Attacks
Halt Rebuilding Of Iraq
By Jamie Wilson
27 April, 2004
The Guardian
Vital
reconstruction work in Iraq has almost completely ground to a halt after
being "screwed up" by the deteriorating security situation
in the country, senior coalition officials have told the Guardian.
Unless the situation improves dramatically in the next few weeks, essential
work on the electricity network will not be complete before the extreme
heat of the summer arrives, raising the prospect of months of power
cuts similar to those that led to riots and widespread discontent last
year, the officials warned.
"It is screwing
up the timetables completely, so for things like electricity, essential
work that should have been done over the last three or four weeks has
not been done," one senior official said.
"We are at
risk of moving into the summer period with the repairs not complete,
which means we are going to have massive demand and not very good provision.
So from that point of view, it is a disaster."
The warnings came
as it emerged that the insurgency has forced two of the biggest contractors,
General Electric and Siemens, to suspend operations in Iraq. Siemens
has been involved in attempts to restore the Daura power plant in Baghdad,
listed by USAID, the development agency, as being one of the most important
electrical projects in the country.
The security problems
are delaying work on about two dozen power plants, as well as a number
of large-scale water and sewage treatment projects across Iraq.
The American-run
coalition provisional authority has always considered the reconstruction
and rehabilitation of Iraq's electrical and water infrastructure as
being key to persuading Iraqis of America's goodwill, as well as crucial
in efforts to create a functioning democracy.
Officials said that
since the increase in violence at the beginning of the month, nearly
all foreign contractors working in Iraq had either fled the country
or pulled workers back to secure bases.
"The best figure
we've got is that about 25% of contractors had currently pulled out
of country, albeit temporarily," a coalition source said. "However,
that is putting a brave face on it because the other 75% have pulled
back to base. They will argue that they are doing essential activities
in the base like getting the paperwork straight. Yeah, well give me
a break, how many times can you rewrite the scope of works and re-do
your personnel accounts?"
So far this month
more than 40 civilian foreign nationals have been kidnapped and 10 killed.
In the same period nearly 100 US troops have died, the worst monthly
total since the invasion of Iraq.
Several countries
including Russia, Portugal, Poland and France have urged their citizens
to evacuate amid the wave of attacks on civilians. The government in
Moscow offered to airlift more than 800 Russians and citizens of ex-Soviet
states out of Iraq after eight Russian and Ukrainian workers were briefly
kidnapped in Baghdad.
The men, who spent
19 hours in captivity, were working for the Russian contractor Interenergoservis,
building a power plant in Baghdad. It is understood that work has almost
entirely stopped since the kidnappings.
A coalition official
said one of the main problems was that because of knock-on effects each
day's delay now equated to a week's delay further down the line.
"If that continues
for another few days or a week then we can keep a brave face on it and
say it is not really affecting the critical path with the exception
of a few individual projects, but if it goes on very much longer after
that then we would have to say we are losing momentum of the project
as a whole," he said.
"Either things
can get better in the sense that they return to a level of security
problems that we were five or six weeks ago or the worst case scenario
is what is happening in Falluja and Najaf where we get substantially
greater violence, substantially greater numbers of contractor kidnappings,
and, if that happens, essentially it will mean a freezing of the reconstruction
effort at that stage."
Publicy, the British
and US governments are trying to play down the extent of the problems.
Brian Wilson, the
prime minister's special envoy in Iraq, yesterday told a conference
of businessmen in London that despite the security situation they should
not lose sight of the longer-term objective of helping Iraqis to rebuild
their infrastructure and economy.
"In doing so
we will help Iraq restore the confidence and prosperity they deserve.
So it is all the more important that you use this event to build relationships
and sow the seeds of a long-term commitment to Iraq and its people,"
he told the conference, called Iraq Procurement: Meet the Buyers.
However, one contractor
from Holland, who did not want to be named, told the Guardian that his
company would not send anybody to Iraq in the present security situation.
"There is just
no way the board would allow it. We are trying to bid for work that
can be done outside Iraq - spare parts, overhead power lines etc.. But
who on earth would actually want to go there now?"