Efforts to rebuild Iraq are so far proved wasteful and rife with corruption

The authors of a new report on post-conflict reconstruction have given warning that efforts to rebuild Iraq have so far proved wasteful, ineffective and rife with corruption.
The report, to be released in London today, was funded by the United Nations Development Programme and draws on examples of previous post-war efforts to rebuild countries including Bosnia, Lebanon and Sierra Leone.
The study, carried out by Tiri. the London-based governance campaign group, and the Lebanese chapter of Transparency International, has found that such reconstruction is viewed by much of the international community as a "state of exception"
in which the normal rules of business conduct do not apply. The need to spend funds pledged for rebuilding makes it acceptable to bend the rules, award contracts without competitive tender and turn a blind eye to profiteering and conflicts of interest.
The authors are particularly critical of donors' tendency to use large western contractors to repair infrastructure damaged in the war, importing foreign personnel and equipment at a huge cost. In Iraq, that policy has proved disastrous, one of the authors said in an interview.
Mr Carver, who as head of international law at Clifford Chance, was a frequent visitor to the region, said: "The ordinary Iraqi - even if they were passionately against Saddam and delighted to see him go - feel that there's nothing left for them after 18 months of occupation. The Americans have brought them, precisely, nothing."
The damning report follows growing criticism -both official and unofficial -of efforts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. The UK's Christian Aid and George Soros' Iraqi Revenuewatch have said that billions of dol lars in Iraqi oil revenues have been spent on reconstruction with few discernible results.
A UN watchdog, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, and the Coalition Provisional Authority's own inspector-general have also sharply criticised the former occupation authority's handling of Iraqi oil funds for reconstruction projects.