Money as a Weapon

INTERACTIVE

CERP Spending in Iraq

Search individual projects from the Commander's Emergency Response Program recorded in the Iraq Reconstruction Management System.

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Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, who is vice chief of staff for the U.S. Army and in 2006 served as commanding general of the Multi-National Corps -- Iraq, said that he and commanders in the field have all seen violent incidents in certain areas decline when CERP spending goes up.

He said CERP is, in fact, a reconstruction program in addition to being a counterinsurgency weapon. After the firefights of the initial invasion, Chiarelli said, "you've then got somebody coming around to a commander, handing him a bag of $25,000 cash and saying to go rebuild Iraq."

But Chiarelli added that the military may not be equipped to maintain the schools, clinics and water projects it builds with CERP money. In one case in 2005, he said, he brought water to 220,000 houses in the Sadr City section of Baghdad using CERP funds. But when he went back a year later to check on whether the program had been expanded to more houses, it hadn't. "The problem is follow-through," he said.

Hearts and Minds

When Army Gen. David H. Petraeus led the 101st Airborne Division's occupation of Mosul and northern Iraq in 2003, posters hung in barracks reading, "What have you done to win Iraqi hearts and minds today?" Then he and his troops started spending money -- $58 million from an early CERP fund that came from seized Iraqi assets.

Petraeus, now the top U.S. commander in Iraq, was well-schooled in the use of money in counterinsurgency. He wrote his Princeton University dissertation on the lessons of Vietnam, where the U.S. military used a tool for "pacification" that looked a lot like CERP.

At the start of the U.S. occupation, many of Iraq's villages experienced few results from the large-scale rebuilding efforts managed from Baghdad. But a quick influx of cash from soldiers to fix urgent problems brought goodwill, military leaders and experts said.

"You can't shoot yourself out of an insurgency," said Marine Col. John A. Koenig, who oversaw $160 million worth of CERP projects in Anbar province last year. "A rifle only gets you so far. It shows you have some force. CERP allows you to develop our answer to al-Qaeda."

The program gives military leaders the flexibility to move quickly in an unstable, cash-only war zone. One litmus test, according to the field manual, which covers CERP and other military spending programs: "Would use of funds embarrass [the Defense Department] if shown on '60 Minutes'?" There are some restrictions, but by design, officers have broad discretion for small purchases.

Since the beginning of the program, CERP money has also been used to help compensate for the damage of war. The military calls these "condolence" payments and says they are "symbolic gestures" to families of Iraqis killed or injured in the war. The military is quick to say it is not accepting blame and is not trying to place a value on life.

Maj. Dana Hyatt, a fifth-grade social studies teacher in Connecticut who served in Haditha two years ago as a Marine reservist, said he was permitted to pay $500 for the loss of a leg or an arm. He paid up to $2,500 for a death -- a value that was written in the regulations.

Once a week, usually Tuesday afternoons, he walked from the military's operating base to the main intersection near the Euphrates River to hear Iraqis' stories. He'd spend the next day squaring the complaints with hospital and military records. On Thursdays, Hyatt and three armed Marines returned with banded stacks of American cash in plastic Ziploc bags.

"We'd set up shop," said Hyatt, who was a civil affairs officer for the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. "They knew I was the money guy." He gave $100 to a father who said his young son had fallen off a curb and broke his leg when U.S. planes swooped in low.