The United States can take several steps to ensure that it has
personnel with the right skills serving in Iraq.
All of our efforts in Iraq, military and civilian, are handicapped by
Americans' lack of language and cultural understanding. Our embassy of
1,000 has 33 Arabic speakers, just six of whom are at the level of
fluency. In a conflict that demands effective and efficient
communication with Iraqis, we are often at a disadvantage. There are
still far too few Arab language--proficient military and civilian
officers in Iraq, to the detriment of the U.S. mission.
Civilian agencies also have little experience with complex overseas
interventions to restore and maintain order--stability
operations--outside of the normal embassy setting. The nature of the
mission in Iraq is unfamiliar and dangerous, and the United States has
had great difficulty filling civilian assignments in Iraq with sufficient
numbers of properly trained personnel at the appropriate rank.
RECOMMENDATION 73: The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense,
and the Director of National Intelligence should accord the highest
possible priority to professional language proficiency and cultural
training, in general and specifically for U.S. officers and personnel
about to be assigned to Iraq.
RECOMMENDATION 74: In the short term, if not enough civilians
volunteer to fill key positions in Iraq, civilian agencies must fill
those positions with directed assignments. Steps should be taken to
mitigate familial or financial hardships posed by directed
assignments, including tax exclusions similar to those authorized for
U.S. military personnel serving in Iraq.
RECOMMENDATION 75: For the longer term, the United States government
needs to improve how its constituent agencies--Defense, State, Agency
for International Development, Treasury, Justice, the intelligence
community, and others--respond to a complex stability operation like
that represented by this decade's Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the
previous decade's operations in the Balkans. They need to train for,
and conduct, joint operations across agency boundaries, following the
Goldwater-Nichols model that has proved so successful in the U.S.
armed services.
RECOMMENDATION 76: The State Department should train personnel to
carry out civilian tasks associated with a complex stability operation
outside of the traditional embassy setting. It should establish a
Foreign Service Reserve Corps with personnel and expertise to provide
surge capacity for such an operation. Other key civilian agencies,
including Treasury, Justice, and Agriculture, need to create similar
technical assistance capabilities.