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By Christine Spolar Tribune foreign correspondent
January 3, 2004
MOSUL, Iraq -- The bombed-out classrooms and teetering stairways of Mutzahbal High School serve as a cautionary tale about the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq.
Mutzahbal once was this important northern city's largest high school. Early in the war, Mutzahbal was turned into an enemy of the Americans. As with many schools in Iraq, Mutzahbal was believed to have been overrun by the Iraqi army and filled with deadly weapons.
So U.S. bombers targeted Mutzahbal High in April, crushing its yellow walls and shredding its books and desks.
When the dust settled and coalition leaders vowed to rebuild Iraq, Mosul education officials quickly identified Mutzahbal, which schooled 150 students, as their No. 1 need.
U.S. military officials, concerned about weapons debris buried in the school's twisted metal and concrete, also put Mutzahbal at the top of their to-do list.
Fixing schools by autumn was a coalition priority, and Mutzahbal seemed on course for reconstruction.
Deep into the school year, Mutzahbal has yet to rise from its ashes.
Chickens, ducks and turkeys peck in the schoolyard, now guarded by a caretaker who lives with his wife and nine children amid stench and ruin.
"We've been here for a while," said Mariam Sadik, the caretaker's wife. "People come and look, but nobody's fixing anything."
There is no obvious deception or negligence to tell in this story of a school forgotten.
Mutzahbal instead is an example of how the U.S. desire for visible progress in Iraq has made for important, quick fixes but also allowed some of the toughest problems to be pushed aside.
Bechtel Inc., the San Francisco-based contractor charged with putting Mosul's schools back in order, has passed over Mutzahbal in favor of faster, easier jobs.
More than 1,000 schools across Iraq benefited this summer from fresh coats of paint, new doors and windows, hand-painted murals and shiny new drinking fountains--hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of repairs for classrooms long neglected by the regime of Saddam Hussein.
The U.S.-led coalition heralds those improvements as proof of on-the-ground progress in Iraq. High-profile government buildings, such as City Hall, courts and police stations in Mosul, also have been helped by hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct coalition aid and are under repair.
But major repairs in Iraq, and in Mosul in particular, are going slowly.
Some delays can be linked to the slow deployment of coalition political advisers to cities beyond Baghdad and a simple lack of staffing to coordinate repairs. Until October, U.S. troops, busy defending and rebuilding Mosul, were the only coalition faces in town.
Another reason for the slow pace of repairs, according to Iraqi and coalition officials, is the broad leeway given to Bechtel.
It is clear that Bechtel is fulfilling its billion-dollar-plus contract in Iraq, but as evidenced in the streets of Mosul, the contracting giant has been able to choose what its wants to rebuild.
As such, Bechtel has the power to make pivotal decisions about Iraq's recovery and the quality of life in communities such as Mosul.
The schools are just one example. The city listed 100 schools in dire need. Bechtel contractors, working under an 82-page contract with the U.S. government, assessed each school and then decided which projects they would undertake. In many cases in Mosul, they declined. By the school term's start, they had fixed 50 schools.
The reason, according to Bechtel and military engineers involved in the selection process, was that the company wanted to repair schools clustered together to reduce costs and risks.
Bechtel's top manager in Mosul, Richard Heighes, said schools were chosen as part of a "quick-fix program" aimed at cleaning up as many as possible by the first day of classes.
"The job order specified a number of schools. It didn't define where they would be or what they would be," Heighes said.
"We did very little structural work. We fixed all the doors and bathrooms and ceiling. It was reasonable. It wasn't structural. The view we had was to spend no more than three weeks on any one school," he said.
News to the military
That was a surprise to military engineers and even coalition officials setting up shop in Mosul.
Coalition officials, in particular, were tight-lipped when asked about Bechtel's results in Mosul.
But so far, one allowed, Bechtel has been a "disappointment."
Engineers with the 101st Airborne Division, in charge of Mosul, said they expected the Bechtel experts to take on the toughest jobs in Iraq. Bechtel ended up vying with non-government agencies for what some engineers called the "easy jobs." Problems such as Mutzahbal High--which needed $100,000 in repairs--were bypassed.
"We gave [Bechtel engineers] the list of the top 100 schools and they said, `No, we're not going to do that. We want schools all in one place, four or five at a time, so we can reduce overhead,'" said U.S. Army Maj. Frank Sturek, an engineer who coordinates repair work in Mosul and northern Nineveh province. http://tinyurl.com/3fk46 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 49 bytes Desc: not available URL: <../attachments/20040103/0098869d/attachment.gif> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 9691 bytes Desc: not available URL: <../attachments/20040103/0098869d/attachment-0001.gif>
