Status of the Provincial Reconstruction Team Program Expansion in Iraq

摘要

On January 10, 2007, President Bush announced a 'New Way Forward' to accelerate Iraq's transition to self-reliance. The strategy called for a surge of civilian and military personnel into the provinces and a doubling of the number of provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) and personnel to support and sustain the transition to Iraqi control. Though still evolving, plans as of the end of June called for the number of PRTs to grow from 10 to 25 and the staff strength to double to 700. The original 10 PRTs will continue to operate at the provincial level, but an additional 15 called ePRTs will embed directly into brigade combat teams (BCTs) to deploy in neighborhoods and work at the district and municipal levels. The goal is to create areas where moderates will have political space to operate and anti-Iraqi forces are brought under control. The objectives of this audit, the second of three in a series on PRTs, were to determine the status of the U.S. government's plan to expand the number of PRTs and supporting staff in Iraq. Specifically, we addressed these questions: * What human resources and funding have U.S. government organizations identified to support the PRT expansion. * What performance measures or metrics are used to evaluate the effectiveness of * What actions were taken to address previous recommendations made in SIGIR's October 2006 report. We are in the process of conducting fieldwork for the third audit, examining the effectiveness of the PRT Program and will report the findings in September 2007.