Learning from Iraq
Stuart W. Bowen
Compte d'auteur
Learning From Iraq: A Final Report From the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction culminates SIGIR’s nine-year mission overseeing Iraq’s reconstruction. It serves as a follow-up to our previous comprehensive review of the rebuilding effort, Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience.
This study provides much more than a recapitulation of what the reconstruction program accomplished and what my office found in the interstices. While examining both of these issues and many more, Learning From Iraq importantly captures the effects of the rebuilding program as derived from 44 interviews with the recipients (the Iraqi leadership), the executors (U.S. senior leaders), and the providers (congressional members). These interviews piece together an instructive picture of what was the largest stabilization and reconstruction operation ever undertaken by the United States (until recently overtaken by Afghanistan).
The body of this report reveals countless details about the use of more ...
Contents
Foreword / vii
Preface / ix
1. Oversight in a War Zone / 1
Sigir Audits / 1
Sigir Inspections / 4
Sigir Investigations / 6
Other Sigir Oversight Work / 7
2. What Happened And To What Effect / 9
The Iraqi Interviews / 10
The U.S. Senior Leader Interviews / 20
The Congressional Interviews / 30
3. Nation (Re)building by Adhocracy / 37
Who Was in Charge? / 38
Who Did the Work? / 47
4. How Much Money Was Spent / 55
Major U.S. Funds / 57
Smaller U.S. Funding Streams / 68
5. Where The Money Went / 71
Planning To Spend / 71
Infrastructure / 75
Security and Rule of Law / 90
Governance / 105
Economy / 114
6. Pathways Toward Reform / 121
Responding to Deficiencies / 122
A Plausible Solution / 125
7. Final Lessons / 129
Afterword / 133
Appendix A: Draft USOCO Bill / 135
Appendix B: Tables / 147
Acronyms / 155
Endnotes / 159
Sources for Figures / 168
Sources for Tables/ 170
FOREWORD
To the Members of the United States Congress:
We commend to your attention Learning From Iraq: A Final Report From the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. This important work brings together a wealth of information and analysis to identify important lessons learned from the rebuilding program in Iraq—lessons that could help improve significantly the U.S. approach to future stabilization and reconstruction operations (SROs). Drawing from numerous interviews with past and present Iraqi leaders, senior U.S. policymakers and practitioners, members of Congress, and others who were involved with Iraq, this report lays out in detail the enormous U.S. reconstruction effort, which completed thousands of projects and programs since 2003, but in which there were many lessons learned the hard way.
Learning From Iraq describes at length the challenges encountered by the soldiers, diplomats, and other civilians who served in Iraq. The nine-year rebuilding program, the second largest SRO in U.S. history (after Afghanistan), expended about $60 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars and billions more in Iraqi funds. Over $25 billion of that was committed to the training and equipping of the Iraqi Security Forces, with the balance funding everything from major infrastructure construction in the electricity and water sectors to local governance programs and small Provincial Reconstruction Team projects.
We worked closely with Inspector General Bowen and his team during our time together in Iraq, and we found their oversight and reporting very useful in providing insights into the execution of our respective missions. While SIGIR’s audits, inspections, and investigations addressed the rebuilding program’s challenges, its lessons-learned reports, of which this is the ninth and last, also identified many of the important solutions that were developed.
Of course, a lesson is not truly learned until it is incorporated in policies, practices, regulations, and, in some cases, laws. Now is the time to draw on the lessons from Iraq as we seek to improve the way the United States plans, executes, and oversees SROs.
We salute the Inspector General as he completes his mission, and we thank the members of the SIGIR team for their superb contributions to the effort in Iraq. Indeed, they were among the hundreds of thousands of great Americans, Coalition country members, and Iraqis who served so courageously, skillfully, and selflessly to help provide a new opportunity to the citizens of the Land of the Two Rivers. It was the greatest of privileges for us to serve with all of them.
Respectfully submitted,
General David H. Petraeus
United States Army (Retired)
Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker
PREFACELearning From Iraq: A Final Report From the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction culminates SIGIR’s nine-year mission overseeing Iraq’s reconstruction. It serves as a follow-up to our previous comprehensive review of the rebuilding effort, Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience.
This study provides much more than a recapitulation of what the reconstruction program accomplished and what my office found in the interstices. While examining both of these issues and many more, Learning From Iraq importantly captures the effects of the rebuilding program as derived from 44 interviews with the recipients (the Iraqi leadership), the executors (U.S. senior leaders), and the providers (congressional members). These interviews piece together an instructive picture of what was the largest stabilization and reconstruction operation ever undertaken by the United States (until recently overtaken by Afghanistan).
The body of this report reveals countless details about the use of more than $60 billion in taxpayer dollars to support programs and projects in Iraq. It articulates numerous lessons derived from SIGIR’s 220 audits and 170 inspections, and it lists the varying consequences meted out from the 82 convictions achieved through our investigations. It urges and substantiates necessary reforms that could improve stabilization and reconstruction operations, and it highlights the financial benefits accomplished by SIGIR’s work: more than $1.61 billion from audits and over $191 million from investigations. My office carried out an unprecedented mission under extraordinarily adverse circumstances. Hundreds of auditors, inspectors, and investigators served with SIGIR during that span, traveling across Iraq to answer a deceptively facile question: what happened to the billions of dollars expended to rebuild that country?
Our work became increasingly more difficult as the security situation deteriorated, the effect of which forced our mission to become quite literally oversight under fire. The collapse of order in Iraq caused an unacceptably high human toll: at least 719 people lost their lives while working on reconstruction-related activities. SIGIR suffered from this toll, with one auditor killed by indirect fire in 2008 and five others wounded the year before.
In late 2003, the burgeoning rebuilding program required more oversight: that was the Congress’ s view. Thanks to the vigilant efforts ...
Stuart W. Bowen
Learning from Iraq
Compte d'auteur
Compte d'auteur
Learning from Iraq
A Final Report From The Special
Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction
For all those lost in Iraq
Each one lost is everyone’s loss you see
Each one lost is a vital part of you and me
—Bruce Cockburn
