AP News, September 5th, 2007
A government inspector told a House subcommittee Wednesday that a $2 billion U.S. reconstruction program for Iraq and Afghanistan remained plagued with problems but "has come a long way" in the past year.
The Pentagon, which operates the Provincial Reconstruction program jointly with the State Department, is having problems "finding people with the right skill sets" and it is nearly impossible to get Iraq's local and central governments to work with each other, Deputy Special Inspector General Ginger Cruz testified.
Cruz told the House Armed Services oversight subcommittee that the State Department has struggled to find adequate numbers of civilian advisers _ a situation the chairman, Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., called "abysmal" _ and that coordination with the government of Iraq posed a significant challenge.
There is a shortage of Arabic speakers and understanding of Iraq's culture and history as well as a lack of organization within the U.S. government to carry out the program, Cruz said.
The program, which began in 2002 in Afghanistan, aims at such projects as improving road networks and building schools. In Iraq, it emphasizes training and improving local and provincial governments.
Cruz said a new audit of the program was nearing completion.
Meanwhile, a prominent analyst, Anthony H. Cordesman, said the odds of any form of enduring success in Iraq are even at best.
Security in Baghdad has increased considerably, but the United States "has quietly lost much of the country, where the central government has little or no presence," Cordesman wrote in a report issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
And yet, the former director of intelligence assessment at the Pentagon said, "the situation is anything but hopeless" if the Bush administration takes some critical strategic steps beginning with pushing Iraq's leaders toward political conciliation and compromise.
This would include sharing power, jobs and money in the central government in ways that give the Sunnis a proportionate share as well as Shiites and Kurds and end the bias toward the Shiites, he said.
The Bush administration should consider distancing itself from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, he said. He called al-Maliki and his cabinet weak and unpopular.
And, Cordesman said, sharing petroleum wealth is the key to compromise and conciliation. Iraq has some 12 percent of the world's known oil reserves.
