Travels With Nick # 6
The next stop on our trip of the northeast was to the PRT at Mehterlam in Laghman province.
A Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Afghanistan operates as a combined military-military-military-military-civilian unit. The idea is that counterinsurgency and stability operations required civilian agency capabilities. In reality, PRTs are almost entirely military, even though many of the officers are air force pilots and ship drivers with little or no experience in reconstruction operations. PRTs are supposed to have a State, USAID, and USDA representative in their command group but often these civilians have not shown up, are on TDY, go on leave or transfer every three months, or don’t work effectively on the PRT.
A strong exception to this stereotype of PRT dysfunction is the Laghman PRT. The PRT Commander, LTC Steve Erickson, USAF, really impressed us with his description of how he and his USAID rep talk through COIN and development principles in their operations. Laghmanis are known as particularly clever and well educated Afghans, particularly the Pashtuns along the southern branches of Alingar and Alishing rivers and the fertile plains around Mehterlam. The more remote parts of the province do offer some pockets of insurgency and Erickson and his team have responded with a popular COIN reconstruction strategy focused on roads. Roads are a popular project because they effectively address multiple issues and needs — allowing security forces more rapid and secure transit throughout the province, enabling commerce through much faster delivery of goods or customers to market, building government capacity by extending reach of health clinics or schools, and by putting people to work. Although Erickson confessed that he and his USAID rep do not always agree, he described a healthy relationship of communication, dissent and debate, and decision-making that are the hallmarks of good teams.
Why would this military aviator and USAID development worker form such a strong working partnership? When I ask those in the field why a civ-mil partnership works (or doesn’t work), the answer is usually personality.” While I think that is true, it also illuminates a bigger problem: organizations dependent on personality for effective team work are rolling the dice. Military officers, Foreign Service diplomats, and development professionals are three different tribes each with unique cultures, dialects, and belief systems and not an insubstantial amount of rivalry. We throw members of these tribes into a difficult, cramped, stressful environment and expect them to operate with unity of effort and minimal friction. And then we pin our hopes on personality?
It shouldn’t. Organizations that effectively and consistently address the challenges of teamwork and leadership do not depend on personality as much as they depend on clarity of responsibilities, clarity of process, and clarity of mindset. If all the players clearly understand who is supposed to do what, why each of their roles is critical to the whole, how to make decisions that properly weigh each perspective, and why they must bring a mindset of collaboration and cooperation, personality becomes much less of an issue (although never a non-issue). This type of organizational clarity and mindset requires clear communication and training/mentoring programs. As a trainer of military units and, just recently, PRTs heading to Afghanistan, we are working hard on the clarity of roles, staff processes, and a mindset of collaboration. Building effectively cooperation will be especially important as the civilian surge in Afghanistan increases the civilian presence in PRTs. Hopefully these efforts will improve the civil-military and PRT-maneuver unit cooperation in Afghanistan and make success less dependent on personality.
As for the impressive LTC Erickson, his situation underscores another weakness in our current system. In just a couple more months, he will leave Afghanistan and return to other USAF duties. Will DoD and the USG capture and leverage his knowledge of and relationships in Laghman province and his understanding of how to blend defense, diplomacy, and development in the Afghanistan COIN environment? Almost certainly not. Instead, LTC Erickson’s reward will be a return to his role as an Air Force pilot and have little further to do with the political and economic challenges in Afghanistan. Success in Afghanistan requires that we better leverage the knowledge and talent of human resources with this type of experience and understanding. We can do better.
Nick Dowling is a small wars policy wonk with experience in OSD, the NSC Staff, NDU, and the contracting sector. He has worked on stability operations for 16 years, most prominently on Bosnia and Kosovo as a Clinton Administration appointee and Iraq and Afghanistan as a DoD contractor. He is currently President of IDS International, a leader in interagency and soft power” types of support to the US military. He is a graduate of Harvard, got his masters at Georgetown, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Although a veteran of print and television media interviews and publications, this is his first foray into SWJ.
