Monday, August 30, 2010
Associated Press
KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq
A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste- treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.
As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects.
More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.
That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.
There are success stories. Hundreds of police stations, border forts and government buildings have been built, Iraqi security forces have improved after years of training, and a deep water port at the southern oil hub of Umm Qasr has been restored.
Even completed projects for the most part fell far short of original goals, according to an Associated Press review of hundreds of audits and investigations and visits to several sites.
And the verdict is still out on whether the program reached its goal of generating Iraqi good will toward the United States instead of the insurgents.
Col. Jon Christensen, who took over as commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region District this summer, said the federal agency has completed more than 4,800 projects and is rushing to finish 233 more.
Some 595 projects have been terminated, mostly for security reasons.
Christensen acknowledged that mistakes have been made. But he said steps have been taken to fix them, and the success of the program will depend ultimately on the Iraqis — who complained that they were not consulted.
“There’s only so much we could do,” Christensen said. “A lot of it comes down to them taking ownership of it.”
The reconstruction program in Iraq has been troubled since its birth shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
The U.S. was forced to scale back many projects even as they spiked in cost, sometimes to more than double or triple initial projections.
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