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U.S. officials fear that rebuilding efforts in Iraq may go to waste
12:00 AM CST on Saturday, November 21, 2009
BAGHDAD – In its largest reconstruction effort since the Marshall Plan, the U.S. government has spent $53 billion for relief and reconstruction in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, building hospitals, water treatment plants, electricity substations, schools and bridges.
But there are growing concerns among U.S. officials that Iraq will not be able to adequately maintain the facilities once the Americans have left, potentially wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and jeopardizing Iraq's ability to provide basic services to its people.
The projects run the gamut – from a $270 million water treatment plant in Nasiriya, which works at a fraction of its capacity because it is too sophisticated for Iraqi workers to operate, to a large hospital that closed immediately after it was handed over to Iraq because the government was unable to supply it with equipment, a medical staff or electricity.
In hundreds of cases during the past two years, the Iraqi government has refused or delayed the transfer of U.S.-built projects because it cannot staff or maintain them, Iraqi and U.S. government officials say.
Other facilities, including hospitals, schools and prisons built with U.S. funds, have remained empty long after they were completed because there were not enough Iraqis trained to operate them.
Stuart Bowen Jr., inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said his agency had "regularly raised concerns about the potential waste of U.S. taxpayer money resulting from reconstruction projects that were poorly planned, badly transferred, or insufficiently sustained by the Iraqi government."
The blame is shared, officials said. While Iraq has often been guilty of poor management, U.S. authorities have repeatedly failed to ask Iraqis what sort of projects they needed and have not followed up with adequate training.
Despite the $53 billion spent by the United States, many Iraqis have criticized the rebuilding effort as wasteful. Ali Ghalib Baban, Iraq's minister of planning, said it had had no discernable impact.
"Maybe they spent it," he said, "but Iraq doesn't feel it."
Despite the billions in U.S. spending, more than 40 percent of Iraqis still lack access to clean water, according to the Iraqi government.
Ninety percent of Iraq's 180 hospitals do not have basic medical and surgical supplies, according to the aid organization Oxfam.
Exacerbating the problem, Iraqi and U.S. officials say, is that hundreds of thousands of people from Iraq's professional class have fled or been killed during the war, leaving behind a population with too few doctors, nurses, engineers and others.
Timothy Williams,
The New York Times
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