Posted by Damozel | One of the Pentagon's current projects is development of a high-end area around the Green Zone---luxury hotels! high-end shopping! condos! --- where the $1 billion embassy we've built ourselves is located. Sound improbable? Never underestimate the determination of developers. A $5 billion plan, backed by the Pentagon, is already in place.
For the moment...it's mortars and rockets — not investment money — pouring into the Green Zone, which includes the U.S. and British embassies, key Iraqi government offices and other international compounds. Militants have escalated their shelling of the enclave since Iraqi forces began a crackdown on Shiite militias in late March.
But developers are clearly looking many years ahead and gambling that Baghdad could one day join the list of former war zones such as Sarajevo and Beirut that have rebounded and earned big paydays for early investors. (AP)
In the meantime, of course, there isn't even a sewer system. But the $5 billion plan is also a five-year plan " to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a centerpiece for Baghdad's future." (AP)
D Cupples always scoffs when I suggest that we'll be able to get out of Iraq anytime within the next ten years. "The embassy," she says. She's convinced that the Bush Administration --- which has been quietly going about getting itself well and truly entrenched ---- has got us in too deep in terms of investments for us ever to get out again.
[T]he $5 billion plan has the backing of the Pentagon and apparently the interest of some deep pockets in the world of international hotels and development, the lead military liaison for the project told the Associated Press. ...
For Washington, the driving motivation is to create a "zone of influence" around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound, whose total price tag will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year. (AP)
The luxury hotel, condo, and shopping areas are being contemplated to act as a 'high-end buffer'? A buffer against what, exactly? Will the Shiite militias and others say to themselves: "Oh no, we can't bomb the embassy. We might damage the new Marriott"? Well, no. The 'buffer' they have in mind is more the metaphorical sort.
"When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time," said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.(AP)
The long-term goal sounds benign: to return the Green Zone to the Iraqis.
The plan also envisions significantly reducing the non-Iraqi footprint in the Green Zone, a five-square-mile area crisscrossed by 15-foot-high blast walls and checkpoints.
About 50 percent of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the U.S. State Department or private foreign companies. If all were to go according to Karnowski's plan, only 5 percent of land in the Green Zone will be in foreigners' hands in five years.(AP)
Sound far-fetched? Sound impracticable? That's why you and I, my friends, will never be wealthy capitalists. I find I'm just as glad not to be. Because:
Even now — with violence in Baghdad again creeping up — the faint hints of the development plan have driven up the Green Zone's already sky-high real estate prices.
Land that a few years ago was going for $60 a square meter on 50-year leases in the zone is now going for up to $1,000 a square meter, American officials say.
Last week, a Los Angeles-based holding company for equity firms, C3, confirmed it was starting a $500 million project to build an amusement park on the outskirts of the Green Zone in an area encompassing the Baghdad Zoo. The first phase, a skateboard park, is scheduled to open this summer.(AP)
You can see the thinking here: once the young Iraqis learn that freedom is fun, they'll be too busy skateboarding and riding the Scrambler to join militias. Hey, that might be just crazy enough to work!
And if the developers see that it could be profitable to them, they might even throw in a sewer system, I guess. Because right now, there isn't one:
"There is no sewer system, no working power system. Everything here is done on generators. No road system repair work. There are no city services other than the minimal amount we provide to get by," Karnowski said....
According to Karnowski, the United States will spend $120 million to demolish buildings damaged by airstrikes during the opening days of the war.
Both Karnowski and Harner are aware their Green Zone plan is viewed as unrealistic by many, primarily U.S. Embassy officials.
"If you talk to people at the State Department, they still believe a hotel isn't going up. But it is a done deal," Karnowski said of the Marriott project.(AP)
A done deal? This is just another reflection of the difference between a long-range thinker and man of action like Karnowski or a developer, and me, you, and any random diplomat. While we sit around on the Park Place square being skeptical and worrying about whether buying a hotel will leave us too short of funds for us to stay in the game, they are already borrowing money from the bank to buy up the utility companies and to build hotels and housing projects in Marvin Gardens.
One diplomat, who asked not to be named because of no authorization to speak to the media, said they did not think Iraqis would want Washington to "turn this area into downtown Kansas City."...(AP)
At present, this appears to be true, at least of some of them.
Iraqis also complain that the Americans — because they control security in the Green Zone — essentially hold a veto over the investors.
Karnowski acknowledged that American officials would vet potential investors because of a "vested interest."
Some Iraqi leaders even have drawn parallels to the U.S.-backed development plan and what Saddam Hussein did in the area — known by its Iraqi name of Tashri during his regime.(AP)
And apparently, Karnowski acknowledges that this is 'partially true.' ""Why do people build fences around their house? The intent is until such time as it's much safer around here, you want to be able to influence what goes on," he said." (AP) ,
Anyway, any objections on the part of the Iraqis will doubtless evaporate like the morning dew once they have the Iraqis have their amusement park and luxury hotel.
Not that Spencer Ackerman --- who probably holds onto his money when he lands on Park Place or the utility company because he's afraid he'll run out of credit and credibility, just like you and me --- sees it this way.
In a city consumed by chaos, war, occupation, corruption, intermittent and unreliable electricity, sewage overflows that you sometimes have to wade through, food shortages, public-health crises, you know what you shouldn’t build?....
The rise of this hotel compound will drain resources away from a desperate population, much like how the desire for ice cream on U.S. troop bases in Saigon led indirectly to all manner of health and social crises in the city during the late 60s. Now that the Bush administration has taken over Saddam Hussein’s old compounds, its officials have begun to ape the habits of the old regime....
Never, ever, let another warmonger get away with telling you that you want to end the war because you don’t care about the Iraqi people’s fate. He probably has his luxury suite already booked in the forthcoming International Zone Hilton. (Think Progress)
Isn't that just like a silly liberal, not to have faith in the power of skateboarding and developers to overcome rockets and mortars?
Other commentary:
The Carpetbagger Report raises a question about our priorities:
Indeed, I’m not even sure why the Pentagon is involved with this in the first place. If the Defense Department is going to take on economic development projects, should basic utilities be higher on the list than this?
Spencer Ackerman concluded that Iraqis “experience shortages of water, electricity, fuel, cooking oil, medical care, security and more. The rise of this hotel compound will drain resources away from a desperate population.”
What could possibly go wrong?
Matt Yglesias thinks we should probably not be dumping the whole burden of Afghanistan on our allies 'to hold America's coat so that we can continue our occupation in Iraq and build a multi-billion dollar hotel and condo complex inside the Green Zone.'
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