BAGHDAD — On the western bank of the Tigris River, scenes of intense activity rarely witnessed in Iraq are unfolding behind the fortified perimeter of the closely guarded Green Zone.

Trucks shuttle building materials to and fro. Cranes, at least a dozen of them, punch toward the sky. Concrete structures are beginning to take form. At a time when most Iraqis are enduring blackouts of up to 22 hours a day, the site is floodlighted by night so work can continue around the clock.

This is to be the new U.S. Embassy in Iraq, and it will be the biggest embassy in the world. It also is the biggest construction project under way in battered Baghdad, where the only other cranes rising from the skyline belong to Saddam Hussein’s abandoned project to build the world’s biggest mosque.

The irony is not lost on Mohammed Jasim, 48, a truck driver who was forced out of his home last month by sectarian violence and now is squatting in an abandoned building just across the river from the $592million embassy project.

“They could build houses, or they could bring security to Baghdad,” Jasim complained as he sat in the shade of a big tree on the riverbank. “But it’s clear they only came here for their own benefit because you can see how much money they are spending across the river.”

Though the site is an open secret, U.S. Embassy officials, currently based in Hussein’s former Republican Palace, are forbidden to discuss it.

The few details available are contained in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report. Scheduled for completion in June 2007, the 104-acre embassy compound, roughly the size of the Vatican, will resemble a mini-state, entirely independent from the outside world. It will generate its own power, pump its own sewage and draw its own water.
chicagotribune

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