Empowering citizens Engaging governments Rebuilding communities

Through its ICAP work, IRD had an
established base of operations in
Baghdad and an important logistical
springboard for launching the much
larger and more complex CSP
them. IRD’s rapid response for relief and reconstruction
work, in both kinetic and nonkinetic environments
and often alongside military personnel, exemplified the
changing face of development and the role of nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs).
Earning local trust
IRD was able to launch and expand CSP quickly
because it had been operating in Baghdad for three
years implementing the Iraq Community Action
Program (ICAP). By going into some of Baghdad’s most
dangerous and at-risk neighborhoods when no other
relief agencies were around, IRD began to gain local
favor as it assisted a war-weary population to rebuild
civil society.
ICAP began operations in May 2003, as a way to mobilize
Iraqi communities after decades of repression and
to help communities identify, prioritize, and address
their most pressing civic needs. Projects focused on
rebuilding economic and social infrastructure, boosting
business development, and providing assistance
to civilian victims of war. Most important, the projects
weren’t decreed by IRD, but decided in conjunction
with locally organized community action groups.
In Baghdad neighborhoods, where no legitimate sense
of grassroots activism or democratic engagement
had existed for years, community action groups gave
ordinary citizens a direct role in a kind of decentralized
decisionmaking that had been mostly missing
from Iraq. With the help of these community groups,
IRD completed almost 2,400 ICAP projects between
2003 and 2006, at a value of more than $73 million.
The program required an in-kind Iraqi contribution
of 25 percent of project funds, but that number was
exceeded by almost $10 million—another sign of
Iraqis’ eagerness to be involved in their planning and
development processes. Through community action
groups, IRD helped put individual citizens directly
in touch with government leaders during a time of
upheaval and uncertainty. Even tenuous links between
public and private interests, IRD believed, would help
citizens regain some sense of trust in their local
political system and open doors to broader improvements
in their communities’ physical and social
infrastructure.
IRD’s close working relationship with the community
continued throughout the evolution of ICAP, which
ran concurrently with CSP and continued for years
afterward as an even more robust mobilization and
participatory program. After three years of focused
community interaction with civilians and local leaders
under ICAP, IRD had enough credibility among Iraqis to
take on a program as large and military-dependent as
CSP—and to make it work.
Stabilizing communities
CSP kicked off in June 2006, a few months ahead of a
highly publicized military surge by US and international
forces. It ended more than three years later, in late
2009. Throughout implementation, IRD staff found
themselves under pressure, pulled in a variety of
directions by competing and sometimes contradictory
demands from multiple stakeholders. But they also
implemented hundreds of projects that brought order
and economic revitalization to an oppressed population
in the middle of a war zone.
CSP’s main goal can be summarized in one statement:
reduce or eliminate incentives for individuals to participate
in insurgent activities by creating employment
opportunities and fostering community engagement. In
Iraq, people were desperate for jobs, so employment
is where CSP focused its financial muscle. More than
90 percent of the program’s funds were geared toward
short- and long-term employment. As the implementing
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