The magazine Engineering News Record has done an outstanding job documenting the progress of Iraq's reconstruction over the past year. News is mixed, good and bad; exactly what one ought to expect from an enterprise borne on compromise and threatened by conflict. Some stories are mildly amusing, such as the confusion faced by Iraqis — who, under Saddam, once were happy simply to work on a construction site they wouldn't get killed on — as they learn American Contracting 101. A few reflect the dangers still present in the country, especially from organized forces under al-Sadr and concentrated in Fallujah. Left unchecked, terrorism works: contractors are mortal men and fear for their lives, business stops. But as the latter article suggests, replacement workers, eager for any kind of work, are never in too short supply; and according to at least one security company principal, medium- to long-term outlooks are bright.

One story stands out as proof that, in spite of attempts by terrorists to cause disarray and paralyze a nascent civil society, work continues wherever it can:

Ongoing security problems in Iraq are having little impact on the oil sector, Iraqi oil ministry officials said April 13, although kidnappings and ongoing violence are slowing reconstruction and have forced the postponement of an oil conference in Basra. At the Ministry of Oil (MOO) and the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), senior officials say it is business as usual — expanding production, increasing exports and attracting foreign investment. “Everything is fine,” says Assem Jihad, MOO spokesman. “There are problems with security but it does not influence our operations.”

Despite pervasive security problems, the U.S. Project Management Office in Baghdad expresses an optimistic view about the progress of reconstruction. “The violence has not stopped or slowed down the process,” says PMO spokesman Steve Susens. “In fact, most of our prime contractors are already here and we are actually moving pretty rapidly. From what we are hearing, many of the projects that are ongoing have not been slowed or stopped, at all,” he says. “In fact, there are some cases where the locals are helping to make sure the contractors and the workers are safe.”

Authoritarians are quite serious in their bid to bring about the collapse of a free Iraq. But Iraqis appear just as serious to preserve their new lives. And just as a defeated militarist Japan's industry — decades old and largely unchanged, by postwar standards hopelessly obsolete — was reborn through American generosity, technology and investment, Iraqis are enriched by their Western counterparts.