UNSCHOOLED

How to Better Train Our Nation Builders

Sloan Mann and

James Derleth

he events of 9/11 fundamentally altered Americas perspective on

national security. Examining the causes of the attacks and the responses
required to diminish the likelihood of future attacks, the Bush administration undertook a national security review. Two central findings
emerged from the 2002 US National Security Strategy (NSS): that contemporary threats faced by the United States, particularly those posed by
ideological opponents using asymmetrical tactics, could not be mitigated
by military force alone; and that it would be necessary to stabilize weak or
failed states in order to diminish the grievances terrorists use to mobilize
support for their causes.
The NSS led to a number of changes for both policy and bureaucracy,
chief among them a directive from the Department of Defense establishing stability operations as a core US military mission with the same priority as combat operations. But while the Pentagon changed its doctrine to
reflect the importance of stability in the new international environment,
after a decade it has yet to introduce comprehensive stability operations
education and training requirements. Its focus continues to emphasize
Sloan Mann is cofounder and managing director of Development Transformations, a
consultancy group focusing on stability and development in areas affected by war. James
Derleth is senior interagency training adviser at the US Armys Joint Multinational
Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany. The opinions expressed are their own.
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operations that are enemy-centrickilling or capturing foesrather

than population-centricprotecting the population.
For example, most brigade combat teams deploying to Afghanistan
receive less than a week of counterinsurgency education, with virtually no
emphasis on stability operations. Even though nine years of combat operations in Afghanistan have not lessened the number of insurgents or stabilized the country, many commanders continue to believe that proficiency
in core combat skills is far more important than training in developing
missions and activities to identify and mitigate local sources of instability.
As a result, military units tend to fall back on what they know best, taking
the fight to the enemyand ignore the importance of the local population in making military gains permanent.

American government civilians taking part in stability operations

receive even less training than the military. Most of those deploying to
Afghanistan receive only 21 days of preparation, none of which is dedicated to understanding or conducting stability operations. (This compares
with 173 days for a provincial adviser serving in CORDSCivil Operations and Revolutionary Development Supportduring the Vietnam War,
which integrated all military and civilian agencies involved in the pacification effort.) Because of political pressure to get civilians to Afghanistan,
there is a limit of thirty days between hiring and deployment, which means
little time to train people to effectively conduct stability operations in the
complex environments in which they will be working.
This deficit is mostly the result of bureaucratic politics. The State
Departments Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which oversees training
civilians deployed in stability operations, determines the training requirements. Since FSI gets paid for every student trained, it focuses on throughput. The same Foreign Area Counter-Terrorsim Course is taught whether
students are assigned to Afghanistan or Mexico. Considering its history
and affiliation, the FSIs preference for training diplomats, rather than stability officers able to work well in unstable field environments, is obvious.
In stability operations, civilians are expected to work alongside their
military counterparts as a team. But differences in organizational cultures
and personal experience create challenges. For example, civilians are
often unsure where or how to inject their perspective into the military
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planning process. They are often left feeling isolated because their culture
tends to favor consensus while the military culture tends to be hierarchical
and directive. It is no wonder that military reports from Afghanistan often
complain about the inability of civilians to work with
Even though nine years
their military counterparts.
This situation has grown
of combat operations in
worse in the last year as the
Afghanistan have not lessened
State Department ended
previously integrated prethe number of insurgents or
deployment training for
increased social equilibrium in
civilian and military personnel serving on provinthe country, many commanders
cial reconstruction teams.
continue to believe that
Another factor limiting
the effectiveness of the US
proficiency in core combat
government to conduct
skills is far more important
effective stability operations is the short length
than training in developing
of deployments, rangmissions and activities to
ing from three to twelve
identify and mitigate local
months, which makes it
difficult to understand the
sources of instability.
operating environment
and also to establish the
personal relationships required to effectively interact with other interagency actors operating in the area. Several members of the provincial
and district support teams who had served in Afghanistan told us that just
as they were beginning to understand their area, it was time to leave. High
personnel turnover makes it difficult to have a consistent strategy and the
programs that support it.
A fourth obstacle to effective stability operations is a lack of appropriate government resources available to mitigate the causes of instability.
For example, the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) typically creates large, multi-sector programs to focus on health,
education, infrastructure, economic livelihoods, governance, and so forth
to foster long-term development in the countries where it is working.
These programs take significant amounts of time to implement, involve
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large amounts of money, and are nearly impossible to modify even though
conditions in unstable environments quickly change. These programs
often spend billions of dollars with little effect because they do not
acknowledge that stability must come before development. For example,
in a stable environment, for instance, an agricultural program could be an
important development tool. However, in an unstable environment where
insurgents are violently solving land disputes on the ground, agricultural programming would not only be difficult to implement because of
a lack of security, it would also not address the sources of instabilityi.e.,
the lack of a strong local governmental or traditional conflict resolution
mechanismthat allow insurgents to gain support.
Another major challenge to effectively implementing stability operations involves misguided measures of success. Military commanders and
civilian program managers too often mistake the number of activities
completed or dollars spent as a measure of stability. Because job creation
programs are believed to have a transformative effect on the environment (gainfully employed men are less likely to join or be sympathetic
to insurgents), spending a significant amount of money on job creation
programs is viewed as a success. However the number of jobs created
tells us nothing about the behavior of young men who hold them. A more
useful measure of stability would be a reduction in the number of young
men joining the insurgency.
Reporting requirements exacerbate this problem. Civilian program
managers and military commanders are required to report on their activities, most commonly in the form of a laundry list of ongoing and accomplished activities. In senior-level briefings, the number of projects completed, the number of trained security forces, or the amount of money
spent dominate discussions. The pressure to demonstrate results and get
dirt flying on projects has the unintended consequence of influencing
program design, implementation, and evaluation. As the ineffectiveness
of hundreds of thousands of projectscosting billions of dollarsin stabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan clearly shows, activity counts for more
than achievement.
In addition, military commanders and civilian program managers are
evaluated on what they achieved during their deployment, usually measured by the number of dollars spent or the number of projects initiated.
These metrics tell us very little about whether an area is more stable. However, they are used in personnel evaluations, which creates the perverse
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incentive of spending as much money as possible, whether or not the
projects foster stability, to improve performance reviews. There are hundreds of schools in Afghanistan with no teachers, district centers with no
communications, clinics without doctors, and roads not traveled because
of local instability. However, those responsible for this situation receive
positive evaluations because they have spent their budgets.
While the amount of money budgeted to programs shows the political
importance of an operation, spending large sums in unstable environments can have numerous destructive side effectscorruption of local
officials and leaders, decreasing the legitimacy of local government, and
so forthall of which foster instability. Civilian and military leaders have
to move away from the mentality that by doing lots of projects the area
they are targeting will automatically become more stable.

While effective stability operations dont require a lot of money, they

do require flexible and readily accessible funding. Although, for oversight

reasons, Congress has been reluctant to create flexible funding instruments, without them, practitioners in the field will continue to lack the
resources they need to quickly target sources of instability. One way of
doing this business can be seen in Britains Stabilisation Aid Fund, which
had a budget of approximately $300 million for 200810 and which is
overseen jointly by the Ministry of Defense, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the Department for International Development using
a triple key approval process. This fund is readily available and can be
used in any unstable area.
Even with a more flexible funding mechanism, stability operations
will not be successful until we improve our ability to rapidly implement
programs. USAID field program officers at provisional reconstruction
teams in Afghanistan report a two-to-four-month delay between identifying projects and initiating themin large part because activities have
to be approved in Kabul and initiated by USAIDs local implementing partner. This situation could be alleviated by delegating project
approval to field personnel or allowing field personnel to work directly
with local communities.
To improve stability metrics, three simple but fundamental changes
would help. First, measuring change over time requires having something
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to measure against. For example, to effectively measure a program to

reduce police corruption, the number of bribes taken or extra money collected per month by the police from illegal activities must be known and
measured against a baseline. Too often this step
is overlooked and reportIn senior-level briefings, the
ing is focused on output
number of projects completed,
or anecdotes.
the number of trained security
Metrics should also be
kept simple. In Afghanforces, or the amount of money
istans Regional Comspent dominate discussions. The mand East (RC-East), the
military tracks hundreds
pressure to demonstrate results
of indicators (by contrast,
and get dirt flying on projects
USAIDs District Stability
has the unintended consequence Framework [DSF] uses
seven variables to meaof influencing program design,
sure stability). This not
implementation, and evaluation. only takes an exorbitant
amount of staff time but,
more importantly, tells
commanders little about stability in their area of operations. As the
renowned counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen notes, Because consistency over time is important, a small number of enduring key indicators
is better than a large number of frequently changing indicators. Standardizing a smaller number of meaningful indicators across a larger area
facilitates collection and allows commanders to compare different areas
using standardized stability metrics.
Another way to improve stability metrics is to relieve the pressure on
field personnel and commanders to initiate projects and to achieve a high
burn rate of money spent. For example, funds should not be allocated
until a projects goals have been identified and confirmed by a stability
specialist. Once a contract has been let, the implementer should be held
accountable for demonstrating results. In eastern Afghanistan, USAIDs
Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) is using this approach. Before
approving an activity, OTI requires the implementer to show that the
proposed activity is tied to a source of instability. While this experiment is
only a few months old, initial reports indicate it has slowed spending and
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Sloan Mann and James Derleth

improved the effectiveness of programming. This change came despite
pressure from the US Embassy to increase the number of projects and the
size of budgets.

In spite of what at times seems to be a flagging commitment to creat-

ing effective stability operations, there have been notable successes. For
example, in the summer of 2009 the Marine Corps moved into Nawa District, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. They were careful not to alienate
the population with unnecessary offensive operations. With help from a
small team of American civilians, they worked closely with Afghan officials
and community leaders. Every patrol was told to build relationships with
locals, listen to their concerns, and take visible action to address priority
community grievances. In addition to living with and partnering with the
Afghan National Police, the Marines initiated a comprehensive vetting
and training program to ameliorate police corruption, a chief source of
local residents anger and alienation. In a matter of months, the security
situation had improved to such an extent that Marines no longer wore
standard personal protective equipment in the crowded bazaar area. This
combination of identifying local sources of instability, working with the
population to mitigate them, building local capability and capacity, and
creating a baseline to measure effect led to stability in Nawa.
The US will no doubt continue to be involved in stability operations
in the future. More than ever, there is a need for trained military and
civilian stability specialists who can identify sources of instability, design
programs to diminish them, and implement programs that integrate the
various elements of US national capability. Although addressing the core
problems that have hindered such robust programs will take leadership
and a willingness to challenge entrenched bureaucratic structures and
procedures, what happened in Nawa shows that the right combination of
commitment and leadership can produce the results envisioned by those a
decade ago who saw stability operations as a crucial element in Americas
national defense strategy.

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