 Good morning. I want to thank you all for coming this morning. We have a really good crowd. My name is Bob Pareto. I'm the Director of the Security Sector Governance Program here at USIP, and it's my high honor to introduce the Executive Vice President of the US Institute of Peace, Tara Sonnechan. Thank you and good morning. I'm amazed to look out at 10 o'clock in the morning and all of these incredible experts. It's not the sexiest title of the topic, so when I see that we're doing the first meeting of the Security Sector Governance Working Group, I think, ooh, can we compete with all that's out there? But obviously those in the room and those joining us online recognize really the significance and the vital role that this issue plays in everything that we all do related to fragile states and conflict zones. And so I want to begin by thanking Bob for organizing this and putting it together. You're part of a very exciting venture because within the Institute we have decided that this topic of security sector governance needs to be elevated and really made significant. And I see some heads shaking, so we're going to make this early next year part of a real center of innovation and really begin to convene and network and put this subject on the map. The work you're doing is critical and we understand that this is something that requires our energies, our research sources, our research and our talents. So I am really delighted and I also want to thank DoD for its ongoing contributions to this program which enables us to elevate it to a central part of our center. I don't need to tell all of you that in May 2010 President Obama said in the National Security Strategy, specifically on page 27 of that document that the United States must improve its ability to strengthen the capacity of states at risk of conflict by improving their security forces and the institutions providing administrative oversight while promoting respect for human rights and the rule of law. We followed that up a month later with an international conference that really looked at the state of the art for reforming institutions responsible for supervising this whole security sector in conflict states. There were many representatives for that event from the UN, NGOs, regional organizations, governments, research institutes and out of that work, today's meeting considers one of the key products from that conference and that's the USIP special report by one of our guests, Greg Hermsmeyer. It's on US approaches to security sector reform. I had a chance to review it in its early stage and it is a first class document. So I think you're going to enjoy hearing more about that and more about our distinguished panel of experts convened today on this subject. Very delighted that Karen could make time to come over. It's not easy to get out of the daily grind to have a little time to reflect and I'm grateful to our other experts and guests and grateful really to Bob Perito for putting this together and so I turn it respectfully back to our moderator. Thank you so much for all being here. Thank you very much, Sharon. Thank you for being with us this morning. I just want to draw attention to two reports that are on the table outside. As Tara mentioned, we have Greg Hermsmeyer's new report called Institutionalizing Security Sector Reform and another one by Eric Shea called Realism and Pragmatism in Security Sector Development. This is sort of more like an interpretive essay on the current state of the concept of security sector governance. So two brand new reports, I think, really interesting reading. The concept of security sector reform is based on the linkage between security, good governance, and development. These positive end states are achieved through the theory or under the theory through a whole government approach that brings together the talents, expertise, and energy of a range of agencies. This approach has been endorsed in U.S. government pronouncements but seldom in practice. In Iraq and Afghanistan, under pressure, the U.S. has reverted to training and equip programs conducted by a single agency or directed by a single agency, the Department of Defense. Recently, the administration has produced a series of new policy documents, the National Security Strategy, the Presidential Directive on Global Development, and hopefully in the near future, the QDDR. So the question is, will these new documents change the way the U.S. conducts security sector assistance and promote security sector reform? This morning, we have a very distinguished panel of experts to address this and related questions. You all have their bios, so I will dispense with long-involved introductions, but I will introduce them briefly in the order that they will speak, and I'll ask them to come up to the podium because it works much better with the camera in the back. We are online today. There is an active chat going on for people that are watching this literally around the country and around the globe, and we will be interfacing with the people who are with us online, and they will be able to ask questions at the end. Our first speaker this morning is Colonel Greg Hermsmeyer, who recently retired from the United States Air Force. His last assignment was Director of Partnership Policy and Strategy in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. As you can see, as you will see or have seen in reading Greg's report, he has an insider's view and an encyclopedic knowledge of the U.S. government's organizations in practice and SSR. Our second speaker is Karen Hanrahan, who is the Director of the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. As you heard already, she's one of the busiest people in Washington today, and we are very grateful that she's taken the time to be here this morning. Our third speaker, Julie Warbel, is the Senior Security Advisor on Security Reform for the U.S. Agency for International Development, probably the most knowledgeable person, and that's saying something on the panel this morning in terms of the breadth of her knowledge and her involvement with this topic, and we're again grateful for Julie to be here. And finally, William Durch, Senior Associate and Director of the Future of Peace Operations Program, Stimson Center. Stimson has worked on SSR programs for the United Nations. Bill is a keen observer of Washington, and we've asked him to listen to the other presentations and drop on his considerable background in this area to provide us with observations and comments. So it should be a lively morning. When we're finished, we'll open the floor to questions and discussion. This is a very distinguished group of folks this morning. We're grateful you're here, and so let's begin. Great. Good morning, and thanks to the U.S. Institute of Peace for the opportunity to publish the report, as well as to speak to you today with such esteemed panelists. Thanks especially to Bob Rito, who's been a good friend and partner in moving the SSR agenda forward over the last three years or so that we've worked together. I'm explaining why I wrote the report and what I hope to achieve with it before I get into some of the report specifics. As Bob mentioned, I worked before I retired from the military in OSD policy. I was there for about four years and worked on a number of initiatives involving stability operations, building partner capacity, security assistance, security cooperation, and those included running the Section 1207 Security and Stabilization program within DOD, legislative and budget agenda for authorities and resources on the Hill. It was also responsible for SSR policy. In the SSR, I found a common thread that linked together most of my work conceptually for the first time. And one of the highlights of my time in OSD involved working with the grassroots efforts to put SSR on the U.S. government policy agenda by an informal SSR working group. Its members are well-represented here today and Julie Werbel and other key contributors I see around the audience. But regrettably, the working group lost some momentum after the producing what I thought was a pinnacle 3D security sector reform statement in January of 2009. And I regret that we never developed as a working group a vision for what the whole government approach to security sector reform might look like. My report was then to offer a vision of what a whole government framework for SSR might look like and offer some options for getting there. The second purpose of my report was to defend the use of the term reform in security sector reform. In the not too distant past the security sector reform was often seen as a set of donor-driven activities that one country does to another country. I think the key to the security sector reform concept is to see reform as something that a country does to itself for itself and sometimes with outside assistance. SSR offers a roadmap for change management as part of a broader democratic process that is essential to good governance in any country. And I like to highlight some very good examples within the US government context. For instance, the 1986 Goldwater Nicholas Act, reformed military command structure, the reform of the US intelligence sector under the director of national intelligence, and the consolidation of border control customs, Coast Guard, and other critical security functions under the Department of Homeland Security after 9-11 are all examples of security sector reform works in progress in the US context. So today the term SSR is increasingly accepted by donors and aid recipients alike as well as by the United Nations set up its own SSR unit and by the OECD which has really led the charge in keeping SSR on the international agenda. In the US government, unfortunately, SSR has become increasingly supplanted by a new term of art, security sector assistance. And SSR is recognized as one objective of security sector assistance which includes a broader set of activities including training and equipment and support for US allies and coalition partners for actual military operations. The problem as I see it is that the current initiatives that center on security sector assistance, including one I'll talk to you about about pooled funding focus too much on the way assistance is delivered, not enough on the desired ends of capacity and reform. There's somebody who's been closely associated with efforts to build partner capacity over the last few years. I would argue that reform which involves transformation of individual attitudes and behaviors and relationships at the most basic level is even more important at the end of the day than that capacity. Without reform, US assistance risk being wasted or worse, we risk helping partners build more effective security forces that may not be bound by the rule of law. That may not be legitimate in the eyes of local populations or sustainable in the long run. Now that I've made my plug to remember the R and SSR, let me shift to some of the key points of the paper. To reach the vision for a whole-of-government approach to SSR, a number of key steps are needed in five areas or bins that I identify in the paper. Those areas are inter-agency policy guidance, inter-agency assessment, planning, programming, and evaluation, flexible funding, inter-agency structures, and human capital. For the US government to effectively support the transformation of a partner's security sector, clear policy guidelines are needed. Common lexicon is needed for sharing, creating a shared understanding of terms and concepts among civilian and military stakeholders. Guidance is needed to help clarify organizational roles and missions and defining goals and objectives for assistance. The 3D SSR paper I mentioned was the first attempt to offer such guidance, although it was never formally recognized as a policy statement. It wasn't important first step and it directly informed a number of key documents and processes especially within DOD and its planning documents, but at the end of the day it was limited to the 3Ds. It was only signed out by the State Department, DOD and USCID. And also it was adopted literally in the last days of the Bush administration and did not reflect the views of the new Obama administration. Fortunately, work is being done right now on a presidential policy directive for security sector assistance. And when this was completed, this PPD would represent the position of the current Obama administration. And even more importantly it would be directive and binding on all U.S. government agencies and departments, not just the 3Ds. And it will also hopefully define more clearly the roles, missions and responsibilities of the organizations as well as the goals and objectives of U.S. assistance to our partners. While this step is important, again I would argue that an opportunity will be missed if the PPD does not emphasize the reform imperative along with the need for more efficient delivery of security assistance. The second bin that I offer is Interagency Assessment Planning Programming and Evaluation, which is a long way of saying strategic planning. I wanted to call out each of the individual components because we have strengths and weaknesses in each area. Ideally, comprehensive needs assessments would provide the foundation for all U.S. government decisions on programs and priorities for assistance. And to be comprehensive, these assessments would also include in addition to a look at operational capacity, an analysis of political context, political will of those in power, their incentives for change, attitudes of security providers who the potential spoilers might be and entry points for donors. A thorough needs assessment can help the baseline, which is critical for future programming as well as monitoring and evaluation. Without knowing where you start from, you really can't measure progress or impact very effectively. Unfortunately, assessments of major deficiency in the international SSR community as well as within our government. As a consequence, programs and activities are often developed without a thorough understanding of local conditions and priorities and often end up being driven by donor supply rather than by local need. Nonetheless, the U.S. government has made some important contributions in this area in terms of tools and methodologies. Julie has helped to lead efforts to develop an interagency security sector assessment framework that's an overarching tool that looks across the entire security sector. Another tool has been developed for sub-elements of the security sector including a maritime SSR framework, the criminal justice sector assessment rating tool developed by state INL as of last Friday, the Defense Sector Assessment Rating Tool which was just released by RANDA Corporation and was sponsored by the Department of Defense. The next step is to systematize the use of these tools and other analytic instruments to help establish baselines for following plans and programs. Informed by a comprehensive assessment, the U.S. government should help partners design long-term national strategies and SSR programs and plans that are tailored to their unique context. Activities should then be prioritized and phased, resources aligned and linkages made among security actors in an integrated plan to perform. My focus in the paper and my presentation is on SSR from a Washington inside the Beltway perspective. It's important to remember that planning should support the activities and expertise in the field and in the country team as well as being responsive to top-down imperatives by senior leaders in Washington. Finally, planning should recognize that SSR is really a long-term process and should be viewed in terms of multiple years or even decades to come to fruition. In my experience, SSR planning unfortunately tends to be reactive rather than preventative and the responses depend to a great extent on personalities for success. Planning processes generally feature more of a year-to-year rather than a long-term multi-year perspective. The US government lacks a clear process for determining a whole of government priorities and developing comprehensive plans for supporting SSR strategies. One of my recommendations in the report is that the US government build a framework, process and procedures to joint the plan and program SSR activities and build on existing planning frameworks such as the mission strategic plans and the DOD combatant commanders the theater campaign plans and integrate those in a whole government manner. Evaluation is critically important, but I think of all the elements, this is probably the most lacking. Measuring the success and failure of SSR planning and programming is critical for making mature adjustments to plans and programs and evaluating whether assistance is having the desired impact and outcomes that we're planning for. Evaluation is also important to assessing whether a program should be continued at all. Measurement is especially important in a time such as that we face now with the mounting resource constraints. Unfortunately, the lack of systematic and meaningful evaluation of program impact may be the most glaring deficiency among the international SSR community. To the extent that evaluations performed at all, it tends to focus on outputs such as numbers of troops trained, numbers of dollars spent and amounts of equipment purchased rather than on the outcomes of those investments. Steps such as DOD's recent effort to set up an office of Security Cooperation Assessments are important steps in filling this gap, but they remain fairly modest in scale. So I recommend that the U.S. government stakeholders develop and build on efforts such as the DOD Office of Security Cooperation Assessments and leverage existing evaluation tools that have been developed by other stakeholders such as the Safer World Organization and begin a more systematic process of evaluation and effectiveness impact evaluations. And since I wrote the paper in the last couple weeks, the Office of Management and Budget has put out guidance that calls for program evaluations across government and that establishes $100 million fund to support managers who want to conduct evaluations of their own programs. So this is another potential source of resources for evaluating the impact of SSR funding. The fourth element I wanted to highlight is flexible funding. As I mentioned earlier, much of the recent focus on security sector assistance has been on funding mechanisms available to decision makers and how those should be aligned between DOD and the State Department and how those might be made more effective. So officials need to have access to sufficient funds. They also need access to sufficiently flexible funds. In this case, quality of the funds and the mechanisms is as important as the quantity of the dollars. A growing number of governments, especially in the UK and Canada, have established flexible cross-departmental programming instruments for SSR as well as for broader stabilization and conflict prevention missions. At their best, these instruments actually incentivize coordination and result in more integrated programs and better outcomes of activities. In recent years, DOD and the State Department have sought new authorities such as the Section 12.6 Global Training Equip Program and Section 12.7 Security and Stabilization Program to help create more flexible and responsive tools for jointly addressing challenges. These have marked a major advance in that they required projects for the first time to be jointly formulated and approved by both secretaries. As many of you know, Secretary Gates last year proposed Secretary Clinton adopting the UK's pooled funding mechanism in approach to the US government context as a step to help institutionalize these dual-key authorities like 12.6 and 12.7 and to move to the next level. An interagency working group has been working on that proposal over the summer, but it remains unclear what shape the final proposal will take and when that will be issued in the form of a legislative proposal on the Hill. Others in the room I think know more about that than I do on that topic at this point. But in the paper I recommended that the Obama Administration seek congressional authority for a single pilot funding pool that would pool resources from State, DOD and USAID in a way that would align training quick programs more closely with institutional building and human capacity development programs that would balance assistance appropriately among the elements of the security sector. The fourth element that I wanted to touch upon is interagency structures. To go along with flexible funding instruments, many donor governments have responded to today's challenges by creating hybrid structures that institutionalize whole government approaches to SSR in layering diagrams as well as in theory for a security sector reform, conflict prevention and stabilization. These sorts of structures have been used to coordinate policy, manage pool funding mechanisms as well as to support operations in the field. At the policy level the SSR working group was one example of an interagency coordination structure that originated from the grassroots level. That work has been superseded by the Security Sector Assistance Interagency Policy Committee which is a new more formal coordinating body responsible for developing the Presidential Policy Directive on Security Sector Assistance. One of my goals was to make that permanent once the PPD is actually released to continue to provide a forum for vetting and reviewing policy decisions. To manage the conflict pool in the UK, the British Government and DFID, Foreign Common Wealth Office and MOD have established a common governance structure that facilitates joint decisions on funding recommendations and priorities. The conflict pool requires personnel from each agency to work together on a single staff. And FCO and MOD actually assign individuals to form part of a DFID-led virtual secretariat that essentially oversees the pool. I would add as an aside that the UK Government has recently completed a review of the new UK Government has completed a review of resources and budgets and has actually decided to build up the conflict pool as an example of best practice within the UK Government at a time when the rest of the Government faces major budget cuts. So to standardize multiyear planning and programming for Security Sector Assistance as well as to manage to pool the account within the US Government, I propose that an inter-agency Security Sector Assistance Plans and Programs Office be established within the State Department to put Secundis representing their own departments and agencies such as DoD USAID as well as Justice in the Department of Homeland Security. Many governments have also created structures to operationalize the deployable whole Government capacity for SSR conflict prevention stabilization in the field. Often, again as is the case with the stabilization unit in the UK, a single organization does all these things. So standing inter-agency units such as these actually help to institutionalize whole Government preparation and training rapid response and unity of effort for these missions. The US Government has developed a standing deployable capacity for stabilization and reconstruction missions in recent years with the creation of SCRS, coordinator for reconstruction stabilization at the State Department, and with the formation of the Civilian Response Corps which is overseen by SCRS. I would argue though that SCRS is not really a whole Government organization in that it only has one component. It's not a civil entity with only one DOD detail as a military advisor. SCRS I think also suffers from having limited SSR capacity. So my report recommends remodeling SCRS or a successor organization along the lines of the UK stabilization unit and making it a truly whole Government entity by integrating both active duty military and reserve military personnel as well as individuals from the civilian expeditionary workforce and DOD civilians as well as military folks. I also recommend expanding the reserve SSR capacity within the CRC to help develop and build that cadre. Well the final area I wanted to highlight is the human capital. That means human capital from the US Government. As SSR becomes more mainstreamed greater professionalization will be required on the part of those who make policy and those who design programs. SSR work requires a mix of technical experts who in such diverse areas as governments policing resource management as well as generalists who are experts at integrating activities across a broad range of activities and navigating complex political and bureaucratic interests. So integrators of SSR strategies, programs and activities also need grounding and concepts from institution building to change management to strategic planning. Anybody who works in the SSR arena should have an appreciation for the country and the regional context of the partner. So I recommended as my final recommendation we'll talk about today is the creation of a sub IPC on training and education underneath the security sector assistance IPC that would be focused on developing the US government human capital military and civilian officials at every level including and maybe especially at the senior level who are involved in making policy or design programs related to a partner security sector. Well I want to hear what the other panelists have to say so I'm going to wrap it up there but I'd be happy to go into more detail on specific findings recommendations and report after the discussion but as we move on and move into the discussion period later I'd welcome your comments that I talked about for a whole government approach. Are these the right ones? Did I miss any? What would you add or change? So with that I will turn it back to Bob or go right to Karen. We'll go to Karen, thank you. Thanks Greg. And thanks to Bob and to USIP both for hosting this event and for continuing to host events on security sector reform and to advancing the discussion on security and justice sector reform for so many years. I always struggle when I'm asked to talk about security and justice sector reform because I feel that it's hard these days to say something new. I feel like we've been discussing some of the same issues for years for a very long time. We still struggle to achieve results on the ground. We're still not quite organized as Greg just described. Just in the government and outside the government to implement an integrated approach, we haven't even fully adopted and internalized an integrated comprehensive approach. We still lack knowledge and capacities inside our own agencies in the US government and we still are talking about some of the same reforms that we were talking about 7, 8, 9 and probably more years ago, for a longer time than I've been around. So when I'm asked to make remarks on these topics, I always struggle with something new to say. And unfortunately today, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to say much that's new. I'm also not sure I'm going to be able to go into too much detail because as you just heard both the White House's IPC on security sector assistance is still going on and the QDDR has not been published yet. But we are all struggling very much with these issues. We're writing we've got a lot of answers. There's still a lot of areas where we don't have answers. I see many people in this room and some on the panel who've been working on these issues for tirelessly for many years since I've been around and a lot of progress has actually been made. So we're coming to a growing consensus around the definitions, the principles, the approaches of how to do security sector assistance and reform. There are more agencies engaged, which is both a challenge and an opportunity. There's a greater understanding of what we need to do in the area of security sector reform. So it's great to see so many people here who are probably very knowledgeable and skilled in this area. I'll talk today about the QDDR, including where our analysis is and the experience of the process so far. I'll touch a little bit on what might be new, might be new to some people, but not so new to others. First, the secretary wanted the QDDR to address security sector reform because she's concerned about the results, which we all are. Our inability so far to achieve results on the ground when it comes to strengthening security sectors. And I get that I'm drawing generalizations and I know we do come up with some results sometimes and there is progress, but overall many of our programs fail to come up with the results that we set out in the beginning if we even define our objectives so she wanted the QDDR to analyze first she wanted to understand why we've not been achieving results but also then what we need to do to get results. She views security sector assistance as one of our most critical tools in both ending violence, criminality, armed violence, strengthening fragile states, preventing conflict as well as one of our core tools in building stable societies with our developing partners. So it's a core building block of basically all the nations where we provide assistance. Basically she and not just the secretary but the administrator, the secretary of state and obviously the White House and the president increasingly understand the importance of our security sector assistance in achieving stability and more peaceful societies abroad so it's become more of a priority and higher up on the agenda. So when we talk about results, that's a very hard discussion as many of you know it's like pulling a thread from a sweater. Once you start to pull the thread it just keeps coming longer and longer and it starts to reveal just how much is entailed in us achieving results on the ground. So it starts as Greg just described all the way here up at a headquarters level and how we organize how we conceptualize the discipline of security justice sector reform have we collectively come to a common understanding of what that is among our agencies and I think there are varying opinions on that but there are people I think it's making progress there are people who would say that yes we have come to more of a collective understanding within the US government about what it is. So it starts up here it goes all the way down through a long chain of events including things that we can't control like the environment on the ground the nature of our partners whether or not we are wanted in a country or not so the least that we can do is get better at those areas that we have more control over which comes to our own organization comes to our own capacities our own skills our own operational solutions and even then once we perfect that which I'm sure we will we're going to have problems achieving results on the ground because that's the nature of this field one of the particular discussions that we have inside the State Department with leadership there again as I mentioned is about results we have so many conversations around how we organize how we organize how we get our budgets making sure that we can fund programs how we get enough people out to the field we've got all these organizational and systems challenges and we tend to spend less time and exert less effort and I might be in trouble for saying this but focusing on our practical techniques our operational solutions the methods that we use for delivering assistance I think we've barely scratched the surface of SSR as a practice I think that's the whole international community there's a lot of progress and knowledge out there a lot of efforts underway but there's still a huge amount to learn so even if we get it right in Washington and accept the discipline accept the definitions get organized I think we're still we have a long ways to go in terms of practical operational tactical solutions on the ground we need to move more towards an evidence-based data-driven approach where we are learning and feeding lessons back into our systems to improve our methods and our techniques again a lot of people are doing a lot of great work around the world and for me that seems more like an opportunity for learning we're not searching out or integrating lessons on operations into our techniques so that we evolve how we actually deliver assistance which ultimately feeds into how we train people you know the doctrine we build the knowledge that we have collectively as practitioners of security sector reform we need to enhance that so moving forward again this is part of the QDDR discussion part of some of the IPC discussions but the desire to move more towards an evidence-based approach a lot more data on what works and what doesn't is on the agenda and people are talking increasingly about it we need more innovation in the field when it comes to our operations and our assistance delivery obviously we need to get the basics right which are do we do training well enough do we do institution building well enough and those are sort of core functions across security sector reform and we need to get those right but also we need to begin doing more and trying more out in the field so in the QDDR our analysis flowed along pretty basic lines starting from the core discussion of what is security sector assistance what is security sector reform and as many of you know the community been engaged in that discussion for a long time and more and more people are joining the discussion and again back to the point that there's more of a sort of collective consensus a collective understanding of what these terms mean which is great so what is SSR what are our roles and missions what are the capabilities we need to fulfill those roles and what are the reforms we need to make internally to strengthen our capacity so obviously in the future play between the White House's IPC discussion we're there looking at interagency wise as a government what are what is security sector assistance what are the roles and missions of all of our agencies and what are the capabilities we need collectively as a government the QDDR is a capability review and so we looked internally we looked at within state within USAID because it's a joint state aid undertaking we looked at our approach first and foremost and looked at how we define and think about SSR what do our programs look like and a definition that the group came up with the working group you know there's a lot of discussion of whether our programs actually reflect these definitions these principles and the answer was most of the time they don't a couple of things again that that are a little bit new in this area not I can't go much into the QDDR I can say that there's nothing revolutionary in what we're talking about in the QDDR when it comes to security and justice sector assistance but it will be I think it does confirm and affirm what many of you work on which is many of you been working on these topics for a long time so again in terms of what's new as I talked about before there is a growing consensus and you feel this among different agencies around the definitions principles what it is and that sounds like a basic thing but it's pretty significant among multiple US government agencies when you consider that six years ago when I was the first senior rule block coordinator in Iraq I showed up and people didn't even know the term the US government representatives and practitioners on the ground most of them didn't even know the term security sector reform they didn't a lot of them some of them didn't know the term rule of law in terms of definitions practices, concepts so I do think that could either be a sign of the people that were there or it could be a sign of where we were in the evolution of these topics so there is a growing consensus there are more people doing it thinking about it working on it and that's a great thing that was very helpful to the QDDR I think another important positive thing that's new is not in the QDDR but it's about the atmosphere within which we are all working right now which is a new relatively new administration with a higher level commitment to an understanding of these topics than I've seen before and so that makes the environment for these issues it makes it a lot easier to work on these and in fact it's demanded from the very top levels of the government so another interesting thing about this administration is a desire to restore civilian leadership and security sector reform and I think that's an important point it comes along with a lot of expectations about civilian agencies like State Department and USAID and Department of Justice and DHS all needing to get better at achieving results and delivering assistance which we're working on it's going to take time because of as I mentioned before we've been talking about a lot of these reforms for a long time and when it comes down to it some of it's really just a change management exercise in our institutions to get us from here to there one of the great things about the QDDR discussion was that it was a State and USAID discussion and that it was valuable in that as Julie were able can attest who participated actually very well in this exercise what it helped do was broaden the discussion of the group which was a challenge what you have even though there's a growing consensus around these terms you still have a lot of people who practice security sector assistance who don't quite understand what it means to do this under a rule of law framework or to rooted in development principles or rule of law principles or governance principles and so having USAID participation there contributed to that discussion enriched the discussion in a way that we haven't had before and I think the same thing is going on within the IPC although it is it's a hard process because what you have are a lot of agencies who've done primarily law enforcement criminal justice types of activities that's the dominant voice that we have historically in the US government but you have more and more people coming to the table with knowledge about broader viewing SSR as a governance endeavor we without saying anything that interesting or detailed we talk very much about a whole of government approach and what our roles and responsibilities are in both shaping and leading and supporting a whole of government approach particularly at state department what is the responsibility of the department of state to commit further to and to design a more whole of government approach which although we've many agencies we've been moving more and more in that direction it's been sort of ad hoc and people coming together trying to coordinate but there really as Greg mentioned there's no structure there is no leadership structure, policies, common frameworks common operational methodologies and that's what we talked a lot about and something that the leadership of the state department is actually very committed to moving forward and I'm going to I think I only have a couple minutes, is that right Am I over? I'm sorry So I'll talk about you know very quickly I can there are a lot of things that we're not new you know as I mentioned before there were still some of the same discussions and arguments about what SSR is and isn't, who should be included you know there are challenges with agencies who you know every agency brings their own world view and approach to the table what was great and affirming was that the Task Force came up with basically the same list of reforms that have been in reports for many years and so as well there are a few others so we are sure what we need to reform I think and an interesting challenge remains in still having people discuss security sector reform security sector assistance in the same discussion as the rule of law discussion so even to come together to be able to say look these are not the exact same things but here they are here is what they are, here is how they relate here is where they are different maybe like a Venn diagram approach there is still just a reluctance to do that among US government agencies but to conclude again I think we are at we have an opportunity where we are with this new administration it's a great environment now for strengthening the US government approach better than I've ever seen it it's committed at the highest levels both the secretary and the president as well as all of the senior officials involved we have a growing consensus as we've talked about we have more agencies than ever before working in this realm which really is truly an opportunity having DOD, DOJ, DHS USA State Department everyone brings a particular comparative advantage resources, skills to the table and it allows us to actually design truly comprehensive and scaled approaches that no agency or two agencies could do on their own and we have programs spread throughout the world we're doing more and more places and therefore have more opportunities for learning so to get better operationally it's a time to start learning and to start improving our techniques on the ground and I'll end there so thanks very much thank you very much Karen Julie thank you to USIP for hosting us and thank you all for coming out particularly for a topic that I believe was described as boring so if you want to talk about narco trafficking or illicit power structures or any of the more sexy parts of security sector reform I'm happy to do that in the Q&A I think I'm a little bit more optimistic than my counterparts about the future of security sector reform and security sector assistance in part because of the presence of all of you here today there's absolutely a groundswell of participation and interest in this topic in a way that I personally haven't seen over my career in working on security and justice issues and I would say that this same level of interest is mirrored within the government whether it's in the QDDR or the security sector assistance IPC so I'm going to talk today very briefly about the president's new development policy and its implications for security sector assistance and some of the work that we are doing in the SSA IPC and let me clarify first some terms I know we've been throwing a lot out at you security and justice, security sector reform security sector assistance security sector reform is the term of art that describes a process that is home grown and owned and managed by a host nation security sector assistance is the universe of activities that the U.S. government brings to the table in support of that process and as Greg pointed out it's not necessarily a one-to-one correlation that the government does SSR and we provide SSA because a lot of our SSA may even be broader than that it might include the building of coalition partners for peacekeeping operations for my military colleagues in the audience we're not quite as large as security cooperation so we're not talking about foreign military financing or the whole universe of what would be called security assistance but this new term of art security sector assistance really is focused on building partner capacity so let me start by talking about the global development policy let me start if I may with a quote from the White House because it's a goodie sustainable development is a long-term proposition and progress depends importantly on the choices of political leaders and the quality of institutions in developing countries where leaders govern responsibly set in place good policies and make investments conducive to development sustainable outcomes can be achieved where those conditions are absent it's difficult to engineer sustained progress no matter how good our intentions or the extent of our engagement although the development policy isn't primarily talking about SSR I couldn't have written better guidelines myself to describe what we're trying to achieve and the conditions under which we must conduct this activity and let me just take a moment to unpack the statement because I think there's some good meeting here first of all SSR absolutely must be conceived of as a long-term process and what that means from an SSA perspective is that we need to stop planning to our budgets and start budgeting to our plans as the government knows this is a particularly challenging endeavor we also need to be honest about what we can achieve and in what time periods it absolutely takes more than two years to build a new police force from scratch in a post-conflict environment and we have to be realistic about that and we have to be able to inform our policy makers and our leaders and ambassadors on the ground who have political imperatives to show deliverables in a short-term we as technical experts have to inform that process secondly leadership matters we all talk about local ownership but at the end of the day local ownership is driven by leaders on the ground who have embraced, who understand who are willing and able to manage the security sector reform process all development is political but no development is more political than development of the security sector there are winners, there are losers there are stakeholders, there's a reason that the status quo exists and unbalancing those very sort of thorny and complex relationships takes a very strong leader that has some degree of legitimacy and they also need to be able to manage the fallout of these processes thirdly, governing responsible at the end of the day security sector reform is fundamentally about governance it's the inclusion of governance in our discussion of these topics that changes your father's training equip into a comprehensive holistic process that's really designed to leave in place sustainable change SSR defines not only what a partner security sector does but how it does it it's about transparency, accountability responsiveness to the needs of the people sound management all of these things are integral to any form of development whether it's economic development education human health or security and justice reform finally we need to recognize where these conditions are absent and make the right choices about building security capacity that won't endure or worse that will actually undermine the governments that we're actually trying to empower let me switch gears and talk a little bit about the work that we're trying to accomplish through the interagency policy committee on security sector assistance the SSA IPC not surprisingly the work plan looks very much like Greg's paper that we are in fact trying to tackle each of the issues that he's outlined starting with national policy guidance and as Karen mentioned we have come to agreement on the basic principles on the basis approaches on kind of the left and right boundaries of what we're talking about and on national level guidance that will help the different departments and contributing agencies prioritize what their engagements in this field should be our objective is to develop policy that focused and collaborative is built on a multi-year integrated interagency planning offers increased flexibility and integrate security sector assistance with other key policy priorities that is we have tended to treat it as an isolated line of activity and that the challenge for us all is to figure out how to integrate these lines of activity in a way that we can achieve higher objectives with respect to assessment planning programming and evaluation I would echo what Greg has said in that we have come a long way we have a number of interagency tools that are being increasingly used in the field the interagency security sector assessment framework is really a great start and all of the specific sectoral frameworks that nest within that are also being used increasingly by interagency audiences or interagency teams rather the maritime security sector reform guide which is finally out for clearance will ultimately bear the seals of five different U.S. departments state defense justice DHS and transportation as well as USAID and anyone who's worked in the interagency or can understand what a feat it is to try to get multiple clearances at once interagency structures having lived through and hopefully survived the QDDR process I can tell you that transforming any kind of internal structure or interagency process is complex but I think that there are still a lot of key questions that we need to be asking ourselves and grappling with a bit to answer how much interagency is enough at the end of the day every department and agency maintains its original mandate we all exist the way we exist for a reason we were designed to fulfill certain objectives whatever it is whether it's USAID and our development objectives whether it's DOJ and their justice and transnational crime objectives so how do we maintain and continue to achieve those objectives while we stand back and develop a more comprehensive set of goals which may not actually be the same another question we need to ask ourselves is how much overlap is too much if you were to ask every department sitting around the IPC how many of them work on rule of law issues we would all raise our hands and just as an aside I'd like to make a plea that we stop using the term rule of law to describe our activities and start using it to describe our outcomes because at the end of the day as a term it's almost lost its meaning because everything we do now falls under this umbrella of rule of law if we are more specific about the kinds of justice sector engagements that we're undertaking then I think it will be easier to identify where we're working together where we might be working at cross purposes and again I think that the overlap that we're experiencing is the natural result of the evolution of our different mandates over time so when USAID began it probably included policing in its justice sector after section 660 was included we excluded police when INO was created they focused primarily on policing because they had a transnational criminal mandate over time we've moved both towards the center because we've recognized the importance of whole of government approaches we've recognized that you have to treat them and in order to do that you have to engage with all of the actors so we now increasingly find ourselves operating in the same space but we came there honestly and we still have different objectives and so I think as a starting point we have to all accept that some overlap is probably okay and the emphasis on streamlining and organizing while important may again undermine some of our other objectives and we need to be clear on the policy objective as a US government and that those mandates don't go away I'm personally a bit bearish on the creation of new structures for SSR because I think that organizational change often serves as a substitute for the required sort of slog work the administrative the financial the personnel systems the real roll up your sleeves dirty work of organizational change management isn't fun it isn't pretty it's not headlight grabbing but it's absolutely required if you want to change your business models and you can overlay a new business structure on top of that but if you haven't dealt with these underlying issues you're really going to find yourself in very much the same position with a whole another set of problems that you hadn't anticipated and by the way this is exactly the same advice that I give to my counterparts when I'm overseas working on organizational changes as part of an SSR program that you would never undertake this kind of program without thinking about building constituencies for change identifying the stakeholders and the spoilers thinking about the legitimacy of the imperative understanding where the resources will come from thinking about the human resources impact and the financial impact and all of this sort of really unsexy kind of boring technical work that's required to an integrated approach and while I'm not saying that there shouldn't be integrated structures to manage these things I think that has to be done very thoughtfully and in a way that takes into account why the level of coordination that we think is required for these kinds of activities doesn't exist now human capital when announcing the global development policy the USAID administrator recently said at the end of the day development is a discipline it's a profession and I think this statement really backs up Greg's point regarding the need for human capital in security sector reform and security sector assistance who have the required experience, expertise knowledge and skills to do the job right you can't take a cop off the streets of Albuquerque and send him to Afghanistan and expect him to achieve the results that you're looking for and any more that you can expect our ambassadors or our policy makers to understand the technicalities of this business without exposing them to what's really involved for those of us on the civilian side of security sector reform we need to start treating this field like a discipline and that means developing a professional development path and starting to educate our senior policy makers on what can and cannot be achieved through security sector assistance and then finally an issue I'm not going to say that blood has been spilled over this but I am going to suggest that it's a tricky issue for those of you who aren't as knee deep in some of this conversations why flexible funding in the beginning congress created foreign assistance and it was good and over time it was divided into military assistance and economic assistance military assistance for economic objectives and you can't use economic assistance for military objectives and while on the military side funds like SERP and some of the money for Pakistan really does enable them to engage in a broader environment on the economic side we really have stayed very true to that bright red line and so what that means on the ground is if you wanted to create a program where you engage the universe of actors within the security system of both military police border security it would be very difficult to do that with a single funding source you really have to cobble from a number of different authorities to do it on the development side we face this with respect to disarmament demobilization and reintegration and on this one we're actually not alone the UN faces a very similar problem for their D&D they used assess funds to the peacekeeping mission but yet they have to create a trust fund for the reintegration components we're in a very similar situation in the US because of this bifurcation of the funding from USAID's perspective we can't get involved in the reintegration activities until those ex-combatants are certified as civilians and so the use of our assistance would be considered economic in nature that makes it very difficult to engage early and high in the negotiation processes that determine what the plans will be for a DDR program so there is some rationale for thinking through how we might update our authorities how we might create a joined up fund the technicalities of it however are daunting and where we are in this process is that whatever comes out of it will likely be a very small pilot that will require the concurrence of both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense and only all of the committee leaders on both the House and Senate side and again that's a whole other layer of complexity we've so far focused on the executive branch but when you talk about the number of committees on the Hill that would need to be involved in true interagency coordination between civil and military and in flexible funds you're looking at eight different committees so that's a lot of coordination so let me just sum up again I'm a little bit more optimistic I think we've come a long way baby I think there's a long way still to go but the fact that you're all here and that you're taking an interest in this again admittedly boring topic I see I think is a really great sign and I think we might just be on our way to some homegrown SSR after all thank you thanks very much Garrett my thanks to Bob Perito for inviting me to serve as a discussant or as it happens the second discussant of Bob's paper but it means that unlike the other panelists my status here is ascribed rather than earned and perhaps regrettably unconstrained by any official boundaries I will say that I never like to follow Julie Werbel because it's just hard to match her intellectual data rate polished presentation and she's never boring so that's my burden Greg has written I think a needed, informative, thoughtful and well informed paper written from the trenches as it were of the interagency this sort of full and frank discussion though that when it's used to characterize a diplomatic presentation I remember where exactly I put that bomb shelter SSR mirrors many of the problems of democratic governance that and especially efforts by multiple democratic governments to do good and produce order in the world on the world stage efforts that may coincide but they don't necessarily do good and being effective and think about spin bull back and the border security situation there versus how it's done, for example so many of these problems of government governance that we seek to or solutions that we seek to spread around we have great big long-term complex problems and little minds focused on short-term and then there's government in recent meetings that I've attended from the most thoughtful people I've read or know the same themes emerge time and again that here and abroad we face problems that must be addressed for the good of the country and the good of humanity but the political debate is like an old money python sketch we're driving toward a cliff, no you're not we need long-term funding and the whole of government I will do the silly walk version of what Julie said unfortunately reminds me of the python department for stacking things on top of other things as we discover a new or common problem everybody dives for it, collides with everybody else and whoever weighs the most survives the best and in this case it's usually DOD but while there are you know their efforts to add order to the scrum as Greg Ably lays them out the number of players doesn't change or it's growing which Julie mentioned is a good thing and that may or may not be true depending on how nicely they're willing to play and as she points out the U.S. players and as Greg points out the U.S. players are only a fraction of the whole we can fight away to get our own act together we take it out on the road and we find out we're on the wrong side of the road and somebody else's truck is coming there is also prevailing back on assumption that reforming country's security and justice institutions and there are many bureaucratic and philosophical fights over what this collection of activities or goals is or should be called let alone try to achieve anyway there's an underlying assumption that's a good thing that could be made to work if we only were better organized and better organized at doing it and I think the deeper I get into the issues the less sure I am of that argument and from here I want to just kind of go through points in Greg's paper skipping from place to place the note that I want to note SSR is not a thing or a specialty really it's an outcome or a goal like rule of law you want to end up with reformed institutions that are good at doing the objectives and the umbrella term tends to get reified as many things do or in the area that I work most robust peacekeeping that's been reified in UN doctrine when we did the Brahimi report 10 years ago we talked about robust rules of engagement that any complex operation should have to be able to defend itself it's mandate to protect and that has now come to be a compound noun in a special class of operation which I think is unfortunate where Greg talks about the need for as a goal and I think citing probably the 3D paper an effective and legitimate public service that is transparent accountable to civilian authority and responsible to the needs of the public that's not the military and it's probably definitely not the intelligence services that applies more to criminal justice to police borders maybe coast guard I don't notice a whole lot of transparency with the military and intelligence and transparency are kind of anthonyms in most settings ok in considering the state of global let alone US cohesion and coherence on this subject I'm really not sure whether to channel John Stewart, Glenn Beck or Stephen Colbert in other words do I laugh do I cry do I level withering sarcasm it's a problem this country you know this country isn't just divided now it's schizophrenic and maybe I should emigrate to Hawaii wait no that's part of the country all right page 8 no existing government framework promotes planning for SSR as a generational endeavor and I would say legally probably it can't or it could but it would be in trouble with its oversight committees on the hill no regional planning framework exists that integrates military and civilian efforts and also true and then think about what that would look like if we were really really good at it we would look like really imperial power and this comes to where we it comes back to the question of how consciously are we developing a national coordinated effort for these endeavors and versus an internationally coordinated endeavor and I think the fact that the SSR definitions and papers and the things that Greg wrote about draw on the OECD handbook for security system reform is a good thing and it's a harbinger of better things to come but as we get ourselves revved up to do these things let's make sure we're looking over at our shoulders and consulting with our partners in the donor community and our partners in the delivering community to improve funding access a growing number of governments including those of the UK and Canada have created flexible cross-departmental programming and budgeting instruments and Julie I think very ably some of the difficulties that we face governmentally here with doing something as flexible as the conflict prevention pool in the UK which I'm delighted to hear maybe topped up by the coalition government but I also point out that those are also parliamentary systems okay quasi now coalitions in Australia and maybe Canada and UK also so they may be sliding in our direction but by and large what the government wants to do or by definition the same and you can move things ahead and the UK had a three-year funding cycle I don't know if that's the same but with a three-year funding cycle I mean you know what you've got for three years you can get a lot more done in terms of planning and accomplishing things on the ground that then contribute to consistency in your next three-year cycle section 1207 expiring on that moment of silence thank you I'm not sure it's necessarily bad and I'm wondering if the phone lines and the Twitter feeds between state and depending on have in fact been cut you guys can probably still talk to each other it's okay even if 1207 is not there to provide a funding feed on the question of a thing to act on top of other things to run SSR where would a US stabilization unit sit? I think SCRS was an effort to create something like that within the State Department and all sorts of congressional problems and because in part because they didn't have a policy job and it took a long time to get going and to convince the Congress to give it money and now we've given it money and we're trying to figure out what to do and blend that into the much larger efforts like CEW that DoD has they could sit in the White House and the NSC complex but the White House is very political it's not career again we have this problem how our government structured versus how the professional civil services are structured with much less political penetration into the structures that endure between governments and elections put it in the interagency kind of a twilight zone really that I think DoD will dominate because they're the heaviest player in the scrum and they always will be I think for the foreseeable future and not only are they bigger they got better night vision devices so if you're operating in the twilight DoD is just going to take your hands down State Department with Secundity I don't know I might put it in USAID with DoD Secundity on some of the barriers between the two I think we need to slim down DoD the secretary recognizes that we need to build up USAID which I think is already in the game plan but that's the operational arm of US foreign policy and assistance and I think that's where the effort to bulk up really ought to be focused and no Julie did not pay me to say that a couple more observations on page in a time of severe resource constraints no donor can hope to place technical experts for every conceivable requirement on the government payroll and this of course is the CRC dilemma and the irony is that there is a CRC reserve that is perfectly adapted to this that is the least favored by the congress at the moment right we don't so much need as a whole bunch of people with specialties that we're guessing about how they're going to be used or we simply hire them and focus them on Iraq or Afghanistan and our immediate needs but we really need to be able to do is to pull from lower levels of government private sector things and places that federal government has nothing to do with in our governing structure but has everything to do with building effective institutions on the ground educators and public administration schools in companies that specialize in public administration these are the places we should be drawing our personnel and okay severe funding constraints but somehow $700 billion a year into the defense budget the PPD should balance capacity building with reform yes just made the point about the educators and more broadly teach reading and I say reading broadly to 8 to 10 year olds everywhere we deploy this instrument make sure the literacy rate is is brought up as soon as we land on the ground if we had done this 10 years ago in Afghanistan we'd have a whole generation even just for the boys okay sorry I mean even if just for the boy we'd have a whole generation a whole cohort of 8 to 20 year olds who were literate and could be trainable as cops and junior public administrators and all sorts of things instead not so much so we look at the long term and started in the short term and being able to read is so fundamental the NATO training command has finally gotten that but only last year it just started training their cops to read I guess the gentleman who runs Spinbull that doesn't read he's doing fine but I don't really want to know what he does to keep the relentless pursuit of the Taliban underway assessment should include a frank analysis of a partner's political will to transform its security sector yes just noting that SSR and Julie also covered this better than I will but I'll do it anyway may have many many partners locally and internationally and they're all going to have different levels of will and resources and goals and the scrum that I mentioned up front is both local and international and occasionally the scrums merge when the local scrum is smaller or its order is brought to it before order is brought to the international scrum then the host state is going to be playing all of us like a violin alright or ukulele or whatever and they will cherry pick aid and cherry pick objectives and then you have to think about well we're talking about all of this effort and let me just leave you with this thought all of this effort to both get our own act together and then as I said form with our international which I'm western partners OECD partners who buy into international human rights law international humanitarian law democratic governance and then there's China and China comes cruising in with all of its trade surplus dollars and they can invest them or hand them out in packets of unmarked bills with no strings attached and for governments that aren't specially democratic to start with this is very handy and so this is something else that we need to compete with as we develop all of these tools for creating good governments and so forth and taking several years to do it and they're out there just moving on I'll stop there because I hate to end on an up note thank you thank you very much for interesting and engaging evaluation I'd like to thank all the members of the panel for really very substantive and very informative presentations and I'd like to begin by exercising my prerogative the chair here to ask the first question I think maybe the question that was on the minds of many this morning when they showed up is the burning question of when we have two government insiders and two people that are outside looking in and I want to ask the question that's on most people's minds these days is we have all of this process that's been going on for a very long time when are we going to see the results when are these two remaining reports going to appear we'll start with Greg what do you think I'm one of those outsiders now what's your best guess you have to make a guess I would guess that the QDR would be released perhaps November I really can't say about the security sector assistance at PC because every time it gets traction it gets derailed by budgetary and legislative cycles that happened last December with existential question about what are we going to do with 12-6 and 12-7 are they going to stage or are they going to stay at DOD and that same dynamics with this discussion on pooled funding from what I understand it's kind of taken the wind out of the PPD process but that's an outsider's view others may have better insight information Karen what do you think on that on the IPC on the IPC but also QDR what's your best guess so I would agree with Greg first on the IPC process so we even those of us who work on it at various levels are you know it's a it is the timing is difficult given how many issues come up and how important all of them are so that's a little bit harder to predict the QDR as the secretary announced a week ago it will come out within 30-60 days so that's when it will come out I can tell you that our biggest point is the review process that it has to go through so we have a first draft of the report we the process for these quadrennial reviews including the QDR the QHSR the quicker and others they all go through an interagency review process which is actually a very difficult but very important and useful process we do engage with other agencies to some extent during the process but this is really a time for us to have other agencies look at what we've written and weigh in so that I think it took the QDR about six weeks to get through that anyone know the exact answer to that it will take us less time I hope Julie how does it look from the other end of any avenue are you just collecting bids here are we betting I won't speak to the QDR on the IPC we are very much hoping to have something by the beginning of the year but again we have been sidetracked by a number of very important debates that really needed us to focus on what are you here Bill nothing I know nothing it will be like the ministry of silly walks when we come to the podium since Bill started talking anybody that tunes into this on the web is thinking they've stumbled into the Bill Marshall or something let's go back to being serious here we'll open the four for questions we'll ask people who want to ask questions if they would go to the microphone so we can capture their questions for those that are watching outside this room and what I'd like you to do is in the usual format and state your name and your organization and then ask your question good morning how are you this morning nice to see you good morning I'm at Dawood Yaakub I'm currently with Princeton University prior to that I was the security sector reform coordinator for the government of Afghanistan as all the panelists pointed out SSR involves transformations on the ground in recipient countries and as Dewey pointed out it actually gives donors entry into some very contentious space in post-conflict transition in some levels it creates winners and loses on the ground it shifts the balances of power my first question is do we really have the skill sets to engage in those type of activities that ends up shifting the balances of power locally and what consequences may flow from that and associated to that how do you reconcile that with the concept of local ownership do we simply pass by do we sidelines local actors or simply overlook them okay do you want to take a shot at that great sure to your first question do we have the skill sets to help navigate those shifts and balance of power realigning political power within a country I think I would argue that in the U.S. government there are people with skills to help make determined decisions or informed decisions on likely outcomes strategic planners but I would say that those individuals are fairly rare we often go into programming and launch activities without that sort of up front work we've done that's where the assessment is so critically important yet seldom accomplished on the lines that you describe so I think part of our record in security sector reform and assistance from the U.S. government has been mixed and some of the failures have been attributed to the fact that we haven't done that up front work we haven't done a very good job of that so I would say yes there are people with those skill sets but we need more of them we need more training like Julie talked about we need to professionalize this as a discipline so that there's a greater cadre of people that can deal with those sorts of issues and how do we address local ownership and that's the paramount principle I think of SSR my paper is totally focused on a kind of Washington based donor based process with the end being working with making the U.S. government a more effective partner for local governments local stakeholders in helping develop and manage processes of transformation in their security sectors so Julie? I think the points that you raise really suggest that SSR is as much an art as it is a science and that the kind of personnel who are particularly adept at this are people who really can stand back and understand the political dynamics in play and are able to do a stakeholder analysis up front and who sort of bring to the process that almost that je ne sais quoi that makes a good development worker a good development worker or a good mentor or an advisor and that's not always trainable I think you can train the skills you can create managers can you create leaders and I think it's that same dynamic and so we just have to look out for the people who bring that inherent understanding because local ownership I think is one of the it's this great buzz phrase that we all use but nobody can really define who's the local who owns it I did an assessment several years ago in Pakistan and I always come back to this because for me it was one of the more instructive moments in my career where I was trying to develop a national security council to help rebalance civil military relations under the previous regime and when you talk to the senior leaders in the country at the national level their identification of threats and priorities was everything you would imagine and largely related to India when you talk to the everyday Pakistani on the street the number one security threat that they identified to me was cattle theft that's night and day and so how do we in the provision of security sector assistance in a way that promotes local ownership in any way and I think there are multiple layers to that and again this is what makes it the art but there is a way to mentor and advise and provide technical assistance that does ensure that you're at least building on locally identified priorities and that's one of the reasons I think where development brings that's one of the areas in which development does bring something to the security world because when you add things like town hall meetings and public debates and public discussions about how the entire population would identify its security needs and its justice needs that does help inform what the programs look like in the end please next question I'm Scott Stezing with Oxfam I want to go to the issue of the political will the government receiving the assistance and all of you have mentioned that if the government does not have the political will for reform we're going to have a difficult time actually engaging in this process I'm thinking of as Oxfam we've been doing a bunch of research in the DRC on this issue and DRC is a clear example where throughout its history the president did not want to have a strong security sector because they're worried about coups so it's always resisting having professionalization of the FRDC so the US is supporting this but we know we can't go so far without the political will change it but are we throwing good money after bad in those situations and should we be stopping it understanding that if we do stop it we lose leverage with the government to actually change their political calculations it's a real dilemma here that I think the US government needs to deal with and I wonder if you had any insights from the review process how you dealt with that you give me the easy question that's good I mean this points to a particular issue within the field about the difference between just being a sort of technical capacity builder versus bringing together all the tools that we have at our disposal to the table to both affect political will and build local capacity so obviously we operate in a lot of environments where we struggle not just with where there is no political will but also with a will and an intention that looks different than ours and so you know sometimes we do need to ask the question should we even be operating now at this time in this country with these objectives that we have but at the same time if it is a priority for us there are multiple tools that exist to help impact political will there are the incentives and disincentives not just that the US government can provide but the international community points to the importance of leveraging diplomatic influence and pressure regional partners their influence and pressure and it's a whole again there is an art also not just to building capacity but to to influencing and affecting political will please bill just briefly question might be why does the DRC need an army if the neighbors hands can be pried off of DRC minerals and minerals brought under legitimate control and producing revenue from government and have their own security have a border police force have a professionally trained presidential guard if the president nervous good enough to protect him not enough to run the rest of the country it needs a large police capacity and I believe the one was recently given a mandate by the security council to train 22 battalions of police well let's give them a hand at doing that because I think that's the transformation they need to make okay thank you Victoria Hello, Victoria Stadel, Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, I just returned from Afghanistan six weeks ago working with the Afghan National Police at NTMA headquarters specifically on the training development of the curriculum as we were taking the program over from INL so I worked with the police from Albuquerque I also worked with the French the Germans, the Italians and everybody else had their hand in our pot the comments about literacy and the incorporation into that art into our training was something that was near and dear to my personal heart because I do believe that it's vital however what I found was that decisions were made based on questions that came back from DC i.e. how many are you training how quickly are you training them and when will they get on the ground so my question is when we know that we would like in ten years to have that eight-year-old be literate how do we get the right questions asked back in the field to make sure that the motivation is focused in that direction of our long-term strategic goals from back here versus the short-term effects and how do we do that while balancing not looking like an imperial power that's a good question I only want to point out that that's a question we've been dealing with in this business going back into the days when we were in the Balkans and somebody used to run the international training program with the department of justice we went into both Bosnia and Kosovo the same people were there asking how fast can you put boots on the ground even though those boots will be worn by people who have no idea what they're supposed to do and so it just never changes and I'm sure you had to live with this as well but in Afghanistan we had an eight-week training program which in order to speed up the number of boots that we're going to put on the ground we just cut the six and we're trying to grow the program by 20 or 30,000 this year so all of that leads to chaos and confusion but anybody else want to take a shot at that? I would just suggest that that highlights the importance of evaluation I mean that's really the metrics and measures of effectiveness that reported back to Washington if they're done in a thorough sort of way and look at the qualitative factors versus just the quantitative outputs of police train number of uniforms provided et cetera would help to highlight the fact that maybe our training is not as effective as it could be because we're dealing with a moderate population and then feeding back into our whole government sense into our USCID education programs in that country I don't have any better recommendations than that but again that just points out the fact that evaluation is so important and we really do a poor job of it If we have a break in the number of people who are, oh please Liz Panarelli I work here at the US Institute of Peace and support the security sector governance program thank you all so much for your presentations I found them very interesting and I was wondering if you could go into a little more depth whoever would like to address this about security sector assistance as a tool for conflict prevention we mostly deal with it in a post-conflict or stability operations context but I think a lot of the literature and interest is moving towards conflict prevention particularly when you have a strong demand driven approach local ownership etc so if you could please speak to that I'd appreciate it Thanks very much Julie that sounds like it's for you What's funny about this question to me is that I actually work in the office of democracy and governance and everyone in the USAID thinks that I work in the office of conflict management and mitigation because they automatically tie security and conflict together and I think there are obviously a lot of very good reasons for that and I think SSR is absolutely a tool for conflict prevention particularly when you start looking at the reasons why conflict happens and it's in many cases it's because it's often driven by or exacerbated by bloated politicized sort of unprofessional security services that are not doing their jobs and that are preying on the population and either creating or inflaming existing tensions on the ground I think that as in the US the security sector can play a very important role in the democratization of a country and in so doing also influence how how conflicts are managed and handled certainly in our own country the military has been far ahead of the rest of the society or at least been the lead in terms of integration and that's one of the issues that we look at in security sector reform is how ethnically integrated are the security services at what levels and what percentages those sorts of things so I think there are sort of multiple ways that the cycle of conflict one of the challenges is that conflict begets conflict and so countries emerging from conflict are ten times more likely to re-engage or fall back into that process and so effective SSR even in a post-conflict period is also done with prevention in mind and that's one of the reasons why we need to get much better at linking SSR and DDR that again reintegration is often thought of as the afterthought it's not well funded, it's not well thought through and yet if those ex-combatants are not really associated back into society they then become the threat that reignites conflict in the next phase so the thing about conflict prevention is that it's never a linear cycle, it's more a cyclical one and so at any stage of the game you're preventing and responding to conflict Karen you want to join? I'm a little to add to that just picking on the point that prevention is, it's a continuum or it's a cycle and so at every phase when it might we are both reacting and responding we are also we need to approach these things with a prevention lens in mind so it looks like we practice this mostly in post-conflict in a reactionary mode and I think historically we have and I think it's symbolic generally of how we approach conflict in crisis which is not from a preventative perspective except in this sense that as civilian institutions we generally believe that our development assistance is conflict prevention and what we're not particularly seized by conflict prevention as an imperative even though it's sort of one of the best modes of cost avoidance it's the most humane approach that we could take but I think we're moving in this direction I think that just having everyone in this room and elsewhere understanding the practice of security and justice sector reform if done right it is a preventative approach and so it's a critical tool in helping us actively prevent not just helping us but actually helping local countries and regions prevent their own conflicts thank you I think what we'll do since we're almost out of time is we'll ask both of our questionaries to ask their questions and then we'll give the panel one last chance to respond to the questions and make any kind of closing remarks they would wish to make please Monique Biedel with Falling with Souls where grassroots campaign for peace in DRC I'd like to see clarification of a comment made by Mr. Durch seem to imply that the U.S.'s action on conflict minerals in DRC could substitute for better engagement and security sector reform I just returned from Nairobi where I spent last week at the OECD, ICGLR joint consultation on the legal exploitation of natural resources and I can't speak for every NGO or CSO that was in the room but the consensus I picked up on at least among Congolese civil society organizations is that these regional and national and local attempts to investigate origins of minerals and to certify supply chains were going to be wholly ineffective and in fact impossible to implement without corresponding security sector reform the reality is that 12 years ago DRC was invaded by all of its neighboring countries the army is 130,000 strong and there are 70 million civilians I think arguably eventually there is a need for an army and that it does need to be reformed and that there are some critical and easy to address differences between an army that protects civilians and an army that preys on civilians so I just wanted to seek some clarification on what you see as the interplay or the disconnect between regulating natural resources and involvement of the security sector Thank you Brian Burton from CNAS I just wanted to ask one reform measure that is going on right now is that there is a DoD security cooperation review that is currently ongoing that from what I can tell is pretty heavily focused on making security assistance more responsive and really focused on delivery rather than some of the more holistic things that we discussed here today so I was just wondering for many of you who have experience with it how well is that process being coordinated with the processes that you described today and to the extent to which it is or is not what are the implications for the whole government approach to security sector reform Thank you for the question and thank you to the panel answer these final two questions and make their closing statements in reverse order and we'll start with Bill Darch Thank you to address the penultimate question not saying that there shouldn't be a substantial security sector reform program and build up a security sector capacity that's professional and so forth in Congo only that the Army is probably not where you want to start I think I tend to subscribe to this position he's at the Institute for Security Studies or Strategic Studies in Pretoria spends a lot of time in Eastern DRC and he thinks that the entire Army should be barracked because it's an unvetted amalgam of old government forces, old rebel forces untrained, unvetted some of incundus people some maybe god knows even FDLR people in there can just shove together and then they go and find their own food and sustenance and they're part of the problem and what Congo really needs is a professional police force not an Army per se because its problems are 99% internal security and we don't want to go about reinforcing the notion that armies are about internal security it's simply inconsistent with civilian control of the military and the whole risk of the government worrying about goods and so forth but police is part of security sector reform justice, corrections, all part of security sector reform yes, you're not going to get anywhere just on an externally run conflict minerals program but you do have to get control of the sources of mineral production you have to get honest companies doing that you have to have honest and effective security protecting them and protecting the supply chain and the chain of payments both for the minerals and for the taxes all of that needs to be done I can see all of it as part of a larger security sector reform effort it's a huge country and we should have been doing this 10 or 15 years ago thank you, Julie I would actually echo that I think when we think about sort of natural mineral and other kinds of both exploitation and trafficking the first responders are actually internal security and border security and if you look across Africa whether you're talking about market trafficking now it's coming in from Latin America the ability of most African governments at the national level or at the regional level to maintain the level of border security both on land and at sea to really engage effectively with these threats is minimal so I would echo that on the security cooperation review one of the benefits to having DOD at the table is that they are represented by both the office of the secretary of defense and the joint staff on the SSI PC so they can bring to bear the results of these reviews that are going on but I would also just suggest that the department of defense is pretty big and that they are a learning organization and they spend a fair amount of time reviewing what they've done and planning what they're going to do and so to be able to coordinate for example every theater security cooperation meeting with what's going on at the IPC would probably be a bridge too far but certainly the fact that there are these two belly buttons that can reach back to the whole agency and the deputy secretary has certainly also been involved in the process so they are pretty linked up Karen I really have nothing to add to those two questions to the answers so I'm going to pass it to Greg if you'd like to On the letter question the security cooperation reform task force was created to implement the recommendations in the QDR there's a reforming security systems chapter in the QDR so like the QDDR is an internally focused effort primarily on improving internal DOD systems and processes with the defense security cooperation agency and the military departments and being more effective and efficient in providing you know equipment and training for our security assistance programs it's led I think by a lot of the same people that are involved in the SSA IPC so it is fairly well linked up but it's primarily an internal process that aligns with the whole government process we never get away with saying that with the QDDR I mean generally the point that it's an internal process particularly on subject matters that we are all promoting should be whole of government it's hard to do as I'm learning an internal review and process that is not fully accompanied by at some point by a more inclusive collaborative effort I'm not currently involved in it but I would say that it's the internal piece of the SSA IPC so there's a lot of internal house cleaning that needs to go on with the DOD on cutting down delivery timelines for acquiring weapons and transporting them to the recipient countries I'm sure State and NAID had extra capacity they were welcome on that thank you so we've managed I think Julie needs another task for us to work that's where I'll put you all to work anyway we've managed after two hours to close at a point of controversy I'd like to thank you all again for being with us this morning I'd like to invite an expression of appreciation for our panel