December 8, 2003
Matt Fuller poses on the roof of the Sheraton Hotel, which is located in downtown Baghdad.
On the front line
Matt Fuller helps reconstruction
team in Iraq
Matt Fuller (LBJ Class of 2002) is getting a crash course in crisis management. Since last May, he has been in Iraq helping to rebuild that country’s government and infrastructure.
A member of the Coalition Provisional Authority (formerly the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance) led by U.S. Ambassador Paul Bremer, Fuller served during the first month of his assignment on a 30-member team that made policy recommendations designed to facilitate Iraq's transition to democracy. The team—which was housed in a compound located in one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces—was comprised of a diverse group of people from such organizations as the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the World Bank, the U.S. Treasury, the Peace Corps and various universities.
During this period, Fuller helped produce policy papers on such topics as the logistics of emergency payments to civil servants, de-baathification, the creation of business-to-business contacts, the use of emergency telecom as a means of security and the electoral process. Research was conducted by talking with Iraqis and Iraqi Americans as well as on the Internet.
The policy papers written by the team eventually became memos, or, in some instances, talking points for Ambassador Bremer. “In this environment you certainly see the direct impact of your work as you are too close to the action and the pace is too fast for ideas to become tangled or watered down or forgotten,” Fuller said.
After his first month in Iraq, Fuller was reassigned to Ambassador Bremer’s office, a position that provided him with a front seat to history. In a journal e-mailed to the LBJ School in July, Fuller talked about some of the trips he helped coordinate for Bremer, described the countryside and populace, and talked about some of his own experiences.
During a visit to Al-Hillah, Ambassador Bremer and
his entourage visited this mass grave site. (larger
photo) |
In a visit to Al-Hillah, for instance, the entourage visited a mass gravesite that had been uncovered, and Fuller described the eerie feeling of seeing a large plowed field lined with white plastic bags as families arrived to look for missing relatives. During another outing, the delegation went into Shia heartland, near Babylon, where the group listened to engineers as they discussed irrigation problems. Afterwards, Bremer and his team were taken into the country where they were treated to a banquet hosted by 40 sheikhs.
Other trips documented by Fuller in July include a visit to Amman, Jordan, where Ambassador Bremer attended the World Economic Forum, and a flight to Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, where the aerial view of a desolate farmland was transformed into a hub of lavish palaces.
“In this job there are very few precise, well-defined roles,” Fuller said during an interview in September. “It is quick-reaction crisis management all the time, 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and everyone does what they can. Professionally, you learn to be flexible and to solve problems under duress and time constraints. It is never dull and the smallest task seems relevant . . . . I handle things as they arise—most recently, I was tasked with figuring out which bodies went where after the U.N. bombing.”
Although tensions have continued to escalate during the time Fuller has been in Iraq, he has consistently emphasized that the situation is not as bad as it is described in newspapers and web sites. “Baghdad is not smoldering,” he said in July. “People are out on the streets selling anything from cigarettes to window AC units, and going to school and going to work.”
In an e-mail sent out in mid-November he admitted that Iraq was now a “different” place and referred to a more “sinister war.” However, he also sent a hopeful message, saying that amidst all of the bombings certain aspects of everyday life are improving.
“There is more electricity now than there was before the war, better access to clean water, and better security against everyday crime in the streets. Restaurants are more abundant and are open later,” he wrote, adding that it was not as hot, and that “people are largely going about their business.”
Fuller’s extraordinary assignment came after a visit in April to Washington, D.C., where he had the rare opportunity to meet with President George W. Bush to discuss international affairs, postconflict reconstruction policy, and his background working with the United Nations. Three weeks later Fuller received a job offer from Andy Card, the president’s chief of staff, and within a week he was on a plane to Baghdad.
Fuller lived in this Republican Guard palace
during the first six weeks of his assignment. Because of attacks
on a hotel he’d been assigned to, he is once again residing
at the palace. (larger
photo) |
While at the LBJ School, Fuller focused on international affairs and postconflict reconstruction policy. For his required internship, he spent the summer of 2001 working for the U.N. Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in New York. In his master's professional report, he developed a business plan for UNITAR's new Asia/Pacific Regional Office in Hiroshima, Japan.
Following his graduation in May 2002, Fuller became a fellow at UNITAR'S Geneva office, where he worked on several publications and two conferences that helped lay the groundwork for UNITAR'S new Asia/Pacific office. The first conference focused on the U.N. Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNAET). The second dealt with postconflict reconstruction in Asia and brought together experts on the postwar reconstruction phases of Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor and Afghanistan.
Fuller, who plans to stay in Iraq until there is a sovereign Iraqi government, said that the LBJ School experience “certainly has been helpful in the work of creating a government from scratch.” He explained, “The economics, politics, development and management issues you study at LBJ have all been helpful in digesting what is happening here.”
by María de la Luz Martínez
2003 Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs
P.O. Box Y
Austin, TX 78713-8925
512-471-4962
8 December 2003
Comments to: lbjweb@uts.cc.utexas.edu
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