24 March NY Times - Iraq Reconstruction Teams to Receive Needed Support by Thom Shanker and James Glanz.

Ten veteran diplomats and four representatives of the Agency for International Development will depart for Iraq in coming days as the civilian core of 10 new provincial reconstruction teams, the first step in what the Bush administration has promised will be a significant increase in efforts to accelerate local economic and political development.

State Department and Pentagon officials said that these additional team members were leaving on schedule.

Still, the pace of the political and economic buildup is expected to be behind that of the military’s, and some military commanders have been asking why they have not seen much in the way of assistance for the president’s new Iraq strategy from the rest of the civilian agencies of the United States government...

There are currently about 10 reconstruction teams working in Iraq but they have been burdened by a myriad problems.

American officials who have firsthand experience with the reconstruction team program say that it has been hampered by a surfeit of active duty or retired military participants who have lacked some of the expertise — such as in agriculture, energy and economics — that civilian government employees have, and by having too few people over all.

“There just aren’t any bodies on these teams anywhere,” said a State Department official who directly observed the formation of one current reconstruction team outside Baghdad. The official was not authorized to speak to the press.

Another problem has been the teams’ ability to move within Iraq...