Reconstruction: progress and challenges

Multi-National Forces-Iraq ^ | Staff Sgt. James Sherrill

[SandRat]

BAGHDAD -- Money set aside for Iraq reconstruction must be allocated by the end of next month or the remaining balance will revert to the coffers of the U.S. Treasury, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction said here Thursday.

Stuart W. Bowen, Jr. and his team of investigators make sure the $22 billion from the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund gets spent wisely. SIGIR was created by the U.S. Congress in Oct. 2004 to oversee reconstruction by detecting waste, fraud and abuse of the funds.

Bowen said nearly $20 billion has been spent or allocated so far and that U.S. contract managers are focused on putting the remaining balance of the money to work in Iraq before the deadline.

“I don’t expect money to revert to the U.S. Treasury,” he said during a press conference in the capital.

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen briefs reporters in Baghdad. Department of Defense photo.

Bowen also called on international donors to make good on promises of continued funding to rebuild the country of more than 26 million people.

“The promises of the Madrid donors’ conference need to be realized,” he said.

Bowen has overseen reconstruction spending in Iraq since 2004, when he was appointed by U.S. President George W. Bush to serve as Inspector General for the now dissolved Coalition Provisional Authority.

Bowen said that while reconstruction in Iraq has been steady and equally distributed across Iraq’s 18 provinces, both corruption and security concerns for contractors have taken a toll on project completion and the pot of money used to fund projects. He noted $6 billion had to be reallocated from the reconstruction fund to finance security costs, and said that even though the security situation sometimes prevents contractors from getting to job sites, the workers still have to be paid.

“It doesn’t stop the meter from running … so to speak,” Bowen said.

Despite some setbacks, Bowen said progress is being made. He touted provincial reconstruction teams, groups devoted to mentoring and addressing the needs of provincial governments, calling them “the leading edge of development.”

Both Coalition and Iraqi government officials have said they hope to have Iraq’s provinces under Iraqi control within the next 18 months.

In the days of the CPA, most reconstruction contracts went to U.S. companies, but more recent contracts have gone to Iraqi-run businesses, Bowen said.

“It’s been a complete reversal executed by Iraqi firms,” he said, adding that putting Iraqis to work on reconstruction would boost the country’s economy.

He also noted that 70 percent of all fraud, waste and abuse cases his team has investigated have stemmed from the CPA period, which ended in June 2004.

Bowen said it’s hard to track the reconstruction money in Iraq because the country still deals in cash and does not yet have an electronic money transfer system like nations with more developed economies.

“We rely on whistleblowers … informants and simple shoe-leather investigations,” he said.

Bowen noted that along with site visits, his investigation team also uses satellite imagery to zoom-in on construction progress – taking overhead photos of sites to see if projects are on schedule.

According to a quarterly report produced by SIGIR for Congress, the office is working with the Iraqi government to help combat corruption in the new Iraqi ministries. The report said that SIGIR “sees positive signs” in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s support for fighting corruption.

Bowen said Iraqi ministry officials are learning to fight corruption while on the job, putting “eyes and ears of integrity into the ministry.”

[SandRat]

Rebuilding Iraq continues

[DemforBush]

IMO, corruption in Iraq represents the one of the biggest threats to the troop's mission(after the insurgents, of course). Our troops won't be able to finish their work until Iraq is sufficiently rebuilt to fend for itself. And we've already seen stateside in the Big Dig and in New Orleans what happens when government largesse is handed out without accountability.

[DemforBush]

Btw, I'm not faulting Bowen - he seems to be on top of things. I'm just pointing out how serious this issue is.