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U.S.
embassy in Baghdad: A city within a
city |
Posted By Amina
Anderson
Since the fall of Baghdad in 2003,
about 1,000 U.S. diplomatic and
military staff have been using one of
Saddam Hussein’s former palaces as a
make-shift embassy, a move that raised
concerns that the Americans merely
replaced Saddam's authoritarian rule
with their own.
The United States then announced plans
to build a new embassy in Baghdad,
claiming that the compound, in the
Green Zone, would illustrate President
Bush’s intentions to expand
“democracy” through the Middle
East.
The new embassy is one of the few
major projects the Bush administration
has undertaken in Iraq that is on
schedule and within budget. But the
entire project came under attack when
new details emerged of its cost and
scale.
The compound will cost $592m and will
cover 104 acres of land, about the
size of the Vatican, making it the
biggest and most expensive U.S.
embassy on earth. It will include 27
separate buildings and house about 615
Americans behind bomb-proof walls. The
U.S. ambassador will live in a
high-security home on the compound
reported to fill 16,000 square feet.
His deputy will live in a more modest
9,500 sq ft. They will have a pool,
gym and communal living areas, and the
embassy will have its own power and
water supplies.
But Iraqi and U.S. critics say the
project was flawed from the start,
raising concerns that it will become a
heavily targeted area that will be a
great liability if the Americans scale
back their presence in Iraq.
"What you have is a situation in
which they are building an embassy
without really thinking about what its
functions are," Edward Peck, a
former American diplomat in Iraq, told
AP. "What kind of embassy is it
when everybody lives inside and it's
blast-proof, and people are running
around with helmets and crouching
behind sandbags?"
Joost Hildermann, an Iraq analyst with
the International Crisis Group, also
said that the new embassy “sends a
really poor signal to Iraqis that the
Americans are building such a huge
compound in Baghdad. It does very
little to assuage Iraqis who are angry
that America is running the country,
and not very well at that."
Despite the huge size of the new
compound, there have been suggestions
that it won’t be large enough to
accommodate hundreds of U.S. diplomats
and military personnel likely to
remain in Iraq for some time. Dozens
of U.S. officials currently live in
trailers which could be an easy target
for bombs. According to a report by
McClatchy News, staff members have
complained about the dangers, but they
were told they should wait until the
new embassy is ready to take them in.
The Bush administration argues that
the need to secure the new embassy is
a top priority. The Green Zone, the
fortified area that houses Iraqi
government offices and foreign
embassies, used to be relatively
secure. But in recent months, the zone
has come under almost daily rocket and
mortar attacks. This month, the U.S.
embassy ordered its staff to wear flak
jackets and helmets at all times when
in the open after four foreign
contractors were killed by a rocket
landing beside the present embassy.
In a sign of further unrest, rebels
started attacking the multiple cranes
surrounding the construction site of
the new embassy. Last week, five
contractors were injured in a rocket
assault.
Despite the growing pressure, the Bush
administration insists that the
embassy will open in September, and be
fully operational by the end of the
year.
But many analysts warn that such a
move further raises Iraqi fears that
the U.S. is there to stay. Toby Dodge,
an expert on Iraq at Queen Mary,
University of London, has just come
back from a month spent in Iraq,
largely in the Green Zone. He believes
the Americans will not leave Iraq
until the end of the next presidency
at the earliest, and so he warns that
the new embassy will serve its purpose
for several years to come.
"A fortress-style embassy, with a
huge staff, will remain in Baghdad
until helicopters come to airlift the
last man and woman from the
roof," he said, adding his own
advice to the architects of the
building: "Include a large
roof."
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