The findings and recommendations of the Woodrow Wilson School's Graduate Policy Workshop, WWS591b, are available in the workshop final report, Provincial Reconstruction Teams: Lessons and Recommendations, co-authored by M.P.A.'08 students Nima Abbaszadeh, Mark Crow, Marianne El-Khoury,Jonathan Gandomi, David Kuwayama, Christopher MacPherson, Meghan Nutting, Nealin Parker and Taya Weiss.

Led by Robert Perito, a visiting lecturer at WWS and an expert in post-conflict issues at the U.S. Institute of Peace, workshop participants analyzed the effectiveness and identified best practices of  U.S. and NATO Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) - those of Canada, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Iceland and the United Kingdom -  in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

PRTs are civil military organizations that provide interim security and assist in reconstruction in unstable countries.

The authors write, “PRTs have become an integral part of peacekeeping and stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they have also been criticized for their mixed effectiveness, over-emphasis on military objectives and priorities, failure to effectively coordinate and communicate with UN and NGO organizations, and differences in staffing and mission. Today, there are 50 PRTs: 25 in Afghanistan under the authority of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (NATO/ISAF), and 25 in Iraq.5 Of these, the United States leads 12 in Afghanistan and 22 in Iraq.”

The nine participants traveled to the capitals of Canada, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom, and interviewed representatives from government, NGOs, think-tanks, and the media to understand how each country has approached its PRT mission on strategic, interagency, and tactical levels. They also had the opportunity to speak with visiting lecturers familiar with the United States’ mission in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In conducting their research students sought to answer three broad questions:

* Should the United States and coalition partners continue to use PRTs?

*  Are PRTs achieving the goals for which they are funded?

* What are the best practices of countries that sponsor and contribute to PRTs?

“We conclude that the United States and coalition partners should continue to use PRTs and fund their activities,” the authors note. “The second question is more challenging, as the goals and objectives of the vast array of PRTs have been neither clearly articulated nor standardized. Nonetheless, PRTs do appear to be making progress (albeit slow and uneven) towards the establishment of security, governance and reconstruction in certain areas of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The report goes on to outline recommendations for U.S. PRTs based on best practices and lessons learned. Here, researchers emphasize the need to integrate various U.S. agencies and departments working on issues related to reconstruction and security in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, to avoid the “stovepiping of initiatives or overlapping of mandates.”

In addition, the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, established to coordinate civilian agencies within the government working on issues related to emergencies and conflict situations, should be better funded and given more authority and control over PRT planning and operations, the workshop participants recommend. “Similar organizations exist in other countries such as Canada, which has a Stabilization and Reconstruction Task Force (START) and Britain, which has implemented a Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit (PCRU).”

Workshop participants also call for “multi-lateral coordination” between the U.S. and its international partners to establish a common set of PRT standards.  Equally important, PRT objectives must be clearly defined PRT objectives and specific tasks need to be clearly defined.

Graduate policy workshops are a part of the core curriculum of the WWS graduate program. Each fall, six to eight School graduate policy workshops are designed to investigate a policy issue for a real-world client, or to provide information and analysis to organizations or individuals with expertise in the topic. Each workshop consists of approximately eight to 10 second-year M.P.A., M.P.P., and Ph.D. students who evaluate the given policy problem and develop a final report for and presentation to the client or issue experts.