Partial drawdown of staff from US Iraq embassy may become permanent

(July 13) Last May US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ordered a partial evacuation of diplomats from the huge US embassy in Iraq as tensions escalated with Iran. Now, several State Department officials are claiming the drawdown will effectively become permanent.

If the reduction becomes permanent, the US Embassy may face shortages of staff to undertake important jobs such as countering Iran on the diplomatic front. The move has also marooned hundreds of withdrawn staff in the Washington area without any place to go for now.

The drawdown

Back in the middle of May, the order was given to withdraw all non-essential staff from the Baghdad embassy as reported at the time: "The State Department has ordered all non-essential staff at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to leave Iraq right away, a consequential decision that usually follows an expectation that some sort of major security threat or military action is imminent. The decision comes a day after the U.S. headquarters overseeing operations in the Middle East bolstered its self-defense posture, anticipating a new and as-yet publicly unspecified threat from Iran or its proxy forces operating in the region."

The reason was intelligence of a threat from Iran. However, the embassy was never attacked. It has never been made clear what the threat was. One would think that since nothing seems to have happened that the staff would return but that has never happened. As part of the drawdown 275 State Deptartment personnel were evacuated.

State Department official denies any decision has been made

A spokesperson for the US State Department claimed the report about the drawdown was inaccurate as no decision on a permanent staffing level had been made. He said a review was in progress. However, three other anonymous officials disagreed and claimed that after the evacuation in May the staffing levels were treated as a permanent cap on State Dept. personnel in Iraq.

Other officials still claim the decision has been made

A senior anonymous State Department official claimed: “They’ve already quietly made the policy decision that they’re not sending these people back,” a senior State Department official familiar with internal deliberations told Foreign Policy. But they’re not actually calling it a drawdown, they’re just saying they’re reviewing the ordered departure."

The embassy even with all non-essential staff gone has an estimated thousands still there but only a small number do work on core diplomatic functions. Most are contractors from other federal agencies including security personnel and members of the intelligence community. After the evacuation, only 15 State Department officials are left working on diplomatic functions.

A senior official claimed: “We took a powerful functioning embassy that was keeping Iranian influence at bay, and created space for the U.S. to exert influence, and we gutted it.” Another official said that it seemed as if the State Department was abandoning Iraq.

There appears to be a debate within the Trump administration as to how to wind down expensive involvement in costly Middle East conflicts and also Afghanistan, and this is happening even as tensions rise with Iran. Trump wants to address other issues such as growing competition with Russia and China.

Previously published in the  Digital Journal