Reports Pan Iraq Reconstruction
Thu Sep 9, 8:33 AM ET
by James Cox and Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY
Detailed new reports by two independent groups offer a devastating portrait of the 16-month-old U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq, blaming ongoing violence there in large part on misplaced U.S. priorities, bureaucratic bungling and poor planning.
The reports come as the State Department and John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, are making plans to reprioritize projects and accelerate spending in a bid to create tens of thousands of new jobs for Iraqis.
The rebuilding campaign's failure to employ more Iraqis has fed guerrilla insurgencies, sparked rampant crime and led to "entrenched frustration and anger" at the U.S.-led occupation, says the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. CSIS includes a number of former diplomats and Capitol Hill workers in Republican and Democratic administrations.
CSIS interviewed U.S. civilian and military reconstruction officials, international relief experts and more than 400 Iraqis in 15 cities. Its findings were echoed in a report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based organization that tracks conflicts around the world.
ICG says the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority committed "stunning mistakes" and left a "fragile, dysfunctional legacy" when it handed authority to an interim Iraqi government in June.
The reconstruction drive has trickled to a near-standstill since spring, when insurgents began sabotaging job sites and targeting foreign laborers and contractors for kidnappings and killings.
ICG says U.S. efforts to rebuild the country have been plagued by an absence of planning, high staff turnover and institutional confusion in Baghdad, as well as turf battles in Washington between the State Department and the Pentagon. Planners have ignored the needs of farmers and other ordinary Iraqis, spent money too slowly, fixated on long-term infrastructure projects, and wasted time trying to privatize state assets, ICG says.
U.S. agencies involved in Iraqi reconstruction offer a far different picture, however.
The Iraq Project and Contracting Office, which manages $18.4 billion in U.S. funds, says it has employed 80,000 Iraqis on 2,000 projects and 130 job sites.
The U.S. Agency for International Development says the U.S. has refurbished hundreds of roads, schools, clinics, ministries and bridges; rebuilt the power grid; improved water and sewage; helped reopen Iraqi courts; and provided training to police, soldiers and civil servants.
CSIS calls the details "overblown lists of achievements" by U.S. officials.
Ambassador Robin Raphel, Iraq reconstruction coordinator at the State Department, says Iraq is a "more than half-full kind of situation."
But she says $1.75 billion is being shifted from big-ticket projects to "simple things which a community needs" such as cleaning irrigation canals, picking up garbage and painting schools.