This article gives another perspective from a US State Dept. in reference to one of the ten PRT that are active in Iraq. There were suppose to be 20 PRT in Iraq however; having trouble finding the bodies to fill those positions. Instead of civilians they fill the positions with young US Army Civil Affairs soldiers not good since your pulling soldiers from pulling triggers to drinking tea with the local Sheiks. If security does not improve then not much of the infrastructure will be built.
Five years ago, provincial reconstruction teams were a daring new concept: combined civilian-military units that engaged in humanitarian affairs in remote locations. PRTs got rave reviews from the media and for good reason. They were established in the parts of Afghanistan where security was decent, if not great, and where development was nil, giving American amateurs the chance to win over the local population by building water wells and one-room schoolhouses from scratch.
Recently the State Department has been trumpeting PRTs as a strategy for getting Iraq on its feet. Unfortunately, Iraq is not Afghanistan. Not only is security non-existent, but Iraq’s infrastructure is far more complex than Afghanistan’s. Thus, Iraq needs real experts and a supple bureaucracy—both in the Green Zone and in Washington—to help it out of its decrepitude. But both of these are lacking.
