United States Institute of Peace Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Iraq/Afghanistan Provincial Reconstruction Teams: Lessons Learned INTERVIEW # 179 Interviewed by: Paul Blackburn Interview date: July 7, 2011 Copyright 2011 USIP & ADST INTERVIEW SYNOPSIS Participant’s Understanding of the PRT Mission The interviewee served in Afghanistan from January 2010 to January 2011 as the senior Department of Agriculture (USDA) advisor on the U.S. civilian team at the Regional Command North headquarters at Camp Marmal, the major German military facility located near Mazar-e Sharif. He understood his small U.S. team’s mission to be one of supporting counter-insurgency objectives in the northern part of the country. His role was to help improve the productivity of Afghan agriculture and to strengthen Afghanistan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL). He also supported agricultural and livestock initiatives of USDA’s five Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) officers assigned to the five PRTs in northern Afghanistan. Relationship with Local Nationals Observations: He enjoyed good relations with Afghan counterparts, both officials and leaders of non-governmental organizations. However, he was frustrated that he could not do more from them due to his minimal resources and virtually no support from the embassy and USDA Washington. In addition, due to a jurisdictional dispute between the State Department and USDA, he was not provided with an interpreter and often relied on an AID colleague to interpret for him. Insights: Working in Afghanistan proved more difficult than he had anticipated, leading him to make initial commitments on which he could not deliver. His problems stemmed from poor internal communications, inadequate leadership and the lack of a supervisory structure that would clearly identify the command structure above him and clarify his responsibilities over FAS personnel at the PRTs. His team leader initially gave him an impossible assignment to conduct a study of U.S. agricultural programs in northern Afghanistan over the past ten years. Lessons: To work effectively with counterparts in northern Afghanistan, it is essential for assigned personnel to have clear objectives and strong institutional backing. Did the PRT Achieve its Mission? (Impact) Observations: The interviewee felt he had made a significant contribution to building working relationships with Afghans. However, lack of resources and a coordinated plan for achieving 1 agricultural objectives made the impact of his efforts much weaker than they could have been. A particularly dire need in his region was for help in rebuilding irrigation canals, but no support in that area was forthcoming. Moreover, no planning was being done to devise strategies for strengthening the MAIL. Insights: His efforts to secure CERP (Commander’s Emergency Response Program) funding consumed considerable time and effort, but produced only small amounts for three of the 15 projects he applied for – and none was available for MAIL management training. His most successful project was supporting the Balkh Livestock Development Union. Military-supported agribusiness development teams (ADTs) are conducting valuable agricultural support activities in the eastern part of Afghanistan, but regrettably do not operate in his region. Lessons: Impact from agricultural efforts in northern Afghanistan will only come from integrated strategies and careful planning in such areas as improving irrigation and capacity building at the over-staffed and under-funded MAIL. Overall Strategy for Accomplishing the PRT Mission (Planning) Observations: The interviewee's priorities and activities were essentially self-generated or developed through collaboration with Afghan officials or NGO leaders. Insights: An agricultural policy working group at the embassy could have produced useful results, but it tended to get bogged down in operational issues relating to handling the stream of visitors. Pre-assignment McKeller Corporation scenario playing was excellent. Lessons: Personnel assigned to the field in Afghanistan particularly need training in how best to navigate the complex and cumbersome process of securing CERP funding. What Worked Well and What Did Not? (Operations) Observations: He was never assigned a formal supervisor and no performance evaluation was written on him. Logistical support was hampered by the lack of a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and the Germans (or other governments) covering modalities for Americans assigned to non-U.S. facilities in northern Afghanistan. Emblematic of this problem was that he had four different housing assignments at his place of duty. Computer and telephone problems were serious at first, but were eventually resolved. Insights: Because the region enjoyed reasonably good security, he was able to self-drive to meetings. Though he felt comfortable driving in his home province he was sometimes nervous when venturing into other areas, but had some reassurance from the high-tech GPS system attached to his vehicle. He never faced a serious security problem. Lessons: The assignment would have been much more successful if he had not felt that USDA’s leadership, after developing the promising idea of assigning personnel to field operations in northern Afghanistan, had not thereupon dropped the ball and left them “pretty much abandoned to fend for ourselves.” 2 THE INTERVIEW Q. Could you begin by telling me the title that you had in Afghanistan, where you were and what time frame you were there? A. I was a Senior Agricultural Advisor in Camp Marmal about five miles east of Mazar-e Sharif. Q. What is your understanding of the mission of the PRT that you were in, and what was your specific role within that mission? A. Well, to start I was in the Region Command, somewhat different. The mission of the Regional Command was to support the PRTs in the area. And to support the counter insurgency effort. I was an Agricultural Advisor. The U.S. government had defined the Agricultural Assistance Strategy for Afghanistan. There were two elements to it: one was focused on improving the productivity of Afghan agriculture, the contribution of Afghan agriculture to the economy, and the second element was focused on strengthening the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, or MAIL. Q. How would you characterize your relationship with the local nationals, the Afghans, with whom did you interact? A. I interacted with mostly MAIL personnel, the provincial director of MAIL. In Balkh province – and other provinces as well, because I had a nine-province area of responsibility. I’d interact with the MAIL personnel and I interacted some with Afghan NGO personnel, particularly in the Balkh, Mazar region – the Balkh Livestock Development Union and its director. Q. You were working with both crops and livestock? A. Yes. My mission was never really clear, it was uncertain in many ways. Whether I was to serve as a supervisor to the other agricultural advisors in the northern region or if I was supposed to be doing my own agricultural projects. So I did some of both. Q. How did you interact with the other people while running or giving advice on projects? I assume for the other agricultural advisors in the area you were advising them or guiding them? A. I was trying to. It was a very difficult year. And much of what made it difficult was the lack of direction, particularly from the embassy and the Foreign Agricultural Service about what I and the other agricultural advisors were supposed to be doing. There was poor communication between the embassy, the FAS and with me and with them and the other AG advisors. In theory I was supposed to be supervising; although, that was not made 100 percent clear. There was poor communication with the State Department, and immediately I ran into conflict with the senior civilian representative in Camp Marmal. The individual that was responsible for all the American personnel in the northern region. And I ran into conflict particularly around what our mission was supposed to be. I get there and I meet with him on the first or second day and immediately 3 he says, “Our mission (or my mission) is to support the Germans battle rhythm, that we are guests in the Germans battle space – Camp Marmal is a German base – our mission is to support their battle rhythm.” It was never entirely clear what he meant by “their battle rhythm.” But, it was very clear that that was not what USDA was saying to me. Clearly they had never had that discussion with him. Right off the bat he gave a simply impossible assignment – I was to research the U.S. governmental agricultural activities in northern Afghanistan in the last 10 years. To determine what had been done, what had been spent, what had worked, what had not worked, and lessons learned from that. This would have been a major project for a contractor. For me it was simply impossible and, again, it was not congruent with what I understood my role was there. Q. Speaking about your interaction with Afghan nationals, what agreements or outcomes were you looking for? And what was achieved? A. I was focused on the two elements of our agricultural assistance strategy. One was to improve their productivity, so I was working with them on whatever projects I could manage that would help their productivity. The other was to strengthen MAIL. I was working with MAIL to figure out the constraints on ministry effectiveness. We did eventually figure that out, that the ministry was in essence overstaffed and underfunded. They had about 350 personnel in just the one province where I was. Most of these personnel were paid so little that they did the job poorly and they just came for a few hours a day. They weren’t doing jobs that were clear. What was clear to me and the other agricultural advisors was that constraints to improving the ministry’s effectiveness were way beyond what we could deal with.