Report finds little real Iraq progress

WASHINGTON — Despite hopes that the U.S. military buildup in Iraq would encourage economic and political headway and sap the strength of the insurgency, little lasting progress has been achieved, according to a new U.S. report.

The report also suggests that American officials may have little hope of influencing developments in Iraq's southern provinces amid growing Iranian involvement there.

The study, based on the assessments of dozens of U.S. military and civilian officials working at local levels across Iraq, runs counter to the forecasts by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It said that with the exception of Anbar province, there has been "little progress" toward political reconciliation, a key U.S. goal in Iraq.

Withdrawal of U.S. troops would produce "open battlegrounds of ethnic cleansing" in some Baghdad neighborhoods and elsewhere in Iraq, the report said.

In congressional hearings in September, Petraeus and Crocker testified that the addition of 28,000 American troops in Iraq, ordered last winter by President Bush, was tamping down violence and providing opportunity for economic projects, government reform and political reconciliation. The first of the reinforcement units is scheduled to leave Iraq before Christmas.

But instead of charting progress, the new report, by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, warns that Iraq "will require years of steady engagement" before there is significant progress in providing Iraqis with power and clean water, jobs, health resources and government that works.

"Iraq's complex and overlapping sectarian, political, and ethnic conflicts, as well as the difficult security situation, continue to hinder progress in promoting economic development, rule of law, and political reconciliation," the report cautioned.

With a $44 billion investment by American taxpayers in rebuilding Iraq, there are some visible improvements, the report said. But it warned that local and provincial governments "have little ability to manage and maintain" new health clinics, water-treatment plants, power-generating facilities and other projects.

One U.S. official in Iraq, quoted anonymously in the report, said he foresaw a "train wreck" ahead as costly U.S. projects in Iraq grind to a halt for lack of manpower or maintenance.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates dismissed the report's conclusion, which he said "doesn't square" with what he is hearing from senior U.S. military officers in Iraq.

The office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, created by Congress three years ago to probe U.S. spending in Iraq, is headed by Stuart Bowen, a lawyer who previously worked for then-Gov. George Bush in Texas and served on Bush's White House staff.

His report, released Thursday, is based on assessments from 32 provincial reconstruction teams made up of U.S. military and civilian experts in local government. The report found the judicial system is not functioning because of police corruption and judges who are subject to intimidation by sectarian violence. Courts are often unable to convene because of threats of violence, and jails are overcrowded. Judicial orders "are often ignored," the report said.

As a result, disputes are often settled by local militias and religious leaders, the report said.

To boost employment, U.S. military commanders are spending millions of dollars on short-term reconstruction projects that employ local Iraqis, but these projects often are not coordinated with local governments and rarely provide long-term job opportunities, the report said.

Gates and other senior officials have long argued that the key to stability in Iraq — and to safely reducing U.S. forces there — is not the military fight but the ability of Iraq's local and national governments to win the trust and support of ordinary Iraqis, rather than allowing Iraqis to depend on sectarian militia and religious groups for security and other services.

The report documented "a growing public frustration" of Iraqis with their government. As a result, there has been "little progress" toward political reconciliation, which it said was being undermined by jockeying for power among rival Shiite groups and a "sense of alienation" on the part of the minority Sunnis.

Much of Iraq's oil wealth is in the south, and the southern city of Basra is Iraq's only major port. In addition, withdrawing U.S. troops would need to pass through the region to reach departure points in Kuwait.

The region is dominated by Shiite Muslims, Iranian religious pilgrims are a major source of income and no large U.S. military units are present. British forces, which have been responsible for southern Iraq's security since coalition forces invaded more than four years ago, will drop to 2,500 by next spring.

Iranian influence is expanding, the report said, and Iranian money is flooding into Najaf and Karbala provinces, the home of Iraq's Shiite religious leaders.

In contrast, the report said, coalition reconstruction experts haven't visited Najaf to meet with officials there in more than a year and have managed only three visits to Karbala in the past year.

Meanwhile, Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of large power plants, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

The Iraqi electricity minister, Karim Wahid, told the newspaper that the Iranian project would be built in Sadr City, a Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is controlled by followers of the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Wahid told the Times a larger project, to be built by a Chinese company, which he said was named Shanghai Heavy Industry, would pump some 1,300 megawatts of electricity into the Iraqi grid. For comparison, all of the plants currently connected to Iraq's grid produce a total of roughly 5,000 megawatts.