The United States has spent more than $60 billion on reconstruction and stabilization in Iraq. Mostly overlooked are the casualties suffered specifically related to SRO efforts. Through this report, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction sought to determine how many people-U.S. Servicemembers and civilians, third-country nationals, and Iraqis-were killed while participating in activities related to the rebuilding of Iraq's infrastructure and institutions. After examining all available classified and unclassified sources, SIGIR found that at least 719 people lost their lives while performing stabilization and reconstruction missions, including 318 U.S. citizens (about 11 percent of total hostile deaths). The report provides more detailed analysis of these casualties, offers lessons learned, and examines opportunities for future study.

In order to learn from the first-hand experiences of those who used CERP and other reconstruction funds in Iraq, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction administered a survey to former Army and Marine Corps battalion commanders, former Provincial Reconstruction Team leaders, USAID members on the PRTs, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials who served in Iraq. They were asked about what outcomes they intended to achieve with CERP, what measures of effectiveness they used, the level of interagency coordination, and the level of corruption. This report provides the results of the survey along with analysis and lessons learned and a wealth of information as well as opportunities for future research.

Recent reviews examining the ongoing counterinsurgency and stabilization effort in Afghanistan regularly report on a variety of ills, problems, waste, and mishandling of one of the largest foreign assistance efforts in history. This essay suggests that the challenges and issues affecting the stabilization mission in Afghanistan arise less from these common themes than from the very institutions that supposedly support the endeavor. The political and bureaucratic challenges facing stabilization programs in 2010 and 2011 often inhibited progress, and unless decisionmakers understand and address these self-imposed challenges, success will remain elusive.