And Another Thing About That Baghdad Salad Bar ...

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There is something that bugs me about that New York Times story - the one with the entertaining tidbits about wilted lettuce and rationed chicken wings - and it has to do with the photo that accompanied the story. That's it, above.

The story also had a slideshow consisting of photos taken in the nicely appointed chancery, staff apartments, dining hall, pool, gym, and tennis courts, all of which give the impression of an up-scale resort.

But nowhere did the Times comment on those big shades that cover the tops and sides of the compound's buildings. What are those things? Over-sized sunscreens?

You can get a better view in this official photo:

There is no reason to be coy about them, since they have been mentioned rather extensively in official documents that are publicly available. They are 'overhead cover' structures, and they are there to protect building occupants from indirect fire weapons such as mortars and rockets. Those weapons have been impacting on the embassy compound all along, ever since it was being constructed. You could Google it.

This official source of information describes them succinctly:

"Overhead cover is a necessity to protect against the threat of indirect fire at vulnerable office, housing, recreational and dining facilities."

So on the one hand, we have the NYT's photos of embassy staffers in the pool and the tennis courts, and turning up their noses at unsatisfactory salad in the dining hall. But on the other hand, you have to use your imagination to appreciate that those U.S. government employees are living the good diplomatic life in a place where every now and then an anti-personnel weapon detonates outside.

I would call that a lifestyle trade-off.

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Working On That Baghdad Footprint

Downsizing the U.S. Mission in Baghdad isn't really about rationing chicken wings in the embassy's dining hall after all, despite yesterday's New York Times story.

Instead, it's all about the reducing the footprint, according to remarks by Thomas Nides, Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources, at a press teleconference today. He said "footprint" seven times.

We are currently wearing men's size 20 quadruple-E extra wides, or something like that. But, if we replace enough third-country security contractors with Iraqis, buy our groceries in the local market, and always, always, always re-think our engagement (Deputy Secretary Nides also said "engagement" seven times) we will eventually fit into a more nearly normal shoe.

Read the press conference transcript here.

Evidently, most of this footprint reduction will come about by hiring fewer foreign (i.e., non-Iraqi) security contractors and replacing them with local hires. That will help in at least two ways. First, it will eliminate a leading source of aggravation for the Iraqis. Second, the mission will not have to house and logistically support so many contractors, since our local hires will go home after their shifts are over, just like a normal local guard force does at a normal mission.

Deputy Secretary Nides tap-danced around questions about the actual numbers involved here, but he did deny that we are reducing our operations by the 50 percent figure cited in the NYT's report. Beyond that, he really couldn't be too specific. However, he concluded with this:

So as we proceed over the next year, and as we look at our mission set and look at what we’re trying to achieve on the diplomatic side, my hope is, is that we’ll conclude over – in the period of time that we can consolidate some of the locations and space, and that will allow us to rely more upon local Iraqi contractors. But the most important thing is what we’re going to do is we’re going to be studying it, we’re working on it, we’re going to work very closely with our staff at our – in Baghdad and around the country, and we’re going to work with the Iraqis. They – we are a team working closely with them as we look at this diplomatic mission now and into the future.

Americans can rest assured that we have our top guys "working on it."

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Where Everybody Knows Your Name (In Peshawar)

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.

If you are an American in Peshawar, you have more reason than most of us to want to get away. And that place where everybody knows your name is called the Khyber Club.

The WaPo has a most interesting piece today profiling the Club's long-time bartender, Khan Afsar, who sounds like he might be the only Pakistani to have a favorable impression of the USA today. (That's not him in the photo, incidentally.)

Khyber Club’s bartender had front-row seat to history in Pakistan:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — As U.S.-funded Afghan jihadists battled the Soviets in the late 1980s, the unassuming American-run bar in this ancient frontier city bulged with gossiping foreigners. Today, with another Afghan conflict winding down, the watering hole practically echoes with emptiness.

Through it all, Khan Afsar, the Khyber Club’s unlikely bartender, had a front-row seat.

But Afsar did not actually have a seat in his spot behind the bar, and all the standing recently became too much to bear. So Afsar has stepped down after nearly 25 years of six-day workweeks that he says left him with admiration for Americans, a rare sentiment in Peshawar and in Pakistan at large.

“They are good people” — not to mention good tippers, Afsar said. “They are helping us.”

As a recent Saturday evening shift began, a lone Canadian patron sipped beer at the bar and predicted that the crowd was unlikely to improve. The scene seemed a metaphor for U.S.-Pakistan relations, which boomed with cooperation during the Afghan resistance but now gape with mistrust.

Yet Afsar himself is a symbol of the ground-level relations between Americans and Pakistanis, which, despite the diplomatic tensions, are typically far more amiable than sour. Over the decades, Afsar — a devout Muslim who never tried alcohol — served as a steadfast and good-natured ambassador for Pakistan, building a trail of admirers now scattered around the globe.

-- snip --

“If I see a face, I remember it,” said Afsar, explaining that he no longer recalls all the notables he served. “Here, every customer is famous.” 

Though U.S.-Pakistan relations ebbed after 1990, the club kept up, and so did Afsar, always adhering to his daily prayer schedule. The bar expanded. The tennis court was replaced by a swimming pool.

Things began changing about five years ago, as Islamist militants expanded their reach and launched attacks in northwest Pakistan. Hostility toward Americans rose, and many international organizations withdrew foreign workers to Islamabad, the capital. The club’s security walls multiplied, and more American customers sported beards and tattoos, said Yusuf Ghaznavi, a Pakistani American who has been a fixture at the club for two decades.

-- snip --

Against that backdrop, the club has become more of a lifeline, recent patrons said. Three U.S. troops who were killed in a roadside bombing in northwest Pakistan in 2010 were mourned at the Khyber Club, said one U.S. diplomat stationed there then. Afsar also served as a lifeline, the diplomat said — a historian and a middleman who could always fulfill orders for the perfect Pakistani carpet or shawl.

-- snip --

Afsar dismisses the plaudits, saying he just did his job. He insists the work never brought him threats from militants or hounding from Pakistani intelligence.

-- snip --

Afsar, a witness to decades of globe-shaking history, would hazard no guess about the future of the club or Afghanistan. U.S.-Pakistan relations, he thinks, will soldier on.

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Kentucky Fried Peace Process?

Well, Kentucky Fried Chicken has come to the Palestinians. H/T to the Snake's Mommy for bringing the news to my attention. Has anyone told Tony Blair?

On the culinary level, I never can understand the demand for American-style fast food in Arab cities. For my money, Arabs already have the world's best native fast food. Nevertheless, KFC's franchisee in Ramallah didn't have to invent* a Palestinian market for The Colonel's Original Recipe, since it's already familiar to locals who have traveled around the region.  

But on the political level, this development might finally test Thomas Friedman's kinda-kidding-but-kinda-serious Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, which postulates that no two countries that both have McDonald's have gone to war against each other since each got its McDonald's. The Palestinians don't happen to have McDonalds, so far as I can tell, but KFC will substitute very nicely. Call it Friedman's KFC Korollary.

Friedman's theory says that when a country reaches a certain level of economic development and has a middle class big enough to support American-style material consumption, its people will than prefer to wait at drive-up windows for greasy buckets of chicken rather than, say, fire home-made rockets into Israeli towns.

I have my doubts about that. But, now it's kosher wings eyeball to eyeball with halah extra-crispy chicken strips, and anybody's guess who'll blink first.


* Here you go:

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World War II Veteran Celebrates Her Diamond Jubilee

Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor, British Army Auxiliary Territorial Service (1945) 

I believe Queen Elizabeth is the last surviving head of state who served in World War II, and that is all the reason this republican needs to notice that today is the 60th anniversary of her ascension to the British throne.

Carry on.

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U.S. Embassy Damascus Suspends Operations, U.S. Employees Depart Syria

Victoria Nuland, Department Spokesperson, issued the following press statement this morning:

The United States has suspended operations of our Embassy in Damascus as of February 6. Ambassador Ford and all American personnel have now departed the country.

The recent surge in violence, including bombings in Damascus on December 23 and January 6, has raised serious concerns that our Embassy is not sufficiently protected from armed attack. We, along with several other diplomatic missions, conveyed our security concerns to the Syrian Government but the regime failed to respond adequately.

Ambassador Ford has left Damascus but he remains the United States Ambassador to Syria and its people. As the President’s representative, he will continue his work and engagement with the Syrian people as head of our Syria team in Washington. Together with other senior U.S. officials, Ambassador Ford will maintain contacts with the Syrian opposition and continue our efforts to support the peaceful political transition which the Syrian people have so bravely sought.

As the Secretary told the Security Council on January 31, we continue to be gravely concerned by the escalation of violence in Syria caused by the regime's blatant defiance of its commitments to the action plan it agreed to with the Arab League. The deteriorating security situation that led to the suspension of our diplomatic operations makes clear once more the dangerous path Assad has chosen and the regime’s inability to fully control Syria. It also underscores the urgent need for the international community to act without delay to support the Arab League’s transition plan before the regime’s escalating violence puts a political solution out of reach and further jeopardizes regional peace and security.

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Friday Document Dumpster Diving (Through Piles Of Green)

It's big, it's green, it's full of garbage, and you just know that it stinks.

The White House backed this dumpster up to Capital Hill last night - beep, beep, beep - and dropped off 313 pages of documents about its pungent decision to give a half-billion dollars in taxpayer money to a failing solar panel manufacturer.

Who do they think they're fooling with these late-night document dumps? Does the White House think no one will notice? Well, the White House might be right about that, since I saw absolutely nothing about last night's dump in this morning's Washington Post or in the New York Times.

At least The Hill newspaper had a story about it:

Amid threats by a top House Republican to pursue contempt charges, the White House on Friday sent lawmakers more internal documents related to the $535 million loan guarantee to failed solar firm Solyndra.

The White House, in providing the 313 pages of documents, again denied that approval of the loan guarantee in 2009 was influenced by politics, an allegation that Republicans have repeated for months.

--snip --

Friday marked the third time that the White House provided internal documents to the House Energy and Commerce Committee since Republicans on the panel issued a subpoena for all Solyndra communications in November.

This particular Solyndra dump may have been the third after the subpoena was issued, but it was the fourth one to occur on a Friday night, according to my count. The first was on October 7, 2011, followed by one on November 4, 2011, and then by another on January 13, 2012. The January dump was on a Friday before a three-day Federal weekend, so I guess those documents needed to be buried extra deep. If the White House is giving up embarrassing e-mails, you know it's a Friday.

You might wonder, what could possibly be so embarrassing about all the green energy loan guarantee stuff that the White House was pushing so enthusiastically just last year?

Well, there were Obama fundraisers advocating for loans in which they had direct personal financial interest. Such as Steven Spinner, who was appointed to a job overseeing the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program despite the fact that his wife's law firm received $2.4 million in federal funds for legal fees related to the Solyndra loan. If the parties involved in that deal had been a Republican fundraiser, his lawyer-wife, and Haliburton, would any Democratic Congressman accept it just because the administration issued a favorable ethics opinion?

And there was also the matter of the Energy Department restructuring the Solyndra loan on the eve of the firm's bankruptcy so as to prevent the taxpayers from having any claim on the firm's assets after it went bust. That's bad enough all by itself, but they also did it without first seeking a Justice Department opinion on whether that action would violate the law governing such loans.

Will there be more green document dumps? You can bet there will be. According to CBS News, there are eleven more green energy firms that are going bankrupt, just like Solyandra, after the administration approved them for more than $6.5 billion in federal loans.

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