Good afternoon. My name is Robert Lamb. I'm a senior fellow and director of the program on crisis conflict and cooperation here at CSIS this event is being livecast on the internet at CSIS.org and the video will be made available afterwards at C3.csis.org So I'll ask that all of our speakers and anybody who has a question Please make sure the microphone is on when you speak so that everybody watching Presently and in the future. We'll be able to hear what you're saying I am pleased today to be hosting the postponed event Apparently a massive snowstorm hit Washington DC a few weeks back that completely prevented anybody from leaving their houses And so we had to cancel the event and reschedule it for today. The upside is that Mr. Ballant has had I believe you've had the opportunity to return to Iraq for what I believe is your 35th trip 34th trip to Iraq and so in addition to hearing mr. Ballant's sort of Final or probably semi-final thoughts on the overall effort in Iraq will also get a bit of an update on the current situation I think I Wanted to Just by way of introduction Our program the program on crisis conflict and cooperation used to be called the post conflict reconstruction project and 10 years and two months ago the post conflict reconstruction Commission at CSIS and the Association of the US Army Put out its final report in which it reviewed lessons of previous Reconstruction efforts mainly through the 1990s and I just wanted to read to you a few of the Main findings of that review. This is from January 2003 The people of the country in question must own the reconstruction process and be its prime movers a Coherent international strategy based on internal and external parties interests is crucial The international community must address the problem of post conflict Reconstruction holistically building and deploying the capacity to address a broad range of interrelated tasks Security is the scene in a Qanon of post conflict reconstruction though every case is different There is one constant if security needs are not met the peace in a given country and the intervention intended to promote it are doomed to fail Successes made on the ground International interventions are extraordinary and should take all necessary measures to avoid undermining local leaders institutions and processes Mechanisms are needed to rapidly mobilize and coordinate needed resources and sustain them for appropriate periods of time Accountability is essential for both host country and international actors and The timing of an operation must be driven by circumstances on the ground not by artificial deadlines or externally driven bureaucratic imperatives those were the lessons learned in 2003 from America's reconstruction experiences up until that point today we have Learning from Iraq a final report from the special inspector general for Iraq's reconstruction In which he will be laying out seven final lessons. I'm not going to read all seven because I imagined that that they will be discussed But as you listen to mr. Bowen speak today, I encourage you to think back To the Commission on post-configure reconstruction from ten years ago And what our program was encouraging people to pay attention to If you were to create a Venn diagram of lessons learned ten years ago and lessons learned from the subsequent ten years The two circles would overlap quite a bit Ray Dubois is going to be introducing mr. Bowen today Mr. Dubois is a senior advisor here at CSIS focusing on international security policy and defense management reform He's been the acting undersecretary of the army director of administration and management He's been in the office of the secretary of defense. He has been all over the world Quite familiar with Iraq his bio along with everyone else's bios are available on your seats I would like to ask mr. Dubois to come up and offer some opening remarks as an introduction to mr. Bowen Thanks, Ray as Bob said my experience with the Cigar Goes back to its inception when I Was the director of administration and management for the office of the secretary of defense before I Lay out some remarks some contexts some introductory References to my friend Stuart Bowen. I do want to note that the importance of this his last shall we say public Performance although I suspect there'll be some congressional hearings in the next month In conjunction with his final report I note in the audience judge Webster our former director of the FBI and director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a Senior counselor to CSIS. Thank you, sir for being here see one of my former colleagues at the defense Jack Shaw Who also served in high office at the State Department? the 19 Excuse me the 2003 bill legislation that created first the special the inspector general for the coalition provisional authority and then Which morphed as we all know into the special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction Was an interesting Journey began an interesting journey some might call it tortuous Senators fine gold and Collins Russ fine gold and Susan Collins were Put it in the special act That created the 18.4 billion dollar reconstruction initial reconstruction funding for Iraq They created this entity this creature. It is a creature of the Congress Congress Inevitably if you go back even to the Second World War and look at the senator Harry Truman Investigation subsequent of the war the Congress likes to know where taxpayers money is going to be spent and whether or not it was spent with some discipline I Was talking to my wife last night about this particular event today and It was keying off a comment that we had just heard on the television Leading from behind and I've decided that Stewart's report ought to be entitled not learning from Iraq, but learning from behind There are a series of recommendations that he will no doubt bring to your attention Which? clearly Point out the mistakes. Yes That have been made During the past ten years that he and his investigators and adult and his auditors Have have brought to our attention and correctly so I look at his his report and There are a number of different aspects of it that I commend to you and One that came comes to my mind as being unique and informative Perhaps very very Special is the fact that he went out and interviewed US and Iraqi and other international players on this stage and They if you read the report had some really candid remarks about the entire reconstruction and stability operation in Iraq This has never been done before to my knowledge and one that I commend Stewart for having entertained now I want to also Tell you that Stewart Started his career young lawyer in Texas For governor Bush then governor Bush He was an assistant attorney general of Texas and also served on governor Bush's staff in Austin And then came to Washington with the president-elect and worked in the White House for four years until he Received the appointment as inspector general for the Corlusion Provisional Authority He leaves that office here in a Another month or so Don't know where he's going But I'm sure we'll find out soon and soon enough but I also wanted to share with you all the fact that The special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction did not Go unnoticed to a number of other agencies in the government it had its critics It had its critics inside the executive branch. It had its critics on the hill. It had its critics in the media So one has to recognize however that Anything in this town that is done with discipline that is done that provides a result That is done with a quantitative set of analyses will always find critics But I think it is also important to recognize the context That the inspector general and his staff Worked in Stewart refers to it as oversight under fire There's no question that That created Situation unlike any other I think it probably bears repeating that Remember in World War two we had 10 to 12 at any given time million men and some women in uniform What was the difference in? Iraq We had an equal number of contractors on the battlefield as we had Soldiers as we had military personnel We also had some 4500 Department of the Army civilians in Country at its height This was shall we say an expeditionary auditing environment one that we had never experienced before As I indicated Congress Likes to have their own fellow on the ground they created that with Stewart And Stuart and his team Held true to their charter But that's another interesting aspect of this story that charter kept getting renewed There was once a period of time after the first year I think it was where Stewart was left with it was he was supposed to go out of existence And I think it would they were Drawing down to some 15 or less people Now Congress and its infinite wisdom decided that they were going to renew its charter and continue to do so Now these nine years later One ought to recognize also the complexity of the situation in Iraq especially going back To 2003 and 4 as you will remember the coalition provisional authority Established by the National Security Presidential Decision memorandum 36. I think it was Put the Secretary of Defense in charge and it said quite Explicitly in the NSPD that the Secretary of State and other cabinet members and agency heads would support the Secretary of Defense This became Shall we say the most complex management chart I have ever seen when Ambassador Negra Ponte became ambassador in Baghdad subsequent to the stand-down of the coalition provisional authority Secretary Romsfeld turned to me and he said I need to better understand how decisions are made with respect to Reconstruction stabilization operations, etc. I Said all right. Give me 24 hours, and I will do a chart I didn't sleep that night because I was trying to determine the relationships between multiple agencies This is the chart That I provided to the Secretary of Defense Does anyone suggest that that is a Chart that can yield effective efficient Timely decisions on just about any issue of course the answer is no But you will also note on this chart there is not a box for the special inspector general for Iraqi Reconstruction when the secretary asked me why not I said oh he's over here He oversees all of this But seriously That was the context administratively from a management standpoint That steward and his team had to deal with David Ignatius Washington Post columnist frequent visitor and Participant in various CSIS events Wrote a interesting column recently and It's entitled in a crisis who should take charge I'll just excerpt a few sentences from the beginning of it Imagine that you're sitting in the situation room the National Security Council is assembled president vice president sex state sec def Advisor to the president for national security affairs and some other hangers on And you're debating The deteriorating political and security and economic situation in a North African country take your pick The president asks how the United States can prevent conflict There and those in those in that country without sending in the military various cabinet members and agency directors look awkwardly at each other Because nobody has a good answer That description quite frankly is Exactly what happened ten years ago and To this day our government does not have a good answer as to how we shall deal with interagency issues in a situation where the United States is Either drawn in by design or by desire To help in stabilizing a failing or a failed state Any one of you in this room Can pick one or two or three or four countries where that might happen not withstanding That a number of people both members of Congress members of the media members of the academic community members within the executive branch itself Have said we'll never do an Iraq again. We'll never do an Afghanistan again And I would hope that we wouldn't but Will we do something similar will be will we be drawn into something some situation where we are doing Arguably armed a nation building or at least we're doing something in conjunction with our allies and friends to stabilize a Syria or an imploding North Korea Think about that the work that steward has done in his team and the reports that they have written point out The inadequacies and the idiosyncrasies of what it takes To do stabilization and reconstruction operations what it takes to do an audit under fire and I congratulate him I Want him to know that the country owes him a debt The fact that I helped Set up his organization both under the CPA and then subsequently as an independent body Reporting jointly to the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State. I take some pride in but I do want to say that We Have yet to my in my opinion To have learned our lesson and let's hope that learning from behind may help us out Stuart Thank you Ray for those kind introductory words and thank It's to all of you for being here this afternoon as we talk about My sickers final reports on on Iraq reconstruction Thank you judge for being here today, and and I want to thank CSIS Bob. Thank you Tony Quartersman John Hamry friends. I've made over the last ten years Among the blessings of this this tough Mission have been being able to work with people like Ray and Tony and John and Bob and Rick Barton Who who helped write hard lessons the predecessor volume to to learning from Iraq and Chris Kirchoff One of the lead writers for that report is here today. So Chris. Thanks for being here. I Want I want to start by Telling you what I'm going to talk about and then Put it in context and then get into the meat of the discussion I'm first going to give you a brief overview of what I learned from the Iraqi leadership During my visit last week my 34th trip a record. No one else wanted and deservedly so it was it was a It was a still a much safer Iraq, but not a safer rock that I was in last week And then I want to talk about learning from Iraq and go through the seven lessons But but I want to begin by saying putting it in context. Please read it I brought copies enough for everyone and the text speaks for itself the interviews speak for themselves They drive the message forward and the message is really a continuing one one a conversation that you and and many in This town are engaged in Many here at CIS are engaged in Tony Cordesman is heavily engaged in Ray is and that is what do we do? About improving our approach just to tackling stabilization reconstruction operations. I've got a suggestion here But it's a it's a point for discussion. It's a it's an argument or an idea I call it the US officer contingency operations an idea that really Concretizes a larger concept and that is the need to arrive at integration not coordination in how we plan and Execute and oversee stabilization reconstruction operators if we're gonna see victory. What's it about? It's about what does victory look like at the end of these very modern very difficult operations So let's talk about Iraq now what I learned last week I met with Prime Minister Maliki and Deputy Prime Minister Shah Rastani Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament Osama El-Nujafi very interesting and strong man. He's a Sunni Maliki and Shah Rastani as you know her Shia and and I met with that Dr Abdul Basit my friend who I've met with every trip for eight years now Who's the head of the board stream audit their their government accountability office? But also has the very difficult job of leading the central Bank of Iraq right now Potential conflict of interest I think on its face, but but enormous challenges Evidence in my discussions with each of them Prime Minister Maliki is focused on the same thing He's always been focused on whenever I've met with him and that is what happened to our money when he says our money He means the development fund for Iraq. That's the Roughly 17 billion that the United States had control of disposed of during the first year of the coalition provisional authorities Regency in Iraq and the three years after that when the US Army managed another three billion And the answer is provided in our 31st audit believe it or not to addressing the DFI issued at the end of January That concluded that about eleven point seven billion was at best poorly accounted for and three billion of its There there simply no documentation no paperwork to to show what happened to that money So his frustration their perturbation at what they see is the failure to implement effective controls in 2003 and 2004 It's well-founded But they're not done with that issue. We are But but the Iraqis I would expect as the nature of the discussion revealed will be pursuing some kind of come some kind of claim which the wisdom of which is Hard to decipher at least with regard to filing against the United States Deputy Prime Minister Shah Rastani Someone who had been engaged over the years and all of these gentlemen have been engaged in Iraq for the last ten years in leadership But he in particular had been Player in the reconciliation efforts and he largely bemoaned the collapse of Sunni-Shia relations over the last eight months in September since the death sentence was issued for the former vice president of Sunni Hashemi vice-president Hashemi then the assault on a man who I really respect and and became friends with over the last Five years the minister of finance now former minister of finance Rafi al-Assawi who's now Hold up in Abu Rishis compound in Ramadi You know a place that the Iraqi army doesn't have purchase over along with Kurdistan So so the fracturing is there Shah Rastani mainly though talked about Jabir al-Nishra the al-Qaeda effort in Syria and the effects of its spillover into Western Iraq and how it was re-energizing unfortunately Sunni-Shia Conflict in the West but really across the country and you see it in the public demonstrations You see it in the assassinations and 50 assassinations in the last month in Iraq Osama el-Nujafi the speaker of the Iraqi Parliament You know he was he was very pessimistic about Sunni-Shia relations right now and and as he said publicly in the press he said to me There needs to be a change at the top he was he was quite forceful in his view that that next year's elections The parliamentary elections will probably produce a new prime minister for rock But you know prime minister Maliki has overcome a lot so be careful in counting him out And finally dr. Bossett The head of the GAO and the head of the bank now Told me some important things that you know that followed up on his discussions with me last September about money laundering He then identified that Iraq was losing up to 800 million a week in money laundering a mind-bogglingly large sum Amounting to 40 billion annually if that could possibly be true even if half of it's true It's it's completely draining the economy of its means to to grow and so those growth figures are really Written in sand right you know the 14% growth figures as far as having meaningful economic impact upon the country and upon the The millions who are destitute in Iraq this time he talked about his role as as governor of the central bank of Iraq and He said to me that he is now enforcing money laundering regulations and he said that they had gone unenforced for 10 years Think about that this absolute profligacy are in in in the theft of the lifeblood of Iraq's economy the revenues from the oil and gas sector and At least he is turning The tide on on that point will remains to be seen The effect because make no mistake that the corruption is occurring at the highest level so you know We can't be naive about The seriousness with which that will be turned back at this juncture So that's what I learned in Iraq last week tough news The provincial elections are coming up soon April 20th and and I learned from a member of parliament that that it looks like is key the the the Islamic Shia party in the leading Shia party in Iraq is going to Win a lot of seats back that it lost four years ago And and that's one thing that I think the electoral system in in Iraq shows That works is their elections occur reasonably effectively reasonably peacefully and they show up a preference for kicking the bums out so in this case is key lost much last time will win much this time and it will portend perhaps somewhat what Next year will bring and that same member of parliament told me that That's the that solder is not Probably going to support Prime Minister Maliki next year nor will the Kurds and so that will make a steep climb for him To retain to win a third term. All right. Let's move To this last report learning from Iraq, which I hope most of you have and and as I said It's it's it's shaped around the idea that you know are really the rhetorical question Are we well structured to carry out stabilization and reconstruction operations? And I think all of our work Many of my six some of my secret staff are here who helped carry it out, you know And I want to thank all those who aren't the auditors The inspectors the investigators who are who did the substantive tough Execution of oversight under fire, you know, I had I had a number of people who served For five years or longer in Iraq really Unmatched by any other agency and they but that had to be done to get to To this point where where we can take that collective effort those findings those investigations and turn them into something meaningful Which are lessons learned that can improve our approach The as Ray pointed out the what's new what's really new in this report or the 44 interviews I conducted since last September with the Iraqi leadership Prime Minister Maliki Deputy Prime Minister Shahristani and Some present and past each also Prime Minister a la we Prime Minister al-Jafri the two former Prime Ministers in Iraq and and other former and present members of of the Iraqi Parliament, but also with The with Secretary Panetta Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and Tom Nights and and Rajiv Shah the administrator at USAID and all of the ambassadors and All the general since 2008, you know hard lessons quarter sort of took us up to 2008 This helps close the loop, but I asked them as well as the Hill that that was the other big difference I talked to Senator McCain McCaskill Collins number of House members Asking all of those 44 individuals What were the effects in your view of the Iraq reconstruction program and what lessons? What are the important lessons to draw from this this tough experience and the answers tease out the themes And and undergird and inform the seven lessons and and interestingly as as Bob Pointed out, you know is to a certain extent they were very foreseeable the the section he wrote from CSIS's report Sounds a lot like what's what's in here And so so the difference being we now have ten years of evidence that absolutely substantiates The those prospective points identified back then and indeed points that when I first met John Hamreya nine years ago Great man wise man a generous man a kind man And a great leader public servant and CSIS so fortunate to have him and I was fortunate to meet him early on and to benefit from His insight and advice But he was he was the first assessor over in Iraq. He told me about his first trip He got in there and with his team and looked around and this is what he found and and so it was the the signposts were clear Early on in that first year, but but as I've said before and I've say in this report And I think those of you who've participated a lot of you have been involved with the Iraq rebuilding program No, rather than nine a nine-year rebuilding program. We had nine one-year rebuilding programs and driven by funding driven by Supplementals driven by spend rates Driven by interdepartmental competition and that's what comes out in these interviews From the US senior leaders on the Iraqi side what comes out is this repeated complaint that you didn't do enough That you didn't address corruption sufficiently Early on with no note of irony in those comments that you didn't that you didn't consult with us and That's a fair point and because it's echoed in the senior leader comments It's echoed across the board among the Iraqi leaders and and I think it is it's one of my seven lessons You've got to consult with the host country before you pick big projects You know you've got to you you can't do it all and do it our own way as deputy secretary of state Bill Burns Told me which is what we tried to do You know as as Ambassador Jeffrey said we failed to consult effectively with them Ambassador Crocker Recognize the same point in my interview with him as did General Austin This is the civilians the military leaders Concord and the Iraqis and The Hill for that matter I recognized this is a crucial element Of course, you might be wondering why is that a lesson? You know it doesn't aren't you supposed to consult? Well, it's a lesson because that's what happens and And it was drew whatever the factors that drove The failure to consult a fish effectively and Ambassador Bremmer told me we did consult well the Iraqi said not enough And many others have echoed the same point and And and the second point Drawn out from the interviews especially with the Hill and with the US leaders is the failure to have a plan and the Iraqis too a Plan that was that was concrete and really a plan B You know Winston Churchill said those who plan do better than those who don't Even if they rarely stick with that plan And Ben Franklin said failure to plan is planning to fail You know, I think apt insights from from great leaders of the past Applicable to what happens and and Kubat Taliban either son of Jalal who's now a minister in the KRG said to me You you came in with a plan a but no plan B and plan a was liberate and leave plan B was and Became occupied rebuilt, but did we have a system of structure a Process an institutional capacity to carry out That plan and the answer is no and why did we shift so quickly in April? That's a fair question You know on March 10th 2003 as we report in detail in hard lessons The president president Bush made a decision on liberate and leave with troops were gonna be out by September We were gonna spend 2.4 billion the organization for the reconstruction of humanitarian assistance of Iraq or how led by retired general J Garner Was going to get its job done quickly. We were gonna have elections in June or July there's gonna be interim government in place and all of that changed in April and Part of the reason certainly was the collapse of the government's capacity the destruction of the ministries The failure of of of the United States to keep order looting unfolding across Baghdad and beyond but also Saddam Hussein was loose. I think that that You know, I don't think you leave it with with him still on Lucy and wasn't caught until the end of that year Whatever there wasn't a capacity a structure a capability a System in place to carry out a reconstruction program that quickly went from 2 to 20 billion in 6 months and now 60 billion and so Looking forward as a before I get to the seventh seventh lessons, you know, I want to want to give you a couple of watchwords Shibboleth to think about as you as we Grapple with with what what we say in this report and as you think About how we should improve, you know on we need to change but it needs to be changed that improves not all change improves This is what has to happen with regard to how we plan execute and oversee stabilization reconstruction operations here are the words coordination integration in Iraq we did a lot of coordination Coordination is an agreement And that agreement lasts as long as the personalities involved are in sync they have that are that are committed to that agreement integration is about preparing before you get there and X and thus having the capacity and the personnel and the contracting and the systems and the databases and the oversight That's that's prepared. That's integrated sieve mill civilian and military not just within the stovepipes Rice bowls and stovepipes, you know, those are the metaphors of the moment In with regard to this issue and really all issues almost here in Washington But they especially are acute when applied to national security matters and stabilization Reconstruction operations and so some stovepipes have to be knocked down and rice bowls touched for us as a country To respond to this national security crisis I would say the need to reform our approach to stabilization and reconstruction operations by achieving integration whatever it is Whatever that outcome might be That's that's the contextual concept With under which it should fall So seven lessons Final lessons from Iraq's reconstruction This was our ninth lesson learned report and and really our last report of substance We'll be doing a couple more reports just to put it in context the Congress has extended us through September 30th We got 65 cases ongoing. We're gonna get 20 more convictions to add to our 82 recover another hundred million estimated to add to our 200 million and That to go with 390 audits and about 1.6 billion saved will be SIGIR's Accomplishment at the end of the day the end of September, but more important than those particulars is Is how they figure into? Substantiating and leading to meaningful application of what they reveal about About the Iraq rebuilding program and number one is let's reform our approach to stabilization and reconstruction operation what I've been saying so that we improve our Likelihood of a successful outcome of victory of achieving our goals in in these operations and and while I think it's You know self-evident existentially if not Very straightforward fashion that we're not gonna do in Iraq and Afghanistan again We're gonna do significant stabilization operations in in the future and we've been in one almost every year since 1982 So the Balkans was not small But we also had Somalia and Haiti twice in Panama and Grenada and others and that that that taxed our our national security Infrastructure in in unique ways and and we might see Syria and and and there are certainly others In the offing that that will certainly draw us into a need to to apply a sieve mill capacity That's not yet perfected and so I would I would say as you think about this What what can what does the United States need to do? How can I contribute to? In strengthening state aid defense is justice treasuries approach to integrative planning because those are the big five That play a role in these and and and today they're not really integrated there have been important reforms We point out I point them out in chapter 6 And Rick Barton is leading one at the at CSO the conflict and stabilization operation bureau at state But that's that's a creation. Let me just put it in context since night 1990 there have been a number of offices created with within agencies to respond to stabilization operations office of transition initiatives at aid CSO at state the civilian expeditionary workforce at defense Issy tap at justice the office of technical assistance at Treasury each agency has responded and And and and each in an within its Particular confines and in an effective way But not an integrated way and that's I think to succeed if we're all gonna work They're all gonna work together on the ground. They ought to prepare in an integrated fashion advance Ryan Crocker likes this idea when I when I briefed when I interviewed him as does General Scowcroft and one of the CIS Founders and CSIS and Stephen B croft who I spent a couple hours visiting with in in Iraq last week Said yeah, I mean he said this is the way we should go and so so then and a number of others But but ultimately it's about the community about the community of influence on the hill within the agencies In the think tanks that will shape this discussion. This is just a contribution to it To advance a second ensure sufficient security and start small and really I would say the metric here is to You know that the the grave or the security problem the small of the project should be and if it's a if it's an absolutely Insecure situation, then you shouldn't be doing rebuilding And and we got that There was no such metric no such measure no such applicable approach in Iraq For instance we went forward with what became the hundred and eight million dollar Fallujah waste water treatment plan in 2004 in the middle of armed open conflict with the Sunnis in that very restive city back then and it continued to be a struggle out in Western Iraq for Seven years That it took to complete that project three times longer than it should have cost three times as much That's what happens as ambassador Crocker said to me if you know if you if you go in and you try to carry out these Pro projects in unstable settings Estimate that they're going to cost ten times what you what you started with Tom Knight said bigger is not better You know it put plan plan you must plan for security challenges As Jim Marshall said to me Congressman who made numerous visits to Iraq and now is leading the US Institute for Peace Excellent interview in the in the report on that subject third key lesson Consult when I've talked about it already again. Why is it a lesson fair question? It is We didn't consult enough and and ultimately it's about I'd say educated intelligent consultation in other words going in Recognizing what the capacity of the host country is what that what their governance their literacy rate is their their governance strengths their infrastructure outputs and then beginning to develop with them in the lead a sense of the kind of rebuilding program That's that they can do that they can sustain as our as audit showed that perhaps the largest waste We estimate in this report at least 8 billion of our 60 was probably wasted in Iraq A lot of that but but that's a conservative figure because because the Iraqis don't have a culture of operate and maintain You know they use it till it breaks and and and so that that's where you have to start and you have to start breaking them of use it till it breaks as I say somewhere in here and and that Was difficult to do sustainment was the watchword. Did they were they willing to sustain what we built for them? No Our inspectors visited the most expensive project number one the Nazareel water treatment system Treated served five villages in the south It was already done turned over to them Operating at 20% why they didn't know how to work it. Why because the tribe that was there Demanded to hold all the jobs and that tribe happened to be illiterate and and You know over 300 million spent on that and and a very very frustrating thing it's gotten better But certainly not the outcome anyone wanted careful planning Careful engagement, you know last point about that when they turned it on It was a system that was too powerful for the pipes it's serving the fight So suddenly it was it was like 4th of July in New York City water exploding everywhere in the streets as the pipe burst and and in the middle of the summer and you know these are really unfortunate Outcomes that better consultation better planning might have obviated Fourth lesson develop uniform systems. This is our last audit really nails this one released a few weeks ago And and it's just the fact we don't know because we didn't have systems in place about 25 30% what we built because it just wasn't tracked there was no uniform system that everyone used the Iraq Reconstruction management system was something people were supposed to use created after our audits identified that there was no system But there was no requirements And as a result some got in some didn't and we know about three-quarters of what we built That doesn't make sense that can be fixed, but but also it's not just databases. It's contracting every agency did its own Contracting it has its own federal acquisition regulation approach and as as general Bostick the commander of the Corps of Engineers today who was actually the first commander of the Gulf region division 10 years ago in Iraq Echoing a recommendation we made in our contracting lesson or report. We ought to create a contingency federal acquisition regulation that's tuned to the necessities of this kind of of conflict Setting and so that it's easier to use so you don't so you're not in Fallujah under fire You know tap it on your commuter with a fed biz ops trying to get a bit in you know, that's that's nuts And but it's what happens And then you got to figure out which agents may work in a defense and what happens when the money's mixed You know these are these are challenges are burdens on the contracting community that they want to see the government fix and They're not fixed yet number five In short robust oversight, I think that's that's sort of the SIGUR story and it the first year was was not overseen and And they're you know one of our cases the Bloomsdine conspiracy that we broke in Hila Babylon Involving a Robert Stein the controller for the CPA and Philip Bloom both of whom by the way had prior felony convictions for fraud And and they were engaged in what what's what they said they described as a as a free fraud zone And and Stein when we interviewed him in prison a few years ago, you know said hey if there'd been some oversight on the ground You know when this was going on, you know I'm you know, I might have thought twice of this, you know, I might not have engaged in this crime Well, maybe not he's a crook, but but nevertheless deterrence is deterrence and and that's I think that's the highest and best use of a robust oversight presence and is not you Need to catch what you can catch catch, you know catching crooks is tough in a war zone. I had unfortunately I had I don't inform it, you know murdered a few days before he was supposed to come see us and And that's that was people were watching our door and it was very dangerous in Iraq for a long time in that regard And so I understand why people didn't come forward but being present made a difference and and being present in a robust fashion Is crucial we got up to 55 personnel in 2008 At our peak and and and that that helped deter I think Wrongdoing and promote good conduct. So, you know, Senator Collins, Senator McCain it Recognize this senator McCollins. I think really of a strong advocate of Strong of effective and robust oversight early on helped make our office happen Senator McCain in my interview with him said hey Congress was out the window quote-unquote You know on this issue early on and and it's something we have to learn and not let happen again number six Preserve what worked, you know, you'll see in here, you know, this is not just a litany of failure There were a lot of projects that did make a difference and and as my interview with general portray has revealed there was The the spending on the security sector about 25 billion, you know gave Iraq It's best equipped best trained army and police ever Perhaps a mixed blessing at this current juncture because of potential abuse It's particularly of the special operations forces, but it is perhaps the best special operations force in the Middle East today and that's directly because of the US training the US funding and that funding continues the largest engagement at this moment In Iraq as far as as far as aid goes as the foreign military sales program 19 billion already in cases and you know 38 f-16s going to be the first ones delivered in in in September of this upcoming year and You know 131 m1 a1 Abrams tanks and this is this is this is a lot of hardware a lot of capacity That's that's going to provide Iraq with a with a substantially enhanced security but it worked in In with in regards to the issues that general portray is and others faced in 2007 and that was a civil war a collapse in the country You know absolute continuous spate of bloodletting that was that was extraordinarily difficult Now when I went to the battle update assessment briefings in in the spring of 2007 It was it was a very depressing briefing because of the level of loss that we were enduring in that spring it got 90% better by December of that year But what else worked? Commander's emergency response program money. This was a unique Revolution in rebuilding programs in the history of the United States Giving battalion brigade commanders, you know substantial sums 4.1 billion in Iraq To carry out large projects and when they worked they were they weren't large You know there that the key was was was keeping a lid on the on the funding and unfortunately that that got out of control in 2008 And and our reporting revealed that and eventually the Congress acted Put a lid on it and it and but Congress shouldn't be the program office So manage correctly serp can work and can be an important tool in in the commander's arsenal Or weapon is it as their own training document calls it money as a weapon system? The other the other element I think evolved in Iraq was the provincial reconstruction reconstruction team Program and that that really is It was sort of a laboratory for what I'm talking about in lesson one creating an integrative sieve mill capacity that can carry out Capacity building and rebuilding efforts In a in a stabilization operation and the PRT's when they worked they were dependent upon good leadership That was the defining element that I learned from my interviews leadership They made a difference across Iraq And they should be preserved in the future with more training the key was as Jim Marshall told me is that there was no System no PRT University no compact no place where they really could Strengthen those who served in the PRT's so that they could achieve more And finally lesson seven, you know kind of a perfunctory one, but again Crucial and that is plan plan plan plan comprehensively plan for plan B plan in integrated fashion That means Including everybody and it's difficult to do in an interagency fashion today Those of you working within agencies know that you have the liaisons But but but there's not really a context or a system in place for for effective regular ongoing integrated planning and and and that's what that's what I Suggest when when I suggest the US Office for contingency operations a sort of a strawman argument to think about What that would look like it's spelled out in in in chapter six here And the appendix gives a sort of proposed bill what how that might come into being Whatever it's whatever whatever's going to come out at the end is going to be different from that But but it but it needs to be as I said at the beginning a Reform that improves a change that makes a difference and one that that obtains buy-in And I think ultimately it's going to come from the Congress and it needs to it needs to be a reform that takes Accounts of the reality of the era we live in that our national security interests are at stake more in this setting stabilization and reconstruction operations than perhaps any other in the 21st century and that's that's a that's a I Think a premise that that has to be embraced in the second premise is that they are civil operations You know that the the eyes I've described it in other contexts that do d's the backbone and the The brain is is the civilian side that the civilians must be in the lead as as congressman Welch said, you know you do d and And in general Austin said it to me too, you know do d is not should not have the lead in this but it's a crucial player and and in in ensuring that you are Structuring well to plan to execute to oversee these kinds of operations Then you strengthen the possibility of victory at the end of the day and Let me just close with a quote from Secretary of Defense Hagel who? You know perfectly positioned in his new office to in and a supporter of Cigar and I met with him many times over the last nine years To to lead this new thinking as they approach it. He said foreign policy will require a strategic agility that whenever possible gets ahead of the problems Strengthens us security and alliances and promotes American interests and credibility you know wise words from from a wise man and a good leader and and you know, I think that That along with senator Kerry who's who gets all of this as well We can look forward to improvements Among the agencies those sect state in defense being the most important that will strengthen The likelihood of victory. So I want to thank CSIS Bob Tony and Ray and John-Hammary especially for having me and and I think Tony you're you're up for for a response They and thank you all for being here It is a pleasure to follow on Bob and Stuart and Ray it The same time strikes me as having come back from Afghanistan that these lessons are anything but theoretical The fact is that we're not leaving Afghanistan in 2014 We are simply reducing our presence and attempting to make Afghanistan work and the time limit we have set is now 2018 to 2021 and We are going to have to apply these lessons in a country which cannot use its oil revenues To buy its way out of many of the problems that Iraq could buy its way out of One way or another whether it is the World Bank or any other outside voice Afghanistan will not and cannot succeed Without sustained dependence on aid But I'd like to also just make a broader point here Stuart focused on his mission, which is the reconstruction of Iraq But the fact is that aid is only part of what we do in civil military impacts We have a vast amount of military spending in country Which comes from forces moving equipment buying services From the construction of facilities by the State Department When you think of the aid money 60 billion dollars is nothing to dismiss But if I can paraphrase Everett Dirksen a trillion here and a trillion there sooner or later adds up to real money 1.7 trillion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan and counting We have no way of knowing as a country how much of that money actually got to either Iraq or Afghanistan We have no system within USA the State Department or the Defense Department That can even roughly estimate what amount of money reaches and stays in country It is probably a much smaller fraction Than that 1.7 trillion, but that raises the issue Of what happens if we really want to understand what we are spending in general Where we are spending it and why we are spending it The argument in the past has been that you spend out of the necessity of war But these are limited wars fought for limited objectives Simply throwing money into the problem For us forces merely makes no more sense than throwing money into the problem for aid Being able to account only by line item and service in the OCO account Provides no basis not only for the kind of planning that Stewart talked about But quite frankly trying to figure out why we assign given amounts of money to given force elements to given activities and what their effectiveness is and This is an issue which becomes further compounded because of these strange objects known as allies In Iraq we had at least some simplicity because most of the allies left early In Afghanistan we have 50 odd countries Two-thirds of the country is PRTs that are not American The primary responsibility for aid was not the United States The organization we tried to set up to coordinate this Yonama gave up in the third year of its existence It simply could not get cooperation from member countries to support even a crude estimate of total aid spending And no one could figure out the correlation between aid spending in country and military spending in country I have not usually met people as pessimistic as the last three heads of Yonama But they have been remarkably frank and remarkably consistent in warning I'm also struck by the fact that in calling for better planning and coordination We are ten years on in two wars USAID has never issued a credible estimate of the impact of any given aid activity We have measures based on health care, which is an hour and a half walk from a facility If the center in the United States was being within an hour and a half drive of a medical facility And that was all we needed for medical care We could eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and most of our entitlements programs immediately We have figures on education and percentages of men and women But if you look at the numbers the estimate on population on a certain day is between 25 and 35 million Exactly where AID gets any numbers is a little striking You have claims of improvement in GDP But as the World Bank points out virtually all of the growth in the Afghan GDP came from agriculture and was determined largely by rainfall and Had nothing to do with aid in Fact in the most recent study issued about a month ago if you contrast what we say to the extent we have measures of effectiveness AID pointed out that basically speaking a Country which is supposed to be benefiting from aid Was a country where something like six to ten percent of the population saw the impact of aid Where 56% of the population is estimated to be unemployed or underemployed and Where the net gain and per capita income during the only two years for which we have data which in no way has impeded US government estimates Data seems to be unnecessary Was an increase in per capita income of two dollars and twenty cents a month in Temporary jobs We cannot go on Spending money where the main metric is Stuart's report points out How quickly you can spend it regardless of your absorption capacity Corruption and the need for the money the same time we have other measures of effectiveness What is aid what is SERP? What is military spending doing to provide military effectiveness the measures we used in Iraq were significant acts? It's interesting to note that if you look at the data coming out of ISAF between 2009 and today The surge had absolutely no impact on the pattern of sig X whatsoever and The measure that they attempted to use which was enemy initiated attacks Which initially proved to be a public relations gesture Became a major embarrassment when recalculating it they discovered we had a decline in capability between 2011 and 2012 With the end result that they had to take all of the data off the ISAF website That is a somewhat memorable warning about the need not only for the integrated planning That has been called for But frankly having planners that have meaningful metrics who know something about plans Who can actually go beyond project planning and do economic planning for a country? That can focus on campaign effectiveness in ways where there is some consistent measure and here let me just point out Something that we can see in both the Afghan and Iraq come conflicts in both cases We bypass virtually all of the bureaucratic structure and interagency forum in Afghanistan We did it because we didn't have time you can argue. It was an act of necessity in Iraq we did it because of struggles between state the Defense Department the vice president's office and The end result basically was We planned on the basis of ideology and as Stuart pointed out that collapsed within a month of The fall of Baghdad We had no plan in either case In any realistic sense to deal with what we were going to do in those countries to move forward General Garner was precluded from having planning and in the case of Afghanistan we set plans called the Afghan compact Which called for a millennial change to be achieved through osmosis a form of planning I would not necessarily encourage for the future In both cases we threw far more money into the countries than they could absorb and Strangely enough we then accused them of being corrupt Let me say that if the supply of money vastly exceeds the ability to spend it wisely It will in general be spent Particularly if you are pushing the speed of spending as a key metric of success Who's to blame it probably was not the Iraqis and the Afghans We imposed indirectly to failed constitutions in the name of democracy Without creating meaningful local or provincial elections and without giving the bodies That we were creating the ability to control and manage money in both cases It has been a disaster in Iraq less than Afghanistan where the president controls not only virtually the entire flow of on-budget money But virtually all appointments We had two wars in which we took several years to admit we were at war in dealing with serious conflicts Some of you may vaguely remember the period in Iraq When we were not going to use the term insurgency or civil war within the Department of Defense In Afghanistan Basically, we did not react in spite of the warnings of ambassadors and commanders-in-chief in the area Because Iraq consumed too many resources What that cost and wounded in blood is Another reason to look at integrated civil military planning In both wars we had a military surge without a civil surge In Afghanistan in particular by the time the civil group arrived. It was time to leave Which they are now doing as we are closing PRTs all over the country We had two failed elections in Iraq Which created much of the political turmoil that exists there and We have a massive question in the spring of 2014 as to whether we will have a meaningful election in Afghanistan and more importantly a meaningful leader and meaningful governance and Is very touched upon When we look at this it isn't just Afghanistan It is the question of what happens when we have to deal with Syria or Libya Which is an ongoing issue or Yemen it's a question if we don't want to have more Iraq's in Afghanistan and We rely on seer campaigns to deal with Iran and North Korea What next? Because at some point the military activities will stop and The questions raised in Iraq and Afghanistan in some form will have to be dealt with The Arab decade is replacing the Arab spring. We have no idea where we will intervene or have to deal with this We have problems in Central Asia South Africa and obviously in Sub-Saharan Africa So I do not believe these are casual lessons I do not believe they are lessons of the past and above all I do not believe they are lessons that we can use constructively by looking backwards and Focusing on the problem after it already exists We face institutional challenges on The basis of a system in the United States national security community Which clearly has not worked over a decade in two different wars and If we do not learn from that We have no one to blame but ourselves Thank You Tony. Thank you Ray and thank you Stewart for for both your service of the past ten years for this fine report We have seen From this particular effort a new set of efforts Lessons to be learned sometimes are referred to as lessons collected I made reference earlier to the lessons we collected ten years ago In the program that I currently run Were based on lessons from the 1990s and in fact in 1958 the Atlantic did a lessons learned effort on Iraq And published lessons from Iraq in 1958 in 1949 the World Bank published its third annual report to its board of trustees And it said that in their first year their first three years They've learned a few important lessons about international efforts to stabilize and reconstruct and develop Foreign nations one is that the development and stabilization Happens as the result of the efforts of the people in those countries themselves and we in the international community can only be supportive of them and Two when we support them we should make sure that we're coordinating with each other and planning and so on and so forth So we now have a solid 60 odd years Lessons learned and learned and relearned One of the things that our program has been doing in the past year has been looking at the issue of why aren't we learning these lessons In the context of trying to understand a little bit better the absorptive capacity problem We've Interviewed some people at the World Bank and at the State Department and USAID and other development agencies to try to understand this And there's just two preliminary findings that we have from the first phase of this effort that we just wrapped up that That I think are relevant here and the first is that what everybody reported was that the top line number that they had to work with In terms of how much money that they had to spend in these efforts had nothing to do with with The needs on the ground or what they wanted to do these were political decisions made either by you know World Bank boards or members of Congress and Parliament or or Politicians and so the development organizations themselves and others had to just work with whatever number they happened to be given Whether that had anything to do with the capacity to absorb it or not And the second was that the people who who do collect these lessons and learn this knowledge and and know the countries themselves They're not the ones who have authority over the contracting processes They're not the ones who have authority over Human resources management and how how decisions are made about who gets promoted and why they get promoted They're not the ones who have authority over people who determine Personnel security policies and how you can operate out in the field whether independently or not Yet all of those offices do have authority over those who are trying to plan and implement and there seems to be a fundamental disconnect between our internal organizational processes and knowledge flows and cultures and Internal incentives and the things that we're actually trying to achieve and so in the phase two of the work that we're doing on absorptive capacity We're looking at that particular issue. I would like to open the session now To questions from all of you I would like to request that first of all when I call on you you wait until the microphone gets to you the microphone Will be on so please don't push any buttons Identify yourself and your affiliation if you would and please try to keep your come your question as a question And not as long comments that we can get as many Questions in as possible. So let's start on this side of the room gentlemen in the second row Thank you very much. I'm like JJ. It's currently working with the Syrian Emergency Task Force on Planning for setting up governance structures in the liberate areas see your comments Obviously highly relevant for whether we're going to succeed at that or not. I want it My question is basically directed to the point that Bob Lam has made We've learned these let we haven't learned these lessons. We've seen these lessons identified Previously ten years ago, but we keep reinventing the flat tire. So I'd like to ask you How would you fix this with your so-called what authorities are needed and and what processes would you want? If you had a magic wand, how would you fix this problem? Well, we spelled out in chapter six But let me let me start with an important initial lesson a prerequisite to the implementation and that is it can't be fixed through Presidential decisions PDD 56 was passed in the mid 1990s Len Hawley helped implement that and it was an integrated Approach that had some capacity to work that that that forced at least conceptually and somewhat on the ground the agencies to work together in the Balkans and And to some good effect the the reality is is that it went away with NSPD one in 2001 Which just underscores the fact that that if the succeeding administration doesn't want to continue the previous administration's national security directives it does away with them and and that happened again a few years ago and so so For example, we president Bush tried to fix it through national security presidential directive 44 which created the coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization But it didn't have any lift, you know, it was completely dependent upon the attention of the Secretary of State and If that attention wasn't there then there was no lift and and ultimately SCRS got absorbed into CSO The point I'm making is It's it's it's got to happen on the Hill and so it has to happen through legislation meaningful change to our Authorized structure of government Comes from the committees on the Hill and and that's where the battles are fought as well I mean the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the Senate Armed Services Committee House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Armed Services Committee that these are the places where this issue has to be addressed and And and and whatever the solution is you soak or whatever Finding a civ mill integration integrated structure That's that the the agencies then can agree upon and move forward I think has to happen up on Capitol Hill because it just isn't going to happen through presidential directives And it's just not happening through osmosis, you know of the of the agencies and and so The the reality is is that it's going to be a few if you're pardoning the illusion a go water nickels moments That's that directs a change and and look go water nickels worked, you know I mean in regards to what you think of what came after 1991 in 2003 were successful air land joint Operations that accomplished their mission very quickly And successfully and so I think for this this is a tougher nut to crack This is a civ mill nut and and and it will it will take serious engagement by the expertise and the leaders and leadership on On Capitol Hill that listens to the agencies in developing that that solution and and then finds a path forward And look one last point there has been some progress as a point in chapter 6 the global Security contingency fund and this was an idea that came out of Secretary Gates and Secretary Clinton's a recognition of the problem And trying to fix it this way through funding, but that's just funding You know there's personnel and systems and contracting and an oversight and and you can't just solve or try to solve One piece of it by saying hey We're gonna do a key on funding for security issues in all these places The money hasn't been spent yet because we don't know what comes next Second question, ma'am Thank you. My name is Yasmeen and I'm a journalist How much of a role do you think that the so new she occurred? Divisiveness will will play interact going forward And if you could also address what a role what role Syria plays in that? And just yeah looking past one that when the u.s. Is it no longer? fully involved Well the answer is a huge role The dominant role an influential role and how Iraq is able to grapple with this issue because it's their issue We'll determine how the country makes progress in the next 10 years I'm as I've said to some you know I'm I'm somewhat pessimistic in the short term, but more optimistic in the long term That optimism stems from a hope that they are able to address that soon as she announced last September when I met with Minister al-asadi of mr. Ventura. He said to me a year ago in other words in 2011 The Sunni Shia issue was not on my radar now. It's number one issue on my radar and it hasn't gotten better since then The Kurdish Arab issue is is forms around Kirkuk The Kurds claim it is their historic capital But but more importantly a an ocean of oil underlies Kirkuk and and the Kurdistan would like to Drill it and export it and and would be happy to do so independent of Baghdad and Baghdad won't let that happen Member of Parliament by and jobber who I met with who was former minister of interior and minister of finance Suggested an idea that that I've heard before but but perhaps may be moving forward now and that is creating a region There's a special provision in the constitution of Iraq that allows to create a region a region out of Kirkuk Which would create an essentially semi-autonomous entity and that would allow the people of Kirkuk to decide the way forward I think that's plausible and and could help resolve the the Kurdish Arab tensions Syria as Deputy Prime Minister Shah Rastani said it's it's Fundamentally and daily impacting Western Iraq and and as I said there there are parts in and bar that over which the IA doesn't have purchased now because of Growing Sunni power Doug Brooks. I'm an independent consultant but formerly head of the International Stability Operations Association Which represented a lot of the contractors working over there? Certainly the there were a lot of problems with the fraud and abuse and you talk about what almost a hundred convictions now and hundreds of millions return But the overwhelming problem is what you said in six of your recommendations out of seven, which is really the coordination and In planning aspect This sort of new entity doesn't seem to have any support at all from state and DOD and USA ID How do we ensure that these guys even if we do create the entity that all these that they will work together and do that kind Of planning to address this problem Well, I don't know how we ensure it. You know, I think the Congress has to Create has to do oversight, you know to to advance it and ultimately as I said this what I suggest is a strong man a point for discussion from which You know further refinement Should evolve and and I you know that it's it's really it falls it just concretizes that I think something we all agree on and that is The current system is not effective. The status quo is not acceptable Okay, if the status quo is not acceptable that means we have to make some form of progress What's that progress going to look like should it just be pouring money into the agencies? That appears to be the approach now I'm not sure that's gonna work Here in the front If you're going to wait to the microphone comes, please. Thank you, sir. Jack Shaw. I was a former colleague of Various of you actually up there and was former inspector general foreign assistance at state Which brings me back to some of this but I wanted to bounce off Stewart Something that he and I I've talked about over time He at one point said, you know, I don't do a rocky corruption and and it's it's it is the wise thing too Because you would have had no time to do most of anything else if you had been involved with that But I raised as you you may remember one of the biggest corruption situations in Iraq back in the in the in 0403 that involved a fellow by the name of Ned me ouchie and it it basically Was was so big and so involved with a key bunch of the political players that it and was in had involvement from the Pentagon as well that there was there was no way to really attack it and the end result was that That there was a whole system of corruption which began to grow on that the so-called London group and others that became part of the Exercise and the question I have is is there any way you must have Accumulated vast amounts of stuff that has to do with the Iraqi side of the picture that that after after the Dust has settled on this you could begin to look at the larger picture and the way in which all of our best intentions We're amplified in ways that were otherwise predictable within the Iraqi culture. You're right Jack I have talked to the Iraqis about it. I don't prosecute or investigate Iraqis, but I bring to their attention Potential cases and indeed in particular for example the defense minister back in 2003-2004 Hazan al-Shalan his head of contracting Zied Katan and their co-conspirator near Jamele You know engaged in a crime that stole 1.2 billion in cash from the Ministry of Defense in 2004 and now Hazan al-Shalan actually a buying driver told me saw him recently flew in on his private jet into Baghdad And he said hey, I didn't take all of it You know and there and there were lots of politicians who got some of it here You know I said to Brian will tell him to say who but here's the here's that the rub in in Iraqi politics is in 2008 They passed something called the amnesty law Amnesty law just essentially said for non Capital crimes you're free, you know, they just they essentially those in power I were wiping their own slates clean as well as others like Hazan al-Shalan and Zied Katan And so they're going to have to find other means first of all they got a habit of passing amnesty laws and second They need to move forward in finding a way to recover that those lost billions that hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraqi funds have been stolen by leadership over the last ten years mostly through money laundering and And it's it's an outrage And but it's something that the Iraqis have to resolve if they're going to make progress You know for for my ten-year optimism to be realized The number one corruption problem today is money laundering. It's huge It's out of control and they don't know how to tackle it They could start by creating an anti-money laundering task force and begin investigating all these crimes Let's go on the back over there, please Jerry Jerry Hyman at CSIS. I Haven't read the whole report and I haven't even read your whole proposed bill But I've looked through a couple of parts and I wonder if you could help us unpack it a bit In the first part you say that the office is going to be established and shall report to the State the Department of State and the Department of Defense But then the in section 201 the director shall have primary management responsibilities and consult Will state and defense So the second thing is so so you have isn't there a bit of a I Hate getting the weeds here, but is that is that a problem secondly the NSC at least in my experience was deeply engaged in a lot of these decisions Going in what to do Very micromanaged is the NSC play a role here. Yes, and if so How do you yeah, how does this all how does this work out good question good question? Yeah, and then your first point thing is in the weeds You know these are these are wording things will have to be worked out it the idea of joint reporting It's not unique. It's what I do. I report to sex state and sex defense and and it seems to have worked out well as my experience with regard to the NSC yes, there's another portion of the statute proposed bill I should say that that includes reporting to The National Security Advisor and I think that's crucial to weave in the policy component The policy is driven as you rightly point out from the NSC But yeah, the NSC also in Iraq tried to run it starting from 2007 on through something called the IMS the interagency management system didn't work You know it barely met and it just and when it did it just adjudicated Various disputes that happened to bubble up at that moment and it was not it had no strategic or for that matter tactical Influence over the relief and reconstruction operation in Iraq or Afghanistan because it was covering both and I think that that's At least among the case studies another one that didn't work follow Part of the new mantra is whole of government and whole of government includes not only state and defense Agencies in their subs, but all kinds of other agencies as well They would have to be woven in here. Yes, that's correct And so there this this office would have to have some kind of authority Yes, yeah, absolutely all these departments are to work only it was when you read for the full statute It does get into that and it also limits itself But I think I probably the whole of government is now the old mantra, you know, I think I think it's it's been ushered out and We're still looking for the next mantra and and and I think that The reality is is that that's yes, you're right This is the challenge as I said there are five major players state aid defense treasury and justice you know and the first three of them the leads really if you will and But but all have to have a role and but but this is this more looks the the enabling statute would somewhat parallel the Enabling statute for FEMA in other words when when an SRO is declared it has its life It's authority for a limited period it has access to the fund the contingency fund for a limited period And I think that's the fear at state and defense that it would be exerting authority over for an extended period and reaching into diplomacy and defense matters that are well beyond its Ambit and and that's why that whatever whatever if this comes into being those issues have to be crafted in a way The statute has to be crafted in a way that that that resolves those issues in the center, please Thank you. Well, Warner Anderson Department of Defense and international health I did two tours in Iraq. One is a civil affairs medical officer and others a special forces medical officer and I've First of all, thank you very much I heard you loud and clearly about security being necessary for Reconstruction and and for development the World Bank I said the same thing in 2011 so that wasn't quite as clear in 2003. We thought that development would lead to security The the Kind of salient point that I'm taking from a lot of the discussion on the 10th anniversary is that maybe we shouldn't be doing the donor model of reconstruction because the donor model tends to displace investment USC ID now is moving more toward an investment model, I believe and It seems to me that that that maybe we we keep trying to relearn the lessons But I think sometimes that the reason we can't apply them is because we couldn't apply them earlier the same reasons Apply later on if we could do investment. I don't know how to do that. I'm not a Capitalist guy, but if we could do investment It seems like there are a lot of safeguards involved in that they could bypass a lot of the issues that we keep finding ourselves in You're exactly right worn and and the 60 billion for Iraq 90 billion for Afghanistan Gifts, I mean there you know direct aid not no no Leverage per se and Senator Collins told me in her interview she pressed back in the fall of 2003 to do Some of this through loans and Dana Roebacher had previously told me the same thing He pushed for it as well and and were there were quickly You know shut up and but I think that's You know to get buying You know, which is what we've done over the last few years when we don't have any money left I mean Iraq money has dominated since 2008 but to get leverage to get them to not look Look as I've called it as as uncle sugar, you know the uncle sugar effect We they the Iraqis just got used to us showing up with stuff And when we stop showing up with stuff, they stop taking meetings You know, and that's what ambassador B croff has to deal with now. He shows up. He doesn't have any stuff So what's his leverage when he wants to say stop your over flights, you know to Iranian over flights You know that he doesn't have a lot of remaining leverage because we had a nine-year program of large s and effectively and And so I think that is a key point It's not spelled out in detail in this report at all other than it through the interviews But loans forcing buy-in by any means possible Is is good way to shape behavior Let me just take a partial exception to one thing you said that ten years ago It wasn't so clear the security needed to be done. I'll just go back to July 2003 in which in which my predecessors wrote quote Security is the senior Kwan-Nan of post-conflict reconstruction if security needs are not met it won't work Which you know that one of the one of the themes that keeps coming up is is the issue of the the problems of the reconstruction effort particularly the civilian reconstruction effort and when you speak to People in the development field at USAID and in other agencies throughout the world and as I have over the past couple months Particularly after we hosted the special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction and leading up to this they expressed concern that that that Congress might get the wrong message Out of your effort and of segar's effort Which is that? The development agencies are just doing it wrong. They're bad at this and that they should just be you know They should lose further support and funding And you know when these a lot of times when they speak in public and you read the reports It's yeah, it can be a little bit overly optimistic But then when you talk to them in sort of off the record You know context that generally speaking they recognize that there there are problems with the data calls There are problems with planning and so on But they also point out that that they're being asked to to spend more money than they can possibly spend a lot of cases Far more than they asked for they're being sent out into environments in which they really don't have adequate training They don't have the same level of support for their families that the military has There's a whole host of other issues surrounding the lack of support that civilians involved in these efforts get From you know congressional meddling to you know into how they write their contracts all the way Through how they're chosen for deployment and how they're chosen for for promotion That just constrains the ability that they're able to do now that doesn't you know forgive some of the other Sins along the way of some bad decisions that they themselves make as well But I just wanted to pose to you and and perhaps to the rest of the panel as well Um What can we say sort of in defense of of of the development world? Um, you know, should we be learning the should should the lesson be that they need less support? Or should the lesson be that we need to not only do they need to reform themselves But we need to figure out what sorts of support to give the civilians that we're sending out to these difficult environments I don't have a lot of sympathy for the Not the development world Because the people I've met in the field. I have a great deal of admiration for But it wasn't that somehow the congress woke up one morning and threw money at the development world Somebody went out in the development structure and asked for And people piled on in shaping the request that came for iraq Uh, but they weren't people from the outside It became almost a bidding contest as to how you could get down the list and create Sort of the request that would meet everybody's dream Uh And in the process had the people worried a lot more about absorption capability If they'd had the capability to actually do economic planning, which is One of the things we have absolutely zero branch for in the united states government Something that we basically dropped about the time we formed the world bank We might have had more realistic goals. I think the problem basically here is If you had a planning staff somewhere in state and us aid It would really help you don't have a planning staff in either one You have groups that can draft power points and conceptual view graphs They're not what stort was talking about They're not capable of doing detailed planning All you have to do is look at the econometric data They're using in the gaps between that and the world bank and virtually any real expertise The community is a very serious problem in terms of basic competence The moment you go beyond program level aid It is compounded. I think by politicizing building up Spinning the image regardless of whether it's really needed ignoring absorption capability You know, we often point out that in the case of iraq, uh, you disbanded the military In afghanistan, we managed to do something even better. We disbanded the remnants of the afghan civil service By buying virtually everybody out of the professional structure And putting them into aid funded projects leaving no core capability within the afghan civil service Uh, no, i'm sorry. I think that it is a very serious time for a lot better top-level leadership and really serious reform And i'll just add on iraq Has presented another important issue that the hill has engaged in somewhat and that is delegation of governmental duties Uh, particularly in the security sector the unprecedented scope of security engagement and by private contractors in iraq that led to some problems that that had to be resolved and commission on wartime contracting addressed it But i think also it's a time maybe as as tony said to look at aid and look at how much Is contracted out of their work and how much is actually done by the u.s agency for international development personnel and i've heard 80 percent is contracted out And and is that does that make sense? I don't know i'm not an expert But but does it but i guess regarding standing standard development? I don't know but but what about aids activity In a stabilization of reconstruction operation. That's a different context And the planning and the execution ought to be rethoughts with with regard to how much is contracted out Of the use of that kind of money in an sRO let me take um One final question i'll take two final questions. Um, and then i'd like to ask that um, everyone on the panel to uh, offer some final thoughts Um here in the front Hi, my name is michael korman. I work for the canadian Is fine embassy and uh, my question was what roles does online information play in improving transparency and accountability? And how can social media or data assist with consulting between military and civilian operations? Um and one additional question, please In the back row, please Eric walter storf and i'm an independent analyst We're having a one-sided conversation. How can we set up governance and accountability structures? In which we're getting direct feedback from people in the country whether it's elites or other interests in the country To be able to flesh out this conversation So the two questions are how can we improve accountability, but but Getting information from the people in the country themselves and then also how can the internet and social media be used to improve transparency Let me take the second one We went through a very strange sequence in iraq The state department first wanted to have a maturity model to prove that they'd succeeded In developing iraq that point iraq ranked 160th per capita income in the world Then When that was pointed out, this was observed. They went to a maturity model and then they started looking for metrics They ended up with a very Long period of gestation. So they eventually ended up with a gallop proposal that we polled people in country to look at what had happened by way of development And by the time that that model was created Interest had dropped and it was never actually implemented polling can help but polling Has very serious limitations even when it's done right And since the united states government never puts the control questions or the whole poll in any of its reporting It is one of the basic problems that if you don't have transparency in the poll you can't trust What is almost invariably a selective product taken out of the poll to justify whatever anybody is doing already You also made the kind of interviews that steward did and you need to balance it out with metrics because One thing we have learned when you actually try to figure out what people's perceptions are You have to consider who they are how divided they are and what their special interests are and national averages or national polls Of developing countries are models of irrelevance Because you can't figure out who thinks what where for what reason And at the end of it you don't have any priorities for actually acting Now there are models that were sort of halfway developed that got us almost to the point where this might have been done at iraq If stated ever funded it, but it didn't Looking at afghanistan we have now gone through something like 14 different models to try to figure out how to actually get progress by district Unfortunately, a lot of the models aren't producing positive signs of improvement and therefore they're never going to be Declassified and let me again say zero transparency zero ability to manage Uh, which unfortunately brings me to Some of the social networking, you know, the problem is you can't twit and I am pronouncing the term properly You can't block your way into highly sophisticated models of what goes on in a given country This is a matter, you know for grown adults Who actually can be operational rather than either superannuated couch potatoes Or graduate students in desperate search of some kind of publication um Ray, would you like to offer some uh, what do I have to follow that? Thank you for coming to graduate students in search of a thesis topic we have here um Kind of disheartening all of this discussion this afternoon I'm remembering a moment when one of my trips to iraq We were talking about situation I was with the deputy secretary actually and The question was well, we've got to uh, we've got a contract here for creating buying manhole covers for a particular town And I made what I thought was a Sensible remark Well, do you mean we can't make manhole covers here in iraq because the contract was going to go to a chicago company And someone said well actually we do make manhole covers here in iraq But we have to buy from an american company I guess my point is that uh Whether it's executive branch or the legislative branch or some combination thereof we put non common sense instructions and directions into Our situation on the ground Which doesn't help at all um I do want to Make one final comment when governments state local federal do construction or reconstruction Waste is inevitable I can remember that wonderful project in boston Called the big dig and I can remember that the Mayor and governor made a comment. I think saying the estimate is going to be two billion dollars And when it was all over and done with it was nine billion dollars That's construction in boston Doing construction in a war zone Doing construction we are getting shot at Doing construction when the estimate of a budget must contain 25 percent value for security Is a different kettle of fish We also do not have a federal acquisition regulation for Overseas contingency contracting Which I think you've testified to I've testified to is something that we need it is different from Buying things on pennsylvania avenue than buying things in Kabul or kandahar or bag dead or bagram And we need to recognize that We haven't done a very good job In learning our lessons as we have Learned this afternoon I've read a recent Book review and the economist about a new book on iraq by a fellow named tobi dodge and the the author of the review went through a series of Remarks about the book and how we got to where we are today But I'm looking at at the article here And the last paragraph begins It's a tale worthy of shakespeare And its conclusion remains to be written Tony, I don't know how you could top your last comment, but have you got any additional thoughts? I don't want somebody to steal my thesis topic Stuart Well, thank you, bob. I just want to say it's it's an honor to be here at csis again And to be with my friends ray and tony and you bob and and thanks also to john hamry And and last thank you all for for being here. And if if you read learning from iraq I'd I'd love to I hope you will and I'd love to hear from you Speaking of democratizing the response, you know, you can find me at www.sigar.mil for about six more months and and if you have some good ideas about as I said this this strawman argument can be strengthened then I'd love to hear them because I think we all agree that where we are is not where we need to be We need to make progress because this is a crucial national security issue That all americans should be interested in and and so I hope all of you will Will um in responding get back to me and and give me some ideas of how we can improve it So thank you And of course our program will continue to be following these issues You can find us on c3.csis.org. Thank you all for being here tonight