United States Institute of Peace Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Iraq/Afghanistan Provincial Reconstruction Teams: Lessons Learned

Transcription

1 United States Institute of Peace Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Iraq/Afghanistan Provincial Reconstruction Teams: Lessons Learned INTERVIEW #133 Interviewed by: LTC Robert C. Stack Interview date: November 5, 2010 Copyright 2011 USIP & ADST INTERVIEW SYNOPSIS Participant s Understanding of the PRT Mission Interviewee, a 3161 subject matter expert, served as one of three governance advisors at PRT Kirkuk, Iraq, from November 2009 to November His mission was to get Iraqi officials at the local, district and administrative levels communicating better with each other to increase the efficiency of government. Relationship with Local Nationals Observations: The PRT had good relationships with local officials. The PRT leader and some section heads travel to the Kirkuk governance building five days a week to make themselves available for meetings with the governor, provincial council members and other officials. There was an ongoing dialogue between Iraqi officials, the PRT and the military regarding projects. The permissive security situation allowed the interviewee and other PRT members to get to know local contacts on a personal level by, for example, visiting their homes after office hours. Insights: Many of the interviewee's Iraqi contacts were self-serving and focused more on increasing their own personal wealth than they did on advancing national interests. Iraqi NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) appear to exist mostly to make money rather than to help people; typically 80 percent of the money was spent on NGO administrative overhead with only 20 percent going to the intended local beneficiaries. Did the PRT Achieve its Mission? (Impact) Observations: The PRT largely achieved its mission. It had a positive impact and was welcomed by locals. The PRT played a very valuable role as the honest broker between the Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs. A PRT leader several years earlier helped to broker a thirteen point agreement that set up a power sharing agreement between the ethnicities giving everybody equal representation in the government; this helped to preserve peace between the Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen. The PRT implemented some useful projects, including a civil-military capacity building project involving Iraqi and American officials. The PRT had success in improving irrigation in the province where 80 percent of the economy is related to farming. The PRT helped to improve vertical and 1

2 horizontal linkages between Iraqi officials at different levels. Insights: Accomplishments were often hard to quantify. The Maturity Model Matrix attempts to measure progress, but few real metrics were available to accurately quantify progress. As PRT staffing draws down as the U.S. presence converts to that of an Embassy Branch Office, the U.S. is loosing the ability to adequately influence all of the districts in the province. Overall Strategy for Accomplishing the PRT Mission (Planning) Observations: The PRT and its individual sections had formal work plans that were updated quarterly as required by the embassy Office of Provincial Affairs (OPA). The PRT also utilized the Maturity Model Matrix developed by OPA which, while subjective, was nevertheless better than nothing. What Worked Well and What Did Not? (Operations) Observations: The permissive security environment allowed the interviewee to get out into the community five days per week. Sometimes there were not enough interpreters so different PRT sections would have to share interpreters; it would have been better if each section had their own interpreters. U.S. civil-military coordination was personality-driven, but usually good. Sometimes relations appeared strained between the U.S. Army brigade and its battalions. The Brigade Support Battalions that are coming in are not nearly as proficient as their predecessor Army units. Pre-deployment training at the Foreign Service Institute was good. PRT members generally had the appropriate skill sets that they needed to do their jobs. While the interviewee was hired as a subject matter expert, he still had to learn as he went along in order to avoid the same problems that predecessors had encountered. Insights: While the PRT and its partner military units had many achievements, they also made mistakes. For example, the military spent a lot of CERP (Commanders Emergency Response Program) money on job creation schemes to try to quell the insurgency, but there was little return on investment and no sustainability to those jobs. Also, the U.S. inadvertently probably paid twice as much for many projects than they were actually worth; with some of the extra money being siphoned away by corrupt locals. When coordinating PRT security issues, the Army was much easier to deal with -- and provided better security -- than did the Department of State's Regional Security Office. Lessons: Some PRT staffing policies were disruptive to mission accomplishment. To lesson the disruption, PRT tours should be longer, the staff of entire PRT sections should not be allowed to rotate out at the same time, and there should be three months of overlap between arriving and departing team members. THE INTERVIEW [Note: This interview was conducted at U.S. Embassy Baghdad by an interviewer from the U.S. 2

3 Army Center for Lessons Learned.] Q. I m Lieutenant Colonel Robert Stack. I m here at the embassy in Baghdad, Iraq with (the interviewee) who worked at the Kirkuk PRT as a District Governance Advisor from November of 2009 to November of The purpose of our interview is to identify issues that need to be resolved in order to improve the effectiveness of PRTs and to identify best practices that can be disseminated immediately. What is your understanding of the PRT mission? A. The PRT mission specifically to my portion of the assignment was to achieve vertical and horizontal integration against all levels of district government and provincial government and the ministerial side of the government, so we were constantly making those connections in order to increase the efficiency of the infrastructure and basically the communication between the different levels of government, the Iraqi government. Q. So you re the connector to get these folks talking to each other at their levels of government. Q. How would you characterize the PRT s relationship with the local nationals there in Kirkuk as you had mentioned earlier, the Arabs and Kurds, and Turkmans? A. I would say our relationship was good. The team leader and a lot of the section heads go to the Kirkuk governance building every day, five days a week, Sunday through Thursday, and make themselves available for major meetings with the governor, the deputy governor, the provincial council chairman, or the deputy provincial council chairman. And then other political bloc leaders, either with the Turkmans or the Kurds or the Arabs, so we stayed connected with all of those different factions and their problems or their concerns so we were the American face of the government to talk to. Q. When you went to that type of a meeting, was it at a single building and did those various entities come together in that single building? A. Yes, the Kirkuk governance building, KGB for short, is basically where the governor s office is, the deputy governor, provincial council chairman, and the deputy provincial council chairman -- as well as all the major ethnicities -- have representatives there. That s specifically what the team leader and section heads did every day. My job was to go out into the districts and I covered there are sixteen different districts plus the city of Kirkuk every one of those except for a few down in the south, which were a little harder to get to. We had three guys in district governance section and we divided up those sixteen sub districts and districts, and covered primarily the ones on the eastern side of Kirkuk. They were ethnically mixed all the way from Kirkuk up in the north to mixed Kurdish, Turkmen, and Arab in the center, and then in the south there were all Arabs. Q. So the district level is below the provincial level. 3

4 Q. That s a pretty robust effort. How many people were working, in general, at the Kirkuk PRT and then in governance? A. In the government section we had three guys that did nothing but district governance advising, and I was one of those three. Now they re down to two. They had two that went to the provincial council chambers every day, and that was the governance director, and his assistant was the deputy, so there s five total. Q. In your meetings down at the district level, any impressions there? A. Infrastructure building was the main concern, because they were all wanting better power; more reliable power, better water, better roads, better schools, medical facilities. So we constantly worked with, not only the military, but with our PRT resources through QRF (Quick Reaction Fund) funding and NGOs, non-governmental organizations, USAID, all those different agencies as well as KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government) contributed funds in order to improve the infrastructure, and that s what we talked about mainly in addition to security. I always rode out there with the Army folks, so security was their number one concern, but with each new brigade or battalion the focus changed a little bit and recently a new unit showed up there and they have briefs on PMESSIII (political military economic security social issues infrastructure and information). They talk about those and how to improve each one of those sectors. The new battalion commander was very concerned about not only the security side but also the social, economic, and the agricultural side, so building that infrastructure. And 80% of the provinces are involved in agricultural endeavors, so that s the major portion employmentwise. It s mostly farming, dry land farming, but they also have major irrigation projects, and that s one of the things I did as a QRF advanced holder was help work on establishing better irrigation projects that helped farmers. Q. If 80% of the folks are employed via agriculture, and the Kirkuk oil fields are the second largest reserve? A. Yes, it is a huge oil and gas resource up there. Q. It just doesn t employ that many people. A. That s right, not too many people are employed in that. I would say if you re not in agriculture, you re probably in government support. There s very little private enterprise, so a lot of people are employed either as government officials; the IPs, being the Iraqi Police, the Iraqi Army, the KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government) constables over into Kirkuk. The ministries like the DG (director general) of AG (agriculture) employs and engineer in every little major city in Kirkuk. Same thing with social services. Same thing with, say the High Electoral Commission when you had the elections. They use all the local school teachers for a lot of things like the census forms or the elections. They basically utilize the schools because everyone knows where the schools are in each little community. So the teachers that run the schools act as employees for census workers or the high electoral commission when it comes to voting. 4

5 Q. You told me that you worked at the district level. How often did you meet and how often were your meetings productive? A. I went out five days a week and what I tried to do was alternate between the districts, so I had six to cover and then if somebody was on leave or someone was gone for some reason I would try to cover some of the other districts. We all shared in kind of a cooperative team, so I tried to get out to my districts once a week. Q. And so when you go out to a district there s some type of government building where all the officials are? Q. And you would go and you would just meet and greet and give status updates A. They have a structured district council meeting once a week, each one of the districts does, and they have to send a report to the provincial council outlining what things were discussed during that meeting. Say for instance I would go to Taza every Sunday, and Taza is one of the districts in Kirkuk province. You get to know all the members of the council and the council chairman, and he has an agenda and usually what they do is they read the letters or the memos that come from Baghdad, the provincial council, and anybody else that s in government regarding things that affect their city. And then they talk about security and they also talk about projects. Those are just standard issues that are covered in each district council meeting. Q. In terms of productivity, did you feel the meetings were productive? I think exchange of information was the important thing because you would have representatives not only from the district council, but from the PRT and the military sides, so we would know what s going on, say for instance, an old sewer project that left the street torn up, so we d be able to keep track of those types of infrastructure improvements. Q. Is there anything you can think of that would have made the interaction more productive? A. From time to time, not having enough translators impacted what we did, so we would have to share the interpreters and that s just a logistical issue. At one point we had our own interpreters at the PRT, but overtime that number was reduced. So I would say if each section had its own interpreter that would be a better thing but I know that s probably too expensive in order to do that. Q. They re not going to backfill you? A. No. We re transitioning to the EBO (Embassy Branch Office) staffing structure, so there s a lot of people leaving with no replacements. It s a cost initiative I think. It s one of those things where we covered sixteen districts with three guys for years and now we re going to cover the same amount with two guys. It s going to be difficult. They won t be at the same level that they were. 5

6 Q. Is the EBO going to be the same? A. It ll still be a FOB Warrior, yes. It s going to leave a much smaller footprint. Q. In FOB warrior, is that going to shrink as well? How s that going to work? A. From what I ve seen it is going to shrink, yes. So they re going to basically bring in the T- walls, turn more of the property over to the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Air Force and Iraqi Police. Q. Do you think that the United States government s objectives coincided with the local national s objectives? A. I think in some areas. I think there s a lot of self-serving interests up there when you get on the local level. I don t think they have a very good nationalistic view. I think a lot of people are motivated just to increase their own personal wealth, and then the infrastructure will rot. I think the U.S. government has focused on overall infrastructure development and political relationships that ensure everyone is equally represented; I don t think that actually happens in the field. Q. In terms of impact of the PRT, do you think that the PRT achieved its mission? A. Yes I do. Q. Is the situation on the ground closer to not requiring any U.S. presence? A. It s one of those things where I think a U.S. presence is good for Iraq. I know a lot of people on the local level would rather have us there. In fact, they ve become too dependent on us, and this is my opinion. They would rather rely on us to tell them what to do instead of figuring it out for themselves. I think you see that in the formation of the national government; same thing happens on the local level. We are looked upon as the honest broker. We don t play favorites between the Kurds, the Turkmen, and the Arabs, whereas they can t remove themselves from that situation either because of political party affiliation or tribal affiliation. They have an allegiance to that tribe or political party, which doesn t lend itself to equality whereas we don t have that same philosophy. Q. Were you aware of any PRT long-term achievements? A. Yes, there was something that was done by the person who was two team leaders ago. He came up with the thirteen point agreement, which established basically a peace treaty between the Kurds, the Arabs, and the Turkmen. When you go up there in a couple of weeks you can ask about the thirteen point agreement and see if they can give you a copy of that. Q. Thirteen point agreement sounds interesting. Can you give me a little bit more in summary or what it achieves? 6

7 A. It was kind of a precursor to Article 23 of the Provincial Powers Law. What that does is it s a power sharing agreement between the ethnicities that allows everybody equal representation in the government. Q. What s that former PRT leader s background? A. I think he was an FSO. I think he worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina for a while with those kinds of ethnic issues up there. In fact, a lot of our PRT leadership for whatever reason has come from that area of Europe. The following team leader had a similar background, and he was a Russian linguist, so he had worked in that area. The new guy we had, I don t know if he has that kind of background but they seem to have put people in that position that had experience with varying degrees of ethnicities, rivalries, and disconnects so a lot of people who understand that function are better off in Kirkuk. Q. Can you think of any short-term achievements? A. There was a lot of achievements up there, but we also made a lot of mistakes. One of the things that happened back several years ago was the Army, through CERP (Commanders Emergency Response) fund, wanted to put a lot of money into the Arab area and it was more or less to create jobs and quell the insurgency, so there was not a lot of return on investment. We basically threw a lot of money at them and did a lot of jobs, but there was no sustainability to those jobs. Q. What kinds of projects were there? What kinds of jobs? A. A lot of wells, water wells. A lot of times it would turn out to be a dry hole because of lack of fuel or electricity for the pump, and then the water would be salty so you d need additional RO (reverse osmosis) capability; reverse osmosis to take the salt out of it and make it drinkable. So a lot of the times you d get nothing but salt water which isn t good for agriculture either, animals, or plants. The other thing is they probably charged us twice of what it cost us to do the job and that s pretty common knowledge. Say for instance you want to build a 10 kilometer road and you wanted to charge half a million dollars when really it would only cost $250,000 for the workers, the materials, and then they d skim that also so you d only end up getting 80% of the project done because people had skimmed it so far and sub-contracted it. You really didn t end up with what you were trying to achieve. Q. Were you aware of an overall strategy for accomplishing the PRT mission? A. Yes, we had a work plan that we would update quarterly and provide updates to OPA (embassy Office of Provincial Affairs). Each section of the PRT had its own work plan. One of the cornerstones of that work plan was the vertical and horizontal integration, so we kept trying to make sure everyone was coordinated because that was one of the things that made it dysfunctional, if we didn t know what each organization was doing and how each political group interacted and sometimes it would be counterproductive. When you looked at the ministerial side, the district side, and the army side or the NGO side, there s a lot of different competing efforts out there and trying to keep all those lined up and communicating was the toughest part of the 7

8 job. Q. Were there people specifically designated as planners at the PRT? A. No. Q. So those work plans, did you think that they were useful? A. Yes, I think it gave us a general direction. It s one of those things where you have to become familiar with that. In fact, I was that really helped draft and update the work plan for the governance section, so I would work on that from time to time. The other thing that OPA did -- and this goes back to was to come up with the Maturity Model that goes along with the work plan, and that was pretty subjective. We didn t have a lot of metrics to update that but we did use that quite a bit. It was better than nothing so that was kind of the precursor to the work plan, but the Maturity Model was good for its time. Q. How did the PRT acquire political awareness or situational awareness for working in Kirkuk province? A. From personal interactions. We got to know the people in the field as well as the people in government. We d not only see them during the day and meetings, but also after hours we d go to dinner at their house, things of that nature. We had different engagements with them so we got to know them on a personal level. Q. And your relationship with the planning process was a high level of involvement with the work plans for governance. What can you say about the PRT with any plan that was coordinated with the support of the military brigade? A. I think that is really personality driven, and I think we have pretty much a check in the block, but I can tell you from my experience that the farther down in the weeds you got, the more disconnected it was. Sometimes the relation between the brigade and the battalions is not as good as it should be. It really depends on how well they re connected, and then how well we are connected with them. The governance section connected with the S9 at the brigade, and it was okay, but I can tell you we were really solid with the companies out there in the battalions. I would ride with one of the companies and knew those guys personally. We coordinated with them every day. We talked to them about political military economic development; things of that nature, and we knew the same people out in the district so we would form strategies and communicate about how to best solve different problems. In fact, one of the things that I worked on personally was called the civil-military capacity building exercise by using a mass casualty plan and a mass communications plan. We got the groups to work together, which was very difficult because they re not used to doing that, even when it s like a joint exercise. You took the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines and put them together for a joint exercise. You have to establish a common communications plan, operating procedures, things of that nature, and so that s what we did with the Iraqi army, the police, the medical folks, the traffic police and the medical folks. We brought them all together to form an emergency casualty assistance plan, and so that worked at all the joint communications centers and command centers. 8

9 Q. What about the PRT and other actors such as international organizations, NGOs, allies, etc? A. We rode with the United Nations every day to the KRG building, but I wouldn t say that we had a warm relationship with them. We had an association with them, but there wasn t a lot of depth to it from what I saw. Some of the NGOs, and those are money-making operations even though they say they re there for the people it s kind of like the United States they ll hook up with widows and orphans and use that as a storefront to gain international support, monetary support, so if it s 50/50, 50% going to the widows and orphans and the other 50% going to the administration of the program. That would be a good thing. It s more or less like 80/20; 80% goes to the administrators and 20% goes to widows and orphans. So that s my observation of NGOs on the ground; they re there to make money not really to support the people that need the help. Q. When you did funding, was there pretty much a requirement that it would go to an NGO? Q. How did your plans include getting the host nation Iraqis to own projects? A. We have something called a PRDC process, and you guys have that same thing here, right? You ve heard of that? Q. I don t know what does it stand for? A. Project Development and Resource Community. What happens is they have to send the project, which contains a bill of quantities and a statement of work through the provincial council. They have a five member committee from the provincial council that reviews the project, makes a recommendation on it, and sends it to the general council for approval, and once it s approved then it s assigned a number, PRDC number, a tracking number, then it will have the estimated cost of the project and how it will be funded from the GOI through ministry, NGO, or CERP, or QRF. And then that sits there in the database until somebody funds it, but that gives transparency to the projects as well as some control. Q. How are resources taken into account in the planning process? By resources I mean budget, host nation capacity, expertise, etc? A. Each district, and I m sure each province, gets a certain amount of money based on population, and this is where the census comes into play. The best census, according to Kirkuk, was in They have had subsequent censuses since then but each one of the districts and sub districts believe that they were low balled when it comes to total population. So, all of the ethnic Kurds that returned to Kirkuk and all of the ethnic Arabs that were supposed to leave; some left some didn t leave. That s what the budget is based on, and there was never enough money given to each district to support the infrastructure projects that were on their list so they d have to prioritize and maybe just do the first project or the second project on the list, and they d have thirty or forty that needed to get done. 9

10 Q. In terms of the census, is that something they were having Everybody on the ground and the district governance guys, we all talked to the district leadership about this. They want the census, even though the political actors either in Baghdad or Kirkuk say that they don t want ethnicity, or they don t want religion as part of that. They want the population part so it will help with the budget, it ll help with social welfare issues, it ll help with education. How many kids are out there in the field? Just about every school is overcrowded in Iraq and what they need to do is get a handle on population growth, which they don t have a very good estimate of how that impacts education, but it does. Q. What worked well and what were the major impediments to mission accomplishment at the PRT? A. When we went out with the battle space owners; those guys knew exactly where to go, what they were doing, and they were very good at their jobs. They were professionals. The brigade support battalion, BSB, those guys were not full time battle space owners, and that s where we had a lot of problems. They wouldn t know exactly how to get to the district council building or to a key leader engagement, things like that. As a matter of fact, they re having some problems up there now and when you go up there next week all you have to do is say, tell me about the BSB and you ll see a lot of people shaking their heads, so I ll let you get that story on your own. Q. So is the BSB working in this area now where they d never been before? A. I think each new group of guys comes in and is challenged by the geographics of the situation. They ve never been there before. A lot of them are first tour guys who have never been to Iraq, so maybe they haven t worked as a unit, driving an MRAP (tactical vehicle), but some people have more trouble than others and this current group that we have right now has trouble with communications; getting their radios to work, getting the talk radios to work, getting their secure website to work, like the SIPR (military communications network) account. So it s one problem after another. Q. So they re a little new. How long have they been at this? A. This new group, a couple weeks. But we ve seen two or three rotations so these guys come through are probably the worst group I ve seen that are up there right now. Q. The other folks had it down? A. The regular infantry guys were all good. The battle space owners don t have a problem because they re out there day and night in all types of weather, and they re very good at their jobs. From my observation as well as the rest of the government s guys, it was the battle space owners are great. Q. Now this BSB is what? 10

11 A. Brigade Support Battalion. And there s three different teams; they take us to the KGB every day and they do side missions that the regular combat troops aren t scheduled to do. Q. In terms of you and your year at the PRT, is there any type of handover when you started? What did you find? A. The first week I was there I got some orientation, but you re pretty much left on your own to fit in with the Army guys and go out and introduce yourself to the council, that kind of thing. The councils are used to seeing that rotation. The turnover to me, I think, is too quick. I was the QRF advance holder. I m like the cash custodian for QRF, for Quick Reaction Fund. I enjoyed that and doing projects, mainly agriculture projects although we did some public diplomacy projects. That was rewarding for me to do that, I enjoyed it. Q. Are there issues with the payments? What was the actual process in place for you to get money that you would then pay people with? A. Well for QRF it was very straightforward and simple compared to maybe the CERP Q. Let s do QRF first. A. Okay. QRF, projects would be proposed through the QRF committee, signed off by the team leader, they d give it to me and I would enter it into the QRF database. We d get approval from QRF Baghdad, and once approval was attained we could go out and work on the project. Say for instance there was an Iftar dinner, which we had several of them this year. And we would basically go to the dinner, pay the vendor at the dinner Q. When everything was approved, did someone send you a check in the mail? Did somebody hand deliver you a check? A. We had the checks there and the cash on site. Q. How did it get there? A. I would come up here, pick up the checks, go down to the bank and cash it, then take the money with me. Q. And they had money in the bank? Q. Because I m getting a sense hearing that the bank here doesn t always have money. A. They do run out, depending on how many PRTs came on, because we usually come down and get 29 million dinars at a time ($25,000). Q. And you re carrying that cash? 11

12 Q. Does somebody have some guns around you to protect you? A. Just the normal guns that are always there. I don t have a special guard, no. Nobody does. Q. Is there every an instance where you had more than $25,000? A. No. Q. Did you ever find that they didn t have funds here at the local bank? A. I always called ahead of time. Q. So it wasn t a problem for you? A. No. Q. I m asking this because I ve heard other folks are having difficulty. A. Yes, in fact there was a survey let us know if you have any problems with Warka Bank -- and I never did. Q. You re saying that a year is not enough for a turn over? A. I think it would be better for the PRTs if it was longer than a year, and the rotation was staggered. I know it s probably hard to do that as a personnel management kind of thing, but if you hire three guys at the same time and they all rotate out at the same time there should be an overlap, say, of three months. That s the way I would do it. Q. Are there others leaving Kirkuk now? Q. How many others are leaving in the next thirty days or so? A. There s a gal in the AG division who s leaving and she was what they called the grant s officer representative. She s working on a very important project; turning it over to a brand new guy who doesn t have nearly the experience that she did. I m leaving with no replacement. One of the military guys was leaving too and he was on the POINT team which is petroleum oil and infrastructure technology, and there s a new guy taking over there. That kind of turnover is disruptive and we ve gone through a fair number of people here recently. Q. Were there processes and structures in place that helped you achieve your goals? It might be in the area of security or logistics, resources, communication, cultural sensitivity? 12

13 A. There was training at FSI (Foreign Service Institute); I don t know if you ve heard about what the State Department does for its Foreign Service Officers, or 3161s. Even the civil affairs guys go through some of that. Of course, that s the Iraq orientation course. Its three weeks. Actually, there s one week for Iraq orientation, there s one week of PRT training, and there s one week of security and what I would call combat drive training. Q. So it was pretty good? A. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Q. Any other processes or structures in place that helped you achieve your goals? A. QRF training down here in Baghdad; that was the other one. Q. Was it pretty good? A. Yes, I would say. It s enough to get you started but you have to be committed to make it work and following procedures so you have to get into the database and learn how to manipulate it, and that s where I think some people have problems. Q. Would you say you were the SME, subject matter expert, for your team? A. Yeah, I pretty much had to teach myself. When I took over the account was frozen because of problems, so I had to figure out what problems were made and not to encounter those same issues. Q. Will someone be taking up those duties? Q. You ve given him your lessons learned? He went through the same training that I did. He s been there for about two months. We ve gone through the database. I ve made him upload documents and do cash accounting verification, that kind of stuff. Q. In general a role on the PRT, did you find that the PRT had the appropriate skill sets to carry out the mission? A. Yes, on a limited basis. It s one of those things that s really hard to establish what the diplomatic mission is, because there are no metrics that accompany that. That s one of the things that we ve talked about occasionally. A lot of people who are in the military I was in the military you have a metric driven environment that allows you to make assessments based on your achievements. I don t think there are any metrics associated with diplomacy that really give you a good feel, in the objective sense. And that s one of the things that the Maturity Model was 13

14 designed to do, was kind of gauge if you re making improvements or not. As far as mission function and task that you would normally have in the military, there s not a metric that s associated with that in diplomacy. Q. But those individuals who were struggling away at diplomacy and capacity building and governance and those things they had skills that were sufficient? Q. Any innovative and creative ways you used to get around any obstacles? A. The civil-military capacity building issue that I worked on was the first time it had been done in the district or in the province. I briefed the governor first on the idea and then I briefed all the Iraqi army generals, as well as the brigade commander, and everybody was on board with it. I think once that was kicked off, and it allowed them to kind of break down those barriers so they could communicate between the different agencies and I think without that initial briefing to the governor and the governor saying it was okay to do this, that that would have never taken place, so that was probably my best achievement while I was up there. Q. Are there any other comments you d like to make or share about your experience working with the PRTs; how they work, or how they could be made more effective? A. The one thing I would say, and it s probably about the future of Kirkuk, is when it s going to the EBO, I think it would be far better to use the military as your security arm rather than a civilian security agency like Aegis or something like that. I work with the RSO (Regional Security Office) on diplomatic security and going outside the wire and I think the military is just much easier to work with. Q. How about in terms of the security level? Is there a difference? A. I feel more secure with the Army than I do, say, with the RSO. # 14