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Money as a Weapon
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Redevelopment experts say the military is ill-equipped to check in on how CERP projects are sustained. The Pentagon has addressed the issue in recent changes to CERP regulations. Among the changes: Requiring commanders to have a "formal, highly visible transfer" of projects to Iraqi control. A May update to the "Money as a Weapon System" manual tells commanders to work directly with the local government to guarantee that Iraq will accept the work once it's done.
The problem is persistent. Earlier this year, in the northern province of Irbil, two schools reviewed by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction included no provision for handover to the provincial government.
Last year, auditors found that a water treatment plant near Mosul that had been repaired with $237,000 in CERP funds and then transferred to the local government was not working months later because it had no electricity.
At a sewage treatment plant in Baghdad, the inspector general's auditors found that when a new U.S. commander arrived in the area and discovered that the plant had no power, he would use CERP money to pay for a generator. That happened three times.
"So at the end of the day, they've paid for the same generator three different times," said Cruz, the deputy inspector general for reconstruction. "Nobody's been there long enough to follow through."
When auditors for the Government Accountability Office surveyed commanders, they were told that many projects executed by their predecessors had been abandoned by the Iraqi government, been vandalized or simply disappeared. There is no requirement for regular monitoring of earlier projects, the GAO said, so there was no way to assess the success of the projects.
"We're Army guys," said Strickland, who helped distribute CERP money in Ramadi. "We're not civil engineers. We're not economists. We can't gut-check a lot of these programs."
"It's not their mission," said Gordon Adams, a former top international relations official for the Office of Management and Budget who has testified recently before Congress on Iraq reconstruction efforts. He said he doubts that the military should ever build schools or health clinics or other facilities that don't contribute to security improvements. "They've got a fairly Wild West approach to development. . . . If you build a clinic, that clinic needs medical support; it needs supplies. In six months, how is that going to be provided? It's not long-term development, to the degree it's development at all."
Staff writer Amit R. Paley and special correspondent K.I. Ibrahim in Baghdad contributed to this report. A special Washington Post correspondent reported from Anbar province. Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed from Washington.
