A Look At What Happens When The U.S. Closes An Embassy

Peter Van Buren, Reuters: Who gets out when a U.S. embassy closes, and who gets left behind?

The American Embassy in Yemen closed its doors and evacuated its American staff on Tuesday. U.S officials say security concerns brought on by the advancing Houthi rebel group caused the closure. The Houthis say the evacuation was unnecessary, a political act seeking to undermine their legitimacy, and grabbed embassy vehicles on Wednesday. Closing an embassy can often be as much about strategic political aims, as it is about security concerns, but how hard is it to execute?

WNU Editor: It is always a worrisome development when a country closes an embassy .... it means that the situation has become dangerous. And yes .... Russia has (more or less) the same procedures and guidelines.

U.S. State Department Officials Are Expecting Trouble When The Long-Awaited Senate Report On CIA Torture Is Released

View of the Department of State in Washington, DC. (Kevin Lamarque/courtesy Reuters)

U.S. Heightens Embassy Security, Anticipating Report On CIA Interrogations -- Reuters

(Reuters) - The U.S. State Department is increasing security at some American embassies in anticipation of the public release of a long-awaited Senate report detailing the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the additional security measures reflected concerns that the report could prompt protests in countries where the CIA operated secret prisons that were used to conduct interrogations.

Human rights activists and some U.S. politicians have labeled as "torture" some of the physically stressful interrogation techniques, such as simulated drowning, that were authorized under former-President George W. Bush.

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My Comment: I suspect that nothing new will be made public when this report is released. But that has never stopped protestors from protesting outside U.S. embassies in the past, and I doubt that it will stop them now.

America's Embassy Guards In Kenya Are Being Paid A Dollar An Hour

U.S. Embassy Nairobi, Kenya. Photo US State Department

America Is Paying Its Embassy Guards in Kenya a Dollar an Hour -- John Reed, Killer Apps/Foreign Policy

Nairobi sits in one of the world's tougher neighborhoods - that's clear from the recent attack on the Westgate mall. But the security contractor hired by the State Department to keep Americans there safe may not exactly be world-class. The company protecting the U.S. embassy in Nairobi pays its guards as little as a dollar per hour. In fact, those guards were so poorly compensated by their employer, KK Security, that last summer they went on strike.

Who and how America defends its diplomatic posts has become an enormous issue in the year since the assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. The local guard force hired by the American government to protect the place fled during the fighting. And those guards were paid $4 per hour -- about four times what their counterparts in Kenya are getting.

And while Nairobi is booming economically, it can still be an extremely dangerous place. Western governments have warned of the high risk of terrorist attacks in Kenya for more than a year prior to last weekend's terrorist assault on a Nairobi shopping mall. It was an incident in Kenya by which most Americans first learned of al Qaeda after the organization bombed the U.S. embassy in Nairobi in 1998.

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My Comment: Being a guard protecting the U.S. embassy in Nairobi is incredibly dangerous .... after all .... who can forget this.

US To Reopen Diplomatic Posts Except Yemen And Pakistan On Sunday

A general view shows the concrete barriers at the entrance to the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, August 7, 2013.

U.S. Diplomatic Posts To Reopen Except In Yemen And Pakistan -- L.A. Times

Most of the U.S. embassies and consulates closed this week because of a worldwide terrorism alert will reopen Sunday, though tension remains high and fear of an attack persists, the U.S. State Department said Friday.

Diplomatic posts in Sana, the Yemeni capital, and in the Pakistan city of Lahore will remain closed because of specific threats to those sites, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in Washington.

Eighteen of the 19 U.S. missions closed as a precaution against credible threats of terrorism against Western interests will reopen after a full week's closure on Sunday, the start of the Muslim world's work week and the resumption of normal business after the fast month of Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr holiday that followed.

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More News On The US Reopening On Sunday It's Closed Diplomatic Posts With The Exception Of Yemen And Pakistan

US to reopen on Sunday 18 embassies and consulates closed due to Yemen-based terror threat -- Washington Post/AP
US to reopen embassies except Yemen on Sunday -- AFP
U.S. to reopen 18 of 19 foreign posts closed amid security concerns -- Reuters
U.S. Reopening 18 Diplomatic Posts, State Department Says -- Bloomberg
US to reopen all but one diplomatic post closed due to al Qaeda threat -- CNN
US to Reopen 18 Missions After Threat -- Voice of America
U.S. To Reopen Most Embassies After Terror Alert -- RTT
Eighteen of 19 U.S. embassies, consulates closed recently will reopen. -- USA Today

How Do You Close An Embassy?

Protesters gather outside the U.S. embassy in Sanaa September 13, 2012. Hundreds of Yemeni demonstrators stormed the U.S. embassy in Sanaa on Thursday in protest against a film they consider blasphemous to Islam, and security guards tried to hold them off by firing into the air. Yemen's embassy in Washington said no casualties were reported when the protesters stormed the U.S. embassy compound in Sanaa on Thursday. REUTERS-Khaled Abdullah

How Do You Close An Embassy? Ambassador Ryan Crocker Explains -- National Geographic

Closures in the Mideast and North Africa may become more commonplace.

What does it mean to "close" an embassy? It's not simply a case of flicking off the lights and locking the door.

The United States temporarily closed nearly two-dozen embassies and consulates last week, mostly in North Africa and the Middle East, with 19 set to remain closed for the rest of the week. The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama cited intelligence about potential terrorist attacks by al Qaeda in Yemen. On Tuesday, Washington stepped up security precautions in Yemen by ordering all nonemergency embassy personnel to leave the country and urging all U.S. citizens to depart immediately as well. Similar actions were taken by Great Britain.

To find out what closing an embassy actually means, we spoke with Ambassador Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat who most recently served as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, after previous stints as ambassador to Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon. Today, Crocker leads the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and is a career ambassador, the highest rank in the U.S. Foreign Service.

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My Comment: Ambassador Ryan Crocker obviously does not go into details .... but an embassy closing will not mean that the embassy will cease operations (i.e. flicking off the lights and locking the door) .... it will still continue to function and take care of diplomatic and civilian needs.

Report: Security At U.S. Embassy In Kabul In Disarray

US Embassy in Kabul on July 4th 2010. Wikimedia

Crisis In Kabul: Security At U.S. Embassy In Disarray, Diplomats At Risk -- Washington Times

In wake of Benghazi attack, internal probe finds Afghanistan posts vulnerable

U.S. diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan have serious security lapses that pose “unnecessary risk to staff,” including poor emergency preparedness and inadequate protections that might allow classified materials to fall into the hands of attacking enemies, according to an internal report that raises fresh questions about the State Department’s commitment to safety in the aftermath of the Benghazi tragedy.

The confidential State Department inspector general’s report, obtained by The Washington Times under the Freedom of Information Act, directly criticizes the department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security for failing to perform a physical inspection before approving the security plan for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, which was the target of a brash attack by Taliban insurgents two years ago.

Read more ....

My Comment: You would think that being a high risk target in a war zone would result in security being the priority .... but unfortunately .... in Afghanistan this appears to not be the case.

The Cost Of One U.S. Marine Security Guard For A U.S. Embassy

A Marine sniper observes a civilian evacuation exercise from the U.S. embassy in Doha, Qatar, May 2006. Photo: U.S. Marine Corps

Additional Embassy Guards Will Come With a Steep Price -- New York Times

WASHINGTON — When the State Department fields the first of 350 additional Marine security guards at high-risk embassies and consulates around the world later this year, the price tag will be steep: about $1.6 million per Marine.

Why so much?

It turns out that about $525 million of the $553 million that Congress approved this year to deploy more Marine guards — fulfilling a recommendation of the independent review panel that investigated the attacks last year on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya — is going toward building new command-and-control hubs in the posts and living quarters for the Marines.

The department plans to send 35 new Marine detachments, with about 10 Marines each, to diplomatic posts over the next few years. The first 90 are expected to arrive by the end of the year, officials said.

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My Comment: $1.6 million per guard .... you got to be kidding me.

Training For The Next Embassy/Conuslate Attack

Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team Marines trained for close-quarters combat this week in Virginia. They are a rapid-reaction force capable of quickly protecting an embassy. Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

Training For Consulate Attacks, in Case There’s A Next Time -- New York Times

CHESAPEAKE, Va. — The “riot” erupted suddenly on the Virginia-North Carolina border in a remote pocket of marshland and pine. “Go back to America!” the protesters shouted, hurling rubber rocks at a large plywood structure meant to be a United States consulate. “We don’t want you here! This is our country!”

Two dozen Marines in full riot gear marched out in formation, beat their batons against their shields and otherwise looked menacing. Within minutes they had pushed back the protesters — fellow Marines in jeans and hooded sweatshirts — in a display of crowd control skills. “It can be a long day if you’re a rioter,” said Staff Sgt. William M. Loushin, the instructor who staged the riot. “Once you actually start getting aggressive against a Marine, it never ends well.”

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My Comment: After what happened at the U.S. consulate in Libya two weeks ago, I assume that there is now a review of all security procedures at U.S. diplomatic missions abroad.