Some of you will remember Biker Chicks #1 and #2, who attended a SWJ non-virtual get-together in Arlington in 2007.

Biker Chick #1 later moved on from researching jihadist IED techniques to working on Middle East civil society and elections issues, and is now deployed to Iraq doing something else. She recently passed on these insights into reconstruction efforts there:

We were asked to do a study on the economic and social effects of a recent Army development project where, for $140k, the Army had paved a 2 mile stretch of road to enable transportation of goods, services, etc. We had designed a research plan, a number of survey questions about how the paving of the road had affected the lives of local residents and business owners, and selected several sites along and just outside the route to conduct interviews....

The road had never been paved. The contractor had laid gravel, and then had stopped construction. Not only was it not paved, the Iraqi Federal Police had closed it indefinitely. Residents told us that the excuse that had been given was that it was an escape route for insurgents, and the loose gravel made an easy place to plant IEDs. We had been provided with a few blurry pictures of a ribbon cutting ceremony with the Iraqi Army as evidence that it was open, at least for a few hours, sometime in March. The brigade staff had no idea that it was unpaved or un-open; they were hoping for assessment of how their project had helped the local economy.

One of our team suspected the contractor was in Syria by now. He wasn't, however--he was still in the area, and managing several other construction projects for the US Army.

I'm getting the opportunity to look at how US reconstruction aid has affected the areas I work in. The stories get frighteningly repetitive, but it's nothing that you haven't read in the news before. We go out to four dairy production factories; the two that were privately funded and still functioning and half-staffed by Bangladeshis, the two funded by PRT or USAID are nonoperational. Massive poultry processing plants have been deserted, because no one did adequate studies on the availability of a market for local chicken in an area where the frozen Brazilian variety is the norm. Small projects are desperate for funding, and no one has reliable electricity or water, which makes it impossible to achieve basic standards of sanitation or refrigerate food or medicine. They often speak about a complete lack of connection and countless unanswered calls between their organization and local government or organizing bodies. There are proposals, statements assuring funding sources that x number of jobs will be created, and the US throws $120k at a project. Something doesn't work correctly, the owners cut their losses and split for Dubai, the factories empty, and squatters move in. We met families of squatters at our last project inspection, most of whom are former or 'current' members of the Sons of Iraq, and who are being run around the bureaucratic annals of the Iraqi government while waiting for jobs to open up for them. But then, that's a different story altogether.