and this is the only panel of minutes would be appreciated. if you go a minute or two overt the would be okay but after 7i will be brutal. >> mr. bowers? >> um to express my appreciation to co-chairman shays and the other commissions testifying today. i'm here today in the capacity as a regional program director for south central and east asia with mercy corps and international managing development nonprofit organization currently working in over 40 conflict countries such as iraq and afghanistan and i myself with a country in afghanistan in 2004 to 2006 in the early days of the prt formation. the mercy corps has worked continuously iraq since 2003 with projects benefiting 6 million iraqis and afghanistan we have worked there since 1986

under the taliban regime as well as post and currently working 12 provinces and the north central and east part of the country. both of those countries received u.s. taxpayer support or usaid department of state and others. today i will provide information and example to illustrate why mercy corps has observed that development and contingency operation currently practiced by the u.s. government is largely designed for failure. ..

and accountability of the sufferers. these three key elements are ensuring that the right actors are engaged in the right goals, aligning u.s. government funding mechanisms with intended goals and employing proven empirical-based approaches to promote sustainable development. the first key element, which is ensuring the right actors are engaged in the right goals and particular area of interest with contingency operations were received many groups iraq or his present indication of righties don't get duties. they have specifically asked for differences between ngos and prt's. first come as any of now come ngos are becoming staffed by local citizens who are known to the serious and live that live in those areas.

as we are staffed mainly by local people and have been doing these works than these communities such as in kandahar and helmand since the 1980s. mercy corps and others are seen as different from any other act or his. this has the comparative advantage of allowing us to be seen as impartial. i can't come ngos are different because we shoeshine different structure programs to allow longer time frames for implementation, lower expenditures on process oriented methodologies to improve and involve local people send programs. we have found that when they feel ownership among local citizens are more likely to involve themselves in project monitoring are therefore accountable to sustainability. when these three elements as for implementation, measures and a local ownership are present in working in tandem with this allows for full scope of the procedures be the place to minimize space about accountability. finally come most traditional ngos are not associated with the military and are not part of the integrated citizen civ-mil

currently employed. independents are 150 million most practice methodologies adopted for promoting development interest in the environment. in this context are compared vintage ngos from the standpoint of local citizens is that we are able to operate in ways that it's less intimidating. the second key area of wish to highlight is the leading u.s. government funding mechanisms with intended goals. just as there is a narrative factors working on the ground in contingency operations, there are also multiple funding sources have procurement mechanisms operating simultaneously. while mercy corps traditionally does not accept contracts which is acquisition, we operate through agreements and grabs her assistant. since the commission has expressed interest in analysis of the differences between these two procurement mechanisms, it provides her perspective on how they manage the plans for assistance. first because contractors are present usaid and primary coming

to maintain no independent identity while implementing programs and therefore not missing is dependent on personal. the situations in which this can be seen as the band for u.s. policy planner. however, discuss about comic can also carry limitations that need to date knowledge and antenna planning, especially in contingency operations for the u.s. military forces their party to ongoing conflict. finally, employing proven empirical-based approaches to promote sustainable and the like affect it is the third key area in this i would like to remake the methodology does matter, which is often lacking in prt is. good developer can happen only when proven methods are employed. the value we become replicated and scalable in different contexts. it does and seven, mercy corps took a field study to engage program success of two d. programs eventually shut. one is five years after ending

the research to understand the lesson impacts of the program of the methodology used by mercy corps and many other ngos is when communities continue to maintain projects over 93% surveyed they are still being a well used and involve significant online steam governance for reporting -- [inaudible] this provides concrete evidence for change in traditional environments. to do this coming program time frames have to be extended. to be sustainable, and government programs in afghanistan should be built around three to five year time frames, not 12 to 18 months. the additional time is required to maximize u.s. investment by planning for cal for handler. unfortunately the various session of civilization creates missed opportunities. i thank you again for leadership and commitment in stressing the

question of how to best support effective development efforts of the history difficulties with doing development continuing operations may seem to offer more examples of success. i mercy corps we believe opportunity does not exist in the world's toughest places. i implore you to write out various with the right task for aligning the u.s. government could meet the public. would've liked to have been present today, but i'm based in washington and here to talk about how u.s. assistance to restrict development approach

can best serve the needs of the children who are after all in the country. i submitted a statement for the record i might like to do is briefly highlight had a circumstance that children face in afghanistan and briefly mention the workers did the children and then talk about the importance of accountability and smart development approach our agency employed in afghanistan. children are with the most from partial partial state in afghanistan are no exception. children that get us into one of the worst chances of survival in the world. in fact, one out of every five children dies before the age of five, mostly because of preventable causes. that isn't to say progress is that he may appear the mortality dropped. many were children at school today than there were 10 years ago, but they're still millions of schools and not get an. despite adapting comprehensively the smart development approach

we outlined in a paper can change the circumstances. we've worked with afghans for over 30 years and three staff that is about 90% afghan to provide protection, health and nutrition and education program into nine provinces directly through our own staff and another dozen or so through partners. as an example of one stream health we work with families, communities, health care workers and homes in clinics and hospitals to provide basic health care and well-being, particularly for children under five and women of childbearing age. where the business of supporting.her's and nurses well as community midwives with training materials and we train to support community health workers who work out of their own homes to reach some of the poorest and most remote areas of afghanistan. i think her extensive experience working in afghanistan is taught is the basic lessons about what conditions they're most likely

to lead to successful outcomes and together with their other colleagues here at the table we believe our work should be guided by certain principles. let me highlight one of those four principles. accountability, smart development which is so we've talked about in our paper is accountable both to donors into communities and accountability and development programs is really building relationships among donors, communities, governments, private sector and ngos in which all actors have incentives to fulfill responsibilities. accountability to donors is understood and ngos are accountable to donors and we suffer financial commitments that we tell peter commitments to allow cost, jeopardizing future funding and as a result of a very clear financial incentives to propose, and deliver appropriate, feasible and sustainable programs. in a manner that is culturally acceptable impartial and does not jeopardize their security. what does this mean in practice.

it is critical to our ability to gain access of committees and that means we really have to know people are working to understand that an identified the needs and not her rations. access is key and we can continue to make field visits and direct project implementation and outcomes. also delivering results are key. gillespie made the communities the communities need in their aspiration. acceptance has been diminished and that can potentially make it much more difficult to gain access. ngos are accountable to the community, the communities and leaders are also accountable. what does that mean? let me give you an example of how this tends to root. but refers come to a village to do some work with the community, we sit down with the altars and we talk about what we can do to help the community and hear what their priorities are through

that through the discussion on a project. that is all done in a public fashion so we are sure the public discussion and community actually knows and i think that communication is done by our national staff. it is transparent, open and public and through the transparency they are able to assure greater accountability. i dove in paper recommends an increased emphasis on resources for monitoring evaluation and the u.s. government and its many partners and within local ngos. we welcome usaid's new policy with monitoring the valuation. the most standard aspect is a difficult one, but tonight needs at best our continued engagement and we have proposed an approach that we think works, which is the approach based on long-term

commitment. partnership in transparency. we have seen this in design and accountable and impartial execution. thank you. >> thank you very much, mr. klosson. >> thank you, cochairman shays. we appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today. the smart development principle and sustainability and perhaps experience we recommend the u.s. government to development in afghanistan as a process to consider the comparative advantages of all the development implementers in defining, awarding and assessing the assistance programs in afghanistan. catholic relief services of the catholic community and the united states. we work in over 100 countries around the world with humanitarian relief and development. the center in afghanistan from

20,822,011 i had the privilege with a team of over 15 internationals. work in the provinces of herat or bamian, kabul. u.s. teams work in close partnership with local communities, local governments. civil society groups to implement programming of the enterprise, integrated water security, community based education and an easy response. dually sustainable to neither new nor is it the students. in afghanistan a theoretical importance of sustainable development. over and over, the principles of development sacrifices in order to make political timelines, expedite burn rates and deliver easily quantifiable without measuring relevant impact. does come at a small suspect

today produces extremely negative consequences tomorrow. the school is built in a accessible to the construction company and not children surrounding villages or if there no qualified assigned to it, it will not endure and lonely kantian the confusion for educating growth to boys. the construction of a water system in one village by temporary goodwill at the expense of preexisting conflicts with neighboring villages in the project is not only unsustainable, but i dually harmful. therefore, though it may seem self-evident, we continue to emphasize the start development is a difficult one but unsustainable development programs are almost always worse than none at all and the poorly implemented stabilization or development activities may actually be destabilizing.

just to follow up, while working for a sustainable long-lasting impact, distribute development is inherently driven, impartial, accountable and sustainable. the crs works in afghanistan to write examples about this process looks like. our aggregate and present duties are designed in consultation but communities will benefit from them and the planning team at the provincial department of agriculture. for activities. concepts and complications develop a business plan improbability analysis. anybody of any inputs contributed by crs. farmers who participate in the project received in person participated in workshops, but they also receive regular follow-up monitoring and on-the-job training visits. s-sierra staff in the moment about the closer is at project

sites to assess progress, suggest directions for necessary and disseminate lessons learned and best practices. farmers not only reap individual benefits, but also work together and grow as an association or collective marketing arrangements. through these associations, beginning his fiber server economy since gail and a long-term support at work. these growers associations with the department of agriculture to individual farmers can no say in their technical capacity for future success. as the example illustrates come the press system and method ensures that only financial sustainability but also structural sustainability. programs are linked to agencies and build local capacity scare and programs after crs lease. moreover they play a season further growth and development. crs's example after a decade in afghanistan illustrates principle of sustainability is not only feasible, but essential for the effective delivery of u.s. development assistance. commissioners, we appreciate inquiry to approach development in afghanistan said the full

exploration of various development implementers by the gao withheld to measure development impacts and sustainability of her prolonged term. benchmarks and standardized majors of progress to assess impacts will help ensure the standard of comparison among peers implementing agencies. secondly, we asked congress to measure the perfumery far been undertaken by usaid to ensure that is made eighth community that programs and is prioritized. thank you commissioners for the opportunity to testify. we appreciate interests and principles and look forward to working for you as part of your final report. >> thank you, mr. mcgarry. mrs. richards. >> thank you for a much commissioners to provide testimony. and richard, vice president for governmental relations at the rescue committee. the rc has been around since 1933 and we've been working with afghan refugee communities in pakistan in 1980 and we watch

programs inside afghanistan in 1998. the irc is than five southeastern provinces in iraq and the west. we have 400 ask anything of which 90 are afghans. our funding comes from mix of sources including u.s. department of state, aad's office of the european commission and as we described in my remarks the afghan ministry of power with the tatian. one of the three key recommendations from the smart developer white paper is that genuine is community. to quote for the paper success of any development intervention is dependent upon the investment in genuine cooperation of those it is designed to serve. initiatives that are designed to implement and maintain beneficiary communities have the greatest potential to deliver sustainable results. an example of genuine partnership that works as the national solidarity program for

msp. the irc is involved in the nfp since 2003 and was developed by the world bank and is managing kabul by the afghan rehabilitation development initiative say there are 28 facilitating partners that work on the nfp and the other con foundation also facilitating partners. the program operated throughout 34 provinces in the country. over 20,000 villages have benefited from this partnership. if a program where committees identify plants and manage their own projects in a very inclusive way. here's how the program works. one, irc or another facilitating partner purchased local elders, religious leaders and other powerful people in the village and asked them to endorse. once they do not, it opens a lot of doors inside the village. to do members prepare development plans and identify projects. elections are organized to create community development councils in cdcs but the responsibility to include

projects. men and women vote and serve on the cdcs. block grants from the ministry are calculated at about $200 per family, with a maximum of $60,000 per community. a number of financial steps to ensure funds are not diverted. committee members informed about how the monies being sent to public notice boards and enlarged public meetings, monitoring committees are established to promote transparency and accountability. issue to mention cdcs hire local people to undertake complete projects when watching their progress. the past eight years, the irc has help to establish 1728 community development councils and districts and four provinces. the councils have spearheaded over 3406 projects, reaching more than 2 million people. the projects that range from the construction of roads, schools, hospitals and irrigation systems to classrooms to learn to read or acquire a skill. the intangible benefits are also

meaningful for many participants that represents the first time they've been able to play a role in determining how their needs are met. the opportunity to elect council members and build consensus empower citizens is an exercise and good governance on the community level. funding is protected from corruption and communities with results. they are developed in ms p. this level of finest only critical to the project, but also to the wanting sustainability. the nfp program is paved the way to other areas. i also want to mention the second program in partnership with afghan organization. this approach was critical in irc's ability to over 30,000 people in southeast afghanistan following severe flooding in 2010. the irc now receives funding from usaid stop to support this humanitarian response program. in this emergency response program, the irc provides training to four afghan partner

organizations and how to help after humanitarian era national disaster. in visits to the region a nighttime work in afghanistan issues in washington, i've been impressed again and again by quiet courage of the afghan people. many experience terrible things as they strive to build a better society. on a trip to afghanistan if he was good visited nsp programs and low-carb provinces all have different villages were investing their nsp fund a much needed is a stone bridge that provides a shortcut to bring market and another is how schools for children and classic tailoring for women. the great frustration to most americans never see evidence of brave afghans. the media tends to report on the set explosions in terrorist attacks and corrupt politicians. these negative portrayals are a far cry from the oppressive dedicated people i've met and who were among my colleagues. we must learn from other sites the nfp and humanitarian response program to ensure actions in afghanistan are rich

and the needs and desires of afghans and facilitate afghan leadership. we appreciate your branding research to look at how aid agencies operate in the strength of the smart development approach. i hope you can also devote attention to the afghans is hard work undergrowth everything i've talked about and explore how we can be better partners but then in securing a better future for all afghans. thank you. >> thank you very much. and ms. cole, you'll finish up almost her questions. >> thank you, mr. shays members of the commission for give me the opportunity to testify today. the director of intergovernmental fears for the u.s. institute of peace, congressionally created and supported federal institution focused on international conflict prevention resolution. the views i express today are my own. i was the lead writer for putting principles for stabilization and reconstruction , the first doctrine for a whole of government and hole of community action published by usip and the u.s. army 2009. what i say to you today reflects

some of what i learned during the writing embedding of this manual. i'll also discuss the unique role that congress gave to usip 27 years ago to act as the primary interlocutor between our military, diplomatic and development agencies and u.s. humanitarian organizations working to solve the conflict. in fact, had the honor cochairing the only regular contact group between the fact is in the u.s., the working group on civil military relations and not permissive environments. the spark for this group arose from issues in afghanistan. in 2005, interaction with the largest u.s. and the organization for ngos approached the state with concerns about encouragement by the u.s. military and humanitarian assistance here in afghanistan. state asp usip if we would convene the relevant parties. the assistance that it is conducted by military were alleged to be distinction between armed forces and armed

humanitarian development workers are jeopardizing the safety of the latter enforcing retreat among them two more secure areas. this shrinkage of humanitarian space ngos are viewed to last, not more help for treating people. our first meeting of the working group in march of that year was tense and tumultuous. but over time, we have learned that regular dialogue often leads to better understanding, listed location of efforts, increase safety for americans on the ground, clear roles and responsibilities in faster response in emergencies. this dialect produced an historic document released in july of 2007 by the u.s. department of defense, interaction you usip into the parents for relations between u.s. armed forces and nongovernmental humanitarian organizations in hostile or potentially hospital environments. i provided a copy to each of you at these guidelines.

will we learned all of the parties in the dialogue are simple facts. first come the years before the u.s. military ran aground, ngos are likely to be there providing assistance in the worst conditions and years after forces have departed, ngos will still be there. humanitarian assistance and development is their business. the genetic increase in profit making contractors working in this business is muddied the waters, lead to legitimate questions about the accountability, role and conduct of the for-profit entities. second, the widespread perception that major ngos, u.s. ngos operate on the fly without standards and rules is simply not true. the interagency standing committee under the office of the u.n. is ngos together routinely to create and update guidelines for assistance operations. steer, groundbreaking project has created a humanitarian charter and minimum standards for humanitarian assistance.

third, a reading of this fundamental building blocks for ngos shows that the line to humanitarian and development assistance is not a sharepoint. when emergency health care is delivered, the involvement of the community beyond the job training the future health care workers, the infrastructure that is often no fees to the rebirth for creation of a health care system that i'd enjoy beyond any emergency phase. that is development and you can trace that path for the other sanitation, water, sewer, shelter and education. afghanistan, the dialogue has been sold in a difficult. it is the jumpsuit by civilians in the u.s. embassy and disbanded. it's been led by the u.n. and then halted. it's been revived in some form by a new general assigned to isaf. the encouraged to bring humanitarian development assistance does not stop. in our working group, we have focused almost solely now on the

afghanistan problem. china's growing church with the u.s. and its partners to show significant progress before transition target service. delineating respective roles and responsibilities is critically important at this phase. the organizations most likely to remain in place from assisting host nations for the long haul for the ngos, both international and local. it is imperative we build the trust that is necessary -- the trust we've found so fleeting to enable development and ongoing humanitarian development to be successful. usip remains committed to fostering dialogue that is necessary. members of our working group and usip believe that our military working group model in washington has proven its effectiveness and should be replicated at some level in afghanistan to remedy the collapse and effective communications among the key act as they are. we stand ready to assist in this process in congress preserves

usip. thank you very much. i'm happy to answer questions. >> thank you are much, ms. cole. but i think all five are witnesses. the way we're going to proceed is the commissioners will do a first round of eight minutes and will probably do a second round of eight minutes, so we'll see how that works and i welcome mr. transfixed. he's usually the first one, so worth it concerned about his well-being, so it's nice to have you. visit that he may not be here, we invited mr. dickson who is participated in another hearing but is still invited to participate. i'll go second to last. he will coalesce and we will start with dov zakheim, commissioner zakheim. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i want to thank you for coming here and thank you for meeting with us in kabul as well. it's really very useful in the reason you were all here.

ms. richards, nice to see you again. and mr. mcgarry, was chatting with my friend the other night, cardinal mccarrick who is in charge of crs and told him how helpful you would then in kabul and what a pleasure it is to have you. this group in many ways is not usual for all ngos. mr. karzai talked about getting rid of 300 corrupt ngos he didn't have you in mind. they're ngos and ngos and that's one of the things we do need to highlight or think about how you guys do a price to what we do about those others because that is not been mentioned at all. but i have a couple of questions about your relationships with the military. one of the messages that has come under fire testimonies, including yours, mr. kohl is the military doesn't get it right. he doesn't understand sustainability. it is in for a short-term result

and there's a second message sometimes subliminal and sometimes explicit that you really don't want to have too much to do with them and need rather stay neutral. so i have a couple questions. you've all been in afghanistan apart from obvious the institute of peace for a long time. and you can access you claim a usenet the needs of the communities. but until 2001, you were getting ready far. obviously, you weren't under the taliban. it was only when the united dates in particular came in and the taliban was overthrown to do it much more access. so, did the removal of the talent and open doors for you that were close before or at least result in outcomes that you couldn't shoot before? or would you say you're doing justice onto the taliban? lodges go down the list. mr. bowers.

>> no, certainly were not advocate a regime change where we work under the taliban. our access during those times were limited. in fact, probably more by the definition of responding to a humanitarian crisis in a certain geographic area. during that time, we are primarily a southern afghanistan entity towards repatriation and sources of that nature. in terms of actually progress made during the taliban time come asserts that there are limitations during that time. we could not advance the agenda that would highlight women's needs. we could not advance further progress in a market led economy as that did not exist. >> celebrities ask you come in that case, why is it so important to say it not even arm's-length, body's length away from the military says they've created opportunities he didn't have quite >> the opportunity they create

we agree in fact in terms of when they're acting as a stabilizing force in promoting with afghan partnerships by an order. we certainly would agree that the very important mission as the prt in effect the u.s. military could advance that. the primary issue for us is that clouds and as ms. cole indicated, caused the relationship between civilian assistance and military assistance. we are impartial to the needs. to respond to all parties in our consultative process. you will see typically the prt is responding to the needs of local power structures that the governorship. and those may not necessarily be community led. and finally, there's the issue of security and safety in having a close relationship with our current combat make military force to frankly be too dangerous for a a staff. a high-value target and it is

our goal to remain deterrent to through community acceptance strategies, not the first military. >> mr. klosson, are you on the same page click connect them into points. i saw that we keep our distance from the military and the crown come we don't keep her distance on the afghan government. it is a clash here, there was flooding and humanitarian disasters. the ngo community communicate closely with the afghan government. it's really the military not governmental authority at large. you do want to be coordinated. i think the second point and i wasn't in afghanistan prior to 2001 is certainly agree with mr. bowers on many of his points is that all so i think the availability of resources for us to do development work has expanded considerably during that. and that is sent in this enabled us to do more work in the communities. but again, to gain access to communities and our committees are based on acceptance, not deterrent, not be some prevention and that requires us not to be seen as sort of the

vanguard of military force. >> yes i serous reestablish the presence of 2002, see your point is well taken. for a city similar to other organization is not a question of the military even at its armed taxers. some organizations have afghan national police. we don't. we've unarmed guards, full-time serous employees. communities local commanders have offered to protect her distributions with their local gunmen in what was the kind of say no, that's not the way we were. or ask him the primary driver safety and security of staff as a direct purchase and party to the conflict on whichever side that indeed she says. and just to emphasize we frequent had these conversations with the military in afghanistan and they are extremely understanding the purpose active for many to keep our and keep doing what we're doing in our very understanding of the need for that space.

>> ms. richard. >> you know come a few years ago i visited the prt in jalalabad and tax every service reservists that were there. i was so impressed by these guys because they were sort of the best face of the u.s. in terms of coming in no company can came from lots of different walks of life. hey, you know, clearly were, you know, taking up the role at great personal risk. but it struck me. they were very enterprising. they would talk to each other, e-mail back-and-forth debate here at different approaches to development in jalalabad. he struck me they had been trained for this role. that wasn't the original mission of the something of a disservice to be thrust into doing reconstruction development work without the proper background. and so it's not surprising to me then that they would produce projects that are sustainable because they were trained to do that. and also i think we should say also a lot of our efforts to be

impartial and provide a based on need and not to be affiliated with any particular political or armed group is based on principle -- and in turn principles to go back to mid-1800s and has stood the test of time. this is not something that was dreamed up, you know, for the afghanistan issue. so their attention sometimes we come in brief on capitol hill. more and more staff is finding other veterans of iraq or afghanistan and they don't want to hear we are too good to work with the military. i assure you that is not the case. instead it is a very deliberate design to work independently and to work from the perspective of the communities and on their behalf. it's a very different mission than what the military has taken in. >> attends the great >> i would just like ms. coulter responded well. >> just a point of information,

usip has been on the ground in afghanistan since 2002 supporting rule of law and community and national reconciliation activities. but i think that the existence of the contact group we have in washington -- the >> one second because the time is expired. he asked a specific question. just so there's consistent v. >> the question was very simple. it was really two parts. one was in mr. bowers answered in detail. the other panelists didn't really disagree with them that they were very successful prior to 2001. the military therefore came in and open doors in ways that were just not possible for the ngos prior to 2001. and therefore the question is, why this emphasis on neutrality given that the military has done what it done and enabled the ngos to do exactly the kinds of things they want to do.

>> well, again i was just going to say that i think that the existence of the number of dod entities involved in our working group has shown is a voracious appetite for them to understand exactly what the role is of the nongovernmental organizations in afghanistan. and they clearly have learned over the last five years. i wouldn't say they started there, that in order for them -- you know, i agree that in the beginning they were in there. they were dislodging mentality in. if elected she conduct humanitarian assistance activities themselves. but they have learned over the last five years that really fairlane is not in that sphere. in the sack truce can do it much more efficiently and with the local population. as we transition out of afghanistan, they are increasingly looking to understand and in fact give good space to these nongovernmental

organizations to perform their activities because they know they're going to be there after they depart. >> thank you. now we will go to commissioner. >> thank you chairman of bank likewise for being here today. i want to tell you i commend each of you are the work to individually doing your respective organizations do. i do very high regard for ngos in general and the role they play in iraq and afghanistan in particular before preparing for this hearing. in the course of preparing for this hearing, i should tell you that my esteem for you in your work is only increased and that's a predicate for the first question i want to ask him which is kind of in super question. both you ms. richard and you ms. cole said it very well. given the commonsense principles that your respective organizations employ -- not just talking about principles to relate in the document comes with a whole range of principles, local support and local bind, which necessarily the two sustainability. the apolitical nature. when opera can with the

military. rather, you're not been seen as an arm of the military of the fact you're generally are there for years before conflict begins and the after concert dance through the small amounts of money that are involved such that they -- that money can be sustained and can be observed by the local government. your tendency to rely on local workers. all of this leads me to ask the overarching question of whether -- and you were going this direction in the future as we trained mission out of afghanistan, iraq and we look at future contingencies and there surely will be found. whether the whole of this development work out to be done by ngos and not the military, not by seville united states government personnel are private or private contractors. i like for each of you quickly to give me your view on that question. start with you, ms. cole. >> well, i certainly think there is a lot of lessons to be examined for both iraq and

afghanistan and i think if we could take a break from our hortense ernie's operations, we would be well served by doing that. >> i do think that we all learned a lot about what the capabilities of nongovernmental organizations are. i take your point there are ngos and their ngos, the ngos were talking about here before you today do exercise rules of accountability for both her daughters in the u.s. government and have well honed methodologies that should be employed in other missions. i think we should start with that at the starting point. >> mr. bowers. >> you know, i've also worked in kosovo before afghanistan and that is often a situation where we run into u.s. military values or do not operation as well. so why can we do in kosovo were in afghanistan and iraq? the commissions they are really the same.

not to dodge dodge the goober question of what is the future model of the blended approach comfortably as contextualize, but i think many ngos see and value and understand there are times when the u.s. military and humanitarian assistance row has a place. their operations they can bring in pakistan during the floods usher certainly have a role for the u.s. military to help the pakistani government of the people. then there is a clear role in with the ngos can do. >> unhappily much in pakistan and you're the one in your testimony had distinguished among relief and development and stabilization. this is the military will largely relief role? >> correct. >> i'm talking about development. in your judgment should the whole of operations be done by ngos like you rather than the bad ones? >> i think we have a significant role. >> mr. klosson.

>> i'm tempted to see us come but it did give requires to look at the capacities that different players bring to the table and you are very nicely summarizing the value-added that ngos can bring to the table, particularly the social sector linking of communities of governments. i don't think you see a lot of us don't need roads and doing powerplants that type of thing commotions also important for economic growth. i don't think which you take on those projects. there is still room for others. >> should the military is there? >> we should do it as the one who can do it best. >> who is that? >> you tell me. i haven't really studied it i think there's a lot of companies out there that do have adapted building roads and power plants. >> mr. mcgarry. >> i think what we're trying to get a is the military does that instead of the contract carriers, does that then

pollute -- i'll use the word development and that does make you suspect? and that's why we're trying to wrestle with it. if you had a preference, would you say the government -- military should not be doing this work. >> i think particularly under the ngos of the value-added and social sector site, ngos should be doing than a partnership with the host governments and local authorities, not the military. >> mr. mcgarry. >> i don't have any access to the comprehensive study of this. information is physically anecdotal for the last three years and afghanistan in the house in sudan. i would say when we wrote this paper present within military might. it wasn't necessarily with security companies in mind or for-profit contractors even ngos. the idea was we see so much that developments enough guinness and an across-the-board, international ngos to a

terrible job. locals deterrable job. what i would like to see is these principles be the metric by which anyone is evaluated for it. and so in afghanistan, the distinction between private contractors in the military is often not a meaningful one because private contractors operate with close protection, armored vehicles and so forth in the community's mind. >> let me turn it on that because of their interest interesting and helpful answer. as you say, the principles that ought to matter here. that is the military capable? are civilian private for-profit contractors capable of taking principles, which are common sense principles and being as effective at implementation is a good ngos are quiet >> i would say based on what i've seen for long-term sustainable community driven impartial development principles laid out here know that maybe in time, maybe in another five or 10 years but the emphasis that have been given on this

principles lately perhaps, but consistent in afghanistan if you're interested in long-term impartial afghan driven trans-parent development ngos are typically the way to go. not to say it gets 100% one or the other couple but that's been my experience. >> thank you admits richard. >> i was thinking about the comparative advantage of ngos. i think is part of the impetus behind writing the paper was the six organizations came together to put out how we do it because they take great pride in that. the large international ngos, less than a dozen to over 90% of the funds mobilized by the ngo community globally and i think probably before us are part of a dozen. so i agree with what mike klosson and not mcgarry said in their consent is.

>> the whole of the joint efforts would be undertaken by ngos. let's stipulate we are talking about good ngos as opposed to bad ones in ngos that follow principles that we've all laid out. today's testimony. i think that's helpful and i'm inclined to agree with that. the second question. given the fact that ngos are generally perceived to be a political, not taking sides in the conflict and therefore presumably more accepted by the local populace and i think your experience you should be says indicates that the case. i would think the casualty rates among ngo american personnel in your local contractors would be far, far lower than that for united states military, civilian personnel and for american ex-pat or western contract truce in the theaters. is that right? what is your casualty rate relative to tears?

>> speaking from the serous example and again we work in relatively stable areas across the central highlands so it's not a direct comparison with someone working in kandahar and helmand that would let mercy corps another's work in those environments, but we've had zero international fatalities of any sort in our time in afghanistan we have had zero work-related afghan fatalities. we've had people killed in roadside robberies, but nothing to do with affiliation with this or that were. >> you think that is everything to do with the nature of how you're perceived? >> it has everything to do with quality of our work because if we do that work, but can be as impartial as he won because of its sick of us entirely so. it has to do with the way we work with a humble approach, community approach and following these principles. >> if i could get a clear response from each and then i'll stop. ms. richard.

>> i'm sorry, did you say before this from the previous round you got the conclusion that ngos are best at doing all this? i want to just correct that. my colleagues think if you're building a ring road around afghanistan, high receives not the group to do it. clearly some of the things we do like having 90% of our staff be afghan is a benefit not just to the sustainability programs and getting them done and also the longevity of it and our security. so if you look at the prt is in the military, they are bringing in the state department. they are preeminent thing americans who are north americans and don't speak language necessarily. some do. it's just a very different profile than our hiring folks who started out working with us when they are in pakistan. >> what is your casualty rate? >> we have lost seven staff in several years.

>> code that relate to the military and private contractors >> in terms of percentages it's actually -- what i was reading this that being an american aid workers on the one of the top is the fifth most dangerous job in america today. so i think it's a little relative. it's a very dangerous job. >> mr. klosson, mr. bowers. >> a a chat with a colleague in my understanding is we have an understanding in afghanistan. we have had national employees held in things like that, but now lost in the expense. >> mr. bowers. >> reapply staff in the past. most of our casualties lately have been natural cassis due to avalanche in airplane crashes. >> i'm talking about violence, being killed. >> no, our rate of ability to stay safe is remaining lehigh right now.

>> this question would be relevant to you, ms. cole. >> we have staff on the ground in afghanistan and we have not taken any casualties. >> thank you very much. commissioner tiefer. >> thank you, chairman transporter. preparing for this hearing is a learning experience for me. with trepidation i mentioned in my status at the university of baltimore law school there such a thing is great for the legal world and i don't know enough to really teach. i'll know a little more after today. i want to express my respect for chairman mike thibault who could not pierce communities in fishbowl that site lead the way to the trip by chairman shays and commissioner zakheim. this is the here and wanted to know from the ground up in afghanistan what does washington want to impose on the world. alas this question to you, ms. richard and have a bit of an

introduction about the principle of impartiality and what it could mean for the future. let's suppose that the current conflicts in afghanistan doesn't end with an absolute victory for one side or the other, but the taliban and that's the word i haven't heard much today, excuse me for bringing it in. the taliban in southern control certain areas and can be rooted out, but the central government ends up in control of other areas. do you think would be possible for your organization or a similar organization to play a stepped-up role in that situation since that's part of whatever truths or arrangement there is, there would be -- what would hope both sides would bombard going on, but there is not a complete and that the conflict in that sense. would there be a large role in a post-conflict afghanistan organization is when ms team. >> i would hope that no matter what afghanistan that piracy

will stay and continue working. we were in afghanistan during area. and what we did was how it supported schools for schools that were hidden away people's houses. now dr. zakheim is correct that there is a lot her afghan children being educated today than there were in those times. you know, we can reach far more into a lot more in the open, but i would like to hope that our folks would be able to continue working no matter what the government that shakes out over time is. >> in your report, i nastiness as one person would be mr. pitt is the case study under helmand province. i learned a little and i'm curious one of the organizations get that worth either i can just talk to you about that.

shiitake about it mr. bowers? >> sure. >> i was impressed. the press understates out. how many provinces -- helmand province is a turbo place in the world, not just because the police there. it is a capital of the world. it is not just in our war interest. happens to be an assemblages dispose precious time i ran, all nations of the hellemond played that there be agricultural development. and i've read this, i didn't think it was possible. how was it possible to have agricultural development? how do you answer this paradox. taliban number one source of income is poppies growing and heroin. how could anyone do agriculture development in helmand province? >> you do it by the blended approach earlier in terms of

where you have an afghan led approach at the community level and you're espousing the idea is that the more you can demonstrate the value in legitimate blissett production that will meet the needs about that community and the more they will buy into that. you have to then couple that with the dilemma of the nature of work there is that the police are under corruption to transport that poppies production you mentioned earlier before and often legitimate government has a stake in that. so we often have a parallel need to not dismember the legitimate government, but to work from a community level of approach. you are essentially building development doesn't have to access that the government of old. it can exist at the community level. the dilemma also is not to be too technical are you going to do harm in that as well because

it is in fact the rotation cannot you help clean and fix. rup repeating poppy land or wheatland? and really that is a very fine line on how much we can control and monitor that. a lot of it has to do with how much the local alters structure has bought into principles of a few providing input comebacks but patience of the output will have been good to weasel be grown or corn will be grown in a opium good opium is gone essentially will appeal it to offer the same inputs the year after. you're conditioning a little development based upon what they understand we cannot then achieve. >> i know what to put together what to questions i asked for you, ms. richard india mr. bowers. the suppose there's a post-conflict situation and part of the price we pay is the taliban must stop protect team the heroin trade in what to impose something awful and we must get rid of corruption.

a high-level other than the lowest common denominator. could ngos play a role in that kind of higher-level? could she provide enough energy to fill the place taken by getting rid of the eliciting so to speak and the u.s. government? >> well, i think that possible service that ngos could play in that kind of scenario is the ability to reach so many villages and to reach so many people really at the ground level and that is something that i know everybody involved in afghanistan is just really amazed by. and so i think that holds a lot of potential. in order for us to work with villages, to be able to travel there than to would it be relatively peaceful. >> impartiality? >> also there be a basic level

of security. >> mr. bowers, what do you think about the possibilities in those situations? >> and reality that is occurred right now. in fact in many places and at best and where you have the fact go conflict districts, most of our staff would already have some sort of dialogue with them in terms of how permissible will it be for us to do xyz. ..

>> very briefly in response to your questions when of the things we observe in the field as farmers aren't growing because the traditional experience because they love it because there's the culture of poppy growing to read the great because it is generally profitable and there are riss get first and if you grow poppy a popular will advance seat and fuel and fertilizer on the credit is one of the problems we see on the stabilization program that is cash for work driven let's give them cash for work right now so they don't grow poppy, somebody does the cash for work project while the rest of the family stays home and gros poppy because they know the cash for work is here today and gone tomorrow so to your larger question if there is a real emphasis on alternative livelihood on the development and things like that the principles again hold where you

have to be planning for where and delete what is the farmer going to be doing in two or three or five years and the farmers need to be confident that we are incredibly destitute, poor, a family of 4i have to provide for i'm not cling to your project and stop growing poppy unless i know there is a plan for the year after and that's one of the advantages the ngos can bring. >> thank you very much. commissioner hendee. >> thank you. ms. cole come in your statement you mentioned the fact that private actors implementing development programs private contractors are muddying the waters which lead to legitimate questions about the accountability role and conduct of the for-profit entities. could you each just give your response more general sense on the contract incited when we have and implementing organization for aid, implementing a project to we

have the right public accountability mechanisms in place to write the oversight mechanisms? take a step out from your ngo role but in your experience working year and with private and mentors for the eight projects do we have adequate oversight of their activities? and the projects to be effective this cole and others? the umbrella answer to your question is no. on the experience i will speak on the rule will fall and police issues. we know when we try to look at the contractors that are providing police and assistance in afghanistan that the information they hold this praia terrie, mostly to understand and conduct any oversight.

>> what kind of information -- >> budgetary information, what are their budgets, very simple questions. it's proprietary information. we did a study of the operations and most conflict states and we couldn't get any of that information. we would argue is the development? i think it is development of the security forces these people need to operate so that is a good example. these are private companies implementing public -- brac correct. >> i certainly do welcome the oversight and i think the nonprofit world even here in the united states is buckling under that issue of having oversight either the state or federal level. >> what you mean by buckling under? i don't follow that. >> in terms of that even from my

experience we often don't know how to communicate back to the public our accountability of what we do it either private money or certainly when the government gives a grant. but in terms of oversight contractors in afghanistan, i think the fault lines have usually been on the expedient nature of when they have to complete something by date and burn rates which causes a lot of it looks like short circuit in their own compliance systems and ability to regulate fraud and waste. >> what does that mean by a short circuit in? >> the contracts usually are very high value and under 12 for 18 months and so really they are jumping through other hurdles to get the roads built and power plants built in a short time span. >> speed dominates? and there's an accountability is you're point? >> we see that a lot and then of

course the turnover rate in terms of their own oversight from the embassy is quite high. >> mr. paulson? >> as i mentioned in my remarks on the accountability and monitoring evaluation i don't have a sort of independent view on the private side. >> i think to answer to question generally know and it's partially a function of the nature of the mechanisms versus acquisition mechanisms where there's a great deal of oversight and conversely a lot more control over a contract they can change the geographic location and completely shape up the entire project until you go this way or that we but a lot of the inherent nature of the contract is that a lot of the success or failure isn't judged on impact it's just how many metric tons we've distributed not whether they got planted were germinated or were distributed through a streak to the country strong men who cut

75% for themselves and where is the cooperative agreement there's a lot less control but the monitoring evaluation does tend to be much more focused on impact the teachers retain what they learned and so forth. >> ms. richard? >> you know, our contractors of explained to me over several years now that contractors will subcontract subcontractors and from the gets a cut along the way so by the time you get to where the project is being carried out there is little of the original money left but i would imagine you are more expert about this than i am. what i fear for in washington is when these big stories hit the news that billions wasted in afghanistan it undercuts our ability to raise money and continue holding the interest of americans and the enterprise we are involved in and it really

bothers me and that's why i try to get the press interesting and covering the positive stories but that's not really news. we try to go to the hill to get their, these ngos, and we try starting a few years ago to get more attention from the various oversight bodies looking at the comparative advantages of the different methods of doing reconstruction development in afghanistan and so we were supportive so senator lautenberg reading the special the inspector general of afghan reconstruction and that hasn't panned out well at all so i feel like apologizing that this hasn't been a success. >> why is that? >> i don't know why but i know why we were behind is because we felt we could be an open book, look at us and that's also why i believe that the call one of my panelists before for general accounting, government accountability office reviewed

is also something we would welcome and that's why we welcome your having this hearing this morning because we want to talk at this. espinel on the issue of comparative advantage of what to ask each of you in the situation that we are in presently in afghanistan, what are the comparative advantages of doing lescol at desolate cost stabilization i'm not sure there's a bright line porter the vintages of doing the development work with a prt in the prt model and space? >> in the competitive advantages to that? >> you each talked about comparative advantages. >> i can .1 thing now which is the military, american military representatives and troops were very frustrated that they were being expected to do everything and they looked to the civilian side of the government for help.

>> so now they have a lot more attention and resources from the civilian side with our point is that's not the best. >> there's too many governments around here. are you talking afghan or you ask the government? >> u.s. government. i know in talking to members of the military they were frustrated they felt they were not showing up and now with the prt there is much more of a u.s. government departmental civilian presence from other governments but what we are challenging is the whole approach. >> what is the comparative advantages? if there is 1i would like to hear. estimate the comparative the advantages in the area of police training, mentoring the local security force capacity building that isn't something i don't think any of us on this panel would do and we have zero capacity to do that so if anyone is going to do that it makes sense which astounded at the provincial level. i think for the long term development we are talking about

they don't have a comparative advantage if for no other reason they tend to be there for a year and rotate out and that isn't enough time to do what we are talking about. >> any thoughts on this? >> i would agree with what was said they be on the security side the longer term development at the country grassroots level was best known by the ngo. >> so very limited? >> just in terms of development. mr. bowers to want to see something i have to wrap up in about 40 seconds. it's been a comparative advantage they speak from authority and the present at the very field level and authorized body most people respect at least the people we want to respect and so often they can create some stabilizing effects if they are led well by their local commander with the government's that are failing. >> okay. thank you. >> i will recognize myself for eight minutes, and first i'd like a short answer if you need

to get a laundry answer dewitt in peril. are you, ms. richards, involved in the nation-building, is your organization involved in nation-building?

>> as a country? >> yes. >> because i think it carried a lot of baggage and it's a term that has been bandied about in many ways and is not a political consensus behind nation-building. >> i love ngos and i love what you do. i am a huge fans and i couldn't even be in partial but i'm going to try because i love the fact i'm a former peace corps volunteer. i just have a general sense you reach people and listen to people and are doing more with the need but there are criticisms. it's hard to measure. you're involved in capacity

building and empowerment and democracy training. getting people to realize the could put their head out of the ground and make a suggestion and they won't be ripped off and they can ask their neighbors what they think and build consensus. overseas in some places that foreign but how we measure it? mr. bowers, how we measure it? >> we have a clear sight of definitions of metrics on how we do that at mercy corps and in fact from pulling it down on a global level with all of our field missions there's always the dillinger reporting. donors like to see outputs and results. rarely do they ask what the impact is. it's the impact most of us with character try to achieve because that's where you see the long outstanding sustainable affect. many cases where you're doing is unless you have a horizon of

time that exceeds two years, you are not going to measure the impact you're going to measure results that are achieved. whether or not the results stick, whether or not the results have changed behavior of population base affect is the key dilemma of our industry and all ngos are faced with that dilemma. but how to do it at a pragmatic level we've always created a set of indicators on how we are going to have least get result based. >> of mr. bower's could elaborate more and tell me where you would agree or disagree. so, give me an example of something that would be a measurement. >> one measurement right now a very specific example is of five years ago created a microfinance institution in kabul to serve women through microcredit so if that is not a self financing entity by 2014 we probably failed and there's a lot of failures out there right now so

that measurement right now is the institutional level measurement of ability to finance itself. >> fair rule of law, how would you determine a measurement on the rule of law blacks >> in the culture of afghanistan if the elder hasn't shot some other family member in an informal justice system, a rule of law measurement i would think is a system that is actually performing the way it's set up by the institution. >> how would you all the elaborate or disagree to the answer of mr. bower's? >> i think one thing is to distinguish between measurement with particular projects and then sort of a broad context with project specific type measure and flexible health interventions looking at increased coverage and how many more local is a fly providing the coverage than is the case for the baseline. the broad perspective is can you actually been lead to the committee and they can take it over. so i think the broad impact of

that rebuilding stage sustaining institutions is a number of years and you have the question sometimes of retribution but we've seen save the children is an afghanistan where a number of years ago we were doing a lot of basic health package service provisions and three years ago the local ngos took them over so we no longer provided them and i think that's impact. >> let me ask you mr. speed and ms. richards, the money is money that commanders in the emergency response programs and, you know, thank goodness for people like petraeus that realize it wasn't finding it in iraq, al qaeda and other dissidents but terrorists but to realize they had to start to be involved frankly and nation-building.

is there a danger that when the military does it people than the get anything where development is taking place at a military instrument and rather something nonmilitary coming to go first. >> i think there is a danger in that. i think it can be overstated. i think a lot of times communities assume our money is coming from the u.s. government. an american catholic organizations there are certain risks involved and the degree to which we stick to the principles. >> catholic organization and a muslim country is a very devout conservative muslim society. so there is a danger that in all development assistance gets tainted as being somehow part of the conflict but there's also the risk that if it's done again not for the development means but largely for the force protection if it doesn't work out well just as if the development is done badly by in

initio or contractor then becomes that much more difficult to be effective development in that community for the next organization beat an ngo or the military. >> but i do have a sense and it's probably not standardized some of the military tried to involve to use the model that he will use. ms. richard? >> well i can give the washington d.c.-based answer which is we have a double standard in our programs in that funding for the agency for national development for a long term development done by development experts is tied up in all sorts of checks and balances that have been imposed by congress to prevent waste and fraud and the money is subject to none of that. >> thank you very much. and i made my best effort to be aggressive.

mr. dixon, fellow commissioners have invited you to participate and we thank you. >> thank you, sir, and good morning to all. i share a high regard for the work that you and your personnel to around the world and mindful this morning as we meet here that one of the mandates for this commission is to focus on waste, fraud and abuse, and in preparing for this, mr. bowers, i read some of your statement for the record and i'd like to bring up when a sample you cite but then i would like you to respond and the other witnesses respond as well. in the six able you are referring to southern afghanistan in 2008 where usaid awarded the global development alliance awarded a $2.1 million grant for agricultural development and then subsequently the u.s. government awarded a 300 million-dollar grant to another organization for agricultural development in the same area.

and in that case it ultimately led to the payment of the farmers to work in their own fields. so in that sense, the u.s. government was competing with itself for limited resources of the non-governmental organizations and we found in other places that competing programs can contribute to waste and inefficiency. the question is how we avoid that? we talked in your opening remarks to talk about the right actors and the right goals. you talked about aligning the funding with goals. the question is who does that and how with ngos and with usa ied in the military and these kind of contingencies who is responsible for the kind of architecture the strategic plan making sure hopefully all of the arrows are pointed in the right direction? >> in the ideal were always be the host government at the provincial or capital level depending on the complexity of that environment. afghanistan all tools are off the essentially in terms of inter coordination that most

would generally find in the development context are simply extraordinarily difficult to accomplish. the panel here routinely need to at least share some of that in some cases the u.n. leaves because the government is either weak or nonexistent and in some cases we have seen in other places you may share that information with a military force. often we would share that with the prt but frankly there are so many actors with competing interests and contractors are one of these actors that unless they complete the deliverable they will be reimbursed, so they don't really care of the end of the day of that farmer's land is incentivized to do something voluntarily because that is the data point they have to accomplish. so, the usaid officer cannot be

aware that mercy corps already has a pre-existing program to support that initiative so i would say there's a dillinger requirement to collaborate and courtenay that, but again like afghanistan where you've seen an exorbitant amount of money really flowing into only three different regions of the country it's extraordinarily difficult to crystalize who's in charge, the governor's office is either incapacitated or lacks the ability and then often the sense of how to get all of those actors together. from your exhibit it seems like even on the part of the u.s. government it's not taking place and it would seem to me he actually knew sort of an interagency mechanism both in the field through the mission but also that here in washington to make sure the work that's being done is aligned and certainly you don't have that duplication.

>> at the village level it's basically impossible for us to duplicate some models is effort because we are small villages in the middle of nowhere and we know what's going on and regular contact with the villages they the example you site that is a kabul u.s. government based decision and we don't give any influence over so intergovernmental boehner it would be great trees of that sort of problem. petraeus connect ms. cole? >> i would only say that after five or six years of trying to build an interagency capability in the united states we are far from achieving any kind of predictable way to bring our agencies together let alone mash up with the non-governmental organizations in the host

nations it's a critical gap and it will continue to plague us as we go forward in any country that we can think about that is in disarray. what is going on at the moment is experiencing the same kind of disarray we've seen in other places. so it's a serious problem. >> my second question focuses on time. we heard questions with regard to the long-term and short-term and value that ngos bring for the long term. contingencies are supposed to be short term yet interactive afghanistan we find that a tremendous amount of time has passed. in terms of planning resources for contingency the role of the military and of the idea of the rollout ngos, how do we as a country plan for and prepare for

short-term contingencies how does that change the equation with regard to your role versus that of the military? i would like to go down the line starting with ms. cole. >> you ask a difficult question. if you see the guidelines we produced in this group you will see we recommended that the interaction the umbrella organizations have some kind of ability to interface the combatant commands as they are preparing for contingency operations in the very short term so that's one recommendation it's not going to solve everything. we do need a more predictable interagency process. and the military and others have recognized they can't just plan the abstract. the need to consult with the organizations here and elsewhere that have some very specialized skills and will allow them not to have to repeat and duplicate their skills.

>> thank you. i have just a minute left of my time and perhaps not all but if anyone has a comment. ms. richard? >> in the international affairs budget there's a couple of accounts that are supposed to be used for responding to contingencies internationally. one is there's a regular refugee account, migration refugee account at the state department and also in the emergency refugee migration account and the unanticipated crisis happens. at the agency for the development there is the fund for the office of foreign disaster assistance and that tends to get oversubscribed because it is only one account so that is used for promoting disaster prevention and readiness oversees the first thing that usually goes out the window. responsibility, the response to the natural disasters responding too complex to monetary emergency such as afghanistan i talked about in my testimony funding has been used for the

humanitarian crisis in parts of afghanistan and also a lady takes the lead on the internally displaced persons all around the world. so to my mind there ought to be more funding for the contingencies but that is usually the first thing cut from a budget. >> you mentioned libya. and frankly apart from the fact our commission is thinking about lessons learned, for the future, not just afghanistan and iraq to me that is a nightmare. we decided to go into libya very quickly. we still haven't decided how we are going to stay in libya and now you're talking about planning. with a seven attrition and government has in fact changed its process he's out all in terms of the kind of issues we are discussing as it looks at libya and i'd like to hear from

each of our other panelists whether you've been brought into this conversation of all or whether once again catch as catch can. can you talk about libya? >> we have brought together an array of organizations under a an interagency planning committee at the white house to do regular planning. they've been brought together and they are looking at various sectors and seeing where the united states might bring resources to bear. >> i think it is a very imperfect process. >> you've been in the government a while. >> i think with each innovation we get a little bit better. >> to meet each contingency? that would help us.

>> but i think the problem remains that we will not have any lead actors and and we are talking to the bringing together assets from across the government. >> have there been any lessons learned from you guys involved? >> i.t. we are involved. we have teams in libya as we speak. i'm talking about government planning. >> i agree with ms. cole at the washington level there's always seemingly another iteration that seems to be improving at. at the field level which is what i represent, very hard to see right now. >> at the washington level linker has been outreach. we certainly saw the the the case of contingency planning for south sudan where the state department and office of disaster assistance through a number of meetings that reach out the committee compared notes and something similar large of the office of foreign disaster assistance has occurred with libya since light and on the

ground in that area. >> i'm afraid that was all afghanistan all the time until a couple of weeks ago. >> libya at all now? >> working on both sides of the border i don't know what extent if any they've been involved in the planning. >> ms. richard. >> we have sent teams to the egyptian side of the border and the parts of the government have been in touch with our teams libya is an odd situation right now because there haven't been a lot of refugees over the border. the people that have come have been workers from third countries going back to them and we did do a little help on that

to in a half-million kids in school is that due to any one organization or what? everyone claims credit for the education success in afghanistan >> would that include -- >> well, when i would suggest and one of my colleagues who was killed by insurgents in afghanistan taught me about this in terms of education is that its education in afghanistan is

more than building a school salat taken credit for building school buildings but education is also getting the support of the communities and send kids to school having the parents having female teachers so the girls can go to school so they are not supposed to go if there is a man as their teacher having a curriculum that israel so that they are not just going through the motions and having parent teacher associations created so that there's good continued involvement in the u.s. so this goes back to the question of benchmarks. but what you really want to do this test to see our children learning in afghanistan. and i think in some of the places where we've been working the community-based schools there are no other -- nobody else to take credit so there it made a contribution, yes. we wouldn't take credit for the

2.5 million, we only take credit for the stuff we can measure and quantify ourselves and in our case for the educational achievement over the last five years we filled 13,000 children, 60% gross achieve a primary education as a consortium with irc and care and the foundation that never goes up to 110,000 across the country. and this goes back to the chairman shays's about the more abstract higher level impact questions. one of the ways in which we do it which is fairly straightforward as we ask people and we ask them over and over, the same people and we write down what ever it is they tell us and so sometimes looking at the principles we violate some of them ourselves we don't get it right all the time that when we get it wrong we ask and try to take corrective action. >> you modify the question. does the circuit in your way when you try to do sorts of things? >> i don't think we access the money. >> but those who are doing serp

to get involved in the same activities we have reserved for instance are teaching farming techniques coming out of iowa and indiana and pleases with farmers teaching the techniques so people involved in the schools. do you find the specific to these cross weicker's with your activities? >> i don't know we've encountered them in the work we've been doing to encounter them i think our impartiality would be called into question. >> mr. bowers? >> they have at times. privatizing field units for many years in fact and often commanders are rife and want to do something very quick and meaningful for the population so they do what is called the attack missions, they provide free vaccinations to animals. >> so you build to the to destroy the market you're trying to build? what is your impression of this? >> the only thing i would add

here is how would we know who is responsible for what? what is attributable to what? we simply do not have a system to extract lessons from the field. the military is an incredible system, to understand exactly where they try any way to understand what leads to what, we don't have that on the civilian side it simply doesn't exist. >> i think that's fair and i would point out i know i am out on my time if we can't measure we can't really say unless you have a case like mr. bowers the military gets in the we necessarily. you just don't know. the military goes to education and decker culture so i'm not sure, you said earlier in effect the military gets in the wagering often and shouldn't be into this and you tell them you can't measure it so how do you square that circle? >> we have case studies. we have some evidence but in terms of the whole string of

case studies that doesn't exist. i feel we can extrapolate from experiences in various sectors of out serp. >> switch more tentative rather than the conclusion you read it? >> thank you. -- before mr. chairman. i just want to start with a quick editorial comment. i think we've had is a commission 23, 24 hearings come something like that over the course of the tenure. this is the most important one we've had. i hope for a much the staff is taking note of everything transpired here, so there's some tremendously important lessons to be captured and i just think of the money that could be saved or as important as that is and that's jerry important indeed especially in these budgetary times as important as that is even more important ally of that could be saved and the likelihood of our increased stability to in jeeves americas's strategic objectives in war zones i think would

benefit enormously from the recommendations of here coming out of the hearing today so i just wanted to start with that. two other quick things. i want to follow one where i began and my first round of questions and mr. hendee continued sounds like the consensus is the only unique role in your judgment your collective judgment that you can play that is a security like function obviously the military obviously is a security focused organization so that makes sense. and you talked about road-building triet i'm not sure why the military is capable of doing that. >> referring to the contractors, construction contractors. >> other is everything else in the long term development sounds like in your judgment ought to be done by ngos operating on these principles of anybody disagrees with that for the record by all means but i'm going to take that as a given if i don't hear things from the

other contracts. >> the military has a role at large. >> fair enough. second i want to follow-up on mr. dixon's line of questioning. you mentioned in your testimony, ms. cole, that usip was called upon to the the conflict in a role in the absence of anybody else and you gathered at least some of the relevant parties to work out issues and that's commendable. i want to ask what you in particular of anybody else has comments i would welcome it one of the things we want to do in the commission is reach out to relevant actors and parties with regard to your view on the recommendation we've already made. we are just out with another report a couple of months ago and one of the right conditions -- recommendations to the need for more coordination on the field and in washington and

among the recommendation is astonishing a dual headed offical one person but dual headed who has an omb function to ensure the relevant resources are provided in the contingency context of which obviously development is a part and that person would play a role of the national security council to ensure coordinating function. do you have thoughts about that recommendation? >> i think i would want to reserve judgment and look at the report in more detail and there's been a lot of recommendations about various interviews that we should construct in the u.s. government and i think there is one floating around introduced on the house side so they should be looked at individually. in terms of the tecum function, it provides a safe space for these organizations, the entities in the u.s. government and non-government to come together. we don't the conflict among themselves and i think it is a very important role that should

be kept and preserved. as to make anybody else have any quick comments? if not i would like each of you to submit for the record your views on that recommendation. its recommendation 11 in the interim report. third, a couple of questions to you, this is neither here nor there i suppose but i'm just intreat you made a point of saying the views you're expressing here are your own and not those of usip i wouldn't think there'd be daylight between the views he expressed in those that usip officially is there, and if not why did you say that? >> usip is not an organization that advocates a specific policy, so it is here in my individual capacity that i come before you today. my views obviously are a result of the work that usip allows me to do so there's a direct correlation. >> okay. and also a question on usip you referenced this i think in your statement.

i know that the funding of usip has been under attack i think it is fair to say recently it seems the work of this organization is more important now than ever can you quickly give the status and the likelihood of your being able to continue petraeus connect our funding was zero doubt under h.r. one and house representatives. it was preserved in the democratic alternative and now there's a deal so we expect to learn what the number is today and early this week. we have been gratified believe to provide by the support of defense military commanders, our colleagues here in the state department usaid and others in support of the mission. so we hope to continue that mission for the american people. >> i do, too. >> another question we kind of touched on this in a number of rounds but i don't think we've drawn out explicitly to get your view on this, that kind of a

threshold question whether stability has to precede the development for the development to be sustainable are we wasting money and putting contractors at risk by working in more dangerous areas? it seems you've had some success in a rather dangerous areas so what are your views about this question? anybody? >> what i would say is there is a continuum so if it is an all-out battle field where you have to be held in a compound, we don't do that. but if it is an area which is in secure when you are able to work out access to the come manatees and receptivity on the part of the community for the work to be done, we will do that. so in afghanistan we are in some of the more secure provinces and kandahar for example as well as places in the north so i don't think -- if it is an all-out battle we are not there but it is insecure and we are able to gain access to the community and they want assistance than we can work in those areas.

>> it makes sense. do you basically agree with that? >> yes, mercy corps does, too. >> perhaps to other questions. one is we talked a lot about the commendable fact it seems to me that the vast majority i think 90% is the figure i heard from you of your employees on the ground in the field or local afghan nationals in the case of afghanistan that having been said it is also the case that there can be a rather large percentage of local nationals employed by contractors by aid etc commesso can you tell us what difference is if any there are in terms of practices and insurance issues causey comer raúl, etc., what is it let's say the percentage is basically the same in a given area for the

purposes of comparison was the differentiating factor would you say any of you? >> in our experience we tend to hire people fairly young. a lot of our staff we don't pay as much as a contractor or the u.s. government so people come to us often out of college and the first job in 2002 they are still working with us because we place an incredible emphasis internally the same as externally all the capacity and so that isn't just sending somebody to training in thailand once in awhile but we have staff in the english teachers' on site for the cooks and cleaners and we offer everybody university educations and we take very good care of people when they get sick and have unlimited health care services and we also are going to be around we hope and definitely is a the same reason communities work with us through thick and thin and take tremendous risks to guarantee safety and security, our staff

will often takes it the second factors of three or four pay cuts where they could walk next door to a contractor and that much more because they know we are going to be around and we will do our best to take care of that as long as they are with us. >> ms. richards -- >> i don't think this death benefits from knowing they are part of a global enterprise working to help people in the similar situations around the world and that we've also had examples of, for example, our national solidarity program which i described is an axiom of the community reconstruction and we had a staffer that went over early on in the to the sentry and 2004 to help that get started and we had a couple of afghan staffers go to indonesia and myanmar to talk about this type of approach to project. so our staff has the ability to become international staff and make a contribution in other situations. >> thank you.

>> ms. cole, part of your enterprise is an elaborate network of experts in several ways and excuse my curiosity, there are some aspects using to border on the government contracting in terms of public budgets and their transparency and so forth. it does u.s. aid take interest in say the post conflict situation? >> interest in looking at that issue >> yes in fact we have looked at that issue both in the context of our military working group but also the peace and stability operations program. we looked at the issue of contracting for particularly the rule of law a fix for many years i would be happy to share with

you the results of the work. >> i would appreciate that. this isn't necessarily a political conflict situation but i will start with you. the projects you mentioned several of you have mentioned roads, power which currently are u.s. contracting the future plan certainly of aid is what the net capacity building by the afghan ministries, they would take over some aspects of roads, power this becomes more and more and in a country thing, not u.s. government but afghan government thing for joost allin parallel and you do this sort of

agricultural substance and things like that and what we are calling the big things but which we, and the smaller things, smaller roads become smaller things do you take a role or is that still somebody else's sector? >> the last couple of years there's been a policy coming out of the state department that of a -- that i believe was to avoid the establishing parallel systems in both pakistan and afghanistan starting with pakistan to buy pass international and she goes like ourselves and to go directly to the government or local ngos, and we felt this is over the long term the idea to have the governments provide service to their own people but in both cases they were not ready to do that. both cases pakistan and afghanistan and we were in the

midst of programs that instead of being parallel for raising standards providing a sort of skelton to support local development so for example in the national solidarity program we are working with the ministry at the village level. it's not a parallel system. it's intrinsically linked to the ministry. there's another program there was mentioned which is an education program that is coming to an end not because we continue to run a i think we could but it's time for the ministry of education to step forward and take that on all that the minister cannot take that on so we talked to ambassador mark grossman about this and to folks at afghanistan -- a ied around this but i think

the pressure to shift right now is quite dominant. >> when we to see an electrical projects in afghanistan we discovered a recent that aid has an ambitious program to build the capacity in the afghan public utility and turn it over the afghan public utility to build between kandahar city. you are apparently someone informed but the capacity of afghan national institutions. are they ready for this or is this way down the road before they can take this over? >> and degette dairies from institution to institution. mrd gets mentioned a lot of

huffing and high-capacity and ministry of health partner directly with others and have a tremendous amount of success. so to build up the pace of the partnership for the community-based education for example that i mentioned it's not just a question of the capacity of the ministry but how that handover is done and so capacity building may be a place filled with the jargon of all sorts but when we talk about capacity building we talked about starting today for something we hope to accomplish in three to five years. when a lot of other people talk about capacity building is a process of starting today for a turnover we are going to do in two months or six months or maybe on the outside a year so that's what happened with the pace and a very sustainable project that could have been handed over quite in a year if we started a month ago and we started planning for a month ago to hand it over today. and so it would allow to

ministry to ministry depending on the sophistication of the work they are doing and what level of capacity they've had over the last ten years but it also depend tremendously on how the u.s. government side hands things over and whether it is a genuine hand over here you go, best of luck. >> i'm going to keep going to try to build on that. either mr. bowers for mr. clausen we have something of a sense that because the goal of the u.s. effort is supposed to be stability operations and stability soon enough we can turn over security in 2014 and pull the troops out, 2015, we're being told capacity building is going to go so fast the timetable is possible. do you have some sense that timetable is realistic?

>> it's most certainly unrealistic because it is tied to different agendas and not so much of the agenda of the right institutions handling that type of handoff. for instance if you look at the telecom industry in afghanistan which is most parts private sector led that doesn't require a lot of intervention from the assistance community so clearly there are in the private sector can lead it should lead and where the government should regulate it should. on some of the signature project, because the design was initially done in the fold of the confusion on when and how long we should be there often they are -- the exit strategy is poorly conceived. >> i would say i think capacity building needs to be evidence based and sort of baseline driven rather than deadline and the example given on the education program i think is a good one. we all would agree at the end of

the day success represents afghan ministries able to do with their success to do to carry out the responsibility. how you get there is a different question and you can't force the pace, you can't get 12 years of education in two months. >> my time is up but this has been very informative. >> thank you, mr. chairman. one of the things i am continually amazed with is when we dropped in with large development programs, a billion for serp, 15 million for the switch in the world of grants and ngos tends to be massive on a new scale was financed with is we continue to be surprised we are changing the very thing into which we are dropping all that money, and it seems to me capri is using your testimony,

mr. bellows is local so but if capacity. what i want to do is just open up a dialogue with you, you had a great example in your testimony about absorptive capacity and scale and it's in the section that talks about the comparative advantages of grants and what i want to do is set it up and kind of online you to see where you go with it. you received your c-corp received a grant through usaid from the global development alliance to increase production in southern afghanistan. through your grant, 2008, $2.1 million your statement says the project took root i guess that is a well chosen phrase. [laughter] was beginning to show results, 500 farmers were changed it a trend, in tv production increased 35% and farmers began to find new markets for their products. then, mr. bowers, then what took

place? >> well, then i will focus on stability and kandahar province would have been essentially. so, inadvertently, by designer action a little hard to tell, the u.s. government decides it wants to fully invested quite a lot of money in a province which frankly that represents more development aid in the province should ever received. >> who, with agency? >> usaid. >> awarded a 300 million-dollar contract suppose? >> actually i believe there was a cooperative agreement i could check on that. >> mckeithen $300 million through some mechanism to another organization and then what amount? >> essentially money comes into the system and who lack the ability to understand where where in the district which is the latest terminology now in

afghanistan to focus these funds into and dissention hee-haw ticker performers, the kaput associations to work with was a you can see the pacific happening who had rather be in that group going back saying it's covered here who, let's go somewhere else, the ne dtc keep the district so many outputs to show part of the stabilization process. >> and, your statement says the head of the effective spend rate of almost a million dollars a day has very little to spend it on, so your statement talks about it but i'd like you to talk about it on the record for the benefit. >> like anyone on how to get rid of money fast, the taxpayer in this case to make poor decisions based on the timeframe that is allowed to you, again, rather than a normal system of who going back to that boehner --

doner we need to redirect, they get locked into the area, walked into that former because it is built into that contract. >> the organization according to your statement began to pay farmers to attend training and work in their fields both activities local people were doing at no cost to the usg under our aid funded a program. since then prefer to receive payment, mr. price, mercy corps had to refocus further the marketing chain working with more local trainers. so keep unwinding the example of what happened when you lead to the conclusion that it creates a, quote, contractor mentality? could you talk about that? >> well, in essence we demonstrate a little bit more flexibility because we have so much less money to try to burn on a monthly or daily basis. you work up through the value

chain of trying to leverage different resources. so in this case, it's finding the right to buy year in europe and the relationships in different technical with the farmers and how they practice that etc. the contractor mentality seeks to us as well. >> what does that mean? >> we have a deliverable which means the management systems which we encourage in our cooperative agreement as well becomes essentially produce that result it doesn't really matter the impact in fact isn't a sustaining impact, in that case the farmer is being paid not to do something we don't have to pay that former, so a contractor typically wouldn't be worried about that. but a deliverable is important. >> within the context of the example from kandahar province you cite local people who contant, used to sell their services to the highest bid

rather than focus on what you all agree is sustainable out comes. .. abu or government come regardless of party trying to push re-enterprise, in fact recruiting or supporting a socialistic quagga >> typically framed posters are

it if of a lot of subsidies flowing because people want to do it on an expedient basis in the mentality they are is not whether or not those individuals and beneficiaries had the ability today. many places have the ability to pay. so right now the donor community have other donors are certainly pushing off the feature be partly led sector that can capably do with these issues. thank you on ipod you for your work and people who are in the field. >> thank you. look at our executive her >> thank you, mr. chairman. i like to talk about ideas for solutions here. in our interim report, congress focused on recommendations with

specific offices in state, usaid and defense and even on the joint staff and greater emphasis on the contracting. the school, stirred to announce that the other witnesses also respond. in 2009 commute testified before the house armed services committee for oversight and investigation. at that time, you were asked to comment on an interagency coordination cell at the department of state which basically became known as the office of the coordinator be ad hoc or he could in the areas of reconstruction and stabilization can you please give me your assessment of what extent has had its desired effect?

>> is in your work under the quadrennial diplomacy and development review, that office is now been absorbed into larger bureau. the bureau for civilian stability operations. you know, that has been an experiment in progress. i think it made some headway. they have without votes the military in large part established a planning mechanism and they have been able to exercise that in a couple different scenarios. most importantly in afghanistan they were staffed the last civ-mil exercised under ambassador eikenberry and general mcchrystal. they have also developed a lot of standing agreements with agencies throughout the u.s. government and put them into the civilian response corps and hopefully deploy them. i think that is if enterprises on short is the deployment.

they have not been able to deploy whole of government interagency teams that can really execute with the united gates needs them to execute on the ground. and it is -- i'm very concerned actually that this time some of these other agencies might indeed a lot of those agreements because of the lack of progress. if you are going to send a team to sudan, you want order experts from the department of homeland security on that team. this should not be a state department usaid corporate exercise. it really is a whole of government exercise and i may concern that that is not what is offering right now. >> thank you. any other witnesses on that particular point? really looking for how that office it then, we're not been

allowed to off the stabilization fits into being part of the solution talking about today and whether or not there's a specific model either through q. ddr or their initiatives out there you know if we take the principles as outlined in your paper and bring in sharper focus about a specific solution for initiatives that would hope for the future is. do you know if anything out there? >> i want to make one point. there is a question of optimal organization and how it will go three minutes. i think what her papers talking about his strategy and how you can to balance rate between some of the objectives and how you have the metrics driven objectives. even if there is a proper organization of adopted this strategy piece they may not have the resolve are seeking. >> ms. richardcome into effect? >> out, i think that some of the initiatives you see happening in

for civilian agencies u.s. government may not be fully developed or may not be perfect yet, but what they do hope .2 are the caps that they're trying to fill in the gaps are real. so for example, all of our organizations have struggled with the gap between release aid and longer-term development. and when done well come you actually lay the groundwork for longer-term development at the time you responding to a crisis or natural disaster. yet our -- at the u.s. state department, these things tend to be handled a different pilot. and so it's very clear to me there is need for crosscutting, you know, both in terms of looking at me to cut down on duplication and waste and also in terms of roles and responsibilities. >> the next question i have chosen to comment mr. klosson made earlier about the

strengthening and monitoring evaluation of these programs overseas, particularly long-term programs. you also mention transparency. and i'd like to take a moment to ask each of you, heidi do that do that? who is operable for that? is there an international standard you adhere to to basically inshore and monitoring and anyway so the funding basically is well spent and accounted for. >> it's an area over the last number of years they put a lot of emphasis and actually have an office in washington whose job it is to strengthen the children's ability to monitoring and evaluation. each of the major programs that exist oversee the humanitarian response and emergency response. we have a monitoring and evaluation purse and so if we feel it country program properly

carry out the responsibility, we would then send people out from headquarters to help load capacity to do monitoring and evaluation. each of our programs is the methodology and each programs goes through a process as it's implemented. so i think if you look where we were safe five, 10 years ago, we have an agency have come a long way to win much more on the ground. >> and contrary face a tremendous amount of scrutiny that were audited externally by the government of afghanistan every two years fire headquarters for a monetary evaluation were accountable to the donor for that. were accountable to the line ministries with the joint monitoring visits to a community schools with administration representatives and farmers demonstration plot.

cultural pride ministry of economy and finance. we have a regional technology-based or for evaluation and regional tractors for management quality and full-time permanent and country is repositions for quality of our natural resource management work and also head of programming and quality coordinator who can get out and get cans dirty, and making sure things are predisposed to be. >> can i ask you to review, how does monitoring of our country here over what you do compare with monitoring other countries have when you're getting assistance from other countries of the world and for example? for a better, worse at the same? very briefly. >> by which is saying this is really connect about what i hear from our country direct nurse is very sound -- there's a lot more done for u.s. a and for others.

>> i don't think within the u.s. government we can say any more than usaid to departments. we have an extremely mutually supportive relationship with the opposite aquaculture who monitors us very rigorously with some of our european donors that may be very hands-off and with other departments than usaid may also be very hands-off. >> i just have one more very brief comment that has to do with thanking you for all the things you do, but also for taking the time to write a paper which stimulated a lot of discussion and ultimately let to our entries today. so thank you, mr. chairman. >> the full commission but also wanted to use the paper was obviously very interesting and provocative and well written. i would love to cover in the eighth minute. first you say that i was mostly in iraq when it was a member of congress. i went 19 times in the first

were times i went with ngos, not the military. in fact they went first two times than i had to sneak into the country and i remember we were at the gate and dod was calling up saying don't let the congressman getting in april april 2003 in the same person said i'm sorry i can't hear you. what these same? i was trying to break into iraq. but i learned more in those four times then i learned in the other 14 times that when. and i really believe i had our government than on the ground like you all are, we would've done things so much differently than we would've spent less money, but offended out or much sooner because we wouldn't have made the mistakes had we been there. and one of the things i'm convinced of is the focus on what folks want. the question i'm asking is what happens if a folks want to something they shouldn't have?

they don't always get it right indeed step in or to allow them to make a mistake and say well if we set this past is that what were. ms. richard, i'll start with you. you can't have someone else for the answer. >> if you don't have any hair, you don't have to answer. >> i think it is striking a balance that depends on how egregious. >> is and can simply say we don't think that's good idea. >> we do genuinely try not to be overly prescript it. in my experience these last --

>> my fellow commissioner and i were saying that the refreshing to have you just tell us the truth, whether it always makes you look at her now. and goodbye was truth exceeded later evenly acknowledging the mistake made her lessons learned. so you know, you're given an example of where you can't meet a need that is important in thank you for doing that. that is something the military has to do with the government. >> no question. the next line down his chin in the water and health some order. we got to help with not translate to a series of conversations which we explain we can build a clinic or to mobile health units. eventually either the community comes around this okay will prioritize the water system or something you can help us with her we agree to disagree. if they spent the week

physically can't do, we don't try to do to make them happy. we connect them with msf for some it can do it. >> grant gives you flexibility to do with the community wants to. it is not enough to build the school at this place at that time. >> in our case we don't build schools. that's one of the nice things about grants or cooperative agreements is ultimately we are able to walk away. there's an extremely volatile conflicts and working with anybody and that could going to exacerbate conflict can turn off power to name a commute inadvertently powered his commander and now he has additional resources and is going to go after. >> real quick. >> one example would be maternal rates and so one of the interventions to do with that what we trained midwives. so we are the safest part of a grant to stand up to school for training midwives.

which means having younger girls go to another town to be trained for 18 months was very, very hard to get that first group of girls to go to the midwest to be part of the first-class. it took a lot of persuasion, a lot of discussion. the good news is second time around who had fathers, brothers, parades, all kinds of things going on to pick my daughter, take my wife to do it. there are ways this can take place. >> cat, although i'm told failure should he set up on capitol hill, there is failure with good intentions and there's also success with really bad development. and so often we have to calculate what i read, with the community's benefit, was the reward? if there's failure, we need to learn from them and understand where two of you that in the future. and then there is say no to money that just looks wrong. >> just quickly i'll start with you, going along, are we

spending too much development money in afghanistan, particularly right now because were trying to do too much? so that the question. >> is my judgment from everything i hear that we are throwing way, way too much money at the situation right now in order to facilitate a rapid transition. >> would anyone in the panel disagreed? >> i'm not disagreeing. i think when the spending too much money in afghanistan. also what happens is when you have these countries that become so associated with american success, successive administrations, they tend to vacuum up money that could be spent in other countries as well. >> so your bottom line -- why are coughing and spending too much money and were misspending and that's it to point.

let me just end by saying i don't usually respond this way, but.her zakheim got an e-mail someone watching the savior enjoined questioning. it happens to actually be a cousin of one of our employees, heather mercer, who was 24 years old when she was with him to korea. i think i have the right. and they were imprisoned shortly after by the taliban after 2011, working for shelter now international. in the question i have direct team mr. mcgarry is how do you do with being a catholic with the service, a christian organization in the muslim world? is very challenge you face should we be aware there are certain things you shouldn't be doing because you have the religious name in the muslim world? >> the first thing is just being incredibly explicit about who we

are and what we do and what we don't do. does internally and externally we are in development

that kind of confront you. one of the question of security. one is of corruption. by of capacity. they cannot recount when you look at community-based approaches that's one way to tackle a good portion of those nuts with the i think we've been discussing today what we can bring to >> i appreciate the opportunity to be here. i miss drinkable because i was based out of herat. if ms. richard mentioned earlier

one of the organizations pushing for creation of years ago and were excited to continue to shine a spotlight on what opportunists also is what's working. >> i want commissioners to know when mr. mccarry took the oath, second time he said i do get married on saturday. this is part of his honeymoon. >> i'm supposed to say i will. [laughter] >> all grooms getting wrong when they say i do. >> congratulations. >> thank you very much for having this. you can tell were very eager to talk about these things. and if the other commissioners would like an informal chat, with up to follow up and do that. we appreciate so much you went to kabul, met with some of ours have and jay are and come you know, congressman shays if you're a former colleagues want to talk about this would like to talk to them too. thank you for shining a

spotlight. >> woolwich about it the last word goes i don't want you to make a mistake that a congressman made and served in columbia in bogotá. it was such a memorable moment on their honeymoon and go to and she said what he take me here for? afghanistan is not where you're going to have your honeymoon. thank you. and with that, we'll end this hearing. >> the best advice i've ever given anyone. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> now a senate armed service committee hearing looks at nato operations come including the mission at libya. biliary marks from the nato commander in senators carl levin and john mccain. this is about three hours. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good morning everybody. this morning. it's one in a series of postured hearings held annually at the combatant commanders as part of this committee's review for the president's budget request for the fiscal budget. our witnesses are admiral james levitus, nato supreme allied commander in commander of the u.s. european command and general c. robert kaler, commander u.s. strategic command. we welcome you both. admirals to read this is no stranger to this committee having previously served as commander of u.s. southern command.

this is his second appearance before the committee in its current position. he comes in a most proficient time, been supreme allied commander in europe. in other words, our nato commander. this is general kaler's first opportunity to test for it before the committee as commander views and strategic command, having assumed command responsibilities just two months ago. general kaler is not due to the issues however is most of his career's been involved with strategic and space systems. on behalf of the committee, a thank you both for your own and distinguished service family would also like to recognize the men and women who serve in the european command area and around the world as members of the force is with strategic command. as they support and enable a wide range of important global missions. please pass along the initiation of this committee to them for

their commitment in their dedication and to their families for the essential support that they provide. once again, our servicemen and women have been called into harms way. this time as part of an international coalition to prevent the gadhafi regime in libya from carrying out a blood that's against the libyan people. we are currently seeking, often at great risk, the same democratic and human rights inspiring others in the arab world. president obama has taken a thoughtful and deliberate approach to u.s. involvement in the libyan crisis, emphasizing the military mission be limited and also have support a broad international coalition, including endorsement of the united nations and the arab league. securing support and participation of an international coalition has been critical, both for regional and

international acceptance of the use of military force and ensuring that the risk and cost of operations are principally americans. the president has consistently made clear that the u.s. leadership of this mission would be limited in time if there would be a handoff of command and control to a nato-led coalition, which currently includes at least two arab countries. president obama has reiterated that it is a u.s. school that colonel gadhafi should go. to achieve that goal without foreign ground forces, the united steve supplied significant tools of national power to increase every pressure against colonel gadhafi come his family and close associates, including economic sanctions, travel ban and frees up more than $30 billion in libyan assets.

today, representatives from coalition countries as well as from the united states, arab league, african union and other arab countries are meeting in london to discuss international effort in support of the libyan people. gadhafi is more and more isolated and his military capabilities can be degraded and airstrikes will continue as long as he continues to trust his own people. the international community with arab countries have responded to gadhafi's repression with u.n. security council resolution in 1970, which imposed sanctions and weapons embargo taken libya and u.n. security resolution 1973, which authorizes the use of all necessary measures to impose a no-fly zone and protect libyan civilians from the threat

of attack by the gadhafi government. for coalition operations and force the u.n. security council resolution were initially under task force led by the commander of u.s. africa command, both yukon and stride come have provided important support of the no-fly zone. maritime and air assets based in your participated in the no-fly zone and in operations to protect civilians, struck him, tim is treated its global strike responsibilities in the b-2 stealth bomber with the fields and other targets and libyans. our coalition partners have assets of the embargo. enforcing the no-fly zone above aircraft including qatar and the united arab emirates and airtime operations conduct by nearly 40 ships, two thirds of which are

provided by coalition partners, including aircraft carriers in italy. must be commended to charge of the mission that forced the arms embargo in the no-fly zone against libya and intended the north atlantic council's for nato's political body agreed to take command of all aspects of military operations under u.n. security council resolution 1973, including the mission of protecting the libyan people. canadian lieutenant general richart who will head the task force in charge of this operation for command enables to admirals stavridis as supreme allied commander in europe. the president carefully laid out or set up commissions and helped organize a u.n. mandate and a coalition to pursue it prefer the admission was launched.

he gained momentum and achieved notable success in so far with any allied casualty. it's a unique moment in history when the international community comes together and ask to stop a tyrant who was massacring his people. the president from the beginning said the military did not command regime change. they should acquire a site ground forces which the president clearly and properly rejects. our military leaders fear of mission creep has been understood as a president and respected. those who favor including the military mission, the counting of gadhafi need to address the problems created by getting deeper into the land of an arab country, putting ourselves in the middle of the civil war are almost certainly destroy the coalition and the u.n. mandate. the creation of the international coalition in

mandate are of historic and essential to serious pitfalls. the goal of our effort is to make it possible for the libyan people to have the opportunity to decide gadhafi's fate to the egyptian people decided mubarak's. if the situation on the ground in libya continues to be volatile in gadhafi continues to threaten his own people, then the issue arises as to whether the coalition should arm the opposition in libya. because such a step must be considered in the context of a nato decision, it will require consensus. one critical consideration is whether providing arms to the rebels would be consistent with the mission of the midday for intervention and perhaps most importantly whether the nato coalition and its partners would maintain the critically essential community to such an adoption. president obama has been

cautious in weighing the conditions with the use of military force. i believe he will continue to weigh carefully the pros and cons of providing offensive arms such as heavy vehicles and artillery for the opposition. in afghanistan and our european allies and partners make up the vast majority of the 48 countries and more than 40,000 non-us troops participating in the nato-led international security assistance force isaf with 90,000 u.s. troops were isaf contributions about the weekend and we honor their sacrifices. at the nato lisbon summit last november, the isaf participants agreed to endorse the afghan government -- agreed to endorse the afghan government, assuming responsibility for security. he's unwelcome step and recently president karzai announced the first round provinces and districts across afghanistan for

afghan security forces to take the security the summer. if we are to succeed our message interactions must be twofold. we must impart a sense of urgency to the afghans on the need to take ownership of the country's security, which is way up in a strong supporter for july 2011 dates that are the president to begin reductions of u.s. forces and began accelerating the transition of security responsibility to afghan security forces. at the same time, we must assure and reassure the afghans as they assume more and more responsibility for responsibility, we'll be there to support them. our european allies need to focus more and see this mission through to a successful conclusion and nato members need to be isaf requirements for trainers for the afghan army and police. the balance of my statements i will put into the record and i

will call now on senator mccain. >> thank you, mr. chairman. let me thank our witnesses for joining us this morning and for their many years service to our nation. on behalf of the entire committee, and like to extend our thanks to the brave men and women in uniform you sacrifice of faithfully for a spirit of a threat to the chairman saying it's a pleasure to have general kehler before the committee for the first time in his capacity as commander of u.s. strategic command and of course always a pleasure to have admiral stavridis before the committee to discuss the many complex challenges of european command, especially with u.s. forces engaged in military operations in libya and with the upcoming transition of the mission to nato command. as the chairman said that he will hold a hearing this thursday on the current operations in libya. so let me see briefly, the

decision to intervene military in libya was right and necessary and i believe last night president made it clear condense and case for it. the president section shall he averted a mass atrocity and ghazi and we cannot we cannot intervene to libyan refugees would not be destabilizing egypt and tunisia, america's moral standing in the broader middle east would've been devastated as we turned a ear and arabs and muslims who were pleading for her rescue. the result of this would've been a fertile breeding ground for radicalization, he's straight and the ideology of al qaeda. now we have prevented the worst outcome, we have an opportunity to achieve a broader u.s. goal in libya as the president stated, forcing gadhafi to leave power. i disagree with the president, saying that the use of force ruled out, but clearly facts on the ground show we are taking necessary steps to do so.

with our support, opposition forces are making significant progress towards that end on the ground, but we just thought insert the u.s. and allied air power is the key element in whether these rebels anti-gadhafi forces succeeded or failed. we need to keep gadhafi. gadhafi may crack. i think it's possible he may do so, but i don't think we can place all of her hopes on that outcome. a long and costly stalemate to have a ten-year stalemate in iraq following operation desert storm, a long and costly stalemate in libya would not be beneficial to any of the parties. our focus is now in libya. we must wonder how many vital in the first national security issues are addressed in both of the commands that witnesses the. u.s. european command although

many diverse missions our armed forces and our site from combating transnational and cyberattacks to building partnership capacity from supporting nato's counterinsurgency campaign in afghanistan to maintaining the balance of forces with other eurasian powers. this european command is doing it all. in addition to the idea, i'd be interested to hear that says if any taken to support the defense every amendment to georgia it's not to bring a stalwart partner. a nato country that the means to properly defend itself. i also believe the entire committee would be interested to update on the initial phase of deployment of europeans adapted approach to missile defense as well as progress made in projections from the timeline set forth by president ford faces 24. this is important in light of

recent statements by russian leaders reject gained stated u.s. policy of deploying all four phases of this critical missile defense program. i know both of their witnesses have been appalled to varying degrees and search for common ground on missile defense with russia. we beat her two year both of our witnesses assessment on prospects of such cooperation ever occurring. similarly, general kehler you take strategic command at a time when we embark on a robust modernization of the nuclear triad and weapons complex find strategic conventional capabilities for the 21st century since mental cybersecurity and cyberwarfare as core competencies. the president's budget for fiscal year 2012 represents the initial investment of novelty a costly yet played vital for investment in nuclear weapons modernization. the importance of congress fully funding for long-term monitoring

station at a nuclear weapons complex should've been driven home last year during the debate over the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty and yet in the full year fiscal 2011 or appropriations bill that congress is now considering for dod, the house has cut the request by 312 million the senate cut the request by 185 million. these actions are troubling to me and i'd like to know whether you share the success of the general color as well as how such chi-squared effector command mission of safe, reliable and effective strategic forces. finally on the issue of cybersecurity, i was struck by a statement that general keith alexander made in recent testimony to the house armed services committee said we are finding we do not have capacity to do everything we need to accomplish to put it otley we are very thin and a crisis would quickly stress our cyberforces.

general alexander was also very clear the threat is not a hypothetical danger. i remember concerned the defense? the necessary legal authorities in sufficient trained personnel to fully perform critical role and cybersecurity. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator mccain. admiral stavridis. >> chairman, ranking member, members of the committee. it's always a pleasure and honor to be with the urinals of a great chance to be with bob kehler for his inaccurate testimony as many of you pointed out. for that to take a moment of current to mention some of the things were doing it u.s. european command do not group them into three broad categories. one is military operations. one is partnering and training with allies and friends and the third is sunday night links very

important and engaging with the interagency. in terms of military operations, i'll conclude with the word about libya, but let me start with the word about afghanistan. at any given time about 80% of the 45,000 non-us troops who are in afghanistan from europe. at this moment, we have 12,000 u.s. european command soldiers who were fully deployed to prepare much focus on afghanistan from u.s. european command and try our best to support general jim mattis and of course general dave petraeus who is both our nato and our u.s. commander in afghanistan. like general petraeus and of course he was up about a week ago, i am today cautiously optimistic about afghanistan. i see progress. as dave said it's fragile, but i believe we are moving forward in

the right direction. today we have a coalition of 49 troop contributing nations, largest coalition in history and it is making i think measurable progress in the transition to ask him a security operations. so i can talk more about that in the question-and-answer period, but i did want to register my sense of optimism -- cautious optimism for progress in afghanistan today. in terms of partnership, i think it's a very important aspect of the we do a u.s. european command. 51 nations who are part of our military to military relationships. last year for example we did 33 major exercises come engaging about 50,000 folks. we do a significant amount of training across the spectrum. senator mccain mentioned georgette. i think the partnership building this heart of why there are 45,000 non-us troops today with

us in afghanistan. third point quickly. interagency. we're also very engaged at anti-european command with our interagency partners and i think that's important. everything from disaster relief where engaged with israel and russia last year after forest fires to working with drug enforcement administration at stemming the flow of narcotics out of afghanistan because the profit that money goes right back into pockets of taliban. so those three things mr. chairman and ranking member or where we are trying to focus military operations on partnering a very good work with interagency. terms of future challenges we talked about afghanistan. we're also concerned about ballistic missile threat and senator mccain said we can talk about how we're doing and i think the answer is reasonably

well on implementing european adaptive approach. we are seeking the right balance of trying to find signs of cooperation where we can continue to work on operations with israel and military to military both very important. the mentioned terrorism insider in all of those things guaranteed on her plate. let me say a word about libya since both the chairman and ranking member mention it in their opening statements. i would like to clarify that i wear two hats. one of course is u.s. european command and in the u.s. capacity i am what is called a supporting commander. i am supporting the combatant commander general carter ham of africa command. he's at the u.s. operator person responsible for meeting coalition that has been in operation for several weeks. my role there is to support the just takes a moving troops

forward for him and i of course can talk about all that. in terms of my other hat as the supreme allied commander of europe, i had the effect of operations officer for nato and in that regard as senator mccain and senator levin mentioned, we are in fact taking this machine. we pretty take in the embargo mission as an several days ago intake in the no-fly zone and now we are prepared over the next 24 to 48 hours to take over protect in the population, all of which stems directly from the u.n. security council resolution. so we are in the process of transitioning to a nato-led operation from this coalition and i can certainly talk about aspects of that in my nato hat as desired. i hope that gives you a quick overview of what we're focused on the u.s. european command. a conclude by saying i'm proud of the men and women and all

carry back the whole committee in the basting wheat u.s. european command are grateful for the congress, senate, house of representatives and support you give it and taking time to visit s. an interest in your questions, which are thinner responses and hopefully of us contribute to u.s. security. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much. >> chairman levin, senator mccain, thank you for opportunity to present my view the united states strategic command missions and priorities. as he noted, in privilege and humbled to appear for the first time as commander of strategic command. i'm also pleased to a phd with admiral jim stavridis and also a great colleague i'm looking forward to getting to know better and work within the coming years. no question mr. chairman today's national security landscape

marked by the const and change an enormous complexity. we are facing a significantly different operating environments than those we've experienced in the past. of the threats we face, weapons of mass destruction clearly represent the greatest threat to the american people, particularly when they are pursuer process by violent extremists or estate proliferators. to do with the environment today demands faster and more comprehensive awareness, strategic thinking, flexible planning, decentralized execution, rapid innovation in unprecedented information sharing. strength comes mission remains clear to detect, deter and prevent attacks against the united states and joined with the other combatant command to defend the nation should deterrence fail. strength comes first priority is to deter nuclear attack on the united states and our allies. as we implement the new

s.t.a.r.t. treaty, we are committed to maintaining a safe, secure effective deterrent. we are also the strongest possible advocates in favor of the investment that are needed to sustain and modernize the nuclear triad for the nuclear weapons complex that underpins. while deterrence is our number one, strike him as broader responsibilities in the 21st century. ongoing operations demand our full commitment as well. so in partnership with the other combatant commands, our next priority is to improve our plans, procedures and capabilities to address regional problems, especially where those problems were the capabilities to address them cross regional boundaries. and on that note, stride, also with a supporting command to u.s. for calm. he mentioned we provided b-2s early in we are also taking steps and have taken steps to

make sure they have space capabilities they need to make sure that the networks are there and operational and has sufficient capacity and are secure and also provided planners to work with africa command on a variety of issues that stride, subissues on. so we are engaged as a supporting command and ongoing operations as well as their long-term engagement in support of the other combatant commanders. they are synchronizing planning and capabilities for things like missile defense, i asarco electronic warfare, combating weapons of mass destruction and all of those efforts i believe to bring regional operations and increase effectiveness to the capabilities we can bring to bear. another one of our priorities and to improve capabilities and operating concept in the important of a national

securities of space and cyberspace. space is increasingly contested, congested and competitive that's important in the united states goes far beyond national security. ensuring uninterrupted access to space and space space capabilities and improving our awareness of objects in the two decent space in enhancing protection and resilience of our most critical systems are all essential object is. achieving objectives to meet continued investment to improve space situational and space capabilities while we also pursue increased opportunities without lights and commercial arborists. our greatest challenge in favors basis to improve our ability to operate and defend the dod network at network speed to make sure critical activities continues and not for stereotypes to deny or disrupt them. stride, and its unified command u.s. saber, working hard to improve our organizations and relationships and enhance

situational awareness and protection and increased technical capacity in developing human capital in a desolate to the to the future. we have much to do, but also no today's fiscal environment minister must maximize both mission effectiveness and taxpayer value. we'll continue our efforts to identify every possible place where we can become more efficient to become more effective. finally, were committed to taking care of warriors, government civilians and their families. to this end, stride come fully supports efforts to care for men and women and we will work till it shall be to ensure they have a safe and positive work environment. mr. chairman, great challenges they had come for so to do great opportunities. the men and women perform the difficult mission with remarkable skill and dedication every minute every day and i'm proud to be associated with them and look forward to working with you in the committee as we address these important national

security issues. thank you again for the opportunity now for two questions. first round with seven minutes. admiral, let me start with you. do you agree it was important to secure international support and participation including u.n. resolution and including support by muslim countries before command the military operations would be a? >> senator, i think anytime the united states can operate in a coalition environment that is to our advantage. again, afghanistan is a good example with 49 partner nations. so i would agree with that. >> from a military perspective, with different does it make to have the international support in place? >> it makes a very significant difference in a wide variety of

ways. let me name three. one is the simple addition of resources, taking afghanistan as an example as i mentioned earlier, 45,000 non-us troops they are. 98,000 u.s. peers a significant resource contributions. >> impetuously be a slow.? >> i think you mentioned your opening statement. today there are roughly 40 ships operated general support of the operation. only 12 of those are u.s. ships. so the addition of resources is first and very primary. secondly, you get the exchange of ideas. when we have both in afghanistan and in libya today where we at 20 dado nations and arab nations coming together, you have different views of looking at things than i can at times create friction, but i would

argue over time it creates better ideas because no one of no one of us is as smart as all of us thinking and working together. and thirdly, i would say access. to do an operation like libya or afghanistan requires overcoming the tyranny of distance and geography we do that best with allies because not everywhere is international airspace and not everywhere are the high seas. as to be three things off the top of my head. >> as to the decision-making process that lies ahead of us, what will happen if gadhafi's forces appear to truly stop fighting? who would make the decision as to whether or not that was real and what the response should be. it's been a military decision in the field? the political decision? to make that decision? >> it would begin in the field with on the ground assessment of

courses we can appreciate the last 30 weeks of the operation, i've heard personally fight different cease-fires announced by gadhafi's forces, none of which have been true. so it has to begin with on the ground assessment. it would be backed up by higher-level intelligence assessments that data would then be floated to the joint task force commander for nato, canadian general lieutenant general charlie bouchard is headquartered in naples. it would be assessed there and operational contexts, moved up to my headquarters in mons belgium, for the state supreme headquartered powers europe with a strategic view on it. i would then go to the north atlantic council to be evaluated for whether there would be a shift in direction, which would be given to us. >> of the evaluation must do as a stoppage of war by gadhafi against his own people, what's the effect of that?

>> well, i think there would be actually another level the discussion would have to go to, which would be the united nation since the authority for nato to participate in operation is under the united nations security council resolution 19701973. but taking your hypothetical, if there was an assessment by nato that this had changed conditions on the ground, then i think there would be, depending on the situation a probable cause in the tv while evaluated at political level best to further steps. >> in terms of arming the opposition forces, is very consensus with the nato or the north atlantic council is to whether are in the opposition forces and have you made a recommendation or have you received one from general bouchard? >> i have not made or received

such an recommendation. we are very early days at this point. >> to have a recommendation on at this point? >> i do not at this point. >> has nato engaged with the libyan opposition forces for the nato representative? >> there is not a nato representative on the ground in libya at this time to my knowledge. >> shifting into afghanistan, admiral, do you continue to support the beginning of production for the u.s. forces from afghanistan by july of this year? >> shot petraeus is evaluating now and i am awaiting his recommendations. >> in the past even if you do support the president decision to begin the reductions in july with the pace of those reductions to be determined by conditions on the ground. >> conditions-based.