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Stability Operations
New Civilian Force To Conduct Stability Operations
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By Stew Magnuson
The State Department is in the middle of building its new Civilian Response Corps, a 250-member team of nonmilitary personnel who can be flown into foreign locales within 48 hours to carry out reconstruction and stability operations.
The one-time pilot project is now fully funded at about $100 million per year and will have a new facility near Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia, said Jon Benton, acting principal deputy at the office of the coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization, at the State Department.
“We’re building something really new on the civilian side,” Benton said at a National Defense Industrial Association stability operations conference.
The force will draw personnel from the Departments of State, Justice, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Treasury, Commerce, Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
It is intended to be a “scalable force of experts who are deployable, self-sufficient, fully trained and fully equipped for reconstruction and stabilization operations,” said Benton.
The Defense Department is not included because it is meant to be a civilian program.
“I would say that the U.S. military continues to be our biggest supporter in every respect,” Benton noted.
The idea for an expeditionary force of civilians sprung from the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, when critics charged that the U.S. government was ill-prepared to “win the peace.” Some in the military also complained that they were being asked to do too much in areas where they didn’t necessarily have expertise, such as reestablishing the rule of law in the courts, setting up governments, and making sure basic services such as hospitals, sewers and electrical grids are functioning.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been a vocal proponent of boosting USAID and the State Department’s ability to assist the military in nation building. The European Union and Canada already have established civilian response units and the United States was seen as lagging.
The hiring process has been slow, Benton and other officials admitted. There will be 250 fulltime members who will train and participate in exercises while awaiting possible deployments. Once a call for their services is sent out, members may be asked to fly out within 48 hours and be prepared to deploy for up to a year.
Only 66 members of the team had been hired by September. The corps expects to be fully staffed by the end of 2010, he said.
In addition, the corps is recruiting from the eight agencies a 550-member reserve force whose personnel can be called upon when needed, he said. There are also plans to include 2,000 civilians who can be placed on “standby,” but there is no funding yet from Congress to move that plan forward, he said.
“We’re building an expeditionary force and trying to develop a more expeditionary mentality,” Benton said.
One of the concerns is the “self-sufficient” part of the equation.
Corps members will undergo safety and first-aid training. The organization has purchased 20 armored vehicles and will have its own communications gear, Benton said.
But what happens if civilians are killed in the line of duty?
The rules of engagement for the corps are going to have to be carefully examined, said William Schneider, former chairman of the Defense Science Board. For example, when and under what circumstances will the corps be sent into dangerous areas?
“The sooner they get there, the more effective the military operations are likely to be,” he said.
However, the public may have a low tolerance for civilian deaths. Soldiers are expected to be in harm’s way, and there is also some acceptance that State Department and intelligence officials who serve overseas are at risk of death or serious injury. But as for other civilians, “people are more uncomfortable with it,” Schneider said.
In October, the Taliban launched a suicide attack against United Nations personnel who were living in a guarded Kabul compound. They killed eight, including six staff members.
Adrian R. Lewis, a retired Army major and professor of history at the University of Kansas, pointed to the Blackwater bodyguards who were killed by gunmen in 2004 in Fallujah, Iraq. Pictures of their mutilated bodies hung from a bridge were seen around the world.
“The only force capable of doing these things is the U.S. Army,” Lewis said of large-scale stability operations. The response corps can lend a helping hand, but their assistance with nation building will be limited, he said.
“You don’t want to send them into say, Fallujah in 2005, or parts of Afghanistan today,” he said.
If five or six members are killed in similar attacks, “Then they will say, ‘Where was the Army? Why don’t we have those guys in there doing that stuff?’”
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