What Went Wrong in Iraq - The Definitive Account, Part 6

This is the last installment of a six-part series. Read part one here, part two here, part three here, part four here and part five here.

The past two years have seen an impressive turnaround in Iraq. Violence has abated, economic activity has recovered.

Americans usually explain this improvement with reference to two factors: the military “surge” announced by President Bush in January 2007 and the political decision by Iraq’s Sunni leadership to rejoin the political process after the bloodbath of 2005-2006.

Stuart Bowen’s report directs our attention to a third, less spectacular, but nonetheless important factor: a civilian “surge” that put US aid resources to better use.

Among the changes: a new requirement that Iraqi ministries spend Iraqi dollars alongside their US-provided funds – and that Iraqis take more responsibility for executing the work they paid for.

The new standard … was “if it can’t be done by the Iraqis, we probably shouldn’t do it.” “What is better is a project that takes 60 days instead of 30 daysÑbut is done by the Iraqi manager and is sustainable by the Iraqis [and] that their operations can support.”(298)

Military and civilians learned to work more closely together, and to share the accumulated knowledge they had painfully accumulated during the long counter-insurgency. As one army officer quoted by the SIGIR report put it:

When an NGO shows up and says, I want to establish some agriculture programs, we think we have the ability to put fish farms in along the Euphrates. Does anybody know of a good place to establish a fish farm? The brigade commander turns to his battalion commanders, who turn to the company commanders, who turn to their platoon commanders. In 96 hours you get the data back. Here are ten historic fish farms. Here are their locations. And oh by the way, we have a relationship with the guy that owns this one, and we trust him. And oh by the way, this one over here has been used as a mortar firing point. Don’t go there. (301)

Directing money to Iraqi firms soon became an end in itself.

Steering reconstruction and military procurement contracts to viable Iraqi businesses became a key U.S. objective. The idea was straightforward. Sustaining the Coalition’s presence in Iraq cost more than twice Iraq’s gross domestic product. The military spent a significant portion of these costs on goods and services that could be procured locally. If properly channeled, military needs could drive job creation in the Iraqi industrial base and thus help end the insurgency soldiers were there to fight.

During the transition to direct, fixed-price contracting in late 2006 and 2007, [the US authorities in Iraq] moved diligently to “Iraqify” their workforce, relying as much as possible on Iraqi contractors and vendors, many of whom had been trained by Bechtel University and other multinational firms. A special effort called the “Iraqi First” program was begun in mid-2006 by Major General Darryl Scott, head of JCC-I.63 From October 2006 to September 2007, JCC-I awarded $2.7 billion in contracts to Iraqi firms who collectively employed an estimated 75,000 Iraqis. In the first half of 2007 alone, it provided Iraqi businesses with more than a billion dollars of business.

By early 2008, more than 4,100 Iraqi companies were registered with the Coalition, which awarded 85 percent of them at least one contract.

Overall, 90 percent of reconstruction projects awarded … were going to Iraqi firms. (304)

Micro-investment often had the greatest impact.

The [Community Stabilization Program], designed in 2005 to execute the civilian component of Clear-Hold-Build, mounted the largest effort in monetary terms. By providing short-term employment and vocational training programs, as well as micro-grants and youth activities, the $544 million program harnessed underemployed populations in the wake of clearing operationsÑa cohort that would otherwise be vulnerable to the cash-for-violence scheme of insurgents and militias. …

By the end of 2007, the program employed 319,583 Iraqis in short-term labor projects and provided 13,275 with vocational training for a total of 260,000 man-months of employment.

More than 260,000 man-months of short-term employment helped make visible community improvements, many of which were overseen by municipal governments in places just swept by violent clearing operations. The role of this economic stimulus in solidifying security gains, although hard to measure, was seen by its implementers and military personnel as an essential element of the surge’s success. (309)

These economic programs got little attention from the outside world. That low profile contributed to their success.

All of these programs were carried out with little overt evidence of U.S. funding. The low-profile facilities maintained by USAID, along with the outreach it did in local neighborhoods, meant its people were rarely attacked. USAID, perhaps more than other reconstruction entities, believed that security could be achieved by muting the association with the Coalition and by gaining community trust and cooperation. It was a sociological, rather than an exclusively physical conception of security.

The office of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, for instance, issued a carefully worded fatwa permitting Shi’a to work with USAID implementing partners, but not the Coalition military. Sistani’s office even issued identification cards to Iraqi workers hired by one of the USAID programs, giving them safe passage through militia checkpoints when collaborating with the Coalition would have meant certain death. (309)

Dozens if not hundreds of Americans contributed to this turnaround. Yet Bowen credits Gen. David Petraeus with key decisions that enabled the turnaround to begin.

The surge brought more personnel and funds into Iraq, but more important, it redefined the terms of reconstruction. … No longer was transition, the Casey-era watchword, the primary goal. The surprising agility with which the military embraced the economic and reconstruction missions was made possible by the wide support in its ranks for the counterinsurgency doctrine articulated and implemented by Petraeus. What was resisted in 2003 and 2004 was seen as absolutely necessary by 2007. … Through these innovations, civil-military cooperation reached new heights. (314)

These successes required a new flexibility from Americans all the way to the very highest levels of government. The report concludes with something less than a ringing declaration of victory.

Even with Iraqi levels of satisfaction trending upward and violence trending downward, the United States was still caught in a nation-building effort it had not anticipated and still did not fully understand. In 2000, future Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice articulated her belief that the U.S. military should focus primarily on combat operations. “Carrying out civil administration and police functions is simply going to degrade the American capability to do the things America has to do,” she said, adding, “We don’t need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten.” Eight years later, during the surge, the 82nd Airborne, serving its second Iraq deployment, was helping oversee the construction of greenhouses outside Tikrit. (318)