Empowering citizens Engaging governments Rebuilding communities

the aggressive grants program yielded
very strong long-term job numbers even
as it addressed the pressing need of
stabilizing business communities
significant challenges. The provision was a rather standard
development assistance tenet regularly followed
by NGOs. But in Iraq, the stipulation proved to be a
barrier. IRD made a concerted effort to encourage
apprentices and new vocational training graduates
to apply for grants and start their own businesses,
but few apprentices could match the grant’s required
25–50 percent contribution. “That was probably the
weakness, the cost-share element, because it kept a
lot of people out of the small grants program,” said
Gartner. “There was a tendency among applicants to
falsify documents to meet that cost-share criteria.
[But] it wasn’t the right time for cost-share buy-in.
That’s a traditional development approach, that the
community should own it, they should buy into it. In
Iraq, I don’t think that was appropriate at that time. I
mean, let’s just get their shops open first.”
In adapting to a COIN environment, the business
development component faced challenges. Many
stemmed from the same issues some CIES projects
faced, such as the inability to fully police those who
were out to “cheat the system,” as Mamadou Sidibe,
IRD’s director of monitoring and evaluation, put it.
Sidibe joined IRD in March 2008, toward the end of
CSP’s implementation. His mandate was to clear up
reporting inconsistencies and strengthen internal
oversight of the monitoring process, especially crucial
for ensuring the integrity of business grants. “CSP
would give you a grant on the basis of how many longterm
jobs you would generate, but people could cheat
on their grant proposal,” Sidibe said. “A businessman
might say he would create five permanent jobs, but
once he got the grant, instead of hiring five, he might
hire two. Or instead of opening the business he
proposed, he might do something else.”
Jessica Cho, who worked on IRD’s post-CSP review,
cited generators as a perfect example because they
were such a commonly requested item for in-kind
grants—and in such high demand due to Iraq’s weak
energy infrastructure. “Someone might say he had
a small store and needed a generator to operate a
freezer or refrigerator, but you know, you can use a
generator for a lot of things,” Cho said. “They were not
always used for their intended purposes, but because
of the security situation, it was extremely difficult to
monitor every specific item.”
Most of the problems that the business development
component faced involved small and micro grants,
often in the more dangerous and less secure locations,
which were sometimes impossible for IRD’s
monitoring agents to visit regularly. For the kind of conflict
environment in which CSP was operating, Sidibe
said, it was simply impossible to eliminate every
corrupt influence. And overall, the aggressive grants
program yielded very strong long-term job numbers
even as it addressed the pressing need of stabilizing
business communities.
Quick impact with a long-term view
While the program sought to enhance knowledge of
private enterprise, teach good business practices, and
stimulate community-led growth, it focused primarily on
shop owners whose established businesses had been
destroyed or shuttered. In some cases, the shops
had been abandoned. In others, the threat of violence
drove shopkeepers away. And often, such as for street
market rehabilitations, IRD used the grants program
alongside CSP’s infrastructure program as a means of
generating a rapid response for quick results.
In early 2007, a suicide bomber detonated a truck
bomb in Baghdad’s Sadriya Market, a popular commercial
district with more than 300 shops, cafes, and
kiosks. More than 130 people were killed and more
than 330 wounded. The day after the attack, two IRD
grants officers headed to the market to evaluate the
damage and talk to shop owners about applying for
CSP grants to help rebuild their businesses. “I just
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Successes and setbacks
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