Episode 32. Iraq: Behind The Scenes In Baghdad Working In A Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) With General William Hickman And Ambassador John Bennett

Additional Resources:

Oral Histories: Iraq Provincial Reconstruction Teams (2008-2009), United States Institute of Peace, 2009

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:00] From the American Academy of Diplomacy. This is the General and the Ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior US diplomats and senior US military leaders in conversations about their partnerships on some of our country's main foreign policy challenges. I am Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, the host of the series. On today's episode, we will talk about how our diplomats and our military officers worked hand in hand in special teams in Iraq. At the local community level, the teams were known as Provincial Reconstruction Teams or PRT's, and they were part and parcel of US efforts to stabilize the country. Our guests today are General Hickman and Ambassador Bennett. I ran into General Hickman at a conference in Washington a couple of months ago As we were having coffee. He told me about his time in Iraq and the great collaboration he had had with Ambassador Bennett. So I tracked Ambassador Bennett down. And here we are. Major General William Hickman served multiple tours in Iraq, including as commander of the second Brigade Combat Team 101st Airborne Division in 2007 to 2008. He has served in over 20 countries around the globe, including as deputy commanding general US Army Central in Kuwait and commander of Fort Polk, Louisiana. He has also served in a number of key staff positions, including as military assistant to General Petraeus in Afghanistan. Most recently, General Hickman was the director of Strategic Plans and Policy for the NATO Allied Transformation Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Ambassador John Bennett served in Baghdad from 2007 to 2009 as a political adviser and party leader with three successive brigade combat teams. Previously, Ambassador Bennett was the political advisor to the commanding general of the 38th Infantry Division in charge of NATO's task force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:01:57] He has also served for many years as a subject matter expert for US Army brigade, Division and Corps, preparing to deploy to places such as Afghanistan, Bosnia and Iraq. Before joining the Foreign Service, where he became ambassador to Equatorial Guinea, Ambassador Bennett served in the US Army as a German language area intelligence specialist. In this series, the General and the Ambassador, we focus on how our military leaders and our diplomats partner in key theaters around the globe. We have spoken extensively about Iraq with General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. We covered the 2007 2008 surge with General Austin and Ambassador Jeffrey. We cover the US military drawdown later with General MacFarland and Ambassador Jones. We covered the return of the US, which helped the Iraqis drive ISIS out of their country. Today I want to turn to a different aspect of our involvement in Iraq, one which called for a high degree of coordination on the ground between our military and our diplomats. From 2005 to 2011, the US stood up what were called prt's or provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq. These were civilian military teams composed of diplomats, sector experts and military officers who worked at the local level to help rebuild economic and political structures. The infrastructure of the country had been destroyed in the war and local authorities had been purged or killed. The theory was that a stable nation would not emerge unless good governance and economic development extended beyond the central government in the capital of Baghdad to local officials across the nation.

Pres. Bush: [00:03:28] "One year ago, our enemies were succeeding in their efforts to plunge Iraq into chaos. So we reviewed our strategy and changed course. We lost a surge of American forces into Iraq. We gave our troops a new mission, work with the Iraqi forces to protect the Iraqi people, pursue the enemy in his strongholds, and deny the terrorists sanctuary anywhere in the country. They saw our forces moving into neighborhoods, clearing out the terrorists and staying behind to ensure the enemy did not return. And they saw our troops, along with provincial reconstruction teams that include foreign service officers and other skilled public servants coming in to ensure that improved security was followed by improvements in daily life. Our military and civilians in Iraq are performing with courage and distinction, and they have the gratitude of our whole nation."

Amb. McCarthy: [00:04:23] Gentlemen, thank you for joining us in our podcast series. You both served in Iraq at a very difficult time. Sectarian violence was at a high. The government was viewed as ineffective and Iraq appeared to be sliding into civil war. Can you give us a sense of the level of violence? In other words, the context for the work that you did together in provincial reconstruction teams?

Gen. Hickman: [00:04:45] The violence was extremely high coming in 2006, 2007. That's basically when the civil War was going on in Iraq. Sunni against the Shia. The Sunnis were using terrorist activities. They were using car bombs primarily to target the Shia. And the Shia militia forces were actually using targeted murders. I was there in 2005 when basically 150 people were being killed every night in Baghdad. So it was extremely high as we go into the surge of 2007.

Amb. Bennett: [00:05:13] It was just a daily occurrence, no question. As far as the US forces and the US civilians go, we were not out of the war at all. We were certainly in it when we went downtown and at night we were rained on occasionally by rockets.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:05:29] And in the context of the work that you did together. As I understand it, there were provincial reconstruction teams scattered around the country, and then there were embedded reconstruction teams embedded within a brigade. You worked together in one of the embedded teams, as I understand it. Can you describe a little bit the purpose of the embedded team?

Gen. Hickman: [00:05:51] When 2007 occurred and the new commander came in June, Petraeus with Ambassador Crocker. And it was a you know, he said here in this forum itself, actually, this was a surge of ideas more than people. And it really was. I got we've all had a chance to work with him in the past. The idea was to get out on the streets to be with the Iraqi people because the security Iraqi people was number one. And John, you can help me. But I think what that did was bring the State Department with the military onto the streets.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:06:15] So bring a civilian face to the US presence.

Gen. Hickman: [00:06:18] Well, we need both the power of walking into a room with the tribal sheikh or a police chief or an Iraqi army general. When you had the military, US military there, the US State Department there, the power of walking in that room, they understood this was not just the US military, this was the US government. And so I thought it brought a different dynamic to every meeting.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:06:35] The PRT was composed as we're discussing civilians and military besides the State Department, which brought its expertise in you as a senior officer, former ambassador coming in. There were other experts who were pulled in. How do we go about pulling in these other experts?

Amb. Bennett: [00:06:54] The most important person with me was the USAID representative you say did an extremely fine job with us. No question about that. We had a highly skilled, highly motivated officer in John Critchfield, and he worked for that full year. Absolutely flat out. We also had a very good component was a civil affairs officer who could do anything. He was a town manager in real world in Pennsylvania.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:07:23] We had people who came from within the government and those who were hired from without to add to that civilian component, correct?

Amb. Bennett: [00:07:30] That's right. My only concern with that was that people really needed experience overseas. Your first trip overseas should not be going to a war. It really should be the you're an experienced person who has been competitive overseas and then going out in your profession.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:07:47] And as a commander, how did you identify the needs that you needed for the PRT?

Gen. Hickman: [00:07:52] It was a team. It was the brigade had 5000 troops, so we were a pretty large part of the team here. But we had the embedded PRT led by Ambassador Bennett. We also had the Human Terrain team led by a military person, but had civilians on that team also that brought in a flavor and the civil affairs officers. And so we went through meetings with the Iraqis, through the Iraqi military, but also the tribal leaders. We partnered extensively with the Baghdad City Council. One example is we partnered extensively with the Ministry of Education. And so before we would do anything that affected the school systems of northwest Baghdad, we went to the Ministry of Education to ensure there was going to be sustainable and something that the Iraqis wanted.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:08:30] And I wanted to get into The actual work that you did day to day, how did you go about identifying with local leaders, the projects that you were going to undertake?

Gen. Hickman: [00:08:39] We had a plan we built off the last brigade. It wasn't just a new plan. Every year a new brigade shows up every 15 months the rotations. And so based on that plan, we had lines of effort. The military does, but one of them was the security, economics, government and services. So with those four major areas, then we looked across those areas to see what was needed with security being the primary focus, the security of the population, not the security of ourselves, but those other factors, the economic factors, the governments and services factors would affect security. And you go through the local leaders. And John, I'll turn it over to you from other areas.

Amb. Bennett: [00:09:12] Yeah, probably the most useful part was the civil affairs aspect of this in terms of going to the Department of Public Works and getting those people they had. Been degraded. But there was tremendous expertise within the Department of Public Works. Baghdad was a well-educated city, and the people who were professionals in there, they'd been oftentimes 20, 30 years. They were lacking equipment, they were lacking funding. We had both of those or could provide both of those. They had the experience and they had the expertise to do it. So they knew what they needed to do. And it was really a question of identifying what their needs were and then meeting those needs.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:09:51] And how did you go about finding which local officials you should meet with, which ones you could trust?

Gen. Hickman: [00:09:57] You build relationships? Yeah. John was there for over two years. This is my third tour, but this tour was 14 months, over 14 months, working every day. You build relationships and I'll mention one other person or my Iraqi cultural adviser who is still in Iraq today. He knew every Iraqi that we ever talked to and had a perfect memory. And so we just built these relationships. But you also verified also. We would actually have projects officers would go back and visit those businesses, those NGOs that we partnered with. We visit them on a regular basis to make sure they were using the resources properly according to the agreements we had.

Amb. Bennett: [00:10:30] There have been a lot of damage from looting as well as just military type damage and restarting stores. So you find who owns the store and bring them along. How do they want to open it up? What do they need? What are their needs? Let them identify it and then supplement that.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:10:48] So was there coming out of any sort of central system, any sort of plan for the country or it was really done at the local level. In other words, each party had a list, had a strategy for that particular area.

Gen. Hickman: [00:11:03] Well, there was a joint campaign plan, so we followed underneath that. It worked its way down through the military side, through the division we worked with. And then the brigade had one. So the ideas were nested. They were locally modified and adjusted based on the circumstances. We faced it every day.

Amb. Bennett: [00:11:17] And these would change from week to week. You would go to all the meetings that anybody was holding at the local council level, and again, you would develop ideas out of that and go along with it. The most important part to me were the professionals who were already in place, who were with the Army, not the Department of Public Works, and working with them, because that's where the expertise was.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:11:39] So we didn't come in with a set plan to reconstruct. In other words, we listened as we went about. That's correct. With the process.

Gen. Hickman: [00:11:47] That was all hard lessons learned from the military side, at least I'll speak for that from 2003, 4 and 5. By 2007, the plan was to develop a campaign plan, but it was synchronized with the Iraqis, so it was sustainable.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:11:59] And get ideas.

Gen. Hickman: [00:12:00] Ideas. So the idea the local neighborhood, public works stations, the Ministry of Education, we partnered extensively with and several other ministries we did. We met with them because we were in Baghdad. We could go straight to the ministry, the 2 or 3 hospitals in our area as a medical clinics. All that work was done through the Ministry of Health before we started spending any money.

Amb. Bennett: [00:12:18] And we had people in our teams particularly, and I'm thinking of health in particular, who could go in and say, how is this hospital working? And come up with some ideas so that we could complement what was being done. We had the money. It was just a matter of implementing it in a way that didn't waste the funds.

Gen. Hickman: [00:12:36] I'll tell you one other thing. Again, from the military side, it was important. We had the Iraqi security forces with the Iraqi army. We would invite them. We would at least brief them so they understand the Americans aren't going behind their back because these are their neighborhoods. They weren't our neighborhoods. We partnered with the Iraqi security forces to provide security so they understood what these projects were and how the military should operate and support the government.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:12:57] In order to give our listeners a flavor of everyday life in a PRT as you went out into a neighborhood. Obviously, there was the security component sit down with local leaders. Can you describe that process a little bit? In other words, was it a meeting surrounded by soldiers?

Amb. Bennett: [00:13:14] Our security details would stay with the vehicles outside. They would come inside the or the bodyguard component. But the Iraqi police, as well as military, also had their bodyguards. So there were plenty of bodyguards. Civilians had bodyguards as well. So the fact that we had bodyguards with us only really meant that they had a different uniform than the other bodyguards in the room was not unusual through Iraqi eyes to see that.

Gen. Hickman: [00:13:40] Baghdad is basically four quadrants. We were in the northwest quadrant of Baghdad, which is Monster Karkh and Kadhimiya. Within that area, we had 19 security substations, 19 JSS. So there were 19 locations where our companies and our platoons lived with the Iraqi security forces in the neighborhoods. Some of them were living inside police stations. Others lived in just a buildings. We found that we put in there with the Iraqi military junior levels, those captains and those lieutenant colonels partnered with the Iraqis. And then John and I would go one level up. So the district level leaders, the senior tribal leaders, the senior religious leaders, we met with them, a hierarchy of individuals, the Iraqi leadership of that northwest Baghdad, and who was responsible for keeping those individuals updated on what was going on, what we were doing, and also to get their ideas, to make sure we were all transparent in the activities we did.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:14:27] You made a very good point, John, about the fact that there had been an infrastructure in Iraq, education.

Amb. Bennett: [00:14:34] And a very good one.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:14:34] Technical skills, in other words, was the US was there. They were working with a base that was already quite well built up.

Amb. Bennett: [00:14:42] For example, in health care, Baghdad was the center of health care for much of the Middle East. Prior to Saddam Hussein really taking a strong hold. And when he did, but the education was going on so that your doctors were well trained. The language used in many of the teaching classes was actually English carryover from the British in Iraq.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:03] We spent quite a bit of money, according to one report by the Special Inspector for Iraq, from 2003 through 2012, the United States provided over $60 billion for the relief and reconstruction of the country. Of course, a huge portion of the funds in that figure were spent on security and in building the Iraqi security forces. But turning back to the PRT, what funds did you use for the work that you did? Did it come from a DOD Department of Defense pot? Did it come from the State Department?

Gen. Hickman: [00:15:36] The Commander's Emergency Response program that started actually in 2003, but that was over $72 million we spent. And that does sound like a lot of money, but a large part of that got the Sons of Iraq program going.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:48] I see.

Gen. Hickman: [00:15:49] When the Anbar Awakening occurred late 2006, early 2007, it spread into northwest Baghdad. And actually, when he got there, John was there. I wasn't there yet, but we were paying the salaries of these primarily Sunni, but there were Shia, also individuals to provide security for their neighborhoods. Some of that money came to that. But and I was very proud that the program worked through the multinational force. Iraq, actually, by the time I left, we actually transferred the cost of that program over to the Iraqi government. So it was even though it was expensive initially, it was sustainable. Definitely released the burden of the attacks. The other one I thought was worth bringing up. Yes. The grants we put out and I think this came out of our money and but the USAID had a lot of money for grants to John. And so these were 3 to $400 or $500 grants to businesses to get them going, get them going again and get the markets going. We spent about 3 or $4 million doing that. And for a population of a couple of million people, these markets would start thriving. If they could just get the initial goods there, they could sell them and and buy more goods to sell. So it was pretty exciting to watch that. Also, we've talked a lot about governments and economics and the services piece, but the brigade with our partners and working with the Iraqi security forces and the other officials, the civilian officials spent a tremendous amount of our time training the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police. And then we would do missions primarily at night. But they were based on evidence to go out and detain individuals that were causing the problems in the city, the insurgents, the terrorists, the militia, special groups. The brigade spent a lot of time doing that. But again, they were all individual missions, evidence based missions that had to pass through the legal system of the US military.

Amb. Bennett: [00:17:22] That was an area that the EPRT did not take part in.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:17:26] I want to turn now a little bit to measuring results. I gather you both were on a phone call with President George W Bush in 2008 to give a report. You were part of a group that reported to the president on what had been accomplished, what was working, what was not working. And I wanted to ask you, what was it like to be on a call with the president.

Gen. Hickman: [00:17:48] That was really interesting. We all went to the embassy and we had a meeting with several brigade commanders, with the embedded PRT leaders, also to go over what ideas, what things we were doing. And then we did have a call with the president, and each of us had a couple of minutes to just explain our focus and our approach. And so he was very attentive to listen to us and actually thank us, but not really us to thank us for what our troops are doing and what our members of our team are doing, which was very important, to go back and then tell our leaders and our younger soldiers that the president is interested on daily basis of what we're actually trying to accomplish here.

Amb. Bennett: [00:18:18] And he was obviously up to date, too.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:18:20] And then I gather the president went out into the Rose Garden and made several announcements about the future of our engagement in the country.

Pres. Bush: [00:18:27] "I had a series of good meetings today to discuss the situation in Iraq, including a video teleconference this morning with General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker and members of the national security team. Today, I just had a good discussion with some of our bravest citizens, members of our nation's provincial reconstruction teams and their brigade commanders in Iraq, three of whom are with me today, along with the secretary and deputy secretary. Thank you all for coming. Provincial reconstruction teams are called PRTs are a central part of the new strategy in Iraq that I announced a year ago. The strategy was built around three key elements. First was the surge of additional troops into Iraq with a new mission to protect the Iraqi people from terrorist insurgents and illegal militias. Second was a surge of operations that began in June once the troops were in place, with new offensives across the country to drive the terrorists and militias out of their strongholds. And third was a surge of provincial reconstruction teams was a civilian surge which deployed across Iraq to ensure the military progress was quickly followed up with real improvements in the daily lives of the Iraqi citizens."

Pres. Bush: [00:19:40] "PRT leaders have gotten to know the Iraqi people. They understand the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in freedom and peace. That's what they know. You know why? Because the citizens tell them just that they're helping give ordinary Iraqis confidence by rejecting the extremists and reconciling with one another so they can claim their place in a free Iraq and build a better life for their families. The men and women of our press are serving on the front lines in the war on terror. These are courageous souls. They could be doing a lot of other things, but they chose to go to the front line where they can make a difference in world peace. These people are helping improve the lives of citizens they never met before. And in so doing, they're making this country more secure and they're helping lay down a foundation for peace. And I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart. And I thank your families as well for their sacrifices they have made. We are so honored to have such courageous citizens such as yourself."

Amb. McCarthy: [00:20:38] Well, I wanted to turn now to cultural differences, cultural differences between civilians and the military. According to one study I read, which. Included a number of interviews of veterans. A frequent theme was the difference in time horizons between our diplomats and our military colleagues. In one study by John Neylon, he quotes one of the interviewees as saying, quote, "The military had their own objectives and most of them were very near term, like, what can we do to stop our soldiers from getting killed," unquote. The State Department came in and said, quote, "What can we do to give these Iraqi people the opportunity to build their capacity so when we're gone, they can continue?" And another study that we looked at from the Center for Army Lessons Learned, there's the following quote from one military officer. Quote, "The State Department wants to build Iraqi capacity. We need to get **** done." Unquote. Gentlemen, based on your experience, was this the case that there was a difference in time horizons between the work being done by civilians and the work being done by our military?

Amb. Bennett: [00:21:46] It's simply a question of short term aims that survival and the longer term aims, and that's building a country or contributing to the building of a country.

Gen. Hickman: [00:21:55] My opinion of this quote is a very ill informed leader. And there are there are those leaders in our military that were in 2003 to 2008 or so that did not experience that. The military I served with deployed early in the war. They went home for 15 months. They went back for another 12 to 14 months. They came back. They went back for another 12 to 14 months, multiple tours. And when you were back, you were not relaxed. You were continuing to study the problem, meet with their counterparts outside the military to try to understand what type of war we started and how do we want to finish this war properly. There are ill formed people who made comments like that, but I would not say that's the majority of the military, not the military that deployed multiple times.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:22:36] Did you ever see in your time in the PRT sort of this friction that took place between one saying, we're here? You know, we've got to think of the longer term and the other saying, you know, we have to stabilize the security situation in the short term and see a difference there.

Amb. Bennett: [00:22:49] Nothing that I observed in that sense. We all understood you've got to be able to get downtown. And that's a security question. And when you get downtown, you've got to be able to develop what the Iraqis wanted to do and where they aimed to go and complement that for the longer term. On the ground, there was no disagreement on what we were doing and how we were going to do it.

Gen. Hickman: [00:23:08] You have to get the security to a level to be able to operate, but then to give hope to the people because a large majority of the people are in the middle. You have the insurgents one side, you have the Iraqis. They're supporting us 100% on one side. And you have the group in the middle just waiting to see who's going to win the group in the middle. You have to give them hope and then they give hope. Then they'll start coming toward the government, toward the people who want security, want a future for Iraq, not a Iraq that's destroyed in chaos.

Amb. Bennett: [00:23:34] And also be able to stand up to the people that are coming in to do ill. One of my team members was held from going outside of a meeting he was holding with one of the local amanat with the Department of Public Works because there was a bomb going to go off. They knew about it. He didn't know about it and it did go off and he was kept inside. They were thinking of whether they were thinking of stopping the flow of funds or what. I don't think so. They were concerned because he had gotten to know them well and they were concerned about his continuing on in his job.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:24:04] Some say that the PRTs were a unique example of cooperation between our military and civilian agencies. Our military's ability to bring security, manpower and resources was joined with the ability of civilian agencies, including the Department of State, to provide political, cultural negotiation, technical expertise. How do you assess this experience and how did it change how you viewed US civil cooperation in a time of war?

Amb. Bennett: [00:24:32] It was a logical outgrowth of being together and doing the same job together. I didn't look upon it as two separate jobs. It was one job to do, and that was in Iraq. We complemented one another and how we got that job done, each using his own responsibilities to further the overall mission.

Gen. Hickman: [00:24:50] I think it shaped the Army, the future, the Army we have today and the Army of the future. After this, I made one star. I went to command the Joint Readiness Training Center and was one of the major training centers in the US for rotation to Iraq and Afghanistan. We had country teams. The State Department have enough people to provide them. They're active participants because they're busy all over the world. So but we would hire former State Department or former USAID and other agencies, build a team of former members that replicated a country team or an embedded part, whatever the right name is. We also kept that up, though, not just for the rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan. We had these country teams built for the decisive action rotations, the rotations that occur anywhere in the world, because we realize the US military does not want to go anywhere by itself. We want a partner of the State Department to be there with us all the way down to the tactical level, not just at the embassy level.

Amb. Bennett: [00:25:39] There is less and less knowledge of the military in the Department of State. We don't have mandatory national services. We we had when I was getting out there, but we do now have the opportunity to go to the command and general staff colleges, a few that I think could be expanded.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:25:57] One of the challenges we do have is the surge capacity. The Department of State is still not in any shape or form permanently funded. So when the next surge is required, we have learned some lessons. I think we referring to the State Department from the last one. But a lot of it will depend on budgeting. Whether we go back out for civilians, draw from within, because with limited resources and limited people, it's always a challenge. I do know it transformed careers of people both at the senior level and further down the chain. People truly believe that we are united in one in these circumstances. I think that has been an important element in something we wanted to underline in doing the series. Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you for participating in our series. Thank you also for the work that you did in Iraq in the Provincial Reconstruction team and also for your service beyond that, also for giving an example here in recorded form of the cooperation that is required in major theatres, both in peacetime and in war. So thank you.

Amb. Bennett: [00:27:04] Well, thank you as well. Thank you.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:27:06] This has been a new episode in the series The General and the Ambassador. The series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy with the generous support of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. You can find our podcast on all major podcast sites and also at generalAmbassadorpodcast.org.