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GAO sees challenges in Iraq withdrawal

The ongoing withdrawal of U.S. troops and equipment from Iraq is on or ahead of schedule but faces six “crucial challenges” that must be overcome in order to meet agreed-upon timelines, the Government Accountability Office said Monday in a new report.

The report finds that the Pentagon has made “significant progress” in implementing its drawdown plans but that a large amount of personnel, equipment and bases remain to be drawn down or closed to meet two deadlines: the Aug. 31, 2010, presidential deadline for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces, and the agreed-upon Dec. 31, 2011, deadline for complete U.S. withdrawal.

The GAO said that to meet next year’s deadline — leaving about 50,000 troops in country by September — Multi-National Force-Iraq must reduce its forces by some 60 percent. It also must draw down 32 percent of its contractor personnel workforce, retrograde more than 50 percent of its tracked and wheeled vehicles, and close 67 percent of its bases.

Everything else must come out in the following 16 months.

Yet while the present contractor personnel workforce must draw down, GAO said that experience has shown requirements for contracted services likely will increase. And the report added that in Iraq, “such efforts may be hampered because contracting officials in Iraq do not have full visibility over the approximately 52,000 contracts in theater.”

The Defense Department also “lacks a centralized repository of the specific services available on the various contracts.” For example, GAO said, MNF-I has several contracts for trucking services for transporting drawdown-related materiel, “but planners may lack the details necessary to allocate these services efficiently as drawdown progresses.”

The GAO said the military must resolve the following concerns in order to meet the timelines for withdrawal from Iraq:

• Contract services that have not been fully identified.

• Potential costs and other concerns of transitioning key contracts that may outweigh potential benefits.

• Longstanding shortages of contract oversight personnel.

• Key decisions about the disposition of equipment that have not yet been made.

• Longstanding information technology system weaknesses.

• A lack of precise visibility over some equipment.

“Without resolution, these issues may inhibit the efficient and effective execution of the drawdown,” said William Solis, GAO’s director of defense capabilities and management and the report’s author.