Topic: Political Rant
These days it seems like everyone is interested in "sustainability." It is a buzz word that is floating through my compound, knocking on the doors of the Palace, and mentioned around the copy machine at Main State, and perhaps even mused about by staffers in Congress. That is why I want to explain a few things that I've learned about sustainability during the last month.

Within a few months after the Saddam's government fell, US government officials working at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) began to draft a second supplemental appropriations request. The reconstruction funds requested under the second supplemental appropriations bill emerged because US leaders in Iraq believe that one of the main ways to combat the insurgency was to prove that the US's actions were leading to positive changes in Iraq (more jobs, better services, etc). They believed that if the Iraqi people could see things getting better, they would stop joining the insurgency.

The second Iraq supplemental appropriations bill eventually became a "laundry list" dominated by large construction projects. CPA leaders threw everything they could into the bill. They dreamed up tons of projects (which months later turned out to be far more expensive than they thought). The laundry list focused on big stuff ? power plants, schools, airports, etc. The idea was to build something big that everyone could see and then slap a "Made in the USA" sticker on the side.

Some development experts in Iraq repeatedly argued for a comprehensive approach that would incorporate rebuilding the human institutions that would support the projects (i.e. sustainability). For example, the Ministry of Electricity needed to learn how to delegate central authority from Baghdad technocrats to plant managers, create a monitoring and billing system to encourage the sensible use of electricity, and institutionalize the use of long-term planning for maintenance, develop personnel policies that reward good performance, prevent Baghdad technocrats from hiring plant manager based on their relationship to key political leaders, etc. For the most part, these institutional strengthening requests were ignored. The budget request submitted by CPA/DoD and eventually approved by Congress did not include any significant sustainability efforts. Thus, the sustainability efforts were limited to low-level operations and maintenance issues, such as providing basic equipment training at newly constructed water treatment plants.

US government planners believed that the Iraqis could fund the institutional strengthening activities required to sustain the US's reconstruction projects. The US planners also assumed that other governments and nongovernmental organizations would provide any institutional strengthening activities that the Iraqis could not perform themselves. However, the need for institutional strengthening activities far exceeded the ability of the fledging Iraqi government, and the other donors never materialized due to the security situation and because they assumed that the US government?s substantial investment could completely fulfill any development need inside Iraq.

Although you can argue that at a very maco-level, the US has some projects (democracy development, education, and business reform) that will lead to the long-term sustainability of the reconstruction, it is not enough to support the country-wide institutional strengthening needed to ensure the sustainability of the projects funded by the $18.4 supplemental. Unless someone finally gets serious and puts some money down on the table, the US's investment in Iraq will quickly deteriorate. Within one or two years, plants might fall apart and could possibly become so degraded that they won?t function anymore. It has already happened at some facilities that we have turned over to the Iraqis.

A joint State Department, USAID, Program Contracting Office (PCO), and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) working group recently determined that the US government should institute a program to operate reconstructed facilities for a short-term basis while simultaneously creating an integrated program to ensure their long term sustainability. They determined that if the $8 billion spent on the electric and water/sewage sectors fails, Iraq will suffer serious economic and health-related consequences. Presumably, the Ambassador could use this White Paper to develop a specific funding proposal that could be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget.