The reading from the Book of Leviticus this Sunday says that the person who is declared unclean “shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.” A mere two years after opening a $750-million-dollar embassy in Iraq--the largest in the world--U.S. State Department officials and contractors increasingly find themselves isolated, confined to the embassy because of security concerns and frustrated by what they see as Iraqi obstructionism.

As a result, fewer than two months after American troops left Iraq, the State Department is preparing to slash by as much as half the enormous diplomatic presence it had planned for Iraq, a sharp sign of declining American influence in the country.

Envisioned and built by the George W. Bush Administration, the expansive diplomatic operation was billed as necessary to nurture a postwar Iraq on its shaky path to democracy and establish normal relations between the two countries. Officials spent more than a year planning the expansion, and many of the thousands of additional personnel have only recently arrived. The sudden realization that the diplomatic buildup and its $6 billion annual price tag were ill-advised and need to be scaled back represents a remarkable turnaround.

After the last U.S. troops departed in December, life became more difficult for the thousands of diplomats and contractors left behind. Convoys of food that had been escorted by the U.S. military from Kuwait were delayed at border crossings when Iraqis demanded documentation that the Americans were unaccustomed to providing.

At every turn, the Americans say, the Iraqi government has interfered with the activities of the diplomatic mission, one the U.S. acknowledges the Iraqis never asked for or agreed upon. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s office--and sometimes even the prime minister himself--now must approve visas for all Americans, resulting in lengthy delays. American diplomats have had trouble setting up meetings with Iraqi officials. For their part, Iraqis say they are simply enforcing their laws and protecting their sovereignty in the absence of a working agreement with the U.S. on the embassy.

“We always knew that what [U.S. officials] were planning to do [with the embassy] didn’t make sense,” said Kenneth M. Pollack of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “It’s increasingly becoming clear that they are horribly overstaffed given what they are able to accomplish.”

Source: An article by Tim Arango for the New York Times