Mosul Iraq Dam Poses Risk to 500,000 Iraqis

The poor people of Mosul, Iraq. An Iraq dam near the city of Mosul risks the lives of at least 500,000 of the Iraqis residing in the city of 1,700,000. After suffering through the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and then more than five years of war and instability under the American occupation their very infrastructure threatens to wipe another 500,000 of them out.

In September 2006, the US Army Corps of Engineers determined that the dam, 45 miles upstream of Mosul on the River Tigris, presented an unacceptable risk and could fail at any time. The dam is the largest in Iraq. The US has warned that the dam is at risk of an imminent collapse that could unleash a 20m (65ft) wave of water on Mosul.

“In terms of internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world,” the corps warned, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) report released today. “If a small problem [at] Mosul Dam occurs, failure is likely.

A $27m reconstruction project to help shore up the dam has made little or no progress. It seems that as important as the dam is to the safety of the people of Mosul the dam has not escaped the corruption and poor workmanship that has plagued nearly all construction projects in Iraq. In many instances contractors have been paid in full for work that is of poor quality or that hasn’t even been completed.

Once a contractor has been paid in full good luck on getting him back to complete the work. There have even been some instances where lucky contractors were paid two and three times for the same sorry work. Now that would be an extremely profitable contract for the contractor and show incredible incompetence on the part of the projects management.

One fine day maybe the US government will realize that in Iraq it is being played by greedy contractors of all descriptions, from Blackwater to those working on the American Embassy, to the Mosul dam. The name of the game under poor supervision and management practices is to get as much money as you can and run.

Widespread corruption is a fact of life in Iraq and indeed in many nations. Unfortunately, even US Congressmen seem to have caught the corruption disease.  In the Mid East corruption is highly refined and is considered a normal part of doing business, especially when billions of Dollars are being tossed around.

Since the banking system in Iraq remains in a shambles payment transactions are often  made in hard to control and to trace cash.  Iraq may be a hell on earth for many but for a corrupt contractor it is a money making paradise.

I recently was in contact with one contractor who has just retired in Thailand at the age of 29 after spending four years in Iraq. He owned a contracting company that apparently received enough work and money in that four year period to set him up for life. I’m sure that he deserved a good return on his time and effort. Four years working in a combat zone is a very long time.

However, I expect that his profits were massive as are the profits of any construction contractor working on major projects, often on a cost plus basis, with minimum supervision. After all how can you expect an Army or Marine infantry officer, trained in the art of war and destruction, to properly supervise a multi-million dollar construction project?

The $27 million so far wasted on the Mosul dam is actually small potatoes as far as construction contracts in Iraq go. But unlike most other mismanaged projects the potential for the heavy loss of life due to faulty construction is high.

How can the US expect to achieve “success” in Iraq, whatever that may mean these days, when the Iraqi and US governments can’t get it right even on critical construction projects?

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