New Iraq war report echoes previous analysis - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

New Iraq war report echoes previous analysis

The latest administration report on the Iraq war — yes, there really is another one — finds that “significant” gains in security have improved daily life in Iraq but that political progress is just about nil.

And so it continues in Iraq. Sectarian killings have decreased. Tribal leaders in Anbar are fighting back against al-Qaida. The Iraqi army is improving, but not the police.

“Challenges remain at the national level,” the report states.

That may be putting it mildly. The chief of the independent Government Accountability Office, David Walker, told Congress Sept. 4 that the Iraqi government is “dysfunctional.” While not as sharply worded, the new administration report concludes that the Iraqi government has to get energized, start delivering municipal services far more widely and push harder to reconcile warring parties, or all the security progress won’t mean a thing.

“The outcomes from securing the population and advancing the legislative agenda still depend, to a great degree, on the ability of the Iraqi government to promote an environment of reconciliation and trust,” the report states.

The U.S., however, is simultaneously urging political reconciliation by pursuing a “bottom-up” strategy, supporting the Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar and seeking similar anti-al-Qaida backlash in more sectarian-mixed provinces. And the new report says this effort is beginning to show results in the outer belts of Baghdad, Baqubah and Salah al Din.

“This phenomenon has led to talks between Shi’a and Sunni tribal leaders,” the report states. On the down side, however, the report finds that high-profile bomb attacks favored by al-Qaida “are likely to continue.”

The quarterly report, the 9th in a series mandated by Congress, comes both as an anticlimax and as slightly dated goods.

During the previous two weeks, Congress has heard reports from the Bush administration and the GAO grading the status of Iraq’s 18 political, economic and security benchmarks; a report by a commission headed by retired Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones on Iraqi Security Forces that included a detailed assessment of the security situation in Iraq; and the widely publicized assessments provided by Army Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

The latter assessments included statistics through Sept. 7. The numbers in the latest administration report run only through mid-August. Critics who took issue with the GAO report noted that its statistics on incidents of violence ran only through July.

The Petraeus assessment included five additional weeks of statistics and thus provided what the administration said was a more comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of the Bush administration surge of 28,500 troops, which wasn’t fully in place until mid-June.

The GAO contends that it couldn’t determine if sectarian violence had subsided, as Petraeus and others reported, because it had questions about U.S. officials’ methodology in determining whether a killing was sectarian or criminal in nature. The conflict has not been publicly resolved.

But the reports all agree that the lack of central government political movement on issues such as oil revenue sharing and implementing laws allowing former regime officials to serve in civic life is crippling Iraq’s future.

“The consequences of the Iraqi government’s previous indecisiveness and inaction include the loss of confidence by segments of the Iraqi public, and more importantly, the failure to invest in the emerging provincial reconciliation in Anbar and other areas by providing essential services that would secure the support of new groups as they enter the political process,” the new report says.

“Political progress is at a critical juncture,” the report states.

Two key indicators of government effectiveness remain virtually unchanged. Oil production, the primary source of cash for Iraq, remained about the same during the recent quarter as during the previous quarter, which ended in mid-May. The reason is the same: poor infrastructure and inadequate security. Total crude oil production in August was lower than in June 2006.

The supply of state-provided electricity rose slightly, according to the report.