Postwar Office Fights Battle for Funding

After U.S.-led forces crushed Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq in the spring of 2003, the job of restoring civil life in the shattered country fell first to mid-level military officers who were eager, but ill-equipped, for the task.

The resulting chaos underscored more than a lack of Pentagon planning for managing postwar Iraq. It also revealed a critical void in America’s overall political arsenal: a dearth of skills in planning for and dealing with the daunting task of lifting shattered nations out of the debris of armed conflict and putting them back together again.

However, a new office established in the State Department to help plug that gap has landed in a funding battle on Capitol Hill that could threaten its future.

Formally known as the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization, it was set up by the Bush administration last summer and has so far operated with a small staff on funds borrowed from other programs. It has begun to focus on its prime role -- coordinating, then leading, emergency U.S. missions to stabilize an area of recent conflict far faster than in the past.

The office hopes to get a quick jump in part by identifying vulnerable countries in advance, planning how to deal with a variety of potential disaster scenarios, then, as soon as security permits, heading the response on the part of several government civilian and military agencies. A swift reaction, veterans of such crises say, would help limit the humanitarian and political damage in a stricken country, reduce suffering and achieve stability faster.

U.S. officials who deal with such issues also note that the history of the post-Cold War era has shown America often finds itself helping stabilize failed states. In the last 15 years, they note, the United States -- whatever the initial cause of turmoil -- has become involved in 17 major post-conflict situations, including those in Haiti, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

At one level, the operation enjoys the enthusiastic support of private sector experts who deal with emergency international relief efforts and members of Congress who are active on foreign affairs issues.

But federal budgetary pressures have caused some on Capitol Hill to question whether existing agencies could do the same job. Others ask why, with all the U.S. commitments, money should be spent planning for problems that have yet to occur.

“With the budget already deep in the red, it’s tough to get money for a crisis that hasn’t happened yet,” said a House Appropriations Committee staff member who, as is customary among congressional staffers, declined to be identified by name.

Last month, the House voted to slash the administration’s request for funds needed to keep the new office operating through the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Instead of the $17.2 million that had been proposed, the House decided to give it just $3 million.

It has fared better in the Senate, which voted to restore the full request after appropriators had cut it in half. House and Senate conferees are expected to meet later this week to resolve their differences over that and other aspects of the $80.7 billion in additional money the administration has sought for its emergency 2005 war funding.

Advocates see the office’s work as an important component of U.S. security in a post-Sept. 11 world in which little-known and far-off states can be -- and have been -- used as springboards for attacks on the United States.

The head of the new office, veteran career diplomat Carlos Pascual, argued that this faster response would not only reduce potential national security risks to the U.S. but could also save money.

“If we’d been able to get on the ground faster in Iraq and, with that improved ability, managed to create a level of stability that enabled us to withdraw one [U.S. Army] division one month earlier, we’d have saved $1.2 billion,” he said in an interview.

By contrast, Pascual said, his office would need $24 million to operate, plus $100 million to fund emergency responses, for the 2006 fiscal year. The office, he said, would draw expertise from State Department bureaus, the Agency for International Development, the Pentagon, the CIA, the Treasury Department and other agencies.

Those who deal with so-called failed states say that past U.S. operations launched to fix them have often been slow and ill-planned.

“We keep reinventing a flat tire every time we do it,” said Peter Gantz, who handles peacekeeping issues for Refugees International, a Washington group that offers emergency humanitarian relief. “What we do get right is due more to dumb luck and good people than anything else. We have to coordinate these responses and this office will do that.”

Some have called for more active lobbying on behalf of the office by the administration.

“The White House truly should view that as one of its major foreign policy priorities and should use its political clout to obtain the necessary resources from Congress,” said Mark Schneider, senior vice president with the International Crisis Group, an independent, nonprofit organization based in Washington that deals with conflict resolution globally.

Many of those involved with private sector humanitarian assistance efforts have expressed frustration at what they see as a lack of greater State Department lobbying for the new office on Capitol Hill. But senior officials in the department argue that the effort has been substantial.

“Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice has been unequivocal in her support,” said R. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of State for political affairs. “We cannot allow failed states to become a base for threats against U.S. and global security.”

After the reconstructions of war-torn Japan and Germany in the 1940s, the U.S. has tended to shy away from the politically difficult task of nation-building. During the early post-Cold War era, a certain division of labor developed within the Atlantic alliance in which America, with its superior military power, would lead military operations in places such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, then turn the job of civil reconstruction over to the Europeans.

With key European allies shunning any role in postwar Iraq, the shortcomings of U.S. capabilities to manage post-conflict turmoil became obvious. The consequences of failing to rebuild nations in turmoil already had been driven home by Al Qaeda’s ability to use war-weary Afghanistan as a base from which to plan and prepare the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa and the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We have to train people to do these initial tasks, but we also have to build institutions,” Pascual said.

Times staff writer Sonni Efron contributed to this report.