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The format for today's presentation is Dr. Johnson will be talking for approximately half an hour, and then the final half-hour will be for questions and answers. You may have noticed that this session is being taped. It will be downloaded to the USAID Website. This is a public for attribution meeting. I would invite you at the end of Dr. Johnson's presentation to please come to the microphone with any questions. Please state your name and the organization or your affiliation because for the benefit of the camera, I'm afraid we'll only be able to capture the back of the questioner, so please speak as distinctly as possible. Thank you very much. DR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Michaela. I appreciate the opportunity to spend some time with you this afternoon and talk about the USAID Local Governance Program in Iraq, and particularly about the program going forward in terms of its fit with the overall U.S. strategy in Iraq. First, as you may be aware with Ambassador Khalilzad and the ongoing efforts on the ground there, the U.S. government strategy is continually evolving and the Local Governance Program as we go forward is one of the key components of the strategy to focus a good deal of the attention not only in the governance sector, but in economic development as well at the province level and below the province level. The Iraqi Constitution adopted in October 2005 with the referendum and of course the directly elected Iraqi government calls for a degree of decentralization or federalism for devolution of certain kinds of powers and responsibilities to provincial and lower levels of government and the possibility of the creation of regional levels of government which would be collections of two or more provinces. So the U.S. strategy in Iraq in terms of the governance sector is to support these constitutional initiatives as well as the legislative initiatives that will follow and to increase the legitimacy of the Iraqi governmental institutions themselves. A quick overview of the Local Governance Program. As Michaela mentioned, the program started in Iraq with the program started in Iraq with the overall U.S. reconstruction effort in April 2003. We mobilized in the southern part of Iraq and also in Basra in April 2003, and over time expanded our presence to all 18 provinces of Iraq working in cooperation with a number of other U.S. Agency for International Development programs as well as programs of U.S. Military Civil Affairs and U.S. Embassy State Department personnel and programs. The basic characteristic of the government of Iraq that's important to understand today and that we'll spend a considerable amount of time focusing on is that under the new constitution, up until the elections of a few weeks ago, in one form or another the government of Iraq since the war has been influenced and substantially dominated of course in the CPA days, gradually transitioning control to the Iraqis. We now have a situation with the Iraqi government operating under its own constitution with a fully elected National Assembly which is now forming a government, and fully elected provincial council members. Subsequent elections will take place within the provinces for district and subdistrict, basically local governments below the level of provincial government. The fundamental characteristic of this new form of government in Iraq is that there never has been previously in Iraq a representative popularly elected council system at the local government level. There has been an executive system in place, of course, and the executive system at times had had a council-like structure which was an advisory body to the executive. The legislative authority at the provincial level now exists with the elected provincial councils. The initial focus of our program is represented by this kind of intersection of a diagram of four basic focal elements. Two of those focal elements in our initial program dealt with essentially services delivery improvement, improving the services that affect the daily lives of Iraqis, and with civil society and participation. After the end of the first year, our original contract was a base year with two option years, and toward the end of the first year of our contract toward the end of the base year the option was exercised for a second year of the program. Under that option year the program was focused more specifically on two of the original four elements represented in the blue parts of the circles there, efficient and effective local government services, and transparent and participatory political processes, the latter focusing heavily around our work with the councils, and the former around our work with the service providing departments, the water department, streets, sewer, lighting and so forth, at the provincial and below levels. The end states, the objectives of the program from the beginning, have focused on an institution of government below the central government level, at the level at which citizens interact with government on an almost daily basis. Be it at the city level or at the district level or subdistrict level or the province level, that is the primary source of authority and responsibility for implementing the kinds of services that affect people's daily lives. The list that you see of the desired end states for the Local Governance Program, if you attended in June 2003, the first Webcast briefing that we did on the Local Governance Program, you would have seen a set of end states that are worded somewhat similarly to these. That is, the end state objectives have been the same since the beginning. These particular end state objectives describe the operation of the Local Governance Program going forward, and so what we're talking about today in terms of the future work of the program reflects these particular end states. Just for a refresher for those of you who are not familiar with our program, in the first year of the Local Governance Program we established physical operations in 17 of the 18 provinces in Iraq with expatriate staff based in those 17 provinces, and Iraqi staff that we hired locally in all 18 provinces of Iraq. At the end of the base year with the more circumscribed program and also because of changes in the security conditions in the country, our expats were withdrawn to four regional hubs represented on this map. In the north, the regional hub is in Urbil, in Baghdad Governorate itself or Baghdad Province. Also coterminous with Baghdad, Babil Province and the city of Hilla, and in the south, Basra. We continue to have those same four regional hubs with our current program, and we continue to have Iraqi employees in all 18 provinces in Iraq. The core question, of course, is we're 33 months since this program started. Thirty-three months later, in January 2006, how does governance in Iraq differ from April 2003? I noted already, first, the institution of a popularly elected provincial council, a completely new institution of government in Iraq specifically. Of the provincial council members, there are 41 provincial council members in each of the 18 provinces. About 650 of those or about 88 percent of these current provincial council members have gone through a basic training program at the that the Local Governance Program provided. You'll see a bit more about that training program as it's being adapted to the provisions now embedded in the new constitution as we go forward. Iraqis adopted the constitution that calls for and permits a degree of regionalization or federal structure that permits two or more provinces to join together. The three provinces who so far are talking actively in creating a regional are as I'm sure most of you are familiar, the three provinces in the Kurdish north. The provinces in the north now are writing their constitution for a regional government, and one of the features of that constitution is to continue to maintain a province-level government below the regional level with the provincial councils and elected provincial council. What has to happen over the next 2 to 4 years in Iraq to reach the desired end states? First of all, the essence of the U.S. strategy going forward with respect to governance focuses around the notion of Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Some of you may be familiar with the term Provincial Reconstruction Team or PRT from Afghanistan. The analogy shouldn't be taken too far in that the conditions in Iraq reflect different than the conditions in Afghanistan. Perhaps during the Q and A session we might spend a little bit more time talking about some of those differences. One of the key differences is that in Iraq you have governmental authority out in the regions, out in the provinces, in the districts and in the subdistricts. In Afghanistan, one of the problems for the Provincial Reconstruction Teams were set up to address was the lack of a projection of governmental authority out into the provinces around Afghanistan. So there are existing formal Iraqi institutions of government to work with in the provinces, and that was not the case in Afghanistan. When you think of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq, you need to think of them in terms of their primary role which is in helping establish the legitimate authority of the existing governmental institutions at the local or provincial level. If I tend to back and forth and use the term local and provincial interchangeably, think maybe subnational, anything below the national government when I use the term local government. The principal focus of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams of which the Local Governance Program is a part, the Local Governance Program and the PRTs are not the same thing. The Local Governance Program as you'll see in a minute is one of the components of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. This particular slide gives you an indication of the overall structure of a Provincial Reconstruction Team, of course, with the Local Governance Program as one element in that. There are still ongoing existing reconstruction projects funded by the Iraqi Reconstruction Fund, the IRRF. There are Commander's Discretionary Fund projects going on in Iraq. These projects are folded together under the reconstruction, development and coordination aspect. They are all folded under the Provincial Reconstruction Teams as well. In addition, of course, the U.S. military and British military civil affairs officers and personnel in many of the provinces are active in various civilian-related functions aside from their military functions, and the Civil Affairs Teams are also enfolded within the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. And there will be economic development and rule of law and judiciary coordination elements also assigned in these Provincial Reconstruction Teams. So on of the aspects of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams is to bring together the various resources most of which are already on the ground, augmenting those resources in terms of expanding the Local Governance Program or bringing in additional economic development resource specialists or bringing in rule of law and judiciary specialists to participate in these teams to concentrate the resources on strengthening the capacity of provincial government and following the provincial government, the district and subdistrict governments to deliver services to the Iraqi population. The kind of staffing for the Local Governance Program is indicated here. On the left, each Provincial Reconstruction Team typically is composed of three to five expats. The three primary skills that are on these Provincial Reconstruction Teams for the Local Governance Program, local governments, political institutions, city council type of expertise of background, someone to work on a day-to-day and regular basis with the provincial councils, public finance and audit and accounting expertise and maybe working on such issues as local revenue generation, but also working on accountability and transparency issues in terms of the public-sector budget that is exercised at the provincial level, and the project administration role that local councils and the service departments will have. And a municipal engineer, a public works specialist, an urban planner individuals to work with primarily technical departments, but also with the councils to a lesser degree on project design and implementation. In addition, I mentioned earlier that the Local Governance Program still has the four hubs in addition to the expansion that we're going through putting staff back in the provinces, and these four regional hubs will also have full-time, long-term staff who will augment the teams and might think of these staff as circuit riders who will be available to work and provide extra resources in the three to five provinces in which that regional hub is the center of activity. But in addition, there are certain activities that are more characteristic of some regions of Iraq than others. For example, the south central region is the heartland of agricultural production of much agricultural production in Iraq and we would expect to put agricultural development expertise in our regional hub in Hilla because that would be one of the focal points of activities in the program, but there would not be a need for an agriculture development expert in each of the PRTs in each of the five provinces of the south central region. So the regional hubs are a basing point to have additional staff expertise, technical expertise, available to the several provinces. Then finally, a group of short-term experts, short-term not as in the usual sense of TDY 2, to 3 or 4 week time, but individuals who would be committing to 2 to 3 month trips several times a year who would have additional specialized expertise as needed as the work plans are developed for each of these provinces. This is the basic technical structure of the Local Governance Program. In the following slides I'm going to focus a little bit of attention on the work plan, the work plan that primarily revolves around the Local Governance Program, although it touches upon especially the work for the civil affairs officers. I'm going to look at it in terms of three areas, and if you can follow the color coding on the screen, there will be a couple of slides that deal with the issues of strengthening the provincial councils in terms of the basic institution of the provincial council, subsequently the district and subdistrict councils, what it means to be a provincial council member, what are the roles and responsibilities of provincial councils, the authority of provincial councils, the basic functioning of a council. There will be one main focal point of the Local Governance Program. It's consistent with the kind of training that we've been carrying out really since the fall of 2003 when there were by that time several hundred councils established throughout Iraq. The second major area of concentration would be on the technical service delivery side, training in technical assistance on project design, project implementation, and especially for the council members, project oversight and public accountability for infrastructure projects. The third area is a national agenda because, of course, there are many things still left to be done in the Iraqi constitution in many areas, and one of the principal areas that has yet to be fleshed out through legislative implementation, statutes and so forth, would be more detail on the powers and authority, and particularly on revenue sources and revenue sharing between central and local. So a third major element of the Local Governance Program will be work focusing on the interaction between provinces and central government and working with the National Assembly on, we use the term local government code. It may not be a single codified instrument called local government code, it could be dozens of enabling statutes, but it's basically the enabling of legislation and has to follow along with the constitution. We'll talk about these in a little bit more detail. I mentioned earlier that in terms of training the current provincial council members who were all elected last January at the same time as the first elected Iraqi National Assembly, at the moment we've developed interactive training modules in two stages, the basic and intermediate. It's just a terminological convenience to distinguish between the introductory training to provincial council members and then follow-on training in more detail. Then this will be augmented as the program goes forward, but you see the four basic modules. Those first six modules listed under the basic column, those first six modules are modeled after the six training modules that we developed for the provincial council members that were elected in January, but of course, they had to be modified because the statutory base for the operation of the provincial councils beginning last January was primarily the transitional administrative law and certain Coalition Provisional Authority, CPA, orders. The constitutional and legal basis for provincial councils now is the Iraqi Constitution, and of course, as legislative statutes are further implemented, so the first six modules are similar in concept but quite different in detail than a similar set of modules developed under the previous transitional administrative law governed actions of the provincial councils. The intermediate steps get more into the functioning of the council as an operating institution, how does the council function to help improve service delivery at the local level. The second aspect of it, the legal, the political, the structural side, is extremely important because there has not been legitimate authority at the local level in Iraq under the previous highly centralized regime. That alone is not enough, and so obviously in the end, what's going to matter to the population is whether or not the conditions at their level improve. So the second major focal point is support for the councils and with the technical departments primarily on infrastructure-like projects. The operating budgets for local governments is primarily salaries, and of course the employees of the technical departments at the local level are central government employees. Nothing has happened to transfer formal authority to transfer the employees such as happened in the Philippines. When the Philippines finally developed its more fully decentralized system, many central government employees were transferred to local government employment. That has not happened in Iraq yet, and I would not expect it to happen perhaps for half a decade or a decade or more. We're not talking about system in which suddenly overnight there's a transformation of all governmental employees to a primarily local government employment base. So the operating budget for local governments is primarily in the salaries item, and so far, minimal expenditures on operation and maintenance. The principal activities that we will focusing on over the next year to 2 years with the department heads and the councils then in terms of technical services will be on the rehabilitation and some infrastructure services or the long-term or capital investment services. The outline on this particular slide simply indicates the kinds of skill sets that will be working with the councils and technical department heads in working together to develop infrastructure plans, carry out projects and provide for a basis for development infrastructure planning based on community input to that. Then the national issues to be resolved. I mentioned already the need to amplify on the constitution which is very general with respect to the structure of governmental authority below the subnational level, through whether it's numerous enabling statutes or it's conceivably the development of a single local development code. In the Philippines it took about 3 years. Once the basic decentralization features of the constitution were put in place in the constitution, it took 3 more years to develop a full local government code. The local government code there is one single statute passed that once. Most other countries tend to work on individual legislation for specific issues. One of the things that's happened with the development of local government in Iraq, even with the previous National Assembly, some numbers of the National Assembly that took office at the end of the CPA days and then the National Assembly that was elected in January, have included individuals who first started work in local government in Iraq going back to April, May, June and July 2003. We don't have the election results in yet, but I can give you some sample examples from different provinces. In Babil Province with the capital being Hilla, Babil Province has allocated 18 seats in the National Assembly. On the party list running for the National Assembly in the election that just took place there are eight members of the current provincial council who ran for the National Assembly and the deputy governor, and the placement of some of those individuals on the list in terms of, as you may know how the election works, once the proportion of a party is determined in a particular province, then if that party is going to have five seats, the top five names on their party list will be those selected. The placement of some of the names would suggest that five to six of the current provincial council members will wind up being seated in the National Assembly, and the deputy governor also liked a good bet. In Al-Muthanna Province, the capital of Al-Muthanna as some of you may know who are familiar with Iraq is Samawah, similar numbers. There may be five to six individuals who will have served on the provincial council over the last 11 to 12 months who will become members of the National Assembly. The election results are still obviously not fully set at this point in terms of who some of the individuals are, but what we would expect to see is some number, by no means nothing like the large majority, but some number of 20, 30, 50 individuals in the National Assembly who will have already served in local government over the last 2 years in Iraq in some capacity or another. One of the key aspects to getting the National Assembly to pay attention to local governments is to mobilize the interest of these individuals who are directly familiar with the problems that the provinces, the districts and the cities have in terms of delivering services, to mobilize them into forming some kind of a local government caucus. That's a U.S. term. Whether it's called the local government caucus of course is not the point, but the notion of getting a group of people who have previously already been working in local government who are now in the National Assembly to act on behalf of the provinces and to act on behalf of the specific powers and authority of the provincial governments. Likewise, one of the key topics that will have to be addressed nationally is the distribution of national revenues, particularly the oil revenues. That we would expect to be obviously one of the most controversial issues, and that's one of the things that hung up the constitution for some time. That will have a big effect on the kinds of authority that provincial and below provincial level governments will have to exercise control over services by maintaining the budget. One of the things that the constitution does provide for though regardless of the source of funding is overview and approval by the provincial council of the departmental budgets which are central ministry budgets with the departmental budgets that will operate in that province. So province governments now under the new constitution have through the council the budget oversight, not the budget planning and formulation, that still is in the hands of the departments, but in the past year and a half we've worked pretty successfully with many of the technical departments in helping them formulate the budgets that they send in to their central ministries in Baghdad. So through budget preparation the council may not have a formal role, but working with the technical departments will also have the opportunity to influence the allocation of resources from central ministries for activities that are carried out in the provinces. The last thing that's a part of our scope of work in terms of broader national issues for the Local Governance Program is establishing a network of Regional Institutes of Public Administration. At the moment, the planning is that these Regional Institute of Public Administration most likely will be affiliated with the major universities in different regions. For example, with Mosul University with whom we worked over the last couple of years, with the University of Basra, with Baghdad University, the Kurdish Institute of Public Administration which was set up about 18 months ago and already does provide short-course, end service types of training for public administrators, and likely also with the University of Tikrit. So four, five or six institutes of public administration that might initially be funded by the program, but ultimately would be part of the national university system for degree-granting programs, and what we would be working on would be some formula for end service types of training, for short courses to be carried out, on some kind of a subscription or a fee-for-service basis where the local government pays for their staff to participate in a 2-week training course on budgeting and accounting or whatever the topic may be so that they will be partly sustained by being part of a national university system of education, but also partly sustained by the training activities delivered to local government officials. Just to conclude with the core concept that will be the take-away from where the U.S. is going in Iraq with respect to governance, the transition that has to take place now which has been underway, but the PRT program provides the focal point of that, until the Iraqis treat their institutions of government as the legitimate source of authority, as the place to take the problems, with the belief that they will have some of these problems addressed, not a lot of change will take place. It will still be otherwise a U.S. or some kind of multinational force reconstruction program, and so the PRT program is to give voice and opportunity and focus for a strengthening program that enables the existing Iraqi institutions to take control and take ownership of it, and the Local Governance Program of the USAID is a core element of it and we're of course very pleased to be working with that over the next period of time. I'm open for questions. QUESTION: [Off mike.] DR. JOHNSON: Would you like me to repeat the question for the Webcast? The question is, basically elaborate a little bit more on the PRT concept itself and any further contrasts with the Afghan PRT experience. There are other countries in which the model of coordination between civilian--usually the first difference in the Afghan and the Iraqi case is, in Afghanistan, all of the participants in the PRT program are U.S. government personnel or personnel from other governments; that is, there is no contractor present. So the civilian nonmilitary part of the PRT in Afghanistan could be one or more USAID officers, for example. In Iraq, a significant portion of the Provincial Reconstruction Team will be civilian experts recruited, in the case of the Local Governance Program, through our RTI, the implementing contractor. So it will be a mix of government and nongovernment personnel in the PRTs. The second major difference is that, as I indicated earlier, in Afghanistan the situation is quite different or was quite different at the origin of the PRT from the situation in Iraq. The PRT program in Afghanistan had as a basic purpose to project the authority of government which was central government in Afghanistan out into the provinces to create a governmental presence in the provinces. In Iraq, the Iraqis have created the governmental presence in the provinces, and the purpose of the PRT program is to strengthen that governmental presence, strengthen the institutions of local governments, so that's a key difference. The third aspect of it is that the resources in Iraq enfold a larger reconstruction program that did not exist in quite the same level and detail as in Afghanistan, and to combine the actions of these programs. I guess a fourth distinct element is that the PRT program in Afghanistan, the head of the PRT team is typically an Afghan and has been a serving military officer, whereas in the PRTs in Iraq, the head of the PRT will be most of the time a State Department employee, but a U.S. government civilian employee or officer as opposed to a military officer. The other features of the program, these resources will be combined within specific locations in each of the provinces typically at a forward-operating base. For example, the PRT established in Ninawa Province right now is operating out of Camp Courage which is Mosul and likely to move to a different forward-operating base so that the teams will be collocated with each other which is also the same characteristic as in Afghanistan. But there is a much tighter integration of the activities in the PRT teams in Iraq as it was in Afghanistan. Just in terms of where the implementation is, three teams have been established during the month of January, that would be in Ninawa Province in Mosul, in At-Tamim Province in Kirkuk, and Babil Province in Hilla. The next three provinces are Salah ad-Din, and Tikrit would be the specific location; An-Najaf, with Najaf being the specific location; and Baghdad Province itself. The roll-out plan would have, if it stays on schedule, 16 provincial reconstruction teams established, one in each of 16 different provinces, by May or early June, and that would be the current time table. The reason for 16 rather than 18 is that the team in Urbil in the north will serve all three provinces, and it will be a somewhat expanded team compared to the other provincial reconstruction teams, so that would account for the difference between 15 and 18. QUESTION: Can you elaborate a little bit on the political culture in Iraq at the subnational level? For example, how do citizens of Iraq now view their local governments and what sort of vectors are you trying to change? DR. JOHNSON: There are almost two different questions there, so I'll answer both of them and hopefully one of the answers will be right. There are four or five provinces in Iraq that are quite diverse, At-Tamim Province, Kirkuk, all of us I think are aware that in that province there's a substantial mix of Kurds, Turkemen, Assyrians, Shia Arabs and Sunni Arabs in that population. Likewise, in Ninawa Province and Baghdad Province have quite a bit of diversity. In a political and cultural sense, many of the provinces are relatively homogenous in that there are not huge sectarian differences and not huge religious differences. There are tribal differences within many of these other provinces, but there is more homogeneity in many of the provinces in Iraq. One of the first things to think about in terms of local government in those places where the population is quite diverse and represents a distinct mix of population is the local governments inevitably will wind up in considerable conflict management, conflict mitigation, even within the official operations of the provincial council. Whereas the nature of the conflict mitigation roles of provincial councils in Al-Muthanna Province where the population is relatively homogenous with two or three major tribes but not huge differences there, that would be one difference. Right now the local governments have not done a great deal. They're still not perceived as having a substantial effect on water delivery. Frankly, as you read accurately in the newspapers, whether rightly or wrongly, a great deal of the problems with water services and electricity, the core services problems, are attributed not to the government of Iraq, but attributed to the reconstruction program or to problems that the reconstruction program has faced. That may not be a fair characterization, but nevertheless, that's the popular perception. In the end, of course, in terms of building new capacity for electrical generation, that's a reasonably accurate perception. In terms of the operation of electrical generation and distribution, that has not been and continues not to be the responsibility of the reconstruction program. One of the transitions that has to occur is that the Iraqi managers of those programs take the responsibility and Iraqis hold them responsible for it. A key focus of the PRT program going forward is to strengthen those institutions to be able to carry out those responsibilities. So at this time, the characterization that most Iraqis would have of local government is that it is probably considered an experiment whose results are waiting for the proof. The citizens do take their issues to the local councils, they have really since the formation of the first neighborhood councils in Baghdad in May 2003, and have become a focal point in Sadr City, for example, for the population to address issues then dealing primarily with the U.S. military authority in Baghdad and in Sadr City, particularly. But it became an interface between Coalition Forces, the various councils, the neighborhood or district or subdistrict councils, city councils, became a focal point and they have continued to be a focal point for that. They are seen as institutions where Iraqis should be able to take issues for redress. They are not always able to do that because they haven't had the resources in many cases. Many of the provinces' council meetings are televised on a regular basis. There are hundreds, or thousands is probably more accurate, of Iraqi newspapers, and regular coverage is given to meetings of councils so that there is a good deal of publicity given to the councils. The expectations are being created in the population that local government will be the place where you try to get improvements. Meeting those expectations, making that a reality, is the core purpose of the U.S. assistance program. QUESTION: I'd like to ask, because you mentioned of course many times the local councils and municipal councils. how big is this? I can believe it's different in different provinces, but just to give us an idea of how big they are because we know from the experience if they are much big, I mean bigger then it's very difficult to make decisions and which councils and work together I think. DR. JOHNSON: Prior to January 2005, the councils were hugely varying in terms of size. You had councils that sometimes could have 100 to 125 members and they were relatively ad hoc institutions. They may have existed for 6 months to 12 months and so forth, but there was no standard, there was no law, there was no constitution, there nothing in place. As we went about our work, sometimes it was simply a matter of you get a council going, maybe the civil affairs personnel in a particular province to help set up the first city council or provincial council, and then some people weren't very represented. Rather than changing that, add members to the council so that underrepresented groups would be added. Now under first under the transitional administrative law and preserved in the constitution, provincial councils were 41 members. Even that's a pretty unwieldy number. So one of the things that we established in terms of working relations of the councils is not rocket science and not a uniquely original idea was to principally have most of the council work except for full sessions carried out in committees. So at virtually every council you'll see a Committee on Youth and Sports, a Committee on Women, a Committee on Water, a Committee on Power, a Committee on Safety and Public Security, a Committee on Drainage and Sewage, those kinds of committees dealing with basic issues that the community faces. Much of the work for the councils is carried out by a Legal Committee to address issues of local ordinances and so forth. Much of the work of the council is carried out in committees of five to seven or eight members and then reported back into the full council for some deliberation and discussion, but the technical work is carried on in a committee structure with a much more manageable number. There are no prescriptions at this point for the size of the district council or a subdistrict council. The constitution provides for councils at those levels, but either a national enabling statute will determine that or it may be left to the provinces. Or in the case of those places where two or more provinces choose to form a regional government, it may be left to the regional government, much like the U.S. where you have different states, you have quite different local government systems in the United States depending on which state you're in because the local government in the U.S. is under the authority of the state government. Regional governments may then become the authority for those parts of Iraq that choose to coalesce into regions as opposed to remaining as separate provinces. MS. RAHM: Melanie Rahm from [inaudible]. Can I have another follow-up question on the PRTs? Can you explain a little bit more about how many people overall are in the PRTs and is still primarily the military as in Afghanistan or are there more civilians on the teams overall? And will there be USAID staff on each team in each of the provinces? If I understand correctly, some reconstruction activities are under the PRT framework, but some are outside of it. DR. JOHNSON: All of the activities are under the framework of the PRT. To answer your last observation first, all of the activities that take place in a province whether they be called reconstruction activities, obviously strictly military activities will not fall under the authority of the PRT, but otherwise, all of the activities are intended to fall under the authority of the PRT. The size of the PRT is approximately 50 to 60 personnel all together. Twenty to twenty-five of those personnel would be the typical civil affairs component that already exists in many of the provinces. It's not numerically intended to be a fifty-fifty, it's just that that's a typical civil affairs team in a province, and it wouldn't be breaking up the civil affairs team, so 20 to 25 civil affairs personnel, uniformed personnel, and then 25 to 35 civilians. There will be a senior USAID official in each of the provinces, and in many of the provinces that already exists, and others are being added as the teams are stood up. And of course there are in many of the provinces individuals from the regional embassies in Iraq, State Department personnel already exist and will be added. So the State Department and USAID will each have at least one person in each of the provinces, and in those places where there's already a regional embassy it would be more than that. Then in terms of civilian contractor personnel, expats will be three to five. In addition, 25 to 35 Iraqi national professional employees for each of the PRTs. So if you add that on top of the expats, a PRT would look more like 75 to 90 with about 25 to 30 percent being Iraqi national employees. Most of those would be individuals who have worked with us in the Local Governance Program or with some of the other contractors, with [inaudible] for example, in some of the provinces. They would be individuals who have been working with programs in many cases. That's the primary recruiting ground. At the time the RTI Local Governance Project was at its largest, which is in January and February 2004, we had 3,000 professional Iraqi employees over the 18 provinces. So we still have a large number. Some of those individuals worked for the embassy, worked for USAID, worked for other contractors, in other roles, and while we would like to attract them back, we're not going to rob some of the best employees, but there is still a large base of individuals that have worked in one aspect or another of the Local Governance Program over the last 2 or 3 years. Did I get all of the questions you asked? MS. MEEHAN: If there are any more questions, if not, I'd like you to invite me to join me in thanking Dr. Johnson for his presentation. [Applause.] |
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