US tries – again – to win support on embattled Baghdad street
The US military says it is committed to rebuilding infrastructure, but it is bogged down by sectarian rifts and red tape.
from the March 16, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
On Wednesday, state TV and some Iraqi officials hailed the security plan as a success – evidenced by a drop in the number of car bombs and bodies found on the capital's streets over the past month.
The US military was more cautious, with many officers describing the situation as "a lull."
Eight bodies were found in the Haifa Street area in February, compared with 53 in January, according to the US military.
"Right now it is a lull; what's going to happen in the future, we do not know. We cannot predict it with accuracy; we can be prepared," says Lt. Col. Kenneth Crawford, who heads the Special Troops Battalion of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division that oversees Karkh district, which includes the Sheikh Ali neighborhood near Haifa Street.
Colonel Crawford notes that security means that people can go to work, to school, the market, the hospital – in other words, lead more normal lives. "If they can do all of this," he says, "maybe we have our foot in the door."
Crawford, a Texan, speaks with steely determination about his goal of handing over all responsibilities for planning and executing community projects to his Iraqi counterparts by August.
At the same time he voices "great frustration" over the "inexplicable reasons" why certain projects previously funded by the US military, and which were badly needed by Baghdad residents, failed to become operational after they had been completed.
He says it's either sectarianism or bureaucracy – or in some cases, a combination of both.
He pulls out a photocopy of an internal PowerPoint presentation and points to a generator project that was built with US money two years ago, at a cost of $2 million, to supplement the local power grid in the Haifa Street area.
The project is lying idle in a city where people are fortunate if they receive two hours of state power a day. Crawford says that the Ministry of Electricity rejected it, saying it was not built to its specifications.
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