Empowering citizens Engaging governments Rebuilding communities

“
There were no similar programs. CSP
was historic from the first day. The scale,
the ability, the necessity to work with
the military in a kinetic environment”
—Dar Warmke
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A complete stabilization package
partner with experience doing this kind of work and a
host of other criteria as well, including a willingness
to work with the military, rapid-start capability, and
flexibility to manage a project that was expected to
grow significantly over its life. On May 29, 2006, it
chose IRD.
USAID looked specifically at two key IRD credentials—
its successful operation of ICAP in Baghdad, where
CSP would be headquartered and where IRD already
had established relationships with local councils
and community leaders; and IRD’s work in Serbia
and Montenegro under the CRDA program. However,
Serbia and Montenegro were not the same as Iraq.
The mission was not remotely on the same scale, and
it was not the same model. IRD’s work in the Balkans
took place in a postwar setting. Iraq, by contrast, was
in full insurrection, and IRD was to work alongside the
US military to provide relief and to help mitigate the
conflict itself.
“There were no similar programs,” said Dar Warmke,
who ran CSP operations for IRD in Basra and, later,
Mosul. “CSP was historic from the first day. The
scale, the ability, the necessity to work with the military
in a kinetic environment. . . . I worked through
the whole Bosnian war, with another organization,
but we were not trying to do stability work at the
same time. There was no clear and hold.” CSP was
unprecedented in its design, and the result was a
stabilization program widely credited by military and
diplomatic leaders for meeting its primary goals—
creating jobs and helping make some of Iraq’s most
devastated communities safer. It also stretched
IRD’s capacity, wound down in controversy, and left
many of the organization’s staff simultaneously
praising it for its successes and criticizing it for its
missteps. Ultimately, it offered a blueprint for civilian
participation in COIN operations, and a case study of
the complexities inherent in assisting the military and
militarizing assistance.
Breaking down CSP’s design
As CSP was being designed, a consensus emerged
that high unemployment contributed to citizens’
negative perception of local and national government
capacity. CSP focused primarily on males ages
17–35 years because that group made up the highest
percentage of the unemployed, marginalized, and
disaffected and because they were most vulnerable to
joining insurgent groups. By reaching the most-at-risk
members of the population, CSP reasoned, violence
would be mitigated.
“At the end of the day,” said Michele Lemmon, an IRD
senior program officer, “it was all about one thing:
jobs, jobs, jobs. It wasn’t to do charity work, and it
wasn’t to give handouts. It was to help people get
back to what they were doing before.” Jessica Cho,
an IRD field program coordinator, conducted a series
of postprogram interviews with CSP beneficiaries and
local staff. Cho said one of the clearest takeaways
was a basic sense of appreciation for the “number
of jobs that were created in some of these circumstances.”
In most cities, Cho said, CSP was “truly
successful in combining nonskill public works projects
with rehabilitation of basic infrastructure, then using
those successes to promote businesses development
and vocational training. Together, it all led to longer
term jobs and to some sense of stability.”
CSP’s four core programmatic components—infrastructure
and services, vocational training, business
development, and youth engagement—closely
resembled traditional development strategy. Yet the
underlying goal in three of the four areas was that
employment generation intended to:
• Create short-term (fewer than 90 days) jobs through
community infrastructure and essential services
projects,such as rehabilitation of schools, streets,
health clinics, public gardens, soccer fields,
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