Transcript: Local Governance Consultation
Iraq Sectoral Conferences - Third Series
September 30, 2003
MS. PETERSON: Good morning. My name is Dana Peterson, and I am with the Asia Near East Bureau here at USAID, and I am serving as the Deputy of our Iraq Management Team.
It is my pleasure to welcome you today to our public sector consultation on local governance in Iraq. This session is actually part of a third series of public sector consultations USAID has conducted over the past five months. This session is intended to highlight efforts undertaken by the Coalition Provisional Authority and USAID and our implementing partners to address local governance issues as well as an opportunity for us to receive feedback from the public on our reconstruction efforts.
USAID has been working with the Iraqis and Coalition Provisional Authority in support of a range of sectors over the past five months. We are helping to restore economic critical infrastructure; support the delivery of essential services particularly focused on health and education; expand economic opportunities, and improve the efficiency and accountability of government, particularly at the local level. Despite security challenges,there has been significant progress and tangible improvements in Iraqis' lives. Our interventions had the primary objective of supporting Iraqis in their own efforts.
USAID is part of the Coalition Provisional Authority under Ambassador Paul Bremer. We have been mobilized to provide reconstruction assistance and humanitarian relief since April, and our mission director, Lew Lucke, formally established the USAID mission in country on July 27th.
USAID is presently implementing approximately $1.5 in reconstruction and humanitarian assistance. We work with a number of private sector NGO and United Nations partners to achieve these objectives. In light of the highly fluid situation in country, our partners have had to demonstrate considerable flexibility and adaptability.
Before I turn this session over to my colleagues, I would like to highlight that the session is focused on progress to date in the local governance section in Iraq. We are not addressing Iraq procurement issues nor are we speaking to broader administration policies in this session. Also, for those members of the press, we request that you defer any questions, press-related questions till near the end of this session, which will be around 12:30 at the end of the session.
Now, I would like to introduce my colleagues. Aaron Williams is the Vice President for International Business at Research Triangle Institute. RTI is our primary private sector partner working on local governance efforts, and Fritz Weden served for four months in Iraq and in the region as team leader for the Office of Transition Initiatives. Both RTI and OTI work closely in achieving our objectives, so I'd like to turn this session over first to Aaron. Thank you very much.
MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you, Dana. It's good to be here with you today to talk about this exciting and important, challenging program that we're involved in in Iraq working on behalf of USAID and the CPA, and, of course, the people of Iraq.
Today I wanted to use this opportunity to talk to you about two aspects of the work that we've been involved in in Iraq, but, more importantly, and talk to you about what we have seen on the ground in Iraq in terms of the role that the Iraqi people are taking in coming to grips with this new challenging democratic transformation.
First of all, I want to talk to you about what I saw on my most recent trip to Iraq. I was there for about a month. I just returned September 12th from Iraq, and I visited 10 cities while I was there and had a chance to really see on the ground the role that the Iraqis have taken in providing leadership in this transformation.
And then, secondly, the other theme I wanted to touch on today is the role that USAID and this program, how AID is making a difference in terms of the transformation that's taking place in Iraq. Well, the first thing, of course, I wanted to start out with is just to give you an idea of what our specific objective is. This is the objective that AIDS is the focus on when we were awarded this contract. And, obviously, we're talking about strengthening the local government and civil society organizations. I want to make sure that they're able to respond to the broad range of issues in governance at the local level. Service delivery is obviously very important, and also is crucial to make sure that there is room for Iraqi citizens to participate in the local administration.
When you talk about our program with USAID, it's very important to structure the results, framework, or how we looked at it and the objectives. And we have a chart here that talks about our expected results. This graphic talks about the four objective areas: the restoration of basic services in terms of the local government; effective and efficient local administration services; making sure that local governance is seen to be transparent and it offers a room for participation by citizens and citizen groups; and, of course, to try to strengthen and develop effective civil society organizations so they can play a role in the debate regarding democracy in Iraq.
In terms of my perspective for Iraq, it was very interesting. This is my second trip that I've taken into Iraq. My first trip was when we started our contract. I have a company my colleague runs, Johnson, who will be speaking to you a little bit later on during the Q and A session. And what I saw this time in Iraq was dramatically different from what we saw when we first went out to Iraq in April. And I guess the major difference, as I would characterize it, is the fact that everywhere you go--Iraqis in local government, Iraqis working in civil society organizations and associations and nurses, lawyers, doctors, teachers--they're coming together to demonstrate what's important to them in reshaping their lives now that they have this opportunity to create a new democratic country.
So, for example, we see in Iraqis helping to create and use new representative institutions to control their own lives. We see Iraqis stepping forward to manage the services in their municipalities, setting priorities, determining how resources should be allocated. We see Iraqis nongovernmental groups coming together to make sure that the people who are providing these services, the local governance, the interim councils that are now managing the towns and cities of Iraq, that they understand what local citizens believe to be important.
If you look at this one by one--I wanted to walk through these three different aspects of what we see in terms of the Iraqi response to this incredible opportunity that's been presented to them--we see city councils and neighborhood councils in Baghdad and other cities and towns around Iraq. They're really taking on the tough, tough issues. I think one of the interesting stories that Iran told me about was the fact that at one point down in Baghdad the former city police commissioner of New York City was there with the new head of the police department in Baghdad. And so they made a presentation about what they were going to do in terms of more effective and responsive policing in Baghdad. After they made their presentation, people stood up in the audience there in Baghdad, and they provided their views and some criticism in terms of what they saw in policing. And we thought that was just an incredible demonstration of the new democracy in Iraq. How many--when do you think was the last time that someone could stand up in front of the chief of police of Baghdad and actually express their opinion in an open and free manner?
So you see more and more of that on lots of wide-ranging issues taking place in Iraq. I spent about a week and a half in Kirkuk in the north and spent a lot of time working with the local council there and talking to the various committees that form part of that council, and in each and every case, whether we're talking about displaced persons or talking about agricultural production, water--restoring water services, sewage, garbage, all of those things people came to the forefront and demonstrated that they were interested, were prepared to take a leadership role, and wanted to put in a role in how this whole thing was being governed.
One of the things I also noticed in Kirkuk, and also something that we've seen in the Mosul area, is that many, many civil society groups are stepping forward to offer their views on how to deal with the ethnic and religious issues that come up. As you probably know, those of you that have been following and know something about Iraq, Kirkuk, is one of the most diverse from an ethnic standpoint in Iraq. You've got Kurds, Arabs, Syrians, and Turkomans, and it's important for all aspects of that society to come together to try to deal with the issues that they face. And we see more and more signs of that.
Another very interesting example I think of how these neighborhood councils have come together in Baghdad, you might remember about three or four months ago, I think, there was an incident where, apparently, a U.S. military helicopter, the backwash of the helicopter as it was flying over Sauder City in Baghdad, they knocked down a religious flag in a Shiite area. And this, of course, created a lot of tension, people were very angry. There was a need to figure out a way to diffuse this, and so both military officials, the people in the community, they turned to the neighborhood councils that had been established as part of this local governance work in Iraq. And these, the people, members of the neighborhood council stepped forward, they spoke to the military authorities, talked to the people on the ground, they talked to the community leaders, and they were able to diffuse the situation and work out a reasonable situation so that people went back to their homes. There was no further demonstrations. It really arrived at a peaceful solution, as we see in many different countries where democracy works. So we think we see tangible signs of things really changing in Iraq.
What about in terms of actually providing services to the Iraqi people? If you look at what's going on in some of the cities, for example Bosra. In Bosra, there's been a significant amount of repair done in terms of water systems, electrical systems, and restoration of sewage operations. In each and every case, our people, our teams on the ground in Basra, would tell us that these are the priorities that were established by the Iraqi leaders of both the heads of the municipal departments and also the local groups that were concerned about services in their communities, Iraqis taking command in charge of this.
In Najaf, we had groups came to us both municipal department heads and also local community organizations that we really need to repair the fire department and the fire stations in Najaf. As you can imagine, with the temperatures being what they are in Iraq and the chances for fires to destroy major parts of the city, let alone a major city like Najaf, which is an important city in terms of the Shia religion, it was important to take steps to do that. And again this is Iraqis setting the tone.
In Kirkuk, I had a number of discussions with local council there, the governor and his various committees, and the military authorities, the CPA authorities, and civil society organizations looking for ways to rehab the municipal building so they could have a decent place to come together and see how governance actually takes place. We're going to be restoring--well, actually, building a city council auditorium for the first time in Kirkuk that's going to encourage a broad citizen participation in that effort.
Another example in terms of service in Kirkuk, because of the high levels of unemployment, it was felt by the various participants in Kirkuk society, both government and on the civil side, there was a need to create a job center. And so the people told us what they needed. We were able to provide resources to support that, but again it was the Iraqis taking the lead to determine how a new employment service center could help them identify potential workers and channel this into a way that could be manageable and also tying into any future initiatives that would happen in Iraq in terms of national job creation.
In Al Hillah-Babel region, historically, whenever the rains come, there is flooding, especially in the poorer areas. And no one had ever come to grips with how to deal with this. Obviously, under Saddam's regime, this being a Shia region, there was no interest in doing anything about it. So most of the poorer neighborhoods during the rainy season suffer from this tremendous flooding.
We heard about this from the fellow who was in charge of the sewer and the water system in that part of the city, and he said with some really simple basic repairs, it wouldn't cost a lot of money, we could change this and change the lives for thousands of people in this area. And so we took a look at it, we worked with him, and now we're in the process of trying to make a difference in terms of saving people from this ongoing flooding that occurs during the rainy season in the Hillah-Babel region.
So these are just some examples of the things that we've seen on the ground where Iraqis are stepping forward, technically, in identifying their priorities and trying to look for resources and ways to make a difference in their lives.
The other thing that's important, kind of the third aspect of the third leg of the stool, if you will, in terms of governances, of course, civil society. In the case of civil society we have reached out and we have found ways to work with organizations that had been excluded in the past. For example, we're working with the Association of Disabled Veterans in Basra trying to come up with a--we're trying to develop a community center where they can come together for therapy, for treatment, for recreation, and social activities. They sought us out, initially, and said we're a group that you might not have heard about. We're not a typical NGO or CSO, but we believe that we have needs that need to be attended to. And the veterans that we're talking about, by the way, are primarily veterans of wars against Iran, the Iraq-Iranian wars.
In Kirkuk, we have come in contact with the Organization for a Civil Society, which is trying to develop ways of strengthening civil society organizations throughout Iraq starting out in the north, and it's another interesting situation where local organizations in the society in Iraq, they're trying to figure out, how can we grow? How can we design projects? How can we reach out to donor organizations? How can we interact with different parts of our society? And again, we're providing--we'll have a dialogue with these organizations as they move forward.
I think the thing that strikes me the most about this as you look at working with these various groups is the fact that there's innovative leadership, they haven't had the experience or the ability to reach out before and work with various groups across ethnic lines in Iraq because of the oppression of Saddam's regime. But now they have this opportunity, and they're looking for ways to work with various groups that are available in Iraq now providing those kinds of resources.
One of the interesting things we've seen in Baghdad, for example, is the Kurdish groups in Baghdad, of course, have been greatly oppressed, but now there's a Kurdish women's group that we're working with that has asked us to help them develop a primary health clinic in a Kurdish area in Baghdad.
In Mosul, the nurses are organizing themselves. They want to have a professional modern nursing association that can look to improving the prospective that one has of the nursing profession, but also providing in-service training and giving them representation in the new democratic Iraq. Wherever you go, you'll see signs more and more of this. And I guess the other thing that's noteworthy in terms of what I saw when I was in Iraq on my last visit is the fact that women's groups are very much in the forefront in many different parts of Iraq in raising their voices and wanting to be heard and participating in the dialogue regarding civil society and local governance.
Hopefully, I've given you a couple of ideas of some of the things that we see happening in terms of what the Iraqis are doing to seize the moment and to move forward and embrace this opening for democracy in Iraq. The other side of the coin, of course, is what, exactly is USAID and the local government project doing to support this--this opening that the Iraqis have and the fact that Iraqis are assuming leadership and developing different types of activities.
We'd like to think that the local governance project is really two sides of the same coin. First of all, we're looking at government and strengthening government processes, transparency, open government, at the same time encouraging those institutions and systems that can enable citizens to elect, select their political leadership and hold them accountable. And we think those things are coming together under this project.
Let me first of all tell you a little bit about the characteristics, as we view the local government program. Right now we are deployed in 16 of the 18 governorates; we have approximately 120 international staff deployed in country, and I use the term "international staff" because we have a very diverse work force. We have people from the United States, from Europe, from the Middle East. We have a number of Iraqi Americans. We have people who have expertise in governance in many different parts of the world, all who are very eager and highly motivated to try to take advantage of this historic undertaking in Iraq.
We also have, approximately, at this point in time 265 Iraqi employees, most in professional positions, and we are rapidly hiring more and more Iraqis every day. It's important for us, of course, to incorporate as many of the local citizens in the work that we do. There's a tremendously talented work force in Iraq that we've been able to tap. I was really struck by the talent and the enthusiasm of the Iraqi staff that I found in the 10 cities that I visited. They are really in the forefront of moving forward and supporting the efforts of this project.
The other thing that I wanted to mention is that about 30 percent of our international staff have hands-on experience. They have managed cities; they have been city administrators; they have been department heads of various municipal departments managing utilities. One very good example is when I went to Kirkuk about three or four weeks ago, traveling with me was a new staff member. He's a Kurdish American. He hadn't been to Kirkuk in 23 years. He never thought he'd ever have a chance to go back and work in his hometown. He's--he runs the Public Services Department in Mesa, California. He has 23 years--20-something years of experience working in city management. He arrived there, the local council, the military authorities, the CPA officials were delighted to have a person of his experience, of his stature, or his perception, someone who speaks the four languages available to work in Kirkuk. So he's off to a tremendous start, and we're very lucky that we were able to recruit a person of that stature, with that level of excitement and that level of understanding about that part of Iraq to work in Iraq.
In terms of the project activities, we look at the project in, basically, four aspects. And again, this relates back to the strategic framework that we talked about earlier on in that first graphic that I showed you. First of all, we are working with Iraqis to identify priorities and provide technical and financial resources for the restorations of basic services. I sat down with the Kirkuk council, I met with the public works committee, and they told me of their 10 top priorities, the things you would expect--electricity, water, garbage collection, things that they believe need to be improved in Kirkuk, things that had been neglected under Saddam's regime for many, many years. And they had very interesting ideas as to how to go about doing that. And so we were very able, very quickly able to work with the military authorities, with CPA, with OT, as a matter of fact, in a couple of different instances to provide resources to support those ideas in terms of restoring those basic services in that city.
In terms of forming neighborhood councils under our LPG Activity II, we found it quite fertile ground, actually. I think back to when Ron first went to Baghdad back in April--or I guess in early May--to work with the authorities there to set up the first neighborhood councils, and now that work which Ron started out working with one of our really outstanding professionals, Dr. Amal Rassam, a distinguished Iraqi American, has led, has resulted in 88 neighborhood councils being set up now in the Baghdad area, that's also led to representatives being selected for the district councils and members of the district councils have now ended up being in the Baghdad City Council.
The work that they did there was extraordinary. It started out with a mile and run (ph) going out and identifying the natural leaders in those 88 neighborhoods, asking them what they thought were the key ideas that needed to be considered in terms of organizing the neighborhoods, what were the key issues, what things concerned them, asking them to bring more and more people together to these town meetings, if you would, these neighborhood meetings, and ending up with a very productive dialogue that led to the formation of these neighborhood councils, and the neighborhood councils are now the focal point for interacting with the various authorities and the advisory councils that govern Baghdad. It's a major step forward, the first time that Baghdad has been organized that way, and a tremendous amount of work has been done by our team working with USAID, the CPA, and the military authorities.
We've also had a chance to work with people on Fritz's team in Baghdad working very closely with OTI, and I know Fritz is going to talk about some of those examples later on.
About two weeks ago--about a week ago, there was a very interesting conference held in Hillah, in the central part of Hillah near Babylon. We were looking for ways to bring together the department heads and the municipal leaders in about, oh, I guess about five or six different provinces, governorates. We had about 75 people. We brought them together to talk about forming or carrying out a workshop that would provide them for the first time ever in Iraq with the opportunity to learn about modern budgeting and financial planning in a municipal setting in a governorate setting. The first time in Iraq's history that many people came together to talk about, how can we put together a modern budget? How can we create the basis for governance in the New Iraq? It was very successful. It's been highly praised by the CPA, Ambassador Bremer has been fully briefed on this, and because of that, they are now poised to, with the blueprint for participating in the budgeting process in the future as we move forward in that overall effort in Iraq. It's really quite an event, and we receive a lot of very, very positive publicity in the Iraqi newspapers and Iraqi radio, television. et cetera.
So I think we have seen a number of different incidents where we've been able to move forward and support this new assertiveness on the part of the Iraqi leadership and Iraqi civil society leaders to make a difference in Iraq.
The last element of this beyond just working with government officials and working with the advisory councils, et cetera, is, of course, civil society. I wanted to close out with that point, because civil society is the essence of having responsive government. You have to have citizens who are engaged, who are aware, who understand what needs to be done in their societies. And we've been very successful in working with as number of civil society organizations. I've mentioned a few of them in my remarks earlier, but I think that we've seen in the case of conflict resolution in the case of women's rights, women's issues, and in the case of looking at how can democracy work more effectively. We've had great success in working with the CPA, with Iraqis, with the military authorities, and other donor organizations to make a difference. Just one example that strikes me as that, about a week ago we had a conference in Karbala.
We brought together a number of women's organizations to talk about democracy in that part of Iraq, and democracy in the greater Iraq, also. And they had, as you can imagine, they had a number of major concerns about women's role in the New Iraq. They were concerned about education, they're concerned about just local governments in general, and the roles that their organizations, as a strong civil society organization, can play in making a difference in Iraq. All of that came together in a conference. The conference is going to lead to follow-up work. We will continue to work with the groups that came to the conference, and we're looking for more opportunities to do that.
It's been a very, very exciting, challenging, and satisfying adventure for us, those of us who work on the local government projects in Iraq. Ron has been out there twice now. I've been there twice, and Ron's probably on his way back in another month or so. We try to keep our hand in the game, so to speak so we know what's going on in the ground, and it's made a big difference in terms of how we've been able to interact with Iraqis on the street as a look of ways to change the new democratic face of Iraq.
Thank you. The last slide, by the way, is where we are deployed now in Iraq.
MR. WEDEN: Good morning. As Dana said, my name is Fritz Wheaton, and I was for about four months the OTI team leader in Iraq. OTI, for those of you who don't know, is part of USAID. The Office of Transition Initiatives was established in 1994 to help USAID and the U.S. government in post-conflict countries, Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, and others to make a peaceful transition by the use of fast-moving, flexible assistance to support efforts to improve the development and democracy in a country, and Iraq was no exception.
Our role in Iraq has been one to try to identify those gaps that existed in U.S. assistance. Inevitably, in a situation like Iraq there will be gaps that are developed, and we were in most cases able to move in and help support the U.S. effort. But it brings us into many areas other than just local government, although in this case we've been very supportive of local government role, but brings us into other fields such as civil society, such as a support of human rights, and the prevention of violence. It gets us into media and communications, and in our case also in Iraq we have provided support to short-term employment generation, that being a very important element in the equation right now. And also in one that we had not expected initially, but one we got into very heavily was support for basic government services. And I'll try to make a distinction between what is being done under RTI and their program and more we've been able to do as part of OTI.
We were one of the first active donors to arrive in Iraq, and our money was in hand and contractors were in hand, so practically from the first day we were able to get programs moving. In fact, the first village council in Iraq in Umm Qasr was funded. We set up their office and got them office equipment up and running in the days before we were even able to deploy full time in Iraq.
There followed on from there several other projects and activities in Umm Qasr and further in other parts of Southern Iraq. A little later on about the beginning of May we were first able to mobilize in Iraq--in Baghdad I should say--one thing became immediately apparent, and that was that no one had anticipated the amount of extensive damage that had taken place as a result of looting and burning following the fall of the regime. That was extensive damage to public buildings, government buildings, all varieties and kinds. It wasn't possible to get some basic services--electricity, water, just to name a few, up and running unless you could get Iraqi civil servants back to work. And it wasn't able to get them back to work unless you could do something about their former headquarters.
We launched a program, OTI did, to go in and rehabilitate. We started with the national ministries--justice, finance, the banks--and worked our way through the ministries, in many cases just refurbishing one or two floors in a building; in other cases where the ministries were too big, we actually went out and tried to locate separate buildings, refurbished them, brought in furniture, computers and got them operational. We made a decision fairly early on that we weren't going to try to put everybody back to work but a core staff of a hundred in each ministry. So that's what we did. We set up what we called a "mystery in a box," and we delivered these things. And, in fact, we still have today some 400 people that are employed full time making furniture in Baghdad for these ministries.
We graduated quite rapidly from ministries to authorities-- the water authority, the electrical authority--and then on to the municipalities. About the same time this was taking place RTI was helping to set up the municipalities and councils, so they were providing the technical assistance while we came in and provided the furniture and some of the other support.
We also got involved in trying to do some local employment and sanitation cleanup, sort of the first showing of the flag. One of the first activities was over in Sauder City (ph) in the northeast quadrant of the city where we put some 16,000 people to work for a period of about the same number of days cleaning up, and we did that in several other parts of the city as well.
We've been at this point something like 40 ministries, municipalities, water authorities, commissions and so on that have been refurbished, provided with basic furniture and equipment to the tune of about $3.5 million. That's all in Baghdad area. Since that time, we've also gone outside of the city into Kirkuk, Mosul, where again we've worked very closely with RTI. I think some of the collaboration there in Kirkuk and Mosul on the buildings have been a joint effort again where we've provided furniture and some of the rehabilitation RTI is provided again, some of the technical assistance, but also some of the hardware, too, just grounded 2-O's (ph).
And that's true in not just in the north but also in the central part of the city, central part of the country. We've been doing courthouses, restoring fire stations and that black (ph).
Our program has grown in the process from about $20 million when we started out to now about $135 million which for fiscal years '03 and '04. We have--we operate through two partners. One is Developmental Targeters, Inc., and the other is International Organization for Migration, IOM . They've worked with us for years, and they are a very crucial part of our operation. We have approximately nine international staff right now working in Iraq strengthened about 30 or so international staff with both IOM and with DAI.
All of this is done on the basis of grants. All of this is done on the basis of sitting down with whether it be a local village council, whether it be a municipality, or a ministry, or whatever, sit down with that group, say, what are your needs? What are your priorities? It's their priorities that are being identified. We respond to them. We write a grant. The grants run anywhere from about minimum of about $10-or-$15,000 up to about max of $300,000.
At the present time we have about 380-some odd projects going out throughout Iraq, many of them completed, others in progress totaling about $27 million. We're looking right now at second-generation activities. As I say, we've been working closely with OTI. We've also been working closely with the cap program in picking out areas where we don't conflict with one another. One of the things that we'll probably be looking at in the future is to try to work with civil society organizations, try to link them up a little bit more with local government, or in some cases national government.
Also, we want to start a second generation of activities where a lot of village councils and others have been established over a period of time. We want to start rewarding the ones that are producing. So that's another thing that we're going to be working on.
But we have a very close working relationship with the local governance program, also with the CAP program and the other elements of USAID program and, as a matter of fact, I should say we are officially, we started out as part of the dark team that went into Iraq, and now migrated over, and we are now part of the USAID mission and operate very closely with the mission director and with CPA.
Thank you.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you, Fritz and Aaron. We'd like to now open up this session to any comments or questions. I'd actually just like to add, briefly, to Fritz's reference to the CAP program. That is a community action program that is implemented by five U.S. NGOs, and we will be having a separate public sector consultation on that within the next two or three weeks. Actually, the list of all of our public sector consultations and the schedule for that is available on our web page. I assume most of you look at that web page fairly regularly, since you're here.
For those who do have questions, if you could please stand up and speak into the microphone. We are broadcasting this session live on the web as well, and we want to ensure that those who cannot be physically present here can at least follow the discussion from afar. So are there any comments or questions, please?
MR. HUSTON: Good morning, Ian Huston from America's Development Foundation, and thanks for having me. I had a very general question about the, just one broader observation before I start with my question. I--I think that if we trace the progress here in terms of the program impact over the last six months, the impact really has been extraordinary. And if we couple what RTI has accomplished in such a short time with what the other organizations, partner organizations, in cooperation with the CPA and USAID have accomplished in really such a short time, I think it's rather historic, and I hope that American constituencies are fully appreciating that.
There's a part of me that believes that there are pockets up on Capitol Hill that, perhaps, don't fully appreciate the progress and really how historic this effort has been. But having said that, my question is more broad in its orientation. It has to do with the atmosphere of the constitutional development. Secretary Powell was up at the UN talking about time frame for developing a constitution. And, of course, this is a broader foreign policy issue that has implications at the UN in terms of getting broader buy-in from the international community. But I'm just sort of curious, as you see the progress over the next six months, if you sort of look out a little bit, how that broader discussion about the development of a constitution, which is for the people of Iraq quite historic and will generate, I think, a lot of discussion as it did in our own country about a Bill of Rights, individuals rights and human rights, and how individuals are empowered. It's a broader discussion that impacts, I would think all of the different programs that are operational and functional.
So that's a very broad question, but I'm sort of curious about your thoughts on that time frame that Secretary Powell is talking about.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you very much for your comments in recognition of the progress made to date. We--our implementers are focused on the local government and local civil society efforts. I can speak--I can have them speak to their impressions of how civil society is in a position to contribute to the constitutional debate, but we are not in a position to speak to any issues of time frame on a constitutional process or things along those lines.
So if, Aaron or Fritz, if you would like to speak to, as you have worked with civil society organizations, et cetera, how they have engaged in dialogue and discussions on issues that impact their lives, and again you've discussed that a lot in your power points. I'm not sure if you want to supplement, but that's really where we can contribute to this discussion or issue.
Nothing more? Sorry, thank you.
MR. WILLIAMS: The only thing I would say in response to that is that we believe we're working in what are considered to be the essence of democratic development, working both in terms of trying to equip the local councils and the technical heads of the departments with the tools they need to become modern managers of the new democratic Iraq.
And, secondly, to work with the other side of the coin, civil society organizations, so they can strengthen civil society and create groups that are going to be interested, engaged, and having a dialogue on the future democratic structure of Iraq, and I'm sure that many of the people that we've worked with, that OTI has worked with, that the other partner organizations have worked with will have representatives that will play a role in this greater debate about the constitution in the future or Iraq. Of that I'm pretty convinced.
MR. WEDEN: I'd just add one other thing, and that is my experiences is that Iraqi people are a very, very talented group of people, well educated in many cases. What they lack in some cases is they have not had experience in the last 20 years of taking the initiative. And I think the kind of efforts that are being initiated right now, RTI, what OTI is doing and what others are doing is helping to develop that sense of initiative and drive that I think is going to be essential to any democratic process that comes down the road. So in that sense I think we're making a good contribution at this point.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you. Any comments, feedback, inquiries? Please, thank you.
MR. PROBADOS (ph): I'm John Probados with the Policy Institute for Religion and State. We had a meeting one day with Jenkins and a gentleman. I'm leaving for Europe tomorrow to Baghdad and to follow up on the meeting that we had last time. But a couple of days ago I was told that there were some--I'm sorry for coming late, you know. I was stuck in the traffic, otherwise I would have made it earlier--but I was told--I don't know whether someone has covered this subject already or not, but I would like to know if--there are some elections already held at the local levels and how many of them and at what level the progress has been made. If some one can shed some light. If somebody has already covered it, I'm sorry about asking that again, but--
MS. PETERSON: We can speak to what--what technical assistance or advice colleagues have given to the interim representative bodies as they go through their selection processes to who will be sitting on those councils. In terms of actual elections, we are not focused on that in our assistance efforts at this point. So maybe, Aaron, if you wanted to discuss a little bit more the selection process of some of these town councils. You had mentioned some of that earlier, but maybe if you wanted to elaborate a little bit? Thank you.
MR. WILLIAMS: Musical chairs. When we arrived in Iraq in late April and started our work in late April, early May, the military authorities in many, many areas of Iraq had selected these interim councils that we had talked about and that you've read so much about. And so we decided in consultation with USAID, CPA, and military authorities that our role, the appropriate role for us would be to assist these councils in going about the business of governing. And so that's really where we have focused our efforts to provide them with the information, the tools, modern management practices, ability to reach out to the citizens, to identify priorities.
And again the thing that has changed so much that I've seen in my recent trip to Iraq is the fact that Iraqi leaders, both the members of the council and the heads of the technical departments in the cities and towns of Iraq are asserting their leadership in determining what their priorities are and bringing the donor community, if you will, the CPA and the military authorities, into discussions as to how they should go about reshaping Iraqi society.
And the other side of this, of course, is again civil society. And to the extent that we've work with civil society we have tried to empower them to give them, give those organizations the tools and the resources they need to create a decent locale where they can actually operate. So many of the organizations that you find in Iraq, so many of the groups that Fritz and I have worked with and seen and the ones that our team members have worked with, they don't have a decent place to meet. I think Ron told me the first time he had a town, a neighborhood committee meeting in Baghdad it was in a jail. It was the only place they had chairs, places they had ample locale. Obviously,. that was not where we wanted to continue to meet.
So we, one of the first grants we provided in Baghdad was to create locales so that neighborhood committees could have a decent place to meet, people could come together in a reasonable place. So we consider that to be a very, very important part of this local governance and the kinds of things that we like to see continue as we work with the Iraqis in shaping the new country.
MS. PETERSON: Any more thoughts? Please?
MR. KRAN (ph): Good morning. I'm Kim Kran. I represent several U.S. public companies, and my question is, is there a selection process or has there been a process established to select acceptable indigenous partners for U.S. technical companies in Iraq? Have you all vetted a list of qualified companies over there with some assets and what their capabilities are?
MS. PETERSON: You're referring to Iraqi firms that--
MR. KRAN: Yes. Yes, indigenous.
MS. PETERSON: --are being used as, let's say, subcontractors under--
MR. KRAN: Right. Right, indigenous partners, acceptable partners to ex-patriot technical partners wishing to do business in Iraq.
MS. PETERSON: I don't know if RTI and if OTI, would you like to speak to how you have determined some of your partners? I can also add that we also have--we work in other sectors, as I mentioned in my introduction, and we have a contract with Bechtel that works on infrastructure reconstruction, and they have held a number of conferences in Iraq with interested Iraqi firms and looked at firms that are in a position to intern to a subcontractor relationship, let's say, et cetera, in light of accounting within the firm and other mechanisms that they have to ensure accountability of funds and that.
But maybe RTI or OTI, if you wanted to expand at all. No, I think, depending on your interest and needs, the question may be appropriately targeted to some of our implementing partners and we can discuss further after the session as well.
MR. KRAN: Thank you.
MS. PETERSON: Okay, thank you. Any--please?
MR. SWANSON (ph): Hi. Jeffrey Swanson with the Carnegie Endowment. I was just wondering if you could give me a little bit more details about how the grant process works. You gave some examples of that how, you know, they range from $10,000 to approximately $300,000. I was just wondering how you determine whether or not a grant's valid or if you have any sort of like overarching criteria for what constitutes an acceptable grant.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you. If you could both speak to the grant, sub-grant process. Thank you. Fritz.
MR. WEDEN: It's somewhat of an art form. Community leaders appear and they have ideas. It's a matter of judgment sitting down with them discussing what their needs are. New organizations, new NGOs that are formed will come forward. In some cases we were directed to possible grants through civil affairs units in the military.
So the potential for grants comes from a whole variety of sources. Generally, then, what we do together with our partners is to go and sit down with whoever the potential grantee is, talk to them, as I say, try to elicit from them where their priorities are, what their organization's like, are they really serious. And, you know, you develop a sense about how realistic planning is, how good the organization is over a period of time.
And once we reach the point where we think we have something valid going, we will write up a short grant. We then turn it over to our partners. Either IOM or DAI will then go out and cost out, basically what's being proposed. If it's construction, it'll get some bids. If it's equipment, they'll go out and check out what the equipment costs are. And they will complete the implementation that way.
Do we occasionally make mistakes? Yes, sometimes we do. There is a certain inherent risk-taking in this business. You don't get much progress unless you take some risks, but what we're trying to do is identify those groups, those leaders that you can work with in the future. And so that's a very important part of the process.
This is not a very time-consuming process. We try to keep it fast. We can usually in a day or so arrive at the terms and conditions under which a grant will operate. And implementation will oftentimes start.
We did a cleanup in Sauder City that started the next day. We organized in one day, and the next day 4,000 people showed up to work. So we can move fairly quickly when the time comes. We don't want his to be a long drawn-out very bureaucratic process.
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, a lot of things that Fritz said in terms of you characterize the grant-making efforts of OTI certainly apply to what we do at RTI. These are just good basic principles in terms of development and how you manage grant funds and target grant funds.
I guess the things that would distinguish how we go about our grant-making process, first of all it ranges about the same as Fritz, somewhere $10,000, let's say, to $300,000, depending on the type of grant. We have tried to use the grant funds that USAID has made available, and that's about $11 million in the first year, in this Year One of this contract. We now have provided about a little--almost $7 million in grants.
And what we try to do with the grant money that we made available is to strengthen the local governance activities that we're engaged in, because the LGP project is not a grant-making project per se. The real focus, the objective of the LPG project is to provide assistance to local government, to strengthen local government, to engage the Iraqi people in, from aspects of their civil society in supporting local government and being involved in participating in local government. So we've tried to use the grants that we've made available to strengthen those.
And also in the case of Iraq because it was so many emergency situations that we've faced, I mean in terms of water restoration, in terms of sewage and garbage collection, et cetera, that we felt it was important to target our grant funds in that direction.
Let me give you one example. In the case of Basra, there was a need to do some short-term emergency water treatment repair. When I was in Basra on this last trip, I visited about four of the water treatment plants, and three of those water treatment plants, interestingly enough--something that might surprise those that don't know Iraq very well--women engineers were the directors of the water treatment plant. And they had very clear-cut ideas as to what needed to be done to improve the delivery of water and the quality of water in that area of Basra.
And so we worked with them to identify their needs, and we provided equipment to be able to conduct for the first time in many, many years to analyze the quality of water in Basra, the first time that's been done in many, many years. We provided generators so they could have a supply of electricity to provide water and keep the pressure up.
People in the areas where we worked have come to the water treatment plant and talked to the Iraqi officials there and talked to our staff there. And they've said that for the first time in their lives they have water on the second floor of their homes and apartments, the first time it's every been done. We've helped clean out some of the intake canals and valves in the areas where the water comes in. And so all of these things have been done to do two things: 1) to respond to the emergency needs in the case of water treatment in Basra; and 2) is strengthen the local government officials and to provide some tangible concrete evidence that things are different in this new Iraq.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you. Please?
MS. MOSER (ph): Charlotte Moser with the Development Gateway. What are you doing in terms of providing technical assistance for conflict resolution in training these--in the selection process for leaders or to support leadership? Are you providing training to help people work out conflicts and cultural and ethnic areas?
MR. WILLIAMS: That's a very, very important area to focus on and to work in, you're absolutely right. And we have been doing a substantial amount of work. A couple of examples, when I was in Kirkuk three or four weeks ago, there were a series of conferences being held with Civil Society Organization of Iraq with some Kurdish groups that had organized, women layette (ph) Kurdish groups who looked at--were looking at conflict resolution. And so we brought in groups from both in the Middle East and from United States, and to look at ways to train these groups to provide them with understanding of how they can go about learning the tools to deal with conflict resolution because that's a very important aspect, as you known, of trying to deal with a new democracy in Iraq.
If you look at just Kirkuk as an example-- and I draw on that because I spent a lot of time there, and also because it's a very important city in Iraq because it is the most ethnically diverse city in Iraq. And among the four major groups there, there are tensions. One of the ways that Saddam governed was to make sure there were tensions that he could divide and conquer. And to the extent that we can equip groups to go out to develop the tools and skills to reach out to that diverse community and resolve these conflicts before they become armed conflicts where more blood is shed, this is very important and crucial work, and we see it as being central to the part of the work we're doing with our grants projects and local governments.
MR. WEDEN: Closely related to this as part of OTI's program this year, for the first time we established something called the Abuse Protection Unit, was set up to go into Iraq and to try to identify potential areas of conflict, potential areas of conflict, work with coalition forces, work with local communities to try to prevent this, and also to follow on and work on development of human rights organizations. As I say, this is the first time that the AID has attempted to take this on as part of its operation. I think it was quite successful.
In the early days, the APU, as it's known, I did a lot of sort of putting out of fires working again with coalition troops. They got into mass graves, discovered a lot of mass graves, helped to work with local communities on protecting mass graves. The tendency when a mass grave was discovered was to the community go out and start going through the remains trying to identify loved ones. That destroys any potential evidence. APU worked with local groups and helped them to protect those areas to the extent that it was possible. It wasn't always possible.
Going on from there, they've worked with other organizations. More recently, the former political prisoners was two different former political prisoner associations that emerged. And they have, in turn, identified and rounded up literally tons of evidence, former crimes against humanity. And OTI has worked with them to establish an office to protect that material which is being held now in readiness for eventual trials that will take place at some time.
There's a lot of groups they've been working with like that, including some of the emerging women's groups that are coming up on conflict prevention and so on.
MS. PETERSON: Does that answer your question? Please.
MS. SITURA (ph): Hi, thank you for your presentation. I'm Mona Situra. I work for the World Bank, but I'm seen to be working on this project with RTI. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about RTIs relations with the main Kurdish parties up north, such as Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and how responsive the event to the efforts in this project, especially in light of their future desires for autonomy and independence.
MS. PETERSON: Okay. Aaron?
MR. WILLIAMS: Welcome to the project. We're glad to hear that. That's good. We didn't plant her in the audience for this, no. We did not. She just came of her own desire to hear about this wonderful project.
Seriously, we have been actively working in the north, and we've been working with the government officials in Kurdistan, in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah and Mosul. And, certainly, that's a part of the array of organizations and government groups that we work with, so and the relationship has been very positive, and we've identified a number of important projects in those areas that we want to be supportive of, and we will continue to do so as we continue to implement the program.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you.
MR. BACCARI (ph): My name Galah Baccari. I'm a--[indistinguishable]--building consultant. I just came back from West Bank. I have two questions: What are the procedures that are the RTI implement secured international staff in the field since most of your activities are in the field?
The second question: What travel arrangements that are followed to make sure that to move staff to arrive, especially in the north region? Thank you.
MR. WILLIAMS: Would you repeat the last question?
MR. BACCARI: What travel arrangements that are followed to move staff to Iraq, especially in the northern region?
MS. PETERSON: Okay, so it sounds like the two questions are 1) how international staff are employed or hired by RTI for this project. That would be the first question, correct?
MR. BACCARI: No, the first question was what are the procedures that RTI implements to secure the international staff in the field?
MS. PETERSON: Oh, to provide security.
MR. BACCARI: Yes.
MS. PETERSON: Okay. And the second one are arrangements for bringing staff to the northern part of the country--
MR. BACCARI: Yes.
MS. PETERSON: --in particular.
MR. BACCARI: Yes, that's true. Thank you.
MS. PETERSON: Okay.
MR. WILLIAMS: Dana?
MS. PETERSON: Yes?
MR. WILLIAMS: I'd like to ask Ron Johnson, who is our senior vice president for international development, RTIN, the leader of the LGB project at RTIN to speak to that issue.
MR. JOHNSON: The--first of all on the recruitment side--and I realize you didn't ask it quite that way, but on terms of bringing staff into the country, taking it in reverse in the north, most of the time we use convoy procedures. That is, almost all of our movement around country is by convoy. We do have access to the air serve, which is the air flight agency that is working primarily with the donor community and NGOs, and we do have some access, although as a contractor we're a lower priority than the NGOs. And so we do use their flights into Baghdad.
But most of our movement around the country in terms of security is--is by convoy, and we use basically normal convoy procedures that any--I'm talking about RTI or LGP convoys, not participation in military convoys. For the most part, we're not imbedded in military convoys. There is no distinction between the international staff and the American ex--staff, if you will, in terms of arranging for security for the staff in country or as they enter into the country. So I'm not quite sure of the thrust of the question about the distinction between international staff versus other staff. I mean all staff are basically part of the same team. So I'm not quite sure where you want it.
If you could clarify what that question meant, I could follow up.
MR. BACCARI: In the list thing (ph) there were for the ex-patriots they have some arrangements that are coordinated with the RSO (ph), okay. I don't know if--I mean the USAID, they issued some kind of cards for ex-patriots to move around in Israel between checkpoints.
MR. JOHNSON: All right.
MR. BACCARI: So this is my question, slightly, since it involves a lot of activities in the field. Thank you.
MR. JOHNSON: Okay, it is obviously not the similar situation that exists there. The identity cards that one needs to move around Iraq are provided by the Coalition Provisional Authority, and those are recognized both by the Iraqi authorities which are, obviously, increasing in presence, and then the official CPA, members of the Coalition Provisional Authority. So it's the same identify process, and there is no distinction as to whether one happens to be a citizen of the U.S. mobilized for this project or a citizen of Jordan or wherever else the same identity card, same process works in all cases.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you, Ron. Please?
MS. FLEMING: Sue Fleming from Reuters. With more Iraqis stepping forward and showing initiative, are you noticing a rising level of frustration that the CPA still holds the ultimate authority, and how are you dealing with that in local council meetings?
MS. PETERSON: Ron?
MR. JOHNSON: Since we're not operating at the national level, we don't really have any experience with sort of how, you know, the Iraqis may be feeling about the progress at the national level. At the local level, we found plenty of opportunities for the Iraqis to effect results themselves with or without our assistance. And so we haven't experienced a great deal of frustration at the local level in terms of either the ability to play a role in the process or in terms of the ability to improve the delivery of services.
An example, the flag incident that Aaron spoke with in Sauder City that was an instance in which the--no matter how the council was constituted--they took on the legitimate authority of the population that they represented from Sauder City. Coalition military forces accorded them that authority as they spoke to them with respect and listened to them and treated them as the legitimate representatives. In turn, when the members of that district council then went back to the community in Sauder City and talked about the meeting that they had with the military forces after that incident, the population responded to them so that it was a clear instance of their having been accorded legitimate authority both by the coalition and by the population they represent. And I think they were quite proud of the fact that they thus had the authority to take action.
So we haven't experienced that kind of--you know, the possibility of that kind of--I don't know--frustration. I mean it just--it's just there's so much to be done that maybe the frustration is how can you get everything done that needs to be done on a given basis? But it isn't because they're held up from doing something by anyone.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you. We can probably accommodate another one or two questions or comments from the audience.
MS. RIEGELMAN (ph): I'm Mary Ann Riegelman with the Iraq Management Team at AID, and this is a question to Aaron and Ron, sort of a tripartite question: Could you talk a little bit about the general status of the local NGO sector? My impression is that it's fairly rudimentary compared to the NGO sector in neighboring countries in the region, but since your people have been working there, I'm sure you have a better feel.
Secondly, roughly, what percent of RGI's work is devoted to strengthening civil society as opposed to local governments, just, you know, some ball for treaty (ph) would be great.
And, finally, do you think that local NGOs need more in the way of capacity-building training, or do they need more small grant--or do they need small grants in order to get back on their feet, or do they need a combination, and to what extent might that be possible?
MR. WILLIAMS: Is that for NGOs?
MS. RIEGELMAN: Right.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you, Mary Ann. I think RGI and possibly OTI, given your work with civil society organizations, too, may want to address, and just to caveat to Aaron and the status of the local NGO sector, I'm sure highlighting differences around the country, too, would be helpful. Thanks.
MR. WILLIAMS: I think, Mary Ann, your first premise is absolutely correct that, compared to other countries that I've worked in in developing world, and in the Middle East. Certainly, the NGO civil society section of Iraq is limited, weak. And that's, of course, as a direct result of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. That's precisely what he wanted to create, and he was successful.
However, what you--the exception to that, of course, would be in the north, where in the north, of course, they've been able--the Kurds have been able to operate differently, and they've created a pretty vibrant civil society that have been effectively working with many of the international organizations for quite some time.
But I think in terms of the NGOs that we've encountered in the civil society organizations that we've worked with in Iraq, the thing that I think distinguishes them that I've found the most impressive is the vibrancy of their leadership. People stepping forward in a somewhat uncertain situation environment to assume leadership roles and to take the ideas from their constituency, their communities, to the appropriate channels so they can really make a difference. That we see happening more and more, and so, therefore, they happen to be very receptive individuals and organizations for receiving strengthening training activities for assisting them in networking and defining what kinds of progresses they're going to design, and implementing those programs.
In terms of the percent of how do we break down the assistance that AID has asked us, in terms of those particular projects, I'd say about 60 percent of our resources go to local governance and about 40 percent to civil-society-related activities for anything civil society. But we've tried to be strategic in how we utilize the resource provided by AID so that working on both sides of that equation, it's all linked to trying to strengthen local governance and give the people of Iraq a voice in government in the future.
And then your last point was that what do they need more of, the NGOs. I think you said, you asked about capacity versus grant money for projects. I think it's probably I'd say an equal dose. If I--I wouldn't want to be held to a formula, but I think first of all, besides receiving training and advice in terms of how they can grow better organizations, they also need to have grant money so they can show some tangible results to their constituency, because that's how they become more effective and are seen as making a difference in Iraqi society.
MR. WEDEN: I guess I'd say ditto to everything that Aaron just said. Basically, I agree with his points. The NGOs that are emerged in Iraq, are emerging, there weren't many in the beginning. There are more and more that are starting to emerge. I think one of the things you can count on in a country like Iraq that NGO is going to be a growth industry. Some of this is going to be good, not all of it. In fact, a lot of it probably isn't because people find and want nice salaries and cars and so on.
One of the things we used to look at when we got a grant proposal was if it started out by saying, you know, what's your budget? And I says, you know, executive furniture, three cars and so on, you know they're not really serious.
But there are enough of the more serious ones that I'm very encouraged. I'd mentioned earlier about initiative. I think that's a very important point. Many of the groups that we come in contact with are a vision of sorts. They want to do, and then you say, well, okay, why don't you go do it? And then let it sort of like, whoa, where do we go? How do we start? Where do--you know, and they just don't have this opportunity.
So again, I agree with what Aaron says. I think probably 50/50 in terms of resources, grant money because you need to do. You learn by doing, but also some technical assistance is important.
They're not really looking for a lot of outside--and they're a little bit bristly about outsiders coming in and showing them how to do things. You've got to be very careful about that, including ex-pat Iraqis. If they go about it in the right way, that can work effectively.
I remember we had a grant proposal which you got in the mail from a group of Iraqis ex-pats and sent it in London. And my colleague at the time said, let's--oh, they were asking for transportation tickets to come down to Baghdad. They were going to work with the University of Baghdad to start up a student union and so on. And, you know, tickets and transportation. And we said, no, we're not going to do that.
Well, these people came down there on their own, and about two months later they walked in and talked to me. And I could see that they had gone about it the right way. They had sat down, and I said, you know, what's the organization like? They were keying to Iraqi leadership and the student union, you could see that this was a group you needed to work with. But, by and large, a lot of them, the ex-pat organizations, are somewhat suspect.
This is going to be a very important thing, I think, over the next couple years. It's going to be to develop civil society in Iraq because it wasn't there in the past, and it's now starting to come forward, and I think it's got a lot of potential, but it's going to take a lot of work, too.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you, Fritz and Aaron.
I think we have time for one more question or comment, please.
MS. HOWARD: Thank you very much. Kate Howard. I was wondering if you could address two questions: 1) If you could address the greatest--if you'd identify the greatest obstacles that you find right now working in the field and to achieving the objectives that you've set forward.
And also, if you could address the issue of all right you are perceiving or hearing of negative or more perhaps just simply opposition or concern about the type of advice and infrastructure technical assistance that you're providing in the field. In other words, is there resistance to what it is that you are offering? Thank you.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you. Ron or Aaron, would you like to speak to that, and then Fritz?
MR. JOHNSON: Early on, our biggest obstacle has really been logistics and communications. The entire communications infrastructure, obviously, was broken down in various ways, and we are operating, as you saw from the deployment map, in 16 of the 18 governorates, and so we have staff scattered--I hate to use the word "scattered," it's probably not the best choice of the word, but we do have staff scattered all over the country. And so we've had to establish a communication and logistics network that parallels--obviously, not nearly as big as, but it parallels in terms of its functionality the CPA and the military communication structure, including access to the ability to transmit information back and forth via some kind of internet connection as well as radio communications. And there still is no telephone service except within some towns and cities.
Then there's just the larger logistics of establishing housing for--if you think in terms of our teams and a governorate, the typical governorate team would consist of, say, eight to 21 ex-patriot employees, ex-patriot from a variety of countries, and then as many as 40 to 50 Iraqi staff, mainly professionals, some support staff. So we need office space for those staff to work. And so, you know, that is simply--it takes time and effort to establish that.
The obstacles have not been interactions with the Iraqis, nor have there been any obstacles in terms of our interactions with CPA, both civilian and military personnel. That has worked pretty well.
In terms of the resistance, we don't present ourselves as we have advice to offer to you, or we don't present ourselves as here's the best way to do something. We really try to first listen to, what are your priorities? And once you tell us what your priorities are, then we try to suggest that there are variety of possible ways to go about that and bring experience in from many countries as opposed to here's the U.S. experience, and this is, you know--this is kind of the model.
So we don't, typically, present a single best model for doing our work. We usually give a variety of alternatives from both other countries in the region, but as well as other countries that are not necessarily from the Middle East, and a mix of Islamic and non-Islamic countries. Representing it in that kind of a fashion, then we certainly emphasize that we're trying to be as neutral as possible.
We have some recommendations, and we have experience in a lot of countries in doing similar kinds of work, and so we do try to say, "In our experience, where are some best practices." So I'm not suggesting that we just kind of throw things out there and then say, "You pick it." But our mode is not to present a particular model. And I think when presented that way, I don't think we have any--we haven't really experienced any--any real resistance to the kinds of work that we're doing with the Iraqis because it really is a partnership. And, you know, we learn a great deal as we're working with the Iraqis, just as they're learning from us.
And we make it very clear that we're learning as we're doing as well. We may have certain kinds of technical expertise, that's why we mobilize certain personnel. But it really is a mutual partnership process, and I think when presented in that light, when you're working with mutual partners, that they accept the partnership mode; they don't accept the top down kind of we're-here-to-help-you kind of attitude, and we have some kind of superior knowledge. But I don't think anyone implementing there--I mean I have not run into that in any of the other implementing agencies whether they be contractor or they be CPA personnel, both civilian and military.
MR. WILLIAMS: I guess I'd agree with Ron in just about all the points he made. In the first--in the early days logistics and communications were, were very difficult. We were living under the same conditions in many respects that the Iraqis were, you know, 110-degree heat, electricity off most of the time, try sending an e-mail when you're--you know, and all that sort of business is not easy.
But in all candor, I'd have to say more recently security is becoming a factor that we have to pay attention to. There was a period of time when I think we all felt that most of the security problems were related directly to U.S. military. That's no longer the case, and with UN incident and so on, I think it's quite clear that ex-pats in general are at risk, so that is having its toll. It's not slowing us down all that much, but it--but it certainly makes things a bit more complex.
MS. PETERSON: Okay, last question, please, mmm-hmm.
MR. AHLIN (ph): Mohammed Ahlin. My question is as you work to its strengthening the local governance, are you working towards on a decentralized form of government, or centralized as to--you know, is there a linkage between--what I mean is there a linkage between the local governments that you are building to on down the road, to a national, you know, to a central government?
MS. PETERSON: Okay, just to address that question, obviously, the Iraqis will determine the governance structure that is best for them through the constitutional process, et cetera, in terms of a decentralized system, et cetera. My colleagues have highlighted what assistance they have provided to Iraqis on different models and providing technical assistance, technical expertise on how to manage resources at the local level and participate in a discussion, a national discussion on such issues.
I don't know if you want to elaborate any further on that, but that's, essentially, how our implementation efforts are contributing to that process which will be ultimately decided by the Iraqis.
So thank you very much for attending. Our next public sector consultation will be this Thursday, at 1 o'clock on economic growth, so hopefully you can attend that as well.
Thank you very much.
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