The “NEC” aka New Embassy Compound
By SusanUnPC on September 6, 2007 at 7:08 PM in Current Affairs
The “NEC” is also known as the “pain in the neck” — “‘We call it the “nec,”‘ [a senior official] said. ‘It stands for the new embassy compound. And it’s a pain in the neck.’” Shirin sent this today (ask her if you can join her mailing list, which is quite informative). First, Shirin’s commentary, then snippets of a UK Times article on the embassy.
“Let’s not play games. This is not an embassy. No country needs to construct and maintain in the center of a foreign capital an embassy the size of a small city-state, self-contained in every way, with a staff of more than one thousand, and with its own missile defense system, for heaven’s sake. Not, that is, if the goal is to maintain diplomatic relations. Let’s call this what it really is – an Imperial Regional Command and Control Center.
“Back in the ’60′s one of our next door neighbors in Baghdad was a U.S. embassy employee and his family. They used the same water, sewage, and electrical supply services that everyone else used, and their phone was on the same Iraqi telephone service every Iraqi household had. Like most middle class Iraqis, they had an Iraqi maid, an Iraqi cook, an Iraqi driver, and an Iraqi gardener (and boy was their garden beautiful – the nicest in the neighborhood!). They mostly ate the food that their cook bought in the Iraqi markets, though they also had access to a commisary with American specialties such as peanut butter and brown sugar. When they moved in they were a family of three – father, mother, and a daughter of two or three years. During their stay in that house they had a baby son, who was born in the same private Iraqi maternity hospital used by our family. That was then. Now U.S. “embassy” personnel will be hermetically sealed off from Iraq, Iraqis, and Iraqi services and infrastructure. How things have changed. …”
NOTE: Shirin’s bracketed comments are in italics.
September 1, 2007
Welcome to the new US embassy
It’s bigger than Saddam’s palace and, with a cinema, gym and pool, is the safest and smartest place to live in Iraq…Martin Fletcher in Baghdad for the Times UK
Baghdad is a city of ruins – of burnt-out homes, of shops wrecked by suicide bombs, of the crumbling shells of Saddam-era palaces and ministries destroyed by smart bombs in the US invasion of 2003. [Much more than ministries have been destroyed by U.S. bombs, and that destruction did not end with the invasion of 2003. In fact, the U.S. has regularly bombed neighborhoods in Baghdad - Sadr City is a favourite site for U.S. bombings these days - and other cities, and has more than doubled its aerial attacks on urban areas since late 2006.]
There is one notable exception. It is probably the only big new building project in the capital in the past four years. It is the new US Embassy on the west bank of the Tigris which the contractors will transfer to the US Government officially today.
A towering wall renders the huge new embassy almost invisible from ground level. For security reasons the State Department has refused all requests for media tours – promising instead to release pictures of the interior at some later date. The only way to view it is from the roof of the Babylon hotel, across the river.
What you can see through the haze of heat and pollution is a complex of two dozen smart new dun and grey blocks set in 104 acres (42 hectares) of grounds ringed by that impregnable wall. It is a fortress within the fortress that is the green zone. It is designed to repel any physical attack and. when it opens for business in a few weeks, it will be protected by a detachment of Marines with their own barracks. It is not, however, invulnerable to criticism.
This is the largest US Embassy built – roughly the size of Vatican City – and at $600 million (£300 million) the most expensive. [Why do they call it "the largest US embassy built? Has there ever in history been an "embassy" even close to this size built by any country anywhere? I do not know, but I seriously doubt it.] At a time when millions of Baghdadis outside the green zone receive only a couple of hours of water and electricity daily, Iraqis observe that this project has been completed on time, on budget, and is entirely self-sufficient with its own fresh water supply, electricity plant, sewage treatment facility, maintenance shops and warehouses.
“People are very angry,” said one young Iraqi. “It’s for the Americans, not for the Iraqis.” [It's for the Americans to try to control not only Iraq, but the entire region.]
There are two office blocks that will house 1,000 staff, six apartment blocks containing 619 one-bedroom units, spacious residences for the Ambassador and his deputy, a school, shopping centre and food court; a swimming pool, tennis and basketball courts; a gymnasium, cinema, beauty salon and social club. [...]
The embassy was built with imported labour. This year a congressional committee heard charges that First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting told a planeload of Filipino construction workers that they were flying to Dubai to build hotels and did not admit that they were heading for Baghdad until they had taken off, forcing them, in effect, to work there. [The construction of the "embassy", and the abuses of workers on the project, is an entire scandal - no, crime - in and of itself.]
Critics also portray the new compound as a symbol of American isolation and occupation, and a sign of how little confidence the US has in Iraq’s future. [I would suggest that it is more a sign of the Bush regime's plans for Iraq's future as a center of US operations in the region.] Jane Loeffler, an expert on the architecture of embassies, writes in the latest edition of Foreign Policy magazine: “Encircled by blast walls and cut off from the rest of Baghdad, it stands out like the crusader castles that once dominated the Middle East.”
Embassies were traditionally designed to promote interaction with their host communities, she says, [remember our next door neighbors?] but not this one. “Although US diplomats will technically be ‘in Iraq’ they may as well be in Washington.
“Although the US Government regularly proclaims confidence in Iraq’s democratic future, the US has designed an embassy that conveys no confidence in Iraqis and little hope for their future. Instead, the US has built a fortress capable of sustaining a massive, long-term presence in the face of continued violence.” [I don't interpret it quite that way.]
Edward Peck, a former US Ambassador to Iraq, says in the same magazine: “The embassy is going to have a thousand people hunkered behind sand-bags. I don’t know how you conduct diplomacy in that way.”
US diplomats roll their eyes in the face of such verbal assaults. …
READ ALL at the Times UK.
by Ronald Scott
* More novels by 
* 
(
)
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
