BAGHDAD - Tuesday night is karaoke night
at Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace in
central Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.
To
the beat of the music, Iraq's latest conquerors
triumphantly take to a stage that dominates the
inner courtyard of what is today the temporary US
Embassy in Baghdad and bawl out old rock 'n' roll
and blues anthems to their heart's content.
A few meters away, soldiers take off
their shirts to play volleyball, State
Department contractors have a party on the lawn, and
bikini-clad embassy workers splash in the swimming
pool. All an awe-struck British journalist gazing
over the scene for the first
time can do is
absent-mindedly mumble, "It's Saigon all over
again."
Were Saddam to revisit his old
haunts, he would undoubtedly
come in for a very unpleasant
surprise. For one, he would not even make it
through to his old living quarters.
Aside
from the current US Embassy and former Republican
Palace being inside the Green Zone, a complex web
of security has also been thrown up around the
palace. X-ray machines, a body search and numerous
checkpoints stand between the casual visitor and
the palace gate.
Ordinary journalists
armed with a standard media pass must be escorted
everywhere around the Green Zone, a
10-square-kilometer restricted area in the heart
of Baghdad ringed by 3.5-meter-high blast walls
and criss-crossed by still more concrete barriers,
concertina wire, and checkpoints anchored by US
armored vehicles.
As one American scribe
for the Defense Department's Stars and Stripes
newspaper commented, "These passes place you one
step above an Iraqi terrorist detainee."
Peruvian private security men recently
gave one visitor a particularly thorough pat-down
at the last guard booth before the palace before
starting to run an explosives-sensitive sensor
over him. Seeing him, his colleague told him in
Spanish not to bother. "Let him go, he's American,
not Iraqi."
Once inside the palace, the
extraordinary architecture induces visitors into
awe-struck wandering through the grandiose
corridors. The palace itself is a neo-Babylonian
affair built on a massive scale and composed of
tremendous pillars, bulky double-leafed doors,
soaring domes and a labyrinth of passages decked
out in elaborate, chintzy Middle Eastern couches
and faux Louis XIV armchairs.
To
the sides, 5-meter-high entrances open up onto
crowded chambers now used as offices, where work
stations sag under the load of computers and all
the detritus of a modern embassy office.
"Pretty kitsch, eh?" an army escort
laughed. "Looks as if Saddam commissioned Liberace
and Elvis to build this place."
After the
aloof grandeur of the palace, the spacious
KBR-operated cafeteria stuns one with the
abundance of food. The mouth-watering range of
options in the packed buffets stretches from prime
cuts of tender roast beef, crab delicacies, an
undulating array of pasta dishes and
chili-smothered baked potatoes to a dazzling
selection of salads, several cakes and fruit pies
for dessert, and refrigerators stacked with soft
drinks.
Hundreds of diplomats, military
people and contractors crowd into the noisy,
air-conditioned premises for dinner, while others
take their food out to the garden, where the beat
of heavy rock music rolls around the lawn,
striking a discordant note with the softly
illuminated neo-Babylonian architectural style of
the palace reflected in the pool.
Suited
US State Department diplomats sit at the tables
dotting the lawn, eating out of plastic, one-use
trays alongside groups of T-shirt-wearing
contractors, their M-3 rifles propped up against
the garden chairs.
The majority of US
diplomats come on short, three-month rotations to
Baghdad. With Iraq already recognized as the
definitive US military adventure of the 21st
century, word in the State Department is that a
short posting in Baghdad is essential for
career-minded young diplomats looking for rapid
promotion.
Their three-month rotations
weigh in at just a quarter of the average military
tour of duty. Added to the few opportunities to go
out into highly unstable Baghdad, it is no wonder
many US diplomats seem to think they are still
picnicking by the Potomac River.
The
karaoke and pool-side volleyball will soon be
transferred from the Republican Palace to a
massive 42-hectare complex currently under
construction inside the Green Zone. When ready, it
will be the largest US embassy in the world. The
US$592 million facility is being built inside the
heavily fortified Green Zone by 900 non-Iraqi
foreign workers housed nearby. Construction
materials have been stockpiled to avoid the
dangers and delays on Iraq's roads.
Once
built, the embassy will be entirely
self-sufficient and provide a school, six
apartment buildings, a gym, a pool, a food court
and American Club, and its own power-generation
and water-treatment plants for its 1,000 staff.
The size of Vatican City, the complex will be six
times as large as the United Nations compound in
New York and two-thirds the acreage of
Washington's National Mall. Iraq's interim
government transferred the land to US ownership in
October 2004 under an agreement whose terms were
undisclosed. The Republican Palace will be turned
back to the Iraqi government.
But until
next year, when the project is to be completed,
Saigon nights will continue at Baghdad's
Republican Palace.
Iason
Athanasiadis is an Iran-based correspondent.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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