Empowering citizens Engaging governments Rebuilding communities

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IRD embarked on its own job placement program, opening what was officially known as Community Outreach Offices inside the districts and staffing those offices with field workers 3 Successes and setbacks development program and start their own businesses, though many graduates simply did not have the resources to meet the in-kind requirement. Individual CSP city programs promoted projects that would support vocational trainees as employees, but there was no formal transition process. “The apprenticeships and job placement, those were the biggest challenges because they were new concepts,” al-Juboori said. “Nobody had done job placement before. We tried to link it to the councils, but they had their own local contractors who would bring in their own labor, so they’d tell us to go talk to the contractors. Eventually, we started doing that.” As a result, some IRD staff became the equivalent of employment brokers, going to businesses or individuals to try and sell the skills of the program’s recent vocational graduates. Sometimes, it paid off. In one case, staff visited a contractor who had a contract to rehabilitate part of Baghdad’s University of Technology, one of Iraq’s largest schools. “We convinced him to hire our people, ‘for the good of Iraq’ we argued,” al-Juboori recounted. “And he took a lot of workers, so that was a success. But we definitely had to make adjustments.” Mini employment centers all over the district One of the most notable and successful adjustments IRD made was in Baghdad, during the final year of CSP, as an effort to get around the job placement roadblocks. Because so many local officials remained “attached” to local workers or contractors, vocational trainees were not getting fair assessments. So IRD embarked on its own job placement program, opening what was officially known as Community Outreach Offices inside the districts and staffing those offices with field workers. “We tried to directly serve the unemployed in that area, and, at the same time, convince local businesses to find jobs for those unemployed persons,” al-Juboori said. Although the setup may sound a lot like an employment agency, it wasn’t, at least not officially, because an actual employment agency was not allowed under labor ministry rules. And since no work of this kind could be associated with IRD, the offices publicly fell under the umbrella of the local government. When CSP began its closeout, district leaders contacted IRD field workers, asking that the offices remain open. The civilian and military support apparatus in Iraq backed the job placement plan as well. “A lot of PRTs loved the idea, and they even supported the outreach offices for two or three months when CSP phased out in some areas,” al-Juboori said. “They loved the idea, and they saw the impact. They were like mini employment centers all over the district. Register the unemployed, and at the same time, try to find them a job.” The job placement program was the logical extension of the community outreach efforts that the IRD employment generation staff made throughout the duration of CSP. In the beginning, IRD found that many people most in need of vocational training simply did not trust the labor ministry. So staff, on behalf of the ministry so as not to be identified as IRD workers, began directly calling potential participants to explain the benefits of the program. A promotional campaign in Baghdad, including billboards, flyers, and other types of announcements, tried to raise awareness and increase participation, especially in neighborhoods where training centers had been closed for a long time or where they had been destroyed. Perhaps most important to the overall success of the program, IRD sent staff into neighborhoods to talk directly to <strong>citizens</strong> and business owners to find out what kind of skills were in demand. “When establishing the vocational training program, IRD looked for the kinds of jobs available and if there was a market for the jobs,” said IRD’s Michele Lemmon. “The first training we did was for electricians or people to repair generators. Because most of Iraq had no electricity, everybody was buying generators, but no one knew how to 48
Working with local NGOs and government officials, IRD organized a 10-day summer “peace camp” for 150 young men and women. Their hope was that the retreat might be a gateway to fostering tolerance maintain them. So we started vocational training by asking, ‘What types of jobs are needed?’” The business development component created many more long-term jobs than did the vocational training and employment generation component, as intended. The vocational training was intended to help at-risk and unemployed Iraqis gain marketable skills. But through the innovative methods IRD used to link training courses to market demand and unemployed <strong>citizens</strong> to employment opportunities, more than 8,000 vocational training graduates landed long-term jobs as a result of their training. In addition, the more effective registration and tracking processes for trainees that IRD put in place at all the rehabilitated training centers helped the labor ministry rebuild its capacity not only to teach Iraqis skills but also to help translate those skills into jobs. “We always tried to link the local market demand with what was provided at the vocational training centers,” said al-Juboori. “Because that was the objective. We needed to ensure that the unemployed youth would not be led back into the violence. We built the ministry’s training capacity 100 percent to stay in business. And they’re still in business.” Youth activities: Different from everything else Iraq’s Ninewa province is among the country’s most ethnically diverse regions. Tragically, that diversity helped fuel the rise of the sectarian violence that gripped the area in 2007. A suicide bombing in a Shia neighborhood of Tal Afar was blamed for more than 150 deaths, making it at the time the single deadliest attack since coalition forces entered Iraq. The bombing led to a wave of retaliatory killings and kidnappings as gunmen stormed homes throughout Sunni neighborhoods. Meanwhile, in Mosul, the provincial capital, rising tensions between Arabs and Kurds led many Kurds to flee the city. As the situation deteriorated, Iraqi staff working for CSP in Ninewa developed a simple program with a lofty aim—to assemble area youth from different ethnic and religious backgrounds in an effort to bridge their cultural and religious gaps. Working with local NGOs and government officials, IRD organized a 10-day summer “peace camp” for 150 young men and women from across the province. Their hope was that the retreat, on a small scale, might be a gateway to fostering tolerance between groups who were increasingly seeing each other only as enemies, not as fellow Iraqis. The first day of camp was a near-disaster. Muslims, Christians, Arabs, and Kurds were all along for the retreat, but the different groups refused to come together, mirroring the tensions so prevalent in the province. IRD staff spent the first day and night simply teaching the concepts of tolerance, acceptance, and religious understanding. “The youth programming was very different than everything else,” said Barzan Ismaeel, IRD’s national director for employment generation and youth. “The outcome was not necessarily employment, but we were still training people how to live and interact.” Through soccer, stronger social ties and teachable moments When asked to name CSP’s greatest success, IRD staffers repeatedly cited the number of jobs created. US political and diplomatic leaders, when discussing the program in public forums like congressional testimonies or media roundtables, used the same point of reference—jobs. Employment numbers, after all, offered the most quantifiable statistic in an environment where measuring results was an erratic, dangerous, often unreliable process. But the CSP design (and COIN strategy in general) presumed that the strength of Iraq’s cultural and community network was at least as important as employment for the country’s stability and social cohesion. Organizing safe and secure “communal activities” was a critical step on the road to reducing 3 Successes and setbacks 49
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Empowering citizens Engaging govern
Page 4 and 5:
Copyright © by International Relie
Page 6 and 7: In memory of Awni Quandour, whose r
Page 8 and 9: Overview General David Petraeus, co
Page 10 and 11: what made CSP stand out was the clo
Page 12 and 13: By the end of the program, the busi
Page 14 and 15: 1 Building community trust through
Page 16 and 17: “ The community believed in what
Page 18 and 19: Community action groups stood at th
Page 20 and 21: “ Many colleagues have told me th
Page 22 and 23: IRD’s health advisor referred Oma
Page 24 and 25: IRD placed a premium on diversity
Page 26 and 27: Whenever harm befell a community ac
Page 28 and 29: Scheduled to wind down in 2012 afte
Page 30 and 31: 2 A complete stabilization package
Page 32 and 33: As planning for CSP unfolded, the s
Page 34 and 35: “ There were no similar programs.
Page 36 and 37: the most successful projects were t
Page 38 and 39: “ You are the future of Ramadi. Y
Page 40 and 41: “[Colonel John Charlton] was the
Page 42 and 43: 3 Successes and setbacks in a count
Page 44 and 45: CSP helped create a sense of normal
Page 46 and 47: the renovation of the Mosul Social
Page 48 and 49: By combining his personal savings w
Page 50 and 51: Ninety-eight percent of grantee bus
Page 52 and 53: Dr. Noor Abdul Aziz Baqir’s grant
Page 54 and 55: all the training centers renovated
Page 58 and 59: CSP’s youth activities component
Page 60: most Iraqi citizens had an overwhel
Page 63 and 64: “We had challenges, but with the
Page 65 and 66: CSP was unprecedented in scale, but
Page 67 and 68: “ Without security, there is no d
Page 69 and 70: IRD’s staffing woes could be brok
Page 71 and 72: Many key tactical lessons have alre
Page 74 and 75: Epilogue
Page 76 and 77: Acronyms ACV CAG Assistance to Civi
Page 80: This report details IRD’s impleme
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Empowering citizens Engaging governments Rebuilding communities

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