Evan, 2005 graduate of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies (M.A., International Affairs), and former lobbyist for the international development community, relocated to Iraq from Washington, DC in July of this year to begin working with a USAID-funded NGO in Kirkuk, Iraq. Several months later, Evan is sufficiently acclimated to share a little of his experience so far.
Q: Please describe your position and how you found out about this opportunity.
I’m the Reporting & Management Information Systems (MIS) Director. I supervise a staff of three Iraqi MIS professionals, who are very good at their work and understand the intricacies of the database far better than I ever will. I’m also responsible for preparing all the reports and external communications that come out of my project. That includes quarterly reports, annual implementation plans, quarterly work plans, weekly reports to USAID/Baghdad, and periodic reports and presentations for the PRTs that are working in our four-province area of operations. I’m also in charge of implementing our marking and branding strategy.
The program itself is a community development program focused on strengthening the ability of communities to articulate their needs to local government, and the ability of local government to respond to those needs. We work with community leaders to form Community Action Groups that assess their communities’ needs and come up with project ideas to address them. We also train local city councils to help them be more transparent, democratic, and effective. Then, in partnership with the Community Action Groups and the city councils, we co-fund relatively small ($100,000 or less) projects that include schools, electrical networks for villages that don’t have electricity, sewer rehabilitations, irrigation canals, etc. A separate objective of our program is to provide small (under $10,000) grants from the U.S. Government to innocent victims of coalition forces’ operations to help them start new businesses in light of the fact that many of them are unable to continue in their previous jobs after they’ve been injured.
I found out about the opportunity from a friend who works at the HQ of my organization. While I didn’t get this job through networking in the traditional cocktail party sense, I wouldn’t have heard about the job had it not been for my friend. I really can’t overstate the value of networking, even if you’re not in the market for a new job. I know several people who got their jobs because of a connection they made through a friend or an informational interview.
Q: What was the impetus? Did you consider this a necessary move career-wise?
While I had worked in the international development/humanitarian sector for three years, I really wanted to get some experience working for an NGO overseas. In terms of the career benefits, I think this move will definitely be a good one. For one thing, I really enjoyed advocating on behalf of U.S. humanitarian and development assistance programs while I was in Washington, and I think my experience here in Iraq will definitely make me a more effective advocate when I return. On a related note, I’m not sure how long I could’ve continued to credibly work in the field of international development without gaining some on-the-ground field experience.
Q: Who did you talk to beforehand in making this decision and what advice did you get?
I was able to get to know a pretty large network of humanitarian and development professionals during my time in Washington, DC, many of whom had experience working in Afghanistan, Sudan, the DRC, Iraq, and other conflict countries. I checked with some of them before I finalized my decision and, for the most part, the feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive. The advice I received from most people was to be prepared for long work hours, the boredom that comes from being confined to a compound for extended periods, and the tensions that can develop with one’s coworkers as a result of the latter two issues. Those predictions were generally spot-on, but it’s the kind of thing you can prepare yourself for.
Q: What are your living conditions like and how has the security situation there impacted your work and day to day existence?
We’re confined to our compound in Kirkuk for the entire work week, aside from project site visits or trainings we (infrequently) conduct off-site. The compound is about the size of a city block, and there are about ten of us living here from day-to-day. We spend our weekends in Erbil, which is within the Kurdistan Regional Government, and is a much safer city. When we’re up there, we’re allowed to go pretty much anywhere on foot. There are lots of expats up there, and so there are bars and restaurants that cater to them.
While I’ve never felt like I was in any kind of imminent danger and I generally feel very safe, security is an ever-present concern here. We have to wear body armor and ride in armored cars whenever we leave our compound in Kirkuk, and even in Erbil we have to keep our security team apprised of our movements whenever we go outside. Basically, someone knows where I am 24/7, which is an odd feeling to get used to.
Q: What books do you think best prepared you for life in post-Saddam Iraq?
Well, I really enjoyed The Prince of the Marshes, by Rory Stewart, and Imperial Life in the Emerald City, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, but I would say that books that were written about the immediate post-invasion period don’t really capture the way things are in the current context. I would recommend Thomas Ricks’ The Gamble to anyone who wants to understand the origins of the Surge and its impact on Iraq, and how the lessons learned from the Surge might be applied in Afghanistan. Given the U.S. Military’s recent embrace of counterinsurgency doctrine, books like The Gamble and The Accidental Guerilla are worthy reads for development professionals who want to understand what counterinsurgency is and what it might mean for the way the United States “does” development in non-permissive environments in the future. Finally, The Shia Revival and Invisible Nation, about the Shiites and the Kurds respectively, have been particularly useful to me here in Iraq.
Q: What are your expectations professionally when you return to the US?
I’m not sure when I’ll return to the U.S., but when I do I’d like to get back into the policy arena. I really enjoyed my work on humanitarian and development policy issues, and people shouldn’t underestimate how important the behind-the-scenes policy work of development NGOs and think tanks is to the way that the United States engages with the rest of the world. It’s pretty exciting work and, like being out in the field, I can feel pretty good about myself at the end of the day.
Q: Any head-scratching moments you'd like to share?
When we start working with a new community, we give them a set up supplies (papers, bins, flip charts, etc.) called a Community Action Tool Box, referred to by the acronym CAT box. I pointed out that “toolbox” is actually one word, and that the term “cat box” doesn’t really call images of community development to mind, but we continue to use the acronym.
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