Empowering citizens Engaging governments Rebuilding communities

most important, citizens were impressed.
A sizable number of Iraqis, regardless
of whether they were directly involved in
the program, credit CSP with improving
security and government services
in reducing sectarian strife. Therefore, CSP’s youth
activities component aimed for something more personal
than jobs—it aimed to help young Iraqis connect
to their identity, culture, and community and to give
them enhanced opportunities to form social bonds
that would be stronger than the pull of the insurgency.
Altogether, IRD’s youth activities engaged more than
350,000 participants through soccer matches and
tournaments and a wide range of other activities.
A legacy of positive perceptions
IRD staff, from field workers to leadership, exude
pride when talking about CSP, but the program had
many other fans as well. Former Deputy Secretary of
State Jacob Lew said CSP was considered “one of
the most effective counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq.”
Arizona Senator John McCain, Connecticut Senator
Joe Lieberman, General Petraeus, and others made
visits to CSP project sites firsthand. And Ryan Crocker,
during his 2007–09 tenure as the US ambassador
to Iraq, repeatedly lauded CSP’s track record of job
creation. “I’ve had discussions with the [Iraqi] government,”
Crocker said in late 2007, midway through
CSP’s implementation. “What they want, they want
jobs. They want something that looks like a stable
future. . . . They’re saying, ‘I want gainful employment.’
And we know how to do this because we’ve done it
with community stabilization.”
Perhaps most important, Iraqi citizens were
impressed. At the program’s conclusion, evaluators
worked with two independent Iraqi polling companies
to survey almost 1,400 CSP participants and nonparticipants
about the perceived effectiveness of CSP
activities, how well community needs were addressed,
and the local support for those activities. While
economic and security variables make it impossible
to establish direct causality between CSP activities
and a reduction in violence, the poll results show that
a sizable number of Iraqis, regardless of whether they
were directly involved in the program, credit CSP with
improving security and government services:
• 84 percent of CSP-type program participants said
their community was safer in 2009 than in 2006
because of CSP, an assessment shared by 70
percent of nonparticipants.
• 69 percent of program participants said CSP
helped improve government services.
• 60 percent of participants credited CSP with
bettering relations between religious and ethnic
groups.
According to USAID’s Jeanne Pryor, the results showed
that “It worked. All four components worked. Polling
data, in addition to the outputs that had been measured,
reported that beneficiaries did notice a positive
impact in their community.”
* * *
This report revisits IRD’s work in Iraq from the beginning
of ICAP in 2003 to the close of CSP in 2009.
It is not a project performance assessment but an
examination of the approach and the results, informed
primarily by the people who carried it out. In considering
the impact of ICAP and CSP, it’s important to
consider factors in addition to outcomes and indicators,
to grasp the weight of individual moments that
made up the collective whole. These observations
are important, because they put a human face on the
anonymous “beneficiary” and the generic “staffer.”
For an endeavor like CSP, heavily debated and controversial,
they also offer a complete way of seeing the
program—its accomplishments, its shortcomings,
and, more importantly, its lasting impact.
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