The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq was a civilian administration conjured up from almost nothing after the initial conflict was already over. It was inevitable that it should have suffered from grave shortcomings in management, organisation, staffing, direction and resources. But some of these were avoidable. While governments and the headquarters in Baghdad focussed on high political and constitutional mafters and the organisation of large-scale contracts, CPA staff on the ground elsewhere faced very different challenges with which they were ill equipped to deal. The prevailing security environment was the key to all other activity, but there was a close relationship between this and progress over reconstruction, the development of local as well as national government, and the perceptions of the Iraqis.