The Fate of the Civilian Surge in a Changing Environment | Page 18

Another result of all this turmoil was that S/CRS
and its successor, the CSO Bureau, were unable to engage effectively in nations that were of key interest to
the United States – the exception being Afghanistan
from 2007 to 2013, albeit in a limited fashion and with
wavering enthusiasm from the country team.37 Most
notably, S/CRS mobilized several dozen CRC-A advisors from the DOS, USAID, and other civilian agencies
to remote areas of what is now South Sudan in 2010.
The mission of the advisors was to support the efforts
of local leaders to resolve conflicts between different
ethnic and religious communities during the tense
months leading up to that country’s independence the
following year. S/CRS and CSO also contributed to
R&S activities in Kenya, Honduras, Burma, Nigeria,
and most recently, Syria.38 However, in all cases, the
office’s role has been to support the efforts of the relevant U.S. embassy country team, rather than leading
a whole-of-government response from Washington.39
Although CRS and its successor failed to achieve
the coordination role envisioned for it in NSPD-44, a
parallel reform undertaken at roughly the same time
took a step in the right direction. In 2006, the George
W. Bush administration created the Office of the Director for Foreign Assistance, also known by its DOS
acronym “F,” to unify budget formulation, execution,
and reporting across the foreign assistance portfolios
of the DOS and USAID. In the ensuing years, F developed a new programming and budgeting framework,
as well as common performance measurements, in order to facilitate reporting to Congress and the public
on the range and scope of spending and the impacts
of foreign assistance activities across dozens of lines of
effort.40 An additional by-product of F and its foreign
assistance framework was the articulation of a broad

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