US civilians drive Iraq's other surge
Teams of US experts in law and management are trying to develop governance by the rule of law in northern Iraq.
from the June 12, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
A further illustration is the initial reliance on Army reservists to take the bulk of the new PRT positions. The State Department, at first, had trouble coaxing civilians to take the posts. That led to frictions with the Pentagon, which felt it could ill afford the assignment of reservists.
But officials insist that a full complement of civilians is now on board. Mr. Satterfield says both he and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are anxious to debunk the "myth" that State Department employees have shunned the jobs.
Nonetheless, fresh criticism is building from foreign-service experts, who say that the expansion of Iraq and Afghanistan assignments is burdening US civilian foreign operations in much the same way the wars are stretching military operations thin. The Foreign Affairs Council concluded in a report last week that the State Department's Iraq focus has left it in a "crisis," with hundreds of unfilled positions elsewhere in the world.
The concept behind the PRTs, especially the new embedded variety, is to get civilians as well as soldiers out among the Iraqi people – and to support progress in local governance. "The less military a face the teams have, the more it starts to seem like normal government, which is civilian," says Col. Chris Brady, the Kirkuk PRT's military-civilian liaison.
A key objective of a civilian reconstruction team is to develop modern local governance while breaking local leaders of a dependence on US forces. The goal has become a critical part of the PRT mission – particularly as a growing chorus of experts faults the American presence in Iraq for perpetuating dependence on the US on the part of the Iraq's national leaders.
Some critics say the Iraqi government uses the US presence as a crutch for avoiding necessary action rather than as a support for making its own difficult decisions possible.
"What we have uppermost in our mind, no matter what the issue or project may be, is to empower the Iraqis to where they don't look to me or a colonel or any of the experts as the provider or the source of the answer," says Howard Keegan, who heads up the Kirkuk PRT. "We want to break them from reliance on an occupying force that goes away."
Don't impose US solutions
Indeed, the packet for a PRT-assisted waste-management project in Kirkuk contains this quote from the Arab Bulletin articles of T.E. Lawrence: "Do not try to do too much with your own hands…. It may take them longer and it may not be as good as you think, but if it is theirs, it will be better."
That means the PRTs should avoid imposing solutions even when experts may think they have the answer.
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