IRAQ: Back to the future
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Five years after Saddam Hussein’s parliament last met there, Iraq’s former national assembly building is ready to be used by the country’s new leaders — well, almost. One critical element was missing during Sunday’s ceremony marking the completion of major renovations of the structure: air conditioning.
Iraqi government officials sat in the new, powder-blue seats fanning themselves with paper as Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and Cabinet ministers took the podium to congratulate the Ministry of Construction and Housing for its work. If all goes according to plan, the national parliament will meet there when lawmakers resume work Sept. 9 following their summer break.
One remarkable thing about the new meeting place is that it is not inside the Green Zone, the heavily fortified enclave in Baghdad that houses the U.S. Embassy, most Iraqi government buildings and the former Convention Center that for years has served as the meeting site for the post-Hussein parliament.
The new site covers a vast compound surrounded by busy avenues, but like much of Baghdad, it is ringed by high concrete blast walls and is virtually invisible from the street except for the entrance. After Sunday’s ceremony, armed guards there tentatively let visitors past them to take a peek at the beige structure. The building looked ready for use, but the surrounding area is badly in need of landscaping.
That didn’t put a damper on the ceremony. Maliki and other speakers noted that they were occupying the same spot where for years, dictator Saddam Hussein led a government that repressed the majority Shiites who now hold power. ‘This was the place for those who just have ‘yes’ in their vocabulary, to say it to the executioner and the dictators. This place was a factory for weakness,’ he said as his listeners waved their makeshift fans back and forth.
‘The old days are gone, and the dictator is gone,’ said Maliki, who kept his remarks brief and closed with a wish for cooler days ahead. ‘By God’s will, the air conditioning of this place will be completed.’
When lawmakers move into the structure, it will mark a symbolic break from the exclusive Green Zone and show that parliament represents all Iraqis, said Muaeen Kademi of the Baghdad Provincial Council.
Being in the Green Zone did not protect parliament from attacks. In April 2007, a bomber smuggled explosives past security at the Convention Center and detonated a bomb that killed a lawmaker. The future meeting site was badly damaged during the war, and efforts to refurbish it had been stalled because of security problems.
— Tina Susman and Saif Rasheed in Baghdad
