MountainRunner, a new blog about counterinsurgency, public information andn other aspects of the War On Terror/Long War has posted the contents of a Bloggers’ Roundtable on Provincial Recontruction Teams and I wanted to get into the act. PRTs are widely viewed as the beginning of a new approach to warfare, they have been fairly successful in Afghanistan, but not at all in Iraq.
Provincial Reconstruction Teams are small-to-medium sized groups bringing together military and civilian assets. Ideally, an American PRT would include a security team drawn from the armed forces, a civilian police training team, a State Department representative to report back to his Ambassador, who is presumably chairing most of the political developments in the country, USAID representatives doing development work and assessing humanitarian needs, and representatives of other U.S. agencies and departments as needed: for example Commerce Department doing economic development, Treasury working on banking, the DEA or FBI if there are transnational criminal issues involved (like Afghan opium), etc. Some argue that non-governmental organizations should be involved directly while others prefer to allow the NGOs freedom of action but to coordinate NGO work through the PRT to avoid duplication or working in ways that might unintentionally support insurgents and spoilers.
The PRT has been extremely successful in Northern and parts of Southern Afghanistan. Probably the most famous PRTS are the Canadians’, because our friends up north have gone full-bore in getting them going, but the PRT has been the main unit of activity in much of Afghanistan. In Iraq, Condaleeza Rice initially announced some time ago (about the time of the ‘Strategy for Victory,’ if you remember that) that PRTs would be the centerpiece of our new strategy. That has not materialized. What are the advantages and disadvantages of PRTs? Why have they been more successful in Afghanistan than in Iraq?
The Provincial Reconstruction Teams are advantageous for a number of reasons. First, they are a step toward undoing what is often called ’stovepiping,’ which is often cited as a problem plaguing our early efforts in Iraq. When things get stovepiped, several agencies go to work on interrelated problems without communicating. This often creates fragmented, disorganized and sometimes countervaling efforts that almost always fail. The PRT creates unity of effort between the military and civilian elements of national power that is necessary to successfully fight a modern war. Theoretically, a PRT will also win points for military personnel in an area. Rather than be seen purely as warfighters, soldiers will be seen doing development work and winning ‘hearts and minds.’ Finally, military protection allows the PRT to move into insurgent-controlled areas. Insurgents often win public support by providing basic services that the national government and the international community is unable to supply. In prior missions, agencies and NGOs involved in development in conflict zones either could not gain access to an area or if they could were forced to make deals with local insurgent leaders and aid was distributed in a way that reinforced the insurgents.
There are serious shortcoming and drawbacks to PRTs, however. The first is the issue of humanitarian space. “Humanitarian space,” is a term used by non-governmental organizations to describe what they conceive of as their area of operations. Most humanitarian groups continue to believe in neutrality. Especially in humanitarian emergencies, however, it violates their morality and principles of operation to have their assistance integrated into the overarching political aims of what can often be an occupying power. In addition, the deleterious effect of close associations between the humanitarian community and Western military power has been seen in the rising number of attacks on humanitarian workers in conflict zones. Second, while the PRTs were meant to end interagency stovepiping, the reality is that local coordination will not undue what are often bloody turf wars at higher levels. If there is not unity of effort in Washington and among regional officers, any unity of effort at the PRT level will be easily undone. Finally, there is the problem of political will and the reality of the situation. A widely-discussed option for dealing with ‘modern war’ is the “Goldwater-Nichols Act for Civilian Agencies.” Based on the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which mandated unity of effort and joint operations among our military branches, the GNA for Civilian Agencies would mandate closer coordination among civilian agencies and between civilian agencies and the military, in conflict zones. This does not, however, substitute for the political will to (a) fund missions adequately, (b) cooperate with NGOs, host nation governments and international organizations that may be sometimes critical of the United States, and (c) create and train solid core groups within various government agencies and among police forces, the medical community, etc. that understand and can interact with a conflict environment. We can be as joint as we want, in other words, but if Commerce sends 4 people who have no training in post-conflict reconstruction, it’s not going to make any difference.
The problem of political will in conflict zones is apparent when we look at Iraq. First of all, “success” in Afghanistan is relative, but PRTs – even in the wiley south – have had decent freedom of movement and have made tangible gains in many areas of the country. PRTs and the discrediting of the Taliban are probably a major reason that ISAF is still popular in Afghanistan, despite our many missteps. But Afghanistan is still fairly safe when compared to Iraq, and neither al Qaeda nor the Taliban targeted the international community during the first 18 months of its presence in Afghanistan. This allowed NGOs, the UN and regional organizations, together with national development agencies, to gain a foothold. Learning from their mistakes, al Qaeda targeted UN and international humanitarian infrastructure almost immediately after the US-led coalition ousted Saddam Hussein. The NGO presence in Iraq is far weaker than in Afghanistan and so is the UN presence. In addition, U.S. agencies that may have employees willing to go to Afghanistan, do not have employees who are willing to go to Iraq. With 78 percent of Americans saying that they believe the war is unwinnable, we have to assume that a certain percentage of those people are working in government agencies. Why would someone from the Treasury Department be willing to risk his or her neck on a mission they felt was useless anyway? Finally, again as Iraq seems to demonstrate, local-level improvements have limited utility if the national-level political questions are not being solved.
This is a major paradox in PRT operations: PRTs can only be effective in areas where they have significant freedom of movement…yet in a situation that is completely deteriorated, like Iraq (one would be tempted to look at Darfur and DR Congo for other examples), where unity of effort is most necessary, freedom of movement is difficult or impossible. So the most deadly and insoluble conflicts, may not be ameliorated by the PRTs.
The Roundtable Discussion is linked here:
http://mountainrunner.us/2007/08/bloggers_roundtables_and_prts.html
Two articles on PRTs from the U.S. Institute of Peace
On Afghanistan: http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr147.pdf
On Iraq: http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr185.html
An article from Reuters on the threats to humanitarian workers
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL31849991
