Military deep into civilian duties

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke of the US military's involvement in aid work at Kansas State University last week.


Military deep into civilian duties
By John Donnelly
Globe Staff / December 3, 2007

WASHINGTON - The US military, deeply immersed in reconstruction projects in Iraq and Afghanistan, has almost overnight become a major player in the traditionally civilian work of helping poor countries develop. It now spends more than 21 percent of all US overseas aid, nearly a fourfold percentage increase in just three years.

The growth in military involvement in projects such as digging wells in western Kenya and building schools in Afghanistan, which are designed to win hearts and minds, has been so fast that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned last week that his department is doing work that should be done by the State Department.

Gates told an audience in Kansas last week that he had no problem with the Pentagon getting more taxpayer dollars to help civilians rebuild war zones or broken states. But he said the number of State Department officials dedicated to rebuilding efforts has shrunk to dangerously low levels and needs to be bolstered.

The entire US corps of foreign service officers - about 6,600 people - is smaller than the personnel in one aircraft-carrier strike group, Gates said.

The shift toward more military involvement in humanitarian efforts, analysts believe, results from two major factors: simultaneous US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created vast "no-go" areas too unstable and violent for civilian relief agencies; and big increases in the Pentagon's budget since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks gives the military more leeway for humanitarian operations than the cash-strapped State Department and US Agency for International Development.

But the Pentagon also has quietly approved internal policy changes that embrace nation-building tasks in fragile states and conflict areas, duties that were once scorned by President Bush and his top team of military advisers before the Sept. 11 attacks as going beyond the scope of US national security interests.


Rest of article at: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/12/03/military_deep_into_civilian_duties/