important to grasp the weight of the individual<br />
moments that made up the $644 million collective<br />
whole. “In my opinion, all the people that I worked<br />
with as a soldier loved CSP,” Andrew Wilson said. “We<br />
loved what IRD was doing because they were a force<br />
multiplier and they were affecting individual lives.<br />
CSP was keeping people employed and happy, giving<br />
them some hope and promise. The big things and all<br />
the little things added up. You could just see it on the<br />
faces of the people.”<br />
During the first quarter of 2009 in Mosul, in addition<br />
to the Hay al-Thawrah playground, IRD implemented<br />
more than a dozen CIES projects, completed 63 business<br />
grants as part of a larger program to regenerate<br />
the city’s market area, created almost 200 long-term<br />
jobs, and tallied more than 1,300 participants in youth<br />
activities. At the time, Mosul represented so much of<br />
what was good and successful about CSP, but it also<br />
“There were huge constraints in Mosul,” said Dar<br />
Warmke, who had managed CSP in Basra before<br />
transferring to Mosul where he oversaw the program’s<br />
closeout in that city. “When I got there, I was able to<br />
see small errors that could be traced back to year<br />
one. It wasn’t rocket science, but it was all management-related.<br />
No one really saw it until year three.”<br />
Warmke had the unique perspective of witnessing the<br />
entire life cycle of CSP implementation in full, from<br />
different cities.<br />
He said CSP administration can be divided into three<br />
stages, one for each year in operation. Year one was<br />
the ramp-up: “The theme was spending a lot of money<br />
so we could start showing results.” Year two allowed<br />
implementers to focus more closely on “what we<br />
were doing and why we were doing it,” he said, which<br />
brought with it more attention to fiscal accountability.<br />
“Work plans and targets started to become the overall<br />
theme much more than simply spending money.” By<br />
year three, compliance had become the overriding<br />
concern. “There were certain elements we needed<br />
to pay more attention to,” Warmke said. “But I would<br />
say in Mosul, everybody was well-intentioned.” The<br />
problems, he said, were cumulative—issues that built<br />
up year over year. “You couldn’t always go back and<br />
repair it.”
CSP was unprecedented in scale,<br />
but it also withstood unprecedented<br />
criticism and second-guessing<br />
How can an NGO work and associate with the military?<br />
Operating in a counterinsurgency environment poses<br />
monumental challenges, uncertainties, and risks, and<br />
getting projects off the ground became just the first step<br />
in an arduous, dangerous, and extremely complicated<br />
implementation process. Monitoring and managing<br />
those activities, as well as trying to ensure a transparent<br />
and accountable financial operation in a country<br />
with little capacity and rampant corruption, proved more<br />
difficult than initially conceived. Moreover, IRD soon<br />
learned not only that it was expected to implement<br />
extensive COIN activities in an unstable environment,<br />
but also it was being held to the same basic operational<br />
parameters as a traditional development program.<br />
“The program was so big, and there were so many<br />
things that were not normal to an operating environment<br />
for an NGO,” said Alice Willard, a former senior<br />
IRD monitoring and evaluation officer during CSP. “The<br />
program was asked to provide standard information to<br />
the donor, USAID, but the military was also asking for<br />
the same information—on top of asking us directly to<br />
conduct different activities.” Willard said the desire of<br />
so many different actors to play a primary role in project<br />
direction—“an unrelenting pressure”—muddied the<br />
communication process and made it easier for critics<br />
to label CSP as unwieldy, disorganized, or ideologically<br />
compromised. To critics, an NGO working so closely with<br />
the military was anathema; indeed, some on IRD’s own<br />
staff rejected the notion outright. “The NGO community<br />
is very deeply divided as to whether people want to<br />
work with the military,” Willard said. “If you talk to one<br />
organization, they’ll say ‘Oh we never do this.’ Talk to<br />
another, and they’ll say, ‘Well we don’t do this officially,<br />
but…’ Finally, a third NGO might say, ‘Of course we’re<br />
working with the military. If we can help them bring relief<br />
to vulnerable people, then how could we not?’”<br />
Michele Lemmon, an IRD senior program officer, was<br />
one of the first at IRD headquarters to begin work<br />
on CSP, which included the immediate need to hire<br />
staff. “It was very difficult to recruit people to work in<br />
Baghdad,” she said. “It seemed like the entire NGO<br />
community was against IRD at the time, because we<br />
were the first ones to work with the military.”<br />
For critics, the sheer size and design of the program<br />
offered no shortage of opportunities to criticize. CSP<br />
was unprecedented in scale, but it also withstood<br />
unprecedented criticism and second-guessing. The<br />
program sharpened already widespread concern<br />
among the development community that the “militarization”<br />
of humanitarian assistance would further<br />
endanger the lives of aid workers already at risk by<br />
being in an unstable environment. Rather than being<br />
seen as impartial actors, critics say, workers can be<br />
viewed too easily as a party to the conflict. The debate<br />
only intensified during the latter part of the 2000s as<br />
aid worker deaths increased in Afghanistan and after<br />
the US Department of Defense unveiled a more formal<br />
civ-mil policy for aid organizations mandating cooperation<br />
“in all aspects of foreign assistance activities”<br />
where both civilian and military organizations are<br />
operating, and “where civilian-military cooperation will<br />
advance [US government] foreign policy.” 9<br />
In the end, extraordinary outcomes in the most difficult<br />
environments<br />
Most of the issues that led to the internal frustrations,<br />
the external red flags, and the public controversies<br />
were a combination of human oversight—inadequate<br />
data collection, inconsistent monitoring, insufficient<br />
quality control—and the reality of working in a conflict<br />
zone with the military as a partner. Some of the same<br />
qualities that military leaders praised about IRD,<br />
flexibility and speed, ran headlong into the systematic<br />
procurement, reporting, and approval processes that<br />
underpin traditional development work. Addressing<br />
this operational dichotomy up front, through processes<br />
and expectations that meet acceptable donor<br />
4<br />
Converting roadblocks into a roadmap<br />
57
“<br />
We learned from our experiences, and<br />
we moved forward with a stronger and<br />
better understanding of stabilization”<br />
—Alaa Ismael<br />
4<br />
Converting roadblocks into a roadmap<br />
requirements while giving fieldworkers the flexibility to<br />
operate, became one of IRD’s most important recommendations<br />
for future stabilization operations. “With<br />
CSP, there were challenges that any other program an<br />
NGO would normally manage would never face,” said<br />
Alaa Ismael, the nationwide manager for CIES activities.<br />
“But that wasn’t a reason to shy away, even if it<br />
was hard to manage.”<br />
Administrative closeout of a typical development<br />
program can take up to three months to wrap up the<br />
bookkeeping, finalize the paperwork, square up the<br />
payroll, and so forth. Once that all happens, final<br />
audit teams from the donor will come in and do a<br />
closeout audit, which normally lasts anywhere from<br />
a few weeks to up to a year, depending on the size<br />
of the program. Given the cost and scale of CSP, as<br />
well as the extra attention it generated, the closeout<br />
process lasted for more than two years and endured<br />
three “final” closeout audits. For many IRD staff, the<br />
program’s end marred what had been a productive<br />
and groundbreaking union of development principles<br />
and COIN objectives, which led to successful stabilization<br />
operations throughout Iraq—exactly what CSP<br />
was intended to do. “When you take a broad view of<br />
everything, it was definitely a success,” Warmke said.<br />
By September 2011, the US government agreed. Two<br />
firms, the Defense Contract Audit Agency and PriceWaterhouseCoopers,<br />
had contested approximately $59<br />
million in CSP costs and expenses. But in the end, IRD<br />
provided the full documentation required to have all but<br />
$239,000 disallowed. At just a tenth of 1 percent, the<br />
disallowance on CSP, the largest assistance program in<br />
USAID history, was well below the industry norm of 3–5<br />
percent. In a staff memo announcing the final determination,<br />
IRD President Dr. Arthur B. Keys reaffirmed the<br />
organization’s commitment to “100 percent compliance<br />
all the time on all programs,” and he reiterated that the<br />
findings were a testament to IRD’s ability to achieve<br />
extraordinary outcomes in difficult environments. “We<br />
had challenges, but with the challenges we also had<br />
great successes,” Alaa Ismael said. “We learned from<br />
our experiences, and we moved forward with a stronger<br />
and better understanding of stabilization.”<br />
Strategic recommendations for future COIN<br />
programs<br />
CSP’s challenges included maintaining community<br />
support while simultaneously maintaining an effective<br />
military collaboration. At the same time, insecurity and<br />
local corruption exacerbated difficulties with monitoring<br />
and evaluation, staffing, and project management.<br />
These challenges, which have been highlighted<br />
throughout this review, offer invaluable learning<br />
opportunities for future COIN programs, or even for<br />
development work in a conflict zone.<br />
Community support: Invest in it<br />
The hold phase of COIN’s “clear-hold-build” strategy<br />
relies on gaining local support by assisting the population,<br />
and as military and civilian leaders repeatedly<br />
pointed out, civilian agencies are much better equipped<br />
to enable that outcome. The military was flooding<br />
Baghdad and other cities with CERP funds, which<br />
dwarfed CSP’s expenditures, but that investment did<br />
not bring what CSP brought: an Iraqi face. From the<br />
beginning, IRD emphasized that CSP was implemented<br />
by and for Iraqis. IRD employed a large Iraqi national<br />
staff who could understand and empathize with the<br />
needs of the community. “The importance of those<br />
years with ICAP cannot be understated,” Iqbal al-Juboori<br />
said. “The base of support we had in Baghdad ahead of<br />
CSP was so strong, that’s what allowed us to expand.<br />
We already knew what it took to get people to trust us.<br />
They trusted us because we had worked with them.”<br />
IRD applied what it learned about the importance of<br />
earning local trust in Serbia and Montenegro to its early<br />
days in Baghdad. IRD built on that knowledge with ICAP<br />
58
“<br />
Without security, there is no<br />
development . So who’s best trained<br />
for that, the soldiers with weapons or<br />
the people with project plans?”<br />
—IRD staff<br />
and CSP, and it has since gone on to apply the knowledge<br />
to stabilization programming in volatile regions<br />
where it had no previous footprint, such as Afghanistan.<br />
Military collaboration: Make it work<br />
“Working with the military is hell. But you have<br />
to. The military has its own way of doing things,<br />
not necessarily in harmony with NGO practices.<br />
They don’t have boundaries. But if it helps<br />
people or saves lives, you do it.”<br />
“Stabilization is a totally different mindset.<br />
Without security, without the military, there is<br />
no development —in Iraq or any conflict zone.<br />
So who’s best trained for that, the soldiers with<br />
weapons or the people with project plans?”<br />
These quotations, each from different IRD staff, are<br />
opposed in ideology, yet both are pragmatic in recognizing<br />
the importance of maintaining a working relationship<br />
with the military in conflict-affected areas. For<br />
the most part, differences were overcome to ensure<br />
the greater goal was reached. As al-Juboori said,<br />
“Everyone has to be on the same side.” But even to<br />
those on the same side, communicating, informationsharing,<br />
and chain-of-command barriers arose as the<br />
pace of military operations exceeded those of typical<br />
development processes. Clear communication was<br />
critical for operational success and basic safety, and it<br />
often relied on developing mutual trust and an awareness<br />
of individual responsibilities. “If you’re willing to<br />
support the military’s efforts directly, and they see<br />
you as an asset with resources to bring to the table, it<br />
will work,” Travis Gartner said. “If you don’t show any<br />
value in what you’re doing, if they see you as another<br />
person they have to provide with a cot and meals and<br />
move around, it won’t work.”<br />
Establishing communication channels was one hurdle.<br />
Managing them in a war setting was another. For<br />
example, some of the protocols weren’t in place from<br />
the project’s launch, including ensuring the military<br />
knew that USAID was the primary point of contact<br />
for IRD. “A lot of times, the implementing team was<br />
asked to do something directly by the military or the<br />
embassy,” Alice Willard said. “You wind up then with<br />
city programs that are either coordinating with the<br />
military or taking orders from them. Either way, it puts<br />
staff at risk and complicates what has to be done on<br />
the back end. In future COIN programs, this has to be<br />
clarified.”<br />
Security: Prepare for all scenarios<br />
During the implementation of ICAP in Baghdad, IRD<br />
had encountered threats and kidnappings, insecure<br />
project sites, and local partners of questionable character.<br />
But when CSP began, security was so bad in so<br />
many areas that it was seen as less an external force<br />
than as a basic cross-cutting obstacle to carrying out<br />
the program. IRD took all possible precautions, hired<br />
private security support, and maintained the final word<br />
on expatriate staff movement in the red zone with the<br />
military. Thorough security planning became costly and<br />
time-consuming. “It would take one staffer anywhere<br />
from 30 minutes to four hours to get to the office in<br />
Baghdad,” Willard said. “Iraqi security checkpoints<br />
changed regularly, and you had to carry multiple IDs.<br />
If you were in a Sunni neighborhood, you had your<br />
Sunni ID. If you were in a Shia neighborhood, you had<br />
a Shia ID. Security protocols to get into international<br />
zones were inconsistent, and there were always the<br />
individual militias in different neighborhoods. We<br />
don’t normally experience this in the development<br />
community.”<br />
Local staff (and their family members) were also under<br />
constant threat of violence. Many staff engaged in<br />
daily routines associated more commonly with being<br />
a spy than an aid worker—varying routes to work or<br />
lying to neighbors about their employment. “Two of<br />
4<br />
Converting roadblocks into a roadmap<br />
59
as long as CSP is studied, future<br />
COIN programming will be much<br />
better equipped to anticipate and<br />
manage civilian security issues<br />
4<br />
Converting roadblocks into a roadmap<br />
my team members were kidnapped for two days by<br />
an armed group before being released,” Alaa Ismael<br />
said. “That was one of our most challenging moments,<br />
but there were others like that.” Ismael recalled<br />
“almost continuous” indirect intimidation of field staff:<br />
“Sometimes a person, maybe a community leader or a<br />
council member or a contractor, would say something<br />
like ‘don’t come here; the militias are looking for you.’<br />
But as Iraqis, we knew what that meant, that when a<br />
person tells you that, it’s a threat.”<br />
USAID and IRD planned for a difficult security environment,<br />
but the mental, physical, and fiscal toll of operating<br />
in a war zone was greater than expected. Specialized<br />
vehicles, equipment, and support structures<br />
(such as safe rooms) became common for program<br />
workers. In addition, the need to travel to the field<br />
for project implementation and monitoring created a<br />
natural tension between program and security staff,<br />
increasing the need for strong communication and,<br />
above all, preparedness. “When actual implementation<br />
is so dependent on the security environment, the<br />
donor and the implementing agency must make every<br />
effort to prepare in advance for whatever scenario<br />
they can envision,” Willard said. She added that as<br />
long as CSP is studied, future COIN programming will<br />
be much better equipped to anticipate and manage<br />
civilian security issues.<br />
Corruption: Address it head on<br />
Corruption is always a challenge in development<br />
settings, more so during a conflict. The vast sums<br />
being spent in Iraq by military and civilian authorities<br />
attracted attention. The war had damaged banking<br />
capabilities, forcing projects to use cash in many<br />
instances and requiring careful controls. IRD took<br />
extraordinary efforts during implementation to<br />
compensate, but as many program workers learned,<br />
fighting corruption often meant overcoming longestablished<br />
systems of doing business. “Corruption<br />
and government officials were a big issue,” Ismael<br />
said. “Officials had seen aid projects, so they knew<br />
the system; they knew all the tricks. Immediately when<br />
we’d start a project, they’d want it awarded to their<br />
own contractors, either relatives of the chairman or<br />
relatives or friends of somebody—or sometimes their<br />
own company.” To overcome this, Ismael said, IRD had<br />
to “legitimize the process.” In one example, IRD had<br />
the district advisory councils and the district governorates<br />
or municipality agree to a single, unified list of<br />
approved contractors.<br />
While strong, consistent controls included frequent<br />
internal reviews and timely external ones, security<br />
challenges posed limits on IRD’s ability to implement<br />
these controls. Because of security concerns, IRD<br />
could rarely conduct spot checks, unannounced site<br />
visits, and forensic auditing. These gaps provided a<br />
few locals an opening to game the system. Jessica<br />
Cho recounted a story involving poultry farms. “Different<br />
farmers received grants for chickens, but the<br />
monitors’ trips were infrequent due to security,” Cho<br />
said. “So when monitors would go make visits to a<br />
farm, the contractor that was hired to provide the<br />
chickens would move the same group of birds from<br />
place to place.”<br />
Corruption wasn’t limited to beneficiaries or local<br />
politicians, either. IRD encountered its own problems<br />
in the field that gave the organization valuable insight<br />
on the best way to anticipate and minimize corruptive<br />
influences for future programs. Gartner helped launch<br />
IRD’s stabilization work in Afghanistan, where “no one<br />
hesitated to address the corruption issue head on,”<br />
he said, adding that better quality assurance, quality<br />
control, and internal reporting systems were established<br />
from the very beginning.<br />
Mamadou Sidibe, a monitoring and evaluation director<br />
for CSP, said, “You have to be realistic; you set<br />
procedures to minimize what will happen, but you can’t<br />
60
IRD’s staffing woes could be broken<br />
down into three categories: getting<br />
people hired, getting the right people<br />
hired, and keeping people on the job<br />
control everything that will happen. There’s going to be<br />
corruption in a conflict zone. You should make every<br />
effort to minimize it, but you can’t alter reality when<br />
it’s inconvenient.”<br />
Monitoring and evaluation: Set the right baseline<br />
Insecurity and local corruption tied directly into some<br />
of IRD’s most notable monitoring and evaluation (M&E)<br />
challenges. Many staff recounted the danger in traveling<br />
to site locations and, as Vigeen Dola said, this<br />
created unique challenges in trying to perform routine<br />
tasks, such as documenting work with photographic<br />
evidence. “In certain areas in Iraq, you couldn’t take<br />
a camera out because you would be easily identified,”<br />
he said. “So staffers would pretend to make phone<br />
calls and then take a grainy cell phone photo. Or<br />
they’d find someone from the same area, a beneficiary<br />
they trusted, and ask that person to take a photo.”<br />
One of CSP’s operational strengths was its development<br />
of an independent M&E framework and a rigorous<br />
system for ensuring the quality of the reported<br />
data—valuable tools for future work in a COIN setting.<br />
However, these steps didn’t take place until the<br />
program was well under way, in multiple locations, and<br />
after the lessons of many months of insufficient practices<br />
had already been learned. Sidibe joined IRD with<br />
a mandate to correct the M&E problems and devise<br />
a stronger monitoring methodology. According to him,<br />
emphasis was placed on verifying and validating data,<br />
separating the M&E and quality control functions,<br />
standardizing processes and forms, training staff<br />
and collaborating with the CSP technical team (which<br />
captures the M&E data), and imparting the value of<br />
monitoring for results. Perhaps most important was<br />
the awareness IRD raised of the ineffectiveness of the<br />
initial program indicators. “You have to set an appropriate<br />
baseline at the beginning,” Sidibe said. “You set<br />
a target, and after a certain period of time, compare<br />
what you realized with what you expected to realize; if<br />
there’s a problem, you’ll have the feedback to correct<br />
it. It takes a lot of discipline.”<br />
Staffing: Identify needs and anticipate turnover<br />
IRD expected to face staffing hurdles while operating<br />
in a conflict zone, but one unexpected challenge was<br />
the high turnover among US government partners,<br />
which meant program directors were constantly<br />
spending time and resources bringing new civilian<br />
counterparts up to speed. As a result, maintaining<br />
institutional knowledge became a higher priority. “The<br />
donor staffing changed radically for USAID from the<br />
beginning to the end,” Willard said. “People who went<br />
to Iraq were there for six months and then shifted<br />
out. That didn’t give you a lot of time to do anything<br />
without feeling like you were starting over.” Other staff<br />
echoed similar concerns with the PRTs, which were<br />
vital to CSP design but burdensome when staffed<br />
with representatives who were unfamiliar with CSP or<br />
untrained in conflict-zone operations.<br />
IRD’s staffing woes could be broken down into three<br />
categories: getting people hired, getting the right<br />
people hired, and keeping people on the job. According<br />
to Michele Lemmon, staffing for stabilization<br />
operations was a consistent problem. “Turnover is a<br />
big problem,” she said, as are the quality of available<br />
staff and support for staff. “It’s because of the environment.<br />
You don’t see that level of turnover with staff<br />
in traditional development projects, where retention<br />
is greater and recruiting is easier.” CSP’s final report<br />
suggests the best way to minimize these challenges<br />
is to plan for a “significant investment in recruiting<br />
and training” and then to focus on identifying and<br />
hiring for certain skills that are difficult to learn in a<br />
conflict setting. Lastly, organizations should anticipate<br />
and plan for extensive, and ongoing, training: “Few<br />
staff will have a background in working under such<br />
conditions, and frequent rotation is required given the<br />
stress of the environment. Ensuring the continuity of<br />
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61
Those comfortable with military procedures,<br />
willing to take measured personal risks, and<br />
committed to the community-based model of<br />
more traditional development approaches were<br />
most adept at navigating CSP’s demands<br />
4<br />
Converting roadblocks into a roadmap<br />
program implementation requires broad-based training<br />
to give staff the flexibility to cover additional responsibilities<br />
[as they arise].”<br />
The most successful CSP workers tended to be<br />
unusual development professionals with at least some<br />
military service—or maybe a stint in the Peace Corps.<br />
Those comfortable with military procedures, willing to<br />
take measured personal risks, and committed to the<br />
community-based model of more traditional development<br />
approaches were most adept at navigating CSP’s<br />
demands.<br />
Project management: Prepare and communicate<br />
Because the environment in any setting where a<br />
stabilization program is being implemented is sure to<br />
be fluid, long-term work plans should be thought of as<br />
guidelines, Willard said. They should be reviewed constantly,<br />
even daily, and updated based on regular conversations<br />
with stakeholders. The interaction between<br />
the donor and implementing agency has to be regular,<br />
strong, and clear, and military considerations have to<br />
be taken into account with—not on top of—civilian<br />
decisionmaking. The key to dealing with such considerations<br />
before they escalate lies in the strength<br />
of preparation: basic systems of logistics, finance,<br />
compliance, administration, and staffing should be the<br />
“first-out-of-the-gate” elements put into place. As staff<br />
members are hired, they should find systems already<br />
functional and tuned to country realities.<br />
As a result of the many lessons learned in Iraq, IRD<br />
established comprehensive procedures for beginning<br />
and ending projects, including an expert startup team<br />
deployed to the field ahead of program launches<br />
(box 9). The team provides technical and financial<br />
management support, assists in hiring and training,<br />
and puts in place systematic processes guided by<br />
internal checklists and codified in an extensive startup<br />
manual that is unique in the NGO field for its detailed<br />
attention to standardization. The new startup team<br />
had a major impact during the launch of the $300<br />
million extension of USAID’s Afghanistan Vouchers<br />
for Increased Productive Agriculture program. And<br />
in January 2011, the team helped launch Cultural<br />
Bridges to Reconciliation in Iraq, a governance and<br />
community-assistance program.<br />
62
Many key tactical lessons have already been<br />
applied to IRD’s stabilization programming in<br />
other areas, including Afghanistan and Africa<br />
Box 9<br />
Stabilization in Iraq: 20 tactical lessons<br />
4<br />
Reflecting on lessons during the course of any project implementation is especially important for such programs as<br />
ICAP and CSP, because both programs provide valuable points of reference when considering how to adapt and build<br />
on the stabilization work done in Iraq. The key tactical lessons here, divided into four operational areas, are culled<br />
from a combination of program reviews, external evaluations, and official and final reports submitted to USAID. Most<br />
important, they synthesize lessons learned by IRD’s implementing teams on the ground. Many have already been<br />
applied to IRD’s stabilization programming in other areas, including Afghanistan and Africa.<br />
Implementation strategies<br />
• Anticipate the need to build the capacity of local partners and avoid transitioning projects until competent<br />
oversight is in place. This includes the capacity to maintain essential service and infrastructure projects as well<br />
as the capacity to oversee training, business, and job placement centers.<br />
• Prioritize investment in vocational training to locations with established programs and strengthen on-the-job training<br />
and placement so that more unemployed or short-term workers are linked to long-term jobs.<br />
• Include business development grants in the initial strategy for quick-start employment programs, with a special<br />
focus on medium-size grants in sectors with the greatest potential for creating jobs, such as agriculture and<br />
small-scale manufacturing.<br />
• Develop a model for measuring the success of community-based youth activities that promote social cohesion,<br />
such as peace camps and sporting events. Anecdotal evidence in support of their impact is strong, but consistent<br />
data and indicators would yield empirical backing.<br />
• Integrate program components into the initial design of any stabilization program so that projects reinforce mutual<br />
goals and flow from one stage to the next. In a conflict zone, uncertain security situations can hinder execution,<br />
but integration should be the default goal.<br />
• Do not overlook the importance of women, particularly heads of households, as a key target audience in program<br />
design and implementation strategy.<br />
Converting roadblocks into a roadmap<br />
Management systems and staffing<br />
• Develop a clear profile of the necessary staff skills most needed to build complementary and efficient program<br />
teams capable of overseeing COIN programming.<br />
• Formalize the startup process, including program implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and compliance<br />
issues before field placement. Consider deploying a city program “startup team” to help city directors with hiring<br />
and putting management systems in place during the first few months.<br />
• Harmonize basic management systems through institutional tools, such as training manuals, to offer consistent<br />
guidance and procedures on handling key operations, such as quality control, contracting, bidding, procurement,<br />
record keeping, and anticorruption measures.<br />
• Anticipate the need for continuing training and appropriate mechanisms for providing training, even as project<br />
activities are ongoing. Options include on-site technical assistance, learning exchange visits, and formal training<br />
sessions.<br />
63
4<br />
Box 9<br />
Stabilization in Iraq: 20 tactical lessons (continued)<br />
Converting roadblocks into a roadmap<br />
• Reduce security risks to staff in all facets of their jobs: at their home community, on their commute to work, at the<br />
project site, and during field visits. In addition, careful consideration should be given to addressing the mental,<br />
physical, and psychological challenges that can strain staff, diminish morale, and increase turnover.<br />
• Strengthen senior staff and backstop staff. Adding more senior staff positions as projects progress will motivate<br />
staff and minimize turnover. Additionally, future COIN programs must prepare an adequate budget for headquarters<br />
staff and technical assistance of field programs.<br />
Military and PRT partnerships<br />
• Maintain open lines of communication with military leaders and PRTs. Dialogue between city program directors<br />
and the military can increase staff safety and improve project supervision in dangerous areas. Directors should<br />
seek regular extensive briefings to ensure that they have up-to-date intelligence on local social, political, and<br />
tribal shifts.<br />
• Make sure lines of communication are clear, understood, and followed. Program directors should buffer staff<br />
members from direct contact with the military, however well intended. Similarly, PRTs should be made to follow<br />
requirements directing them to work through technical officers to provide direction to implementing partners.<br />
• Encourage PRTs to take a more active review role on projects and site locations when projects are still in the<br />
stabilization phase.<br />
Monitoring and evaluation<br />
• Develop a detailed monitoring and evaluation (M&E) plan as part of the initial application process. In addition, the<br />
implementing agency should collaborate closely with the donor in developing and reporting appropriate performance<br />
indicators.<br />
• Give top priority to hiring and training qualified M&E staff. Ensure that the program has an M&E director with an<br />
appropriate background in conflict situations. All relevant senior management and headquarters staff should be<br />
fully integrated into the M&E system design, and basic training in measurement and analysis processes should<br />
occur at least once a year.<br />
• Build M&E staff capacity to allow both for independent measurement and analysis and for collaborative measurement<br />
with outside contractors.<br />
• Focus on region-specific analyses when possible so project data in specific cities can be shared with program staff<br />
to assess local effectiveness and impact.<br />
• Develop a project system for archiving city-specific documents, as well as all official reports and complementary<br />
data systems, and include this system as part of the basic startup management package in each city program.<br />
The CSP archive, developed by the CSP reporting and information officer, is an example of this lesson in practice.<br />
64
Epilogue
CSP was in part a social experiment and an innovation<br />
in development programming. The stylistic dissonance<br />
encountered in coordinating with a fast-paced,<br />
command-centered, rapid results–driven entity like the<br />
Department of Defense—all the while responding to<br />
USAID’s direction and administrative requirements —<br />
called for agility and diplomacy. Yet the result is<br />
that CSP succeeded both as an exercise in military<br />
cooperation and as community-based engagement in<br />
a conflict zone.<br />
Hard Lessons, a 450-page report from the US government’s<br />
special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction,<br />
chronicles the relief efforts undertaken by the<br />
Department of Defense, Department of State, and<br />
USAID in Iraq. 10 In the chapter recounting the “civilian<br />
surge,” the programmatic work IRD oversaw is praised<br />
repeatedly. Relationships with Iraqis “that often<br />
eluded embassy personnel flourished just miles away<br />
in compounds maintained by USAID contractors,” the<br />
report observed, a reference to IRD’s implementation<br />
teams. A more explicit reference was then made to<br />
the positive impacts derived from both CSP and ICAP<br />
and how they directly underpinned the much larger<br />
stabilization efforts in Iraq. CSP and ICAP, the 2009<br />
report states, “employed Iraqis to work in neighborhoods<br />
not far from the Green Zone, as well as in other<br />
places across Iraq. By 2007, this approach to reconstruction—the<br />
strengthening of Iraqi civil society by<br />
operating within it—was viewed as a crucial tool. . . .<br />
Perhaps more than other reconstruction entities,”<br />
USAID and its implementing partners “believed that<br />
security could be achieved by muting the association<br />
with the coalition and by gaining community trust and<br />
cooperation.” Hard Lessons referred to this belief as<br />
a “sociological, rather than an exclusively physical”<br />
conception of security.<br />
As an IRD monitoring and evaluation manager, Vigeen<br />
Dola would conduct site visits as often as the security<br />
situation allowed. But Dola still took extensive precautions,<br />
informed by his own past “bad experience”<br />
working for another organization many years prior and<br />
his cultural awareness as a native Iraqi. “Whenever<br />
I’d go into the field, I would always keep a low profile,”<br />
he said. “I used to hide everything in my socks—my<br />
IDs, papers, anything that would give me away.” But<br />
one day in 2007, when Dola traveled to the western<br />
Iraqi city of Haditha in the dangerous Anbar province,<br />
he was taken aback when members of IRD’s city staff,<br />
who were accompanying him into the field, took no<br />
measures to hide their badges. At a checkpoint, with<br />
their IDs in full display, the staff were allowed to pass<br />
unobstructed, without being questioned or asked for<br />
additional documentation. “Everyone else had to go<br />
through a queue to be checked—but we did not,” Dola<br />
said. “When they said we could go through, I asked<br />
why. The men at the checkpoint looked at me and<br />
said, ‘Because IRD already has done more than the<br />
government to help rebuild our city.’”<br />
67
Acronyms<br />
ACV<br />
CAG<br />
Assistance to Civilian Victims<br />
Community action group<br />
CERP Commander’s Emergency Response Program<br />
CIES<br />
CIVIC<br />
COIN<br />
Community Infrastructure and Essential Services<br />
Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict<br />
Counterinsurgency<br />
CRDA Community Revitalization through Democratic Action<br />
CSP<br />
IBTCI<br />
ICAP<br />
IED<br />
IRD<br />
M&E<br />
Community Stabilization Program<br />
International Business & Technical Consultants, Inc.<br />
Iraq Community Action Program<br />
Improvised explosive device<br />
International Relief & Development<br />
Monitoring & evaluation<br />
MOLSA Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs<br />
NGO<br />
PRT<br />
Nongovernmental organization<br />
Provincial reconstruction team<br />
USAID US Agency for International Development<br />
68
Notes<br />
1. www.sigir.mil/files/HardLessons/Hard_Lessons_Report.pdf.<br />
2. www.humanitarianinfo.org/sanctions/handbook/docs_handbook/HR_im_es_iraq.pdf.<br />
3. www.sigir.mil/files/HardLessons/Hard_Lessons_Report.pdf.<br />
4. The total number of ICAP beneficiaries exceeded the population of Baghdad, then between 5 and 6 million,<br />
four times over, a result of multiple projects providing different benefits to the same people.<br />
5. http://articles.latimes.com/print/2009/jul/13/local/me-streeter13.<br />
6. www.economist.com/node/3936146.<br />
7. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/19/newsid_3504000/3504255.stm.<br />
8. The sample survey of CSP’s main database was conducted for CSP’s final report and included all projects<br />
at the time of closeout. Some of the businesses included had not yet been in operation for six months.<br />
9. www.huffingtonpost.com/virginia-moncrieff/military-civilian-policy_b_152749.html.<br />
10. www.sigir.mil/files/HardLessons/Hard_Lessons_Report.pdf.<br />
69
This report details IRD’s implementing role in Iraq<br />
from 2003 to 2009 on the US Agency for International<br />
Development’s Iraq Community Action Program, which<br />
brought essential services and civic empowerment to<br />
<strong>citizens</strong> in the immediate aftermath of war, to the end of<br />
the Community Stabilization Program in 2009. Through<br />
first-person accounts from those who were there, the<br />
report describes the need for a civilian-led component<br />
to counterinsurgency efforts and reviews how IRD<br />
built a strong enough foundation in Iraq to take on a<br />
$644 million program, overcome the risks and challenges<br />
of working in a conflict setting, and emerge with a wealth<br />
of applicable knowledge to share.<br />
International Relief & Development<br />
1621 North Kent Street. Fourth Floor<br />
Arlington, VA 22209<br />
703-248-0161 • 703-248-0194 fax<br />
www.ird.org