Living it up

"It's like Hawaii. There are landscaped lawns, palm trees, a swimming pool, bars serving alcohol, restaurants, plasma screens TVs everywhere, and Americans driving around in golf carts."

That's how a friend described the Basra palace compound. Several other friends concurred.

Once a playground for Saddam, the palace is now the home of the occupying governments and the opportunistic private contractors. They've restored it and added their own luxuries so they can enjoy a world apart from the Iraqi people on the other side of the compound walls. Compound walls they rarely if ever go beyond. Compound walls that rather bizarrely are guarded by privately contracted Peruvian military apparently.

It seems times are changing though. As the attacks on the compound and the death threats against locals visiting the compound increase, the locals employed in the compound are staying away. The locals who clean the toilets, check the chlorine levels in the pool, serve in the bars and restaurants, mow the lawns, implement the projects… The ramifications of this must have come as a bit of a shock to the internationals holed up in their little Hawaii. When they agreed to be posted to the Basra palace they didn't expect to have to clean their own toilets or wash their own clothes.

To be fair, there are some legitimate reasons for the international community to be there. They can meet far more frequently with the local authorities and organizations. So long as they hold enough planning and coordination meetings with the local authorities and organizations, and perhaps produce a couple more strategic plans, they can all justify their existence.

Unfortunately though, just as the local employees are staying away for fear of being targeted, so too are the local authorities and organizations. So the internationals are left staring at each other across an otherwise empty conference room, with nothing left to do but kick their feet, fight over the biscuits and ponder whether they are relevant any longer.

Sadly there was never any legitimate reason for the international community to construct a little Hawaii in the middle of a city torn apart by conflict and in desperate need of basic medicines, professionals, water, sanitation, electricity and law and order. As much as such luxuries must go some way to easing the sense of insecurity, frustration and isolation, it does still seem a little inappropriate and unnecessary...