Report: (Security is so poor) Coalition has little influence in southern Iraq

[ProSense]

Report: Coalition has little influence in southern Iraq

By Mark Seibel, McClatchy Newspapers
2 hours, 51 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — Security is so poor in parts of southern Iraq that U.S. and coalition civilian officials are unable to meet regularly with many of their Iraqi counterparts, a U.S. government report released Thursday says.

Coalition officials charged with helping local governments provide services haven't visited the province of Najaf to meet with officials there in more than a year and have managed only three visits to Karbala in the past year, the report says.

Rocket and mortar attacks in Basra forced a British-led team of reconstruction experts to abandon its offices in the center of that province's capital a year ago, the report says. Most of the team was sent to Kuwait , and a few were relocated to an air base outside the city, where meetings with local officials are now held.

Coalition officials no longer travel to Maysan province, which is dominated by members of anti-American cleric Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army, the report says, and overland travel to Qadisiyah and Wasit provinces is a rarity. If reconstruction experts meet with local officials in those provinces, they generally travel by helicopter, the report says.

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