The New Embassy Compound in Baghdad: Dysfunctional Imperial Symbol

Nearing completion	Sketch of aerial view by design firm

Among other things, it is

• huge to the point of grandiosity,
• over budget,
• built under appalling working conditions,
• not going to be operational for at least another year, and when it is, it will be
• highly dysfunctional in the normal sense of an embassy.

And most of all, in the bigger picture, it

• presents the clearest symbol around the world, of American intentions of control oil and geostrategic location in the Middle East, and
• creates the alleged need for its ongoing protection by U.S. military forces -- the principal rationale being used by candidates of both parties for ongoing U.S. military presence in Iraq, however they may feel about the war.

The NEC occupies 104 acres. It is

• equivalent to 80 football fields
• two-thirds the size of the entire National Mall in Washington
• six times the size of the United Nations compound in New York
• equal in size to the Vatican City

Designed by the architectural firm Berger Define Yaeger (on whose website the plans were temporarily posted before being quickly removed, the "embassy's" 21 buildings were supposed to cost $600 million. This makes it the largest and most expensive such compound in the world, in a country with a population roughly the size of Texas. By comparison, the second largest -- the American embassy in Beijing, a country with a population 50 times as large as Iraq's -- occupies 10 acres and is now expected to cost almost $750 million.

As such, intended to house the top American military staff in the country, and accompanied by a set of "enduring" military bases [*] in Iraq which are linked to the Green Zone by a military communications system, it is small wonder that it is viewed all over the world as an unambiguous symbol of American intentions to control the Middle East from an irreversible foothold in Iraq.

However, it isn't only the rest of the world that recognizes the symbolism. On May 10, 2007, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was questioning Secretary of State Rice about the increasing cost and size. He commented:

And as if the initial price tag of $750 million weren't enough, Senate staffers at the time of those May hearings were estimating the NEC's annual operating costs of $1.2 billion.

Embassies are the representation of one country in another. As such, they act as a two-way channel of communication and experience. That process relies on contact and, if possible, understanding between the embassy personnel and the people of the country in which they reside. Because of security concerns, the NEC is enclosed behind high 15-foot thick walls.

Artist's rendering of office building and swimming pool

Designed to be completely self-contained, needing no contact with the local population, it contains its own

As Jane Loeffler, author of The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America's Embassies, wrote in an article called "Fortress America" in Foreign Policy Magazine (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3936)

Since the NEC was designed, the Green Zone -- and Embassy Row -- has become a much more dangerous place. State Department personnel have to wear helmets and flak jackets when outside of buildings. NEC building designs had to be modified to withstand mortar and rocket attacks. But it isn't clear how this will help people between buildings, given that, in spite of its high walls, the NEC doesn't have an overarching roof.

And located as it is right between two major shopping districts -- the Mansoor and the Karada -- the NEC creates logistical problems for the city. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out that

Contracted to First Kuwait General Trade and Contracting, the construction project involved about 3500 workers. Among these were Filipinos described in testimony before Congress in June 2007 by a First Kuwait subcontractor's employee as kidnapped slave labor. He and other former foremen and managers of the operation described horrendous working conditions, frequent strikes, attempted escapes, large numbers of injuries with little or no (or worse, dangerous) medical treatment.

The NEC was to be turned over on September 1, 2007 for occupancy. It wasn't ready.

Part of this failure turned out to have been due to poor planning, shoddy workmanship and internal disputes, which had been obfuscated by the secrecy with which the project manager, retired Army Gen. Charles Williams, ran the project. Key government people in Iraq and the U.S. were unaware of a backlog of unaddressed problems cited as far back as August, when Williams in December said the project was "substantially completed" and ready to occupy. It wasn't until February that a report identified wiring problems and critical faults in the fire-fighting system. The situation ended up the subject of a Justice Department investigation and State Department probe.

Trying to deal with the shoddy workmanship, the State Department requested and received permission from the Iraqi government for 2,000 non-Iraqi construction workers to stay on until March. In March, Richard Shinnick, who had taken over in January as acting director of State's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, sent a team of State Department architects, engineers, attorneys and contracting officers to fix the problems.

Also contributing to the failure to meet the occupancy deadline were various last-minute changes sought by State Department officials. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice asked Congress in May 2007 for $50 million for additional buildings because the situation in Iraq had changed since the original plans (including the decision to house the top military brass there, requiring extra places for storing classified material). In October, the request was upped to $144 million.

In March 2008, after the invasion of Basra and attacks on cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army by Prime Minister al-Maliki's security forces, the Green Zone came under heavy mortar and rocket attacks, making the existing temporary embassy in the Green Zone a dangerous place, with a number of Iraqi and American deaths. Although project director Shinnick initially declined to give an estimated date for completion of the NEC, by early April he claimed the fire-fighting system was working and people could occupy it.

Some staff began sleeping there, shuttling to the Green Zone for work. Work in the NEC will have to wait until the State Department signs the occupancy certificate and computers and telephones and office supplies have been installed. Day-to-day oversight of maintenance and operation of the NEC will be in the hands of contractor PAE Government Services.

What the security of employees will be remains to be seen. The NEC is farther away than the temporary embassy is from Sadr City, the source of the incoming "indirect fire." The NEC buildings were at great cost retrofitted to be blast resistant. But movement between buildings may be problematic, and it isn't clear what effect a continued pounding might have on the various utility systems that support the complex. In May 2008, reports appeared indicating that the Mahdi Army had begun using ordinance with a much longer range.

What came before this eighth Wonder of the World? The initial American Embassy, set up in Saddam's former royal palace. Tom Hartmann wrote a good background piece for it:

This present embassy is clearly an appropriate symbolic precursor to its yet-to-be-completed reincarnation.

Last updated: 15 May 2008
List of sources used for this article
Also available: a Congressional Research Service report on the NEC, last updated October 2007

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