A Deployable Civilian Force for Reconstruction and Stabilization: S/CRS and the Civilian Response Corps
By Thomas G. Reich
Men from the town of Kalam form a chain to quickly unload a U.S. Army Chinook helicopter that has delivered humanitarian assistance and pick up victims of the flood in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan, on August 10, 2010. NATO Photo.
Introduction
Failing and post-conflict states pose one of the greatest national and international security challenges of our day, threatening vulnerable populations, their neighbors, our allies, and ourselves. Struggling states can provide breeding grounds for terrorism, crime, trafficking, and humanitarian catastrophes, and can destabilize an entire region. Experience shows that managing conflict, particularly internal conflict, is not a passing phenomenon. It has become a mainstream part of foreign policy.
Since 2005, the U.S. Government has recognized that the complex challenges posed by ungoverned spaces require a comprehensive U.S. Government response, necessitating the coordination of the civilian and military sectors in order to leverage the full spectrum of U.S. Government resources to meet its goals in reconstruction and stabilization. In 2004, the U.S. Government created the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) to organize the U.S. Government’s civilian response to such crises. Specifically, S/CRS is designated to “lead, coordinate and institutionalize U.S. Government civilian capacity to prevent or prepare for post-conflict situations, and to help stabilize and reconstruct societies in transition from conflict or civil strife, so they can reach a sustainable path toward peace, democracy and a market economy.” The S/CRS Coordinator reports directly to the Secretary of State; Ambassador John E. Herbst has served as the S/CRS Coordinator from 2006 to date.
In December 2005, President Bush approved National Security Policy Directive 44 (NSPD-44) which laid out the responsibilities of the office and set the stage for Title XVI of Public Law 110-447 (The Reconstruction and Stabilization Civilian Management Act of 2008), which codified these responsibilities and authorized the creation of a Civilian Response Corps (CRC). The Department of Defense issued its own directive, 3000.05, setting the importance of operations in support of civilian reconstruction and stabilization operations at the same priority as combat operations.
S/CRS Structure and Composition
S/CRS is a State Department office, but it is interagency in both character and function. It is staffed by personnel from eight U.S. Government agencies, allowing it to build upon and draw on existing skills and expertise, and more easily reach back to interagency partners.
Currently, S/CRS staff come from the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Office of the Secretary of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency, Army Corps of Engineers, Joint Forces Command, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Treasury Department.
The principal component offices within S/CRS are, Civilian Response Operations, Planning, and Conflict Prevention.
Civilian Response Operations is responsible for the strategy development, recruitment, training, equipping, deployment, and coordination of the CRC.
The Planning Office leads the planning for and the conduct of highly complex and multi-faceted US Government reconstruction and stabilization operations in specific countries at risk of, in, or emerging from conflict. Planning’s Doctrine Unit takes the lead in devising a common operating doctrine for all civilian agencies in reconstruction and stabilization missions. It also takes the lead for S/CRS in joint doctrine development, planning, and exercises with the U.S. military.
(CP)
Conflict Prevention coordinates interagency processes to identify states at risk of instability, and lead interagency planning to prevent or mitigate conflict. In addition, it coordinates preventative strategies with foreign countries, international and regional organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and private sector entities.
Because S/CRS’s mission is not only to respond to ongoing crises and instability but also to prevent emerging conflict from happening, the organization, through Conflict Prevention, manages the interagency process for assigning 1207 funds under the DOD account. This has been a $350 million program to provide support to civilian-led, whole-of-government projects that address instability in countries of critical relevance to the United States.
To date, S/CRS has initiated 25 1207 projects in 23 countries. In 2009, S/CRS used 1207 funding and to address the root causes of conflict in countries such as Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco, Paraguay, Sri Lanka, and Uganda. Indeed, one of the most salient strengths of S/CRS is this ability to engage in dedicated planning, conflict assessment, and mitigation activities that seek to reduce the need for future military interventions.
The Civilian Response Corps
The heart of S/CRS is the CRC, a rapidly-deployable pool of qualified, trained, and ready-to-deploy civilian professionals to support overseas reconstruction and stabilization operations. Additionally, the CRC can reinforce regular standing staff in Washington and overseas in support of reconstruction and stabilization operations in countries or regions that are at risk of, in, or are in transition from conflict or civil strife.
Because no single U.S. Government entity has all of the relevant expertise to deal with these threats, the Civilian Response Corps is a partnership of eight departments and agencies: the Department of StateUSAID) Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, and Department of the Treasury.
To assure member preparedness for their mission, the CRC has a set of robust readiness requirements. Every active member must attend at least eight weeks of training before being deemed operationally ready, and standby members must complete at least two weeks of training before being considered for deployment. In 2009, S/CRS created a training curriculum with the help of its interagency partners that is very similar to the rigorous training required by the military. While this type of training is a new concept for the civilian U.S. Government sector, these courses are a key part of preparing CRC members for planning, assessment, security, and military coordination in the field.
The CRC – which received Congressional funding to begin recruiting and training its members early in 2009 -- consists of two components:
- Active Component (CRC-A) officers are full-time CRC employees whose specific job is to train for, prepare, and staff reconstruction, stabilization and conflict prevention efforts. They are able to deploy within 48 hours and focus on critical initial interagency functions such as assessment, planning, management, administrative, logistical, and resource mobilization. Funding has been provided by Congress to build up to an initial strength of 264 CRC-A officers; 78 were on strength at the end of 2009.
- Standby Component (CRC-S) officers are full-time employees of their federal government departments who have specialized expertise useful in reconstruction and stabilization operations and are available to deploy within 30 days in the event of a reconstruction and/or stabilization operation. The goal is to have 2,000 federal employees registered and trained as CRC-S members. 554 were on strength at the end of 2009.
In addition, a potential third CRC component is envisioned, although not yet funded by Congress. These would be members of the Reserve Component (CRC-R), who would be U.S. citizens (not current federal employees) who committed to be available within 45-60 days of call-up to serve as U.S. Government temporary employees in support of overseas reconstruction and stabilization operations. These Reserve officers would possess specialized skill sets not normally found in the federal government, but considered critical to efforts to bring “normalcy” to countries in conflict or post-conflict situations. Reserve members would be drawn from the private sector and state and local governments across the United States, with specialized expertise in a range of processes necessary in a transition from crisis, including policing and rule of law, infrastructure development, economic stabilization, state and local governance, agricultural production, and provision of basic services.
The CRC is intended to be deployable either in conjunction with a U.S. or international military deployment, or more independently. The CRC warehouses armored vehicles, portable voice and data communications equipment (including satellite dishes), armored vests and helmets, and a variety of other personal equipment to support CRC deployments in the field for months at a time. As the CRC builds to its initial authorized strength of 2264 total personnel by the end of 2010, it will need additional equipment as well.
International Cooperation
In no small part, S/CRS came into existence in response to U.S. experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and lessons learned demonstrating the need for improved coordination between civilian organizations and the military. However, the U.S. has not been alone in seeking to develop a rapidly deployable civilian “force” for stabilization missions. A number of other countries, primarily in Europe, have either created similar organizations or are considering doing so. Notable among these are Canada’s Stabilization and Reconstruction Task Force and the U.K.’s Stabilization Unit. The U.S. actively dialogues with these international partners to further development of internationally-recognized operating doctrine, best practices, and training concepts. S/CRS sends personnel to training courses offered by its international partners and welcomes their representatives to its training courses in the U.S.
Civil-Military Coordination
Since its inception, S/CRS has benefited from close cooperation of the Department of Defense, in particular the U.S. Army. As its regional combatant commanders strengthen their capabilities to support reconstruction and stabilization missions, DOD recognizes that it needs an interagency-coordinated civilian partner in such operations. As a result, DOD has assisted directly the development of S/CRS doctrine, planning concepts, and operational best practices. S/CRS personnel have participated in several training exercises with the U.S. military and our international partners. In an example of one such exercise, in 2009 at US European Commandin Stuttgart, an exercise called Austere Challenge, over 50 S/CRS and CRC members from across the government participated. The Army’s field manual for operations in reconstruction and stabilization situations was co-authored by S/CRS; and S/CRS maintains at least one student in the Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.
Recent Deployments and Experience
Last year was the official first year of the Civilian Response Corps
Over the course of 2009, S/CRS deployed over 170 CRC members and headquarters personnel to countries around the world – in Africa, Central America, and Central Asia – in support of stabilization missions. Among these deployments, CRC members:
- Wrote the first civilian-military integrated campaign plan for Afghanistan, including civilian-military operational plans for all Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan, as well as Regional Command East and Regional Command South;
- Deployed a 12-member integrated team for six months to Kabul to lead the U.S. Embassy’s effort to assist in preparations for the 2009 Afghanistan presidential election. Among the team’s accomplishments was a strengthening of the resources and capabilities of the Electoral Complaints Commission, which was critical in supporting the Electoral Complaint Commission’s investigation and adjudication of alleged fraud.
- Deployed to the regional combatant commands at AFRICOM, SOUTHCOM, and CENTCOM to work on signal planning issues and to further expand coordination with the military.
- Deployed 13 CRC members to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) following up on Secretary Clinton’s visit there last August. They performed interagency sector assessments on economic governance, anti-corruption, food security, security sector reform, and sexual and gender-based violence. This will influence our government’s assistance strategy in the DRC.
With the standup of the CRC and a steadily accelerating tempo of deployments, one could say that S/CRS has now achieved “initial operational capability.” But as S/CRS Coordinator John Herbst noted recently, just as DOD constantly develops its capacity to meet evolving threats, those on the civilian side must also strive to continually improve their efforts and strengthen our capacities. Herbst also commented, “Implementation of Goldwater-Nichols by the military, a parallel capacity to what we’re trying to accomplish here, took 10 years. With this timeline and perspective in mind, it is clear that we in S/CRS and the Civilian Response Corps are just getting started.”
Thomas Reich was a career Foreign Service officer for 29 years at the US Department of State, retiring in May 2010. His final Foreign Service assignment was as Deputy Director for Planning in S/CRS. He served in Afghanistan in 2009 as deputy chief of the US election assistance team. Reich joined BAE Systems, Inc. in June 2010 as Director, International Government Relations. This article reflects his views alone.
|
