|
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Civilians, Military Team Up for Aid
FrontLines: April 2008
In a twist of traditional
roles, USAID employees now go to military bases to teach conflict prevention while
uniformed military officers stride the halls of USAID in Washington as they work
on coordinating U.S. engagement strategies for failed and fragile states.
The need for USAID to
foster stabilization by delivering assistance and development in
Iraq and Afghanistan—where conflict is far from over—prompted both USAID and the Department of Defense (DOD) to seek ways to institutionalize the military-civilian relationship that previously had been based on ad hoc arrangements.
Although there are cultural differences between USAID and DOD, there are also many similarities. For example, both organizations are field oriented and have an expeditionary mindset.
Vocabulary seems to be
one of the biggest obstacles to closer coordination—for example, USAID employees call the
overseas environment “the
field,” while the military calls
it “the theater.”
But the bottom line remains the same: using U.S. resources and staff to improve conditions so people can earn a decent living,
feel secure, and reject the appeal of insurgent recruiters.
To further this new bonding between these “soft” and “hard” sides of U.S. foreign policy,
two offices have been stood
up within the last five years as
part of USAID’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance:
the Office of Military Affairs (OMA) and the office for Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM).
In early April, Elizabeth Martin of CMM traveled to the Foreign Service Institute to teach civilian (USAID, State, U.S. Department of Agriculture) and military personnel about instability and conflict as part of their preparation for a year-long deployment to a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT)
in Iraq.
Using a newly developed conflict tool—the Tactical Conflict Assessment Framework (TCAF)—she told the trainees that to effectively stabilize an area, you have to know what is causing instability. The best way to do this is to ask the local population. TCAF has four key questions that help in understanding
the reasons for instability
in an area:
Have there been changes in the village population in the last year?
What are the most important problems facing the village?
Who do you believe can solve your problems?
What should be done first to help the village?
USAID’s civilian aid experts have learned through long and sometimes difficult experience how to approach people in different
cultures and in unstable conditions.
This knowledge is being transferred, not just to civilians serving on PRTs in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also to officers at military bases around the country.
James Derleth of the OMA took USAID’s work in conflict assessment and “translated it for use by the military—it needed to be more operational,” said Martin.
Derleth has used the TCAF
to train troops heading for Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa. “This is back to the future—the first years of USAID after it was created in 1961 were spent in Vietnam in the CORDS Program,” said Thomas Baltazar, head of the OMA. CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary [later changed to Rural] Development Support) merged civilian aid teams with military groups to deliver assistance and foster stability in unstable areas.
“After Vietnam, we went our separate ways,” Baltazar added. USAID hired a lot of former Peace Corps volunteers and the staff gravitated towards more traditional
long-term development in stable areas, so this re-engagement with the military has been “a kind of laboratory” said Baltazar.
Since the military tends to have “a manual for everything,” Baltazar is trying to institutionalize
USAID’s ideas into military
strategy and doctrine towards failed and failing states.
“TCAF has gotten huge traction
with the U.S. and British military—
the Brits are in the process of incorporating it into their military
doctrine and the U.S. Army has included TCAF in their soon to be published Operations and Counterinsurgency manuals,” said Baltazar. This means USAID’s conflict assessment tools will be “taught in all the Army schools.”
Back to Top ^
|
RSS Feed for FrontLines
