Spirit of America's Commander Support Program

A new model for NGO-military collaboration

Matt Valkovic

Last February, after I left the Army following a deployment to Iraq, a friend of mine in Washington had sent me an email about an opportunity with a non-profit organization called Spirit of America. Since 2003, Spirit of America had supported the humanitarian and counterinsurgency efforts of American military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq. I learned that Spirit of America had tapped into the generosity and resourcefulness of the American people to "help our troops help the people" with everything from sewing machines, farming tools, irrigation equipment to school and medical supplies.

They were looking to hire field representatives to work alongside a Marine battalion deployed to Helmand province to more directly and efficiently leverage "private sector support" on the ground—basically an extension of their US-based efforts. The initiative was called the Commander Support Program, and it was—to the best of my knowledge—the first time a privately funded non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) had worked or planned to work directly with the US military in a conflict environment in support of common objectives.

I thought the concept of delivering private-sector support to the fight in Afghanistan was very interesting but also a little abstract. I dispensed a good deal of Commanders' Emergency Response Program (CERP) money during our tour in west Baghdad a couple years ago, so I was familiar with the "non-lethal" side of the fight. How I'd actually deliver private-sector support alongside the Marines was something of an open question, but I was curious about being a part of something unique that might help win the fight.

I threw my hat in the ring for consideration, and Jim Hake, the organization's founder and CEO as well as a successful technology entrepreneur, hired me to be Spirit of America's first field rep. About two weeks before I was slated to arrive at Camp Leatherneck in last June, we got word that some military attorneys had serious issues with the nature of the Commander Support Program as well as Spirit of America's traditional support.

Basically, the idea of US troops telling Spirit of America what was needed to help the local population was interpreted by some military attorneys as a violation of Defense Department ethics regulations. My "deployment" to Afghanistan was postponed indefinitely and Jim asked me to come out to Los Angeles where Spirit of America is headquartered to help him work through the legal issues as well as maintain the relationships we had with the Marine units we intended to work with on the ground.

With Jim's persistence and purpose of mission and the help of attorney John Bellinger of Arnold & Porter LLP, we found a resolution. US Central Command created a new regulation that cleared up ethics issues associated with private-sector support to military efforts to help local nationals.

The regulation provided the legal framework for the Commander Support Program. Dan Henninger wrote about our encounter with military ethics regulations in his Wall Street Journal column here. The CENTCOM regulation was authorized in late November and our second field rep, Chris Hellie, another former Army officer, and I were en route to Afghanistan by mid-December.

Launching the Commander Support Program with Marines in Helmand Province

The idea for the Commander Support Program grew out of Spirit of America's work with the Marines in Helmand Province, in particular its work with 1st Battalion, 5th Marines in Nawa. In 2009, Spirit of America provided more assistance in support of 1/5 than any other Battalion in the organization's history. And, at the same time, 1/5's achievements in Nawa came to be seen as a model of counterinsurgency success.

Upon returning from their deployment, Jim asked 1/5 Marines how Spirit of America's support could have an even greater impact. The answer was to put Spirit of America personnel on the ground alongside the Marines to deliver private-sector support even more rapidly. With that, the idea for the Commander Support Program was conceived.

The Commander Support Program also fit with the growing call for new approaches from other quarters. Last year in Foreign Affairs, Carl Schramm, CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, argued that "...using the whole of American power effectively—beyond simply the 'whole of government'—means reconfiguring the usual cast of actors, recognizing the limits of government, and tapping the enormous potential of entrepreneurs and skilled investors." And, Admiral Mike Mullen wrote, "The enduring challenges we face don't merely require a whole-of-government approach— they demand a "whole-of-nation" effort."

The original intent of the Commander Support Program had Spirit of America's field reps working and delivering private sector support at the battalion level for that battalion's entire deployment. However, in order to effectively work alongside a complicated civil-military structure in Regional Command Southwest, the assistant chief of staff for stability operations (the C9) and our primary point of contact, recommended we circulate throughout the entire RC's area of operation.

While the staff at the RC level understood and supported our desire to work full-time at the tactical level, their view was that we would be more useful working throughout Helmand, spending several days to a couple weeks at one battalion before going on to the next—while still coordinating with the C9 shop.

In our first month on the ground, we observed that the "non-kinetic" line of effort in RC-Southwest was and continues to be robust. With the exception of the Sangin District and a few remaining corners of Marjah, the Marines had cleared Helmand province and were transitioning into the hold and build phases of their counterinsurgency campaign plan. The CERP faucet was on at all levels and battalion commanders had approval authority for projects up to $50K. Furthermore, District Support Teams (DST), the British-led Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) and the State Department-led Regional Platform (RP) led the provincial and district-level government capacity building effort.

Despite this focused and fully resourced non-kinetic effort, we found a variety of ways where we could channel private-sector support to fill gaps in these programs. The key, though, to identifying these gaps was our ability to build relationships and interact at all levels of command.

Being able to brief a colonel on the RC-Southwest staff about our projects, collaborate with USAID and State Department officials on a DST, and connect with a skeptical and hard-nosed squad leader were all essential to contributing to the fight in a meaningful and tangible way. We couldn't just freelance and "do stuff" on our own.

We found ways to integrate ourselves in the civil-military team, while understanding our limited role within the overall campaign plan. The strength of Spirit of America since its founding is that it hasn't acted like the smartest guy in the room; we simply respond to what the troops say is needed.

Furthermore, and equally important to the relationships we established, we had to be aware of the consequences of providing too much assistance, or administering it in a manner that undercut the local Afghan government.

Many people—in and out of uniform—have argued that the US military has spent too much money on development projects; others have made the case that funding programs like CERP still serve a purpose on the battlefield. Both sides to this argument have merit, and this debate will surely continue on at think tanks and in graduate dissertations in the years to come. The challenge, though, for us was determining, as best we could, in any project we considered whether or not that particular project was really needed—did it really add value to the Marines' mission and improve welfare of the Afghan people?

Thinking like a VC in a COIN environment

One of the great advantages of working on the ground for an entrepreneur and investor like Jim Hake was that he approached this process like a seasoned venture capitalist (VC). He's —and able to put money to work, but he also knows you just don't throw money at a good idea, or because a Marine said his area of operation could use X, Y, and/or Z.

An entrepreneur may have created what he thinks is an amazing new product or service but does it meet a real and compelling need? There's a difference between something "sounding good" versus something that actually "is good." In this regard, providing aid in counterinsurgency has some parallels to building a profitable business.

Of course, providing aid in this environment is a little more complicated than starting a business in the US when we have to consider the political and tribal dynamics of the particular area in which we're working. And then there's also the natural tendency to want to do so much in a place like Helmand province where the annual per capita GDP is somewhere south of $300 USD. But in reality, doing less is doing more.

When I met with a Marine who proposed an idea, quite often and sometimes to their frustration, I found myself asking more questions about that idea. Where did it come from? Is this something that the local elders or district governor suggested? Is there a distribution plan? Will that plan include Afghan officials? What effect do you think it'll have on your AO 3 months from now? How about 6 months from now when a new unit is here? How do you guys plan to monitor its progress when I'm with some other unit? And on and on.

Despite our ability to "get stuff" and get it quickly, I ended up saying "No can do" to projects more often that saying "Yes."

In a span of about four months, we executed twenty small-scale projects throughout northern and southern Helmand province. The average cost of one of our projects was about $5,000. The most we spent on one project—a school refurbishment in Marjah, which took a grand total of six weeks to complete with a local contractor—was just over $22,000.

The second and third order effects of supplying shovels and boots

One my favorite projects that I think best illustrates the second and third order effects of our support was when we provided 700 shovels and 700 pairs of knee-high water-proof boots to workers who were clearing the main canals in villages throughout southern Garmsir.

A Marine company had hired locals, most of them small farmers, to clear canals of silt and overgrown brush, but the workers didn't have any tools to effectively clear the canals. Some would bring a small sickle they had from their home, but most pulled the brush with their hands. None of them had waterproof boots, so a full day working in the canal meant one more day sloshing around in the muck, usually in their bare feet.

The local elders who organized the workers told the Marines that while they valued the work and the pay, many of the workers were cutting their hands clearing the brush and bruising their feet on the canal beds. Getting their workers shovels and boots would be a really helpful thing. Plus, after they were done clearing canals, the workers could take their shovel and pair of boots back to their home and use it on their plot land to help farm their own families' food, as many Afghans in Helmand live off their own land.

While Marines were able to purchase shovels and boots with CERP money, it would take at least several weeks to send the project packet up through the various approval channels (even if it only had to go to battalion), get the funding and then purchase the shovels and boots.

I was able to get approval for funding from our staff back in the US and get the OK from the battalion civil affairs officer and the RC-Southwest C9 shop within twenty-four hours. I contacted a vendor in Lashkar Gah, the Helmand provincial capital, who within hours of my email told me he could buy the 700 shovels and pairs of boots in Lashkar Gah for just under $7,000, including transportation costs.

After we got all the OKs, we pulled the trigger the next day and wired the money to our vendor. In just four days after my initial meeting with this Marine company, we had 700 shovels and 700 pairs of boots delivered directly—by our vendor—from Lashkar Gah down to the company's combat outpost in southern Garmsir.

The Marines organized the distribution the following week at their platoons' patrol bases, which were dotted throughout the villages of southern Garmsir. They put the word out through the local elders, and had all the locals who worked on the canals come to the various patrol bases to pick up their shovel and pair of boots.

This decentralized distribution plan ensured regular Afghans received their shovels and boots. It also allowed the Marines to register the full name and sub-village location of each and every Afghan who received a shovel and a pair of boots. Simply knowing where all these folks live is essential information to have in conducting a counterinsurgency, for either intelligence gathering and for having a better understanding of the "human terrain"—the tribal and societal make-up—in a particular area.

About a month after the Marines passed out the shovels and boots, I made a follow-up visit to their combat outpost. The Marine civil affairs section that coordinated the distribution told me they noticed that after the locals cleared the main canals—the canals in which the Marines hired them to clear—using the shovels and boots we provided, they began to clear the side canals on their own initiative.

The Marines told me that without the proper equipment, clearing the side canals was a daunting task. But now they were forming their own community canal clearing projects. After they cleared a main canal, the same group of locals would help each other clear those canals that flowed water into their respective properties. The Marines also made the point that, in southern Helmand province, where homes are made of mud and where people live off the land, a good pair of boots and a shovel aren't just gardening tools; rather, the Marines said, they're "a basic life necessity."

The other direct effect of cleared canals was that the opportunity for an insurgent to emplace an IED or conduct a hasty ambush from the concealment provided by the overgrown brush was severely mitigated.

It's not very often conceptual ideas like "expeditionary economics" or "private sector support" go from a lofty journal article or a white board diagram to implementation on the ground. But that's what we were able to do in our four-plus months in Helmand province. It wasn't easy, but we made it happen.

We're hiring: Become a part of something innovative and impactful

The pilot phase of the Commander Support Program in Helmand province lasted about four months. We learned a lot in those four months, and we've established a pretty good model for how the private sector and NGOs can directly collaborate with the US military in Afghanistan. We're looking to build on the work we've done with the Marines and we're planning to expand our support to Army units operating in Kandahar and the other provinces that make up Regional Command South. We're looking to bring on at least three field reps to continue the unique and innovative work we've done in Helmand.

If you're a veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan and out of the military, but have been thinking about getting back downrange, please check out the job description here on our website. Our basic qualifications: E6 and up, service in Iraq or Afghanistan, patience, maturity, a sense of humor and the ability to explain your role as an SoA field rep to a gunnery sergeant who thinks you're just another civilian eating his chow. Well, only some of the time on that last point. But you get the idea.

If you're interested and think you fit the bill, email me a cover letter and resume to [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you.

Matt Valkovic is the Manager of Spirit of America's Commander Support Program. He is a former US Army field artillery officer, who served in Baghdad from 2008 to 2009 with 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment out of Fort Riley, Kansas.