Composite reinforcements achieve the desired performance with a synergetic action from two components. In this paper, development of a composite reinforcement system, made of high tensile steel wire, encased in a cement mortar as a viable system for soil reinforcement applications is proposed. The high tensile steel wire takes care of the tensile strength requirement, whereas the interfacial friction between the backfill and the cement mortar takes care of adequate frictional capacity requirement. Both requirements can be independently controlled, enabling an optimum design of the composite reinforcement from both the considerations for a given situation. The paper presents the development of the technique, behavior and analysis of failure mechanisms of composite reinforcement from pullout test results. The results demonstrate that pullout failure of the composite reinforcement, tensile failure of the steel wire and bond failure arising from the proportioning of cement mortar mix needs to be considered in the analysis.