10.2 |
Reconstruction: July 2004 to July 2009
433.
The strategy
required deeper integration of civilian and military activities,
including
by
restructuring part of the US Mission in Iraq as PRTs:
“These will
be civil-military teams … training police, setting up courts, and
helping
local
governments with essential services like sewerage treatment or
irrigation.
The first
of these PRTs will take the field next month.”
434.
Hard
Lessons described the
difficulties the US experienced in establishing PRTs:
“Coaxing
the Departments of State and Defense to set the terms of their
first
major
operational collaboration in Iraq required a Herculean effort … A
patchwork
quilt of
memoranda of agreement, cables, and military orders – many of them
at
cross‑purposes
– evolved to codify policy for PRTs. More than a year
elapsed
before
basic issues of budgets, the provision of security, and command and
control
relationships
were resolved, delaying full deployment of the PRTs and limiting
their
early
effectiveness in the field.” 247
435.
The 3 November
meeting of DOP(I) considered an IPU discussion paper on
how
PRTs could
be configured to “add value to current
arrangements”.248
436.
The IPU paper
set out lessons from Afghanistan, and concluded that there was
no
“fixed
template” for a PRT. PRTs were most effective when:
•
they
contained an appropriately resourced, integrated military and
civilian team;
•
they had
the support of local authorities, a close working relationship
with
international
organisations and NGOs, and sought to extend the reach of
central
authorities;
and
•
they
operated in relatively benign security environments where they
could seek
to contain
rather than confront conflict.
437.
The IPU
identified three major risks to the implementation of the US
proposal:
•
a lack of
Iraqi “buy-in” at local and national level;
•
a
perception among “local Iraqis” that PRTs represented a failure to
deliver a
transfer of
control to Iraqis; and
•
a lack of
resources. The success of the PRTs would be commensurate,
to
some
degree, with the financial resources available to them. The US
planned
to fund the
three pilot PRTs from within existing resources. The UK
would
need to
consider whether further PRTs could be established on that
basis:
“In
particular, we would need to ensure that PRTs did not divert …
effort from
essential
capacity-building efforts elsewhere. In MND(SE) existing
military/
247
Bowen SW
Jr. Hard
Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. U.S.
Government Printing
Office, 2009.
248
Paper IPU,
October 2005, ‘Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraq:
Discussion Paper’.
269