Interagency training: lack of military-civilian coordination hinders war-zone rebuilding efforts.

• Author: Jean, Grace
• Position: WARGAMES

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Rebuilding war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan has been cited repeatedly by military officials as one of the cornerstone efforts that will help the United States win the war on terrorism.

A major obstacle to achieving this goal, however, is that the civilian federal agencies and non-government aid organizations--which are critical players in the rebuilding endeavor--have little interaction with military leaders, and have no clear guidance for how to coordinate their efforts with commanders on the ground.

The Pentagon's top leadership has stressed me need to integrate--"interagency coordination into military training, and the issue was mentioned prominently in the department's Quadrennial Defense Review published last year.

The Pentagon also made interagency training part of its $2 billion "Training Transformation" effort that started five years ago.

But so far, little progress has been achieved in making the interagency coordination a priority item in military exercises, said government officials speaking at the training and simulation industry's annual conference here.

"We have not yet developed a collective mechanism to educate and train our forces--military and civilian--to operate effectively on the ground," said Thomas Baltazar, director of the military affairs office for the U.S. Agency for International Development, a federal government agency that receives foreign policy guidance from the State Department.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, it is not uncommon for military commanders and leaders from other agencies to meet for the first time after a reconstruction project has gotten under way. Often there are culture dashes and at times, even goodwill efforts, such as building schools or spurring economic growth, unwittingly counteract each other, said officials.

One solution would be to have military and civilian leaders meet and train together before they deploy to countries where rebuilding efforts will occur. "If we can get them to be role players on certain occasions, it's a win-win situation. They get the training and we get the benefit of their expertise," said Dan Gardner, a Defense Department official in charge of readiness and training policy at the office of the secretary of defense.

That may not be a realistic option for private humanitarian groups, which are thinly staffed. "The demand from the military side far outstrips the supply from the humanitarian community," said George Devendorff, director of public affairs for...