Lack of jobs, services is missing from Iraq discussion

WASHINGTON — For all this week's fevered rhetoric, endless squabbling over benchmarks and charts and debating troop numbers, a critical piece of the Iraq puzzle has gone largely unmentioned: jobs.

President Bush often boasts of past U.S. successes in rebuilding war-ravaged Europe and Korea.

But Iraq, after four years of American occupation and a $44 billion investment by U.S. taxpayers, still has a stagnant economy, dozens of idle factories, dysfunctional government ministries that cannot provide sufficient electricity, clean water or basic health care — and millions of unemployed people.

And that, according to war critics and Pentagon officials, is a recipe for continued conflict in Iraq, no matter how many troops are deployed or withdrawn or how much "reconciliation" is achieved among Baghdad's politicians.

"If your government is delivering services for you, you're going to feel a lot better about your government," said Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. For ordinary Iraqis, living inside a war is frightening enough. Having no way to provide for your family is perhaps worse, a predicament that builds resentment and anger and, U.S. military officers say, creates a pool of Iraqis who support the insurgents, either passively or actively.

Many attacks on U.S. troops, officers say, involve ordinary Iraqis who are paid $50 or so to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at soldiers and run, or dig a roadside hole for a homemade bomb.

Unemployment is "rampant" among Iraq's 7.7 million working-age males, said Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Paul Brinkley, director of the Pentagon's task force on improving Iraqi industry. He said at least half of all Iraqi workers are unemployed.

"There is no human population in the world that can withstand that level of economic distress and not experience attendant violence, unrest [and] sympathy with violent actors," Brinkley said last week.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, said recently that victory in Iraq "requires an economy that provides jobs to those citizens, so they can do something besides build bombs for a hundred dollars."

As Bush acknowledged Thursday night, "For most Iraqis, the quality of life is far from where it should be."

Yet a large part of the problem, according to Gen. David Petraeus and others, is that the Bush administration has been sluggish about mobilizing the government's nonmilitary resources for Iraq, to provide job training and significant startup help for state-owned factories, help set up a banking system, help streamline trade agreements and tax collection, help organize, man and equip health and other ministries, and other critical nonmilitary functions.

Although he is held in high regard by Bush, Petraeus has been unable to persuade the White House to pour more resources into the nonmilitary fight. In his speech and in a report to be delivered to Congress today, Bush noted the role of provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq, which combine civilian American experts in operating regional governments and schools, sewer and water systems, courts and other functions with a U.S. military unit. They are empowered to make quick loans and grants, but the intent is to help Iraqis figure out how to jump-start and sustain solid economic, commercial and governmental activity.

There are 25 such teams at work across Iraq, an increase from 10 in January.

"We are surging diplomatic and civilian resources to ensure that military progress is quickly followed up with real improvements in daily life," Bush said Thursday night.

In congressional testimony this week, Crocker asserted that after four years of such investment, the Iraq economy "is starting to make some gains." Iraq's economy is pegged to grow at 6 percent this year, according to an International Monetary Fund estimate, and oil revenues will enable Iraq to invest $10 billion this year in capital investment, Crocker said.

But overall, he acknowledged, "the Iraqi economy is performing significantly under potential."

Against this dismal backdrop, the White House is pinning hopes that the provincial reconstruction teams can achieve solid gains — and quickly.

But Ginger Cruz, deputy special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, testified before a congressional committee last week that the reconstruction teams are seriously understaffed with qualified personnel. Only 29 of 610 team advisers in Iraq are fluent in Arabic and familiar with Iraqi culture.

A larger problem for them is funding. According to Cruz, the budget allows for a staff of only 800 people in a country of 26 million, about one-tenth of what is needed.

Most teams lack armored transportation and security, limiting some to one trip a week. In Karbala and Najaf, she said, there is no U.S. military presence and teams do not travel there.

That, she said, "raises the question: How can they accomplish the mission?"