As U.S. tax dollars pour into private coffers, reconstruction goes nowhere

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/18/AR2007101802201.html

Reconstruction In Iraq at a Crawl, Auditor Reports
Progress Varies by Area, Official Says

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 19, 2007; Page A17

Provincial reconstruction teams, the civilian centerpiece of the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq, are making "incremental" progress in some areas and very little in others, a government auditor told Congress yesterday.

"Improvement . . . is likely to be slow and will require years of steady engagement," Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction , told a House panel.

The teams are designed to help Iraqis build and maintain democratic institutions, provide basic services and create jobs at a local level. There are about two dozen teams spread across Iraq, each staffed with a handful to several dozen U.S. civilian and military subject experts.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has described the teams as the front line in the administration's "bottom up" strategy of developing local governance even as sectarian divides have stymied political reconciliation on the national level. As the number of U.S. military forces in Iraq increased earlier this year, Rice doubled the number of reconstruction teams, boosting their overall cost through this fiscal year to $2 billion.

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But a review by the inspector general's office, published yesterday, concluded that the success of the strategy varies widely in different parts of Iraq and in different task areas, including governance, security and rule of law, economic development, administration, and political reconciliation. Overall, it criticized the program for lacking uniform guidelines and measurable objectives.

Bowen also cited the failure of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to pass a law delineating provincial and local government powers -- one of the "benchmarks" for progress set by Congress -- as a "key obstacle" for the program.

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