As U.S. Rebuilds, Iraq Won't Act on Finished Work
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As U.S. Rebuilds, Iraq Won't Act on Finished Work
By JAMES GLANZ
Iraq's national government is refusing to take possession of thousands
of American-financed reconstruction projects, forcing the United
States either to hand them over to local Iraqis, who often lack the
proper training and resources to keep the projects running, or commit
new money to an effort that has already consumed billions of taxpayer
dollars.
The conclusions, detailed in a report released Friday by the Special
Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a federal oversight agency,
include the finding that of 2,797 completed projects costing $5.8
billion, Iraq's national government had, by the spring of this year,
accepted only 435 projects valued at $501 million. Few transfers to
Iraqi national government control have taken place since the current
Iraqi government, which is frequently criticized for inaction on
matters relating to the American intervention, took office in 2006.
The United States often promotes the number of rebuilding projects,
like power plants and hospitals, that have been completed in Iraq,
citing them as signs of progress in a nation otherwise fraught with
violence and political stalemate. But closer examination by the
inspector general's office, headed by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., has found
that a number of individual projects are crumbling, abandoned or
otherwise inoperative only months after the United States declared
that they had been successfully completed. The United States always
intended to hand over projects to the Iraqi government when they were
completed.
Although Mr. Bowen's latest report is primarily a financial overview,
he said in an interview that it raised serious questions on whether
the problems his inspectors had found were much more widespread in the
reconstruction program.
The process of transferring projects to Iraq "worked for a while," Mr.
Bowen said. But then the new government took over and installed its
finance minister, Bayan Jabr, who has been a continuing center of
controversy in his various government posts and is formally in charge
of the transfers.
"After Mr. Jabr took over, that process ceased to function," Mr. Bowen
said.
In fact, in the first two quarters of 2007, Mr. Bowen said, his
inspectors found significant problems in all but 2 of the 12 projects
they examined after the United States declared those projects
completed.
In one of the most recent cases, a $90 million project to overhaul two
giant turbines at the Dora power plant in Baghdad failed after
completion because employees at the plant did not know how to operate
the turbines properly and the wrong fuel was used. The additional
power is critically needed in Baghdad, where residents often have only
a few hours of electricity a day.
Because the Iraqi government will not formally accept projects like
the refurbished turbines, the United States is "finding someone at the
local level to handle the project, handing them the keys and saying,
'Operate and maintain it,' " another official in the inspector
general's office said.
If the pace of the American rebuilding program is a guide, those
problems could quickly accelerate: So far, the United States has
declared that $5.8 billion in American taxpayer-financed projects have
been completed, but most of the rest of the projects within a $21
billion rebuilding program that Mr. Bowen examined in the report are
expected to be finished by the end of this year. Some of that money is
also being used to train and equip Iraqi security forces rather than
finance construction projects.
The report was released too late in the day to contact Mr. Jabr, who
is part of a Shiite alliance in charge of the government. In his
previous position as interior minister, he was accused of running
Shiite death squads out of the ministry. In his current position he
has developed a reputation as being slow to release budget money to
Iraqi government entities, which would have to run the new projects at
substantial expense.
He is sometimes suspected of seeking to use his position to undermine
the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who is also a
Shiite but answers to a different faction within the alliance. In
interviews, Mr. Jabr has rejected those accusations and says he
strongly supports the government.
American researchers who have followed the reconstruction said Mr.
Bowen's report raised serious new doubts about the program. Rick
Barton, co-director of the postconflict reconstruction project at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institute
in Washington, said the lack of interest on the part of the Iraqis was
the latest demonstration that they were not involved enough in its
planning stages. "It sort of confirms that you really need pre-
agreement on the projects you are attempting," Mr. Barton said, "or
you end up with these kinds of problems at the tail end, where people
don't know much about the program and they haven't bought into it."
Mr. Barton said that the episode was probably inevitable given that
the elected Iraqi government operated mainly within the fortified
Green Zone in Baghdad and had little capability of managing thousands
of new projects around the country. He said that this was the most
likely explanation - rather than any ill will on Mr. Jabr's part. But
Mr. Barton said the findings indicated that the United States should
put some of the remaining money in the program into "sustainment," the
term for running the projects, rather than continuing to build when
there might be no one to run the projects.
"To build something and not have these issues resolved from top to
bottom is unfathomable," said William L. Nash, a retired general who
is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert
on Middle East reconstruction. "The management of the reconstruction
program for Iraq has been a near-total disaster from the beginning."
The report says that of the 2,797 projects declared completed, besides
the 435 projects formally accepted by Iraq's central government, 1,141
have been transferred to local Iraqi authorities. American government
entities in charge of those projects include the United States Army
Corps of Engineers, the American-led multinational forces in Iraq, the
United States Embassy and the United States Agency for International
Development. In letters attached to Mr. Bowen's report, several of
those entities largely concurred with many of Mr. Bowen's findings and
said that new agreements were being hammered out with the Iraqi
government to smooth the transfers.
A spokesman for the development agency, David Snider, said in a
statement that work now being undertaken by the agency "helps address
the concerns" raised in the report. Mr. Snider said that the agency
was seeking to formalize an agreement with the Iraqi government that
would protect the American investment there.
The agency "usually secures these commitments from recipient
governments before the initiation of a project," Mr. Snider said. But
in the case of Iraq, he said, the American rebuilding effort "began
before the current Iraqi government was established."