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."
Add Comments