Section[ Appendix - The 8 Strategic Pillars
Title[ Pillar 4 - Help Iraq Build Government Capacity and Provide Essential Services
Strategic Pillar Four
Help Iraq Build Government Capacity and Provide Essential Services
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE: The Iraqi government is able to provide essential services to the
population of Iraq.
Status: Saddam Hussein pillaged Iraq's infrastructure and directed essential services to favored areas
populated with Ba'ath party loyalists. This legacy is now further complicated by forces in Iraq that
deliberately target civilian infrastructure to dishearten the public and weaken the central government.
These strains on Iraq's infrastructure are exacerbated by an ever-growing demand for electricity and fuel
(resulting from an upward spiral of demand for new cars, generators, and air conditioners) and subsidies
that make prices for power among the lowest in the world. These difficulties, among others, help explain
why progress in these areas has not been as robust as some expected. Nevertheless, impressive gains are
being made, with new schools and clinics opening and water projects and electricity generation coming
on line.
The United States is helping Iraq achieve this objective through the following lines of action:
- Rehabilitating critical infrastructure in the production and distribution of fuels and electric power
as well as training engineers to maintain and operate this infrastructure
- Supporting and strengthening the nascent institutions of public utilities and regulatory agencies
- Rehabilitating water and sanitation infrastructure to provide safe drinking water and reducing the
transmission of water-borne disease
- Building and rehabilitating health care facilities, with a focus on impoverished neighborhoods and
communities
- Rehabilitating schools, providing new textbooks, computers and materials, and training teachers
and school administrative staff
- Encouraging international donors to expand infrastructure and capacity-building efforts through
prompt disbursement of pledges
"As to the situation with infrastructure and services for Iraq, the United States, of course, has devoted
$18.6 billion to reconstruction in Iraq, a good bit of that to water projects, to electricity. I think it's
awfully important to step back and recognize that under Saddam Hussein this Iraqi infrastructure was
seriously deteriorated. There is already a lot of work that has gone on on electricity, a lot of work
that has gone on on water, from us, from the European Union, from other states."
-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, June 2005
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