Falluja Waste Water Treatment System: A Case Study in Wartime Contracting

Abstract

The Falluja Waste Water Treatment System was one of the largest and most expensive construction projects in Iraq. It was part of a broad strategy to improve Iraq's infrastructure so as to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. This report discusses the history and outcomes of the Falluja Waste Water Treatment System and examines the lessons learned from this difficult reconstruction experience as applied to wartime contracting. A successful reconstruction program requires a balancing of security, political, and economic interests. Reconstruction cannot proceed on a large scale without the requisite security to protect those carrying out the projects and those overseeing them. In Iraq, the scope of reconstruction was too often insupportable by available security resources. To this day, Iraq's reconstruction environment has never been truly "post-conflict." Endlessly resuming rebuilding in the wake of sustained attacks on reconstruction personnel and critical infrastructure proved to be a demoralizing and wasteful strategy. In future stabilization and reconstruction operations, the U.S. government should analyze whether and at what costs security risks can be mitigated before proceeding with large-scale rebuilding projects. Such projects should begin only when senior leaders determine that the strategic objective they could fulfill outweighs the risk of failure and the costs of mitigating security risks. The Department of State and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided comments on a draft of this report. The comments are printed in their entirety in Appendices F and G. The U.S. Central Command provided technical comments that we also incorporated as appropriate in the report.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 30, 2011
Accession Number
ADA552675

Entities

People

  • Glenn D. Furbish
  • James Shafer
  • Kevin O Connor
  • Richard Kusman

Organizations

  • Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Case Studies
  • Construction Materials
  • Department Of State
  • Drinking Water
  • Employment
  • Families (Human)
  • Governments
  • Health
  • Health Services
  • Improvised Explosive Devices
  • Military Operations
  • Personnel Management
  • Private Military Companies
  • Sanitation
  • United States
  • Waste Water
  • Water Purification

Readers

  • Military and Counterinsurgency Studies.
  • Strategic Security Studies