Lessons from Iraq

A decade of military involvement in Iraq has imparted  precious lessons regarding stabilization and reconstruction. A United States Institute of Peace (USIP) event this week drew on the seven main lessons enumerated in Learning from Iraq: A Final Report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.  The panel featured:

–Jim Marshall, President of USIP

– William B. Taylor Jr, former director of the Iraqi Reconstruction Management Office in Baghdad (2004-5)

– Manal Omar, the Director of Iraq, Iran and North Africa Programs, USIP

–Quil Lawrence, NPR Baghdad Bureau Chief

–John Nagl, Senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security; Minerva Research Fellow at the US Naval Academy

Lesson 1: Establish who’s in charge

“Create an integrated civilian-military office to plan, execute and be accountable for contingency rebuilding activities during stabilization and reconstruction operations”

The Iraq reconstruction effort suffered from a dual handicap: disjointed command and poor coordination of efforts. According to the SIGIR report Defense, State, and USAID failed to integrate their operations.  No one entity was tasked with planning and executing the reconstruction activities.

Lesson 2: Stability before reconstruction

“Begin rebuilding only after establishing sufficient security, and focus first on small programs and projects”

State and Defense made the mistake of investing on large infrastructure programs before establishing a safe and secure environment to spur Iraq’s recovery. According to William B. Taylor, Jr, his office found itself repeatedly rebuilding sabotaged projects or entirely reallocating funds from an $18.4 billion bill list of national projects designed for a secure environment. The take-away: the greater the instability, the smaller the infrastructure projects should be. In an unstable environment, smaller, local projects have a greater impact than large, easily targetable infrastructure projects.

Lesson 3: Make sure investments are both productive and sustainable

“Ensure full host-country engagement in program and project selection, securing commitments to share costs (possibly through loans) and agreements to sustain completed projects after their transfer”

The Iraqi leaders interviewed in the SIGIR report complained of the US’s failure to consult with them on what construction projects Iraqis wanted and needed. The botched consultations resulted in the construction of unwanted, underutilized, and often dysfunctional projects—including a $40 million prison sitting empty in the Iraqi desert north of Baghdad. Lawrence argued that to this day, Iraqis can point to few tangible constructions iconic of the US contribution to the Iraqi people. In order to distinguish between a need and a want, the US should have fully engaged the Iraqi leadership and deferred to its judgment. Better consultation would have forced the US not to build above Iraq’s capacity and to secure cost-sharing commitments.

Lesson 4: Standardize the management system

“Establish uniform contracting, personnel, and information management systems that all SRO participants use”

Good coordination among agencies was the exception, not the rule. Systematic planning was completely lacking. Poorly coordinated personnel assignments caused team members of the various participating agencies to deploy and depart on diverging schedules, hampering coordination and aggravating tensions. There was no shared database listing the contracting, personnel and information management systems between agencies, so it was impossible to know what infrastructure was complete, and which was under construction.

Lesson 5: Oversight and accountability

“Require robust oversight of SRO activities from the operations’ inception”

Congress established SIGIR in 2003 to oversee the reconstruction effort and it’s challenges. In this respect, the Iraq reconstruction operation proved successful.

Lesson 6: Learn from the successes

“Preserve and refine programs developed in Iraq, like the Commander’s Emergency Response Program and the Provincial Reconstruction Team Program, that produced successes when used judiciously”

Omar complemented this point with what might represent a pre-requisite to lesson six: the importance of recognizing and highlighting successes to the population, the host country leadership, and the international community. Iraq is far from stable, but the country has experienced some successes: Iraqi police man checkpoints and the Iraqi civil society engagement is stronger than ever.

Lesson 7: Plan ahead

“Plan in advance, plan comprehensively and in an integrated fashion, have backup plans ready to go”

The abrupt shift from a liberation mission to a state building and reconstruction mission points to the lack of foresight in planning the Iraq program. The absence of a defined mission led to perennial re-evaluation and re-organization of the reconstruction program.

The panelists’ comments all converged on the final point. The absence of an “exit strategy” led to two major mistakes: poor consultation and weak engagement of Iraqis. Nagl argued that the military’s ignorance of Iraq’s culture and environment left the US unable to contextualize the little consultation it was receiving. The decisions to disband the army and de-Baathification– often touted as the poorest decisions taken during the reconstruction period—were based on hasty US consultations with aggrieved members of the Iraqi population.  These early blunders destroyed Iraqi expectations, shattering the small window of opportunity offered directly after the fall of the regime.