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The author describes conditions in postwar Iraq with the view that reconstruction efforts have failed. A strange column of dark smoke rises from a lush palm grove. And suddenly, huge nauseating plumes of raw sewage spill from pipes at Baghdad's southern edge. Throughout the country, vital systems, from water and power to healthcare and education, are in woeful disrepair. The World Bank estimates that bringing Iraq back to its 1991 level of development will cost $55 billion and take at least four years. From a military standpoint, reconstruction is central to the US counterinsurgency effort. But seen up close, reconstruction in Iraq looks less like a mission of mercy or a sophisticated pacification program and more like a criminal racket. The Rustimiyah sewage plants are among the few facilities given explicit mention as priority projects in Bechtel's contract-related documents. Together the two plants should handle all the sewage from Baghdad's populous east side, known as Rusafa; before the war the plants were fully functional but haven't processed any sewage since April 2003. Now their daily flow of 780,000 cubic yards of human and industrial waste--a nasty cocktail of organic solids, heavy metals and poisonous chemicals from a battery factory, a soap factory, an electronics plant and other light industry--goes directly into the Diyala River, which joins the Tigris seven miles southwest of the plants. At the Al Daura power plant, Baghdad's main source of electricity, Bechtel's main subcontractors, Siemens and General Electric, fled after four Russian contractors were assassinated, according to sources at the plant. Most of the little that has been invested in healthcare, water treatment and sanitation has come from Iraqi oil revenues, managed for most of last year by the Development Fund for Iraq, a US controlled successor to the UN-run Oil for Food program.
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