IHT : As U.S. rebuilds, Iraqi minister won't take over finished work

As U.S. rebuilds, Iraqi minister won't take over finished work

By James Glanz | July 27, 2007

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, such as 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 declares that they have been successfully completed. The United States always intended to hand over projects to the Iraqi government when they were completed.

Although 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," 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 Jabr took over, that process ceased to function," Bowen said.

In fact, in the first two quarters of 2007, Bowen said, his inspectors found significant problems in all but two 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 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 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, Jabr has rejected those accusations and says he strongly supports the government.

American researchers who have followed the reconstruction said 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," Barton said, "or you end up with these kinds of projects at the tail end, where people don't know much about the program and they haven't bought into it."

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 Jabr's part. But 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 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 Bowen's report, several of those entities largely concurred with many of 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. 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," Snider said. But in the case of Iraq, he said, the American rebuilding effort "began before the current Iraqi government was established."