Ms. Stephanie Miley returned to Iraq to lead a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in April 2006. A Foreign Service officer, economic officer and volunteer for duty in Iraq, Miley had previously served in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), completing that tour as the acting executive secretary for the US Embassy. Miley arrived in Baghdad for her first tour in March 2004 after receiving modest training in elements of personal security and orientation on the unique nature of the CPA. This first tour for Miley meant long days juggling nascent embassy operations and training very young Foreign Service officers posted there, often on their initial tours. The CPA functioned as the de facto government of Iraq between the end of the military's Phase III and the Iraqi elections. Prior to Miley's return to Iraq in 2006, she received no additional training. Miley led the PRT in Salah ad-Din, near Camp Speicher, north of Baghdad. The mission had shifted between her tours from running an occupied country to developing indigenous capability and reinforcing Iraqi authority. Working closely with a US brigade combat team - two different ones during her tenure - Miley's team focused on development through US Agency for International Development officers and contractors, civil affairs, as well as reaching out through State Department regional embassy offices. The PRT worked nonstop to establish rapport and develop confidence among the diverse Iraqi ethnic and tribal centers of influence. Relations between Miley's PRT and the maneuver brigades directly affected the transition required to implement the growing understanding that counterinsurgency is more than kinetic success in killing insurgents. Miley and elements of her PRT traveled despite the threat level, protected first by Blackwater International contractors then by a US Army element habitually assigned. Pursuing the national interest of a self-governing Iraq meant developing rapport with and among the Iraqis. This required face-to-face engagement as well as reconstruction and development. Miley and the brigade combat team commanders had to resolve and balance their respective elements of hard and soft power in areas like Baiji and Samarra. This ongoing balancing and rebalancing was necessary to make the transition from being occupiers to giving Iraq back to legitimate Iraqi leaders. After an overlap with her State Department replacement, Miley returned to Washington, DC, after this second year in Iraq. She has helped train military and diplomatic professionals in Washington and at Fort Polk, Louisiana, as well as participated in conferences on these subjects.

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