As violence rises, rebuilding stalls

A parade of 20 blue-and-white buses filled with Russian and Ukrainian oil workers lumbered out of Baghdad Thursday - the first exodus of some 800 contractors Moscow ordered to leave. Thousands of foreign contractors are still working on electricity, pipelines, roads, and buildings in Iraq. But the pace of rebuilding is slowing, and in some cases grinding to a halt.

The epidemic of kidnappings in Iraq has put a chill through the foreign community here. Journalists are moving out of houses to fortified hotels, private contractors are hiring extra layers of security, and almost everyone is severely limiting their movements. Many contractors, concerned about unsafe travel, have taken days off work in recent weeks.

The dramatic deterioration in security is now threatening the speed with which US and other reconstruction money can be spent in Iraq. The $18.4 billion, allocated last year but slowed by a lengthy contracting and review process, has started to trickle out and was expected to become a deluge by July.

The US-led Coalition Provisional Authority sees the spending as a linchpin for stability. It hopes that job creation - in a country where unemployment runs as high as 50 percent - would help drain the pool of potential insurgents.

But with violence at its highest point since the war began, concern is growing that starting a virtuous cycle between job creation and better security has just gotten a lot harder.

"The violence may slow us down, it may make work more expensive, but we're not going to let it stop us,'' says Capt. Bruce Cole, spokesman for the CPA's Program Management Office, which oversees the US-allocated spending. "If we were to allow ourselves to be stopped, we'd be losing perhaps our single biggest tool for improving the security situation."

But using that tool is growing harder. Fighting with Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and a showdown with the Mahdi army, a Shiite militia loyal to the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in Najaf, has increased antiforeign sentiment. At least 50 contractors were killed in April, and at least 40 foreigners have been kidnapped across Iraq during the past three weeks, though more than 20 of them have been released, including three Japanese who were handed to a Sunni clerics committee Thursday.

Wednesday, gunmen filmed the execution of one of their captives, Italian Fabrizio Quattrocchi, and delivered it to the Al Jazeera TV; Thursday, two more Japanese were kidnapped after being lured out of Baghdad to film a helicopter crash; and six contractors from Houston-based Kellogg, Brown, and Root remain missing since an attack on their convoy delivering fuel to US troops last Friday.

Tensions in Baghdad rose Thursday after leaflets from the "Mujahideen Forces" were distributed, threatening attacks in the city through April 23. The leaflets warned shops and schools to close.

"Your brothers the Mujahideen in Ramadi, Khaldiya, and Fallujah will transfer the resistance fire to Baghdad to help our Mujahideen brothers from the Mahdi Army to free you from the darkness of the occupier," the statement said.

The effect of this new, more threatening atmosphere was evident in Baghdad Thursday as at least some of the workers from Russia and former Soviet states headed to the Baghdad airport. Their decision to leave followed the brief kidnapping of five Ukrainian and three Russian engineers earlier in the week.

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