Washington's abandoned embassies have stories to tell

In Washington's embassy district, years' worth of wildly overgrown vegetation outside an empty building was finally pruned away in September as the flag of Syria was raised.

The symbolic reopening of the compound after 11 years of closure serves as a reminder that a number of buildings in the area of Washington called Kalorama are in a state of sad abandon, thanks to the violent jolts of world diplomacy.

Since the embassy of Afghanistan closed a few months after the Taliban returned to power in 2021, its mailbox outside has been filled with yellowing newspapers.

And not far away, weeds grow in the parking lot of a mansion that used to house the Russian trade delegation in Washington. The State Department ordered it closed in reprisal for Russia's alleged attempt to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election.

The Syrian Embassy was shut down by the US government in 2014 after three years of civil war. Now, in principle at least, it can reopen.

The Trump administration announced this on November 10 after a White House visit by Syria's new president Ahmed al-Sharaa, the formerly blacklisted jihadist who led the ouster of Assad in late 2024.

- Angry neighbors -

But the building is in such bad shape it could take years to get it up and running again, former Syrian diplomat Bassam Barabandi told AFP.

Barabandi left his post in 2013 after it emerged that he had secretly made passports for people opposed to the Assad regime.

He recalled that even back then, before he left, areas of the building had been partially condemned.

"So, just imagine," he said, of its state now.

Down the street, the overgrown hedges outside the abandoned ambassador's residence were sometimes trimmed by gardeners employed by wealthy neighbors irked by the unsightliness.

A utility company notice of gas being cut off still hangs from the front door knob.

A few buildings away, near a mansion owned by Barack and Michelle Obama, the embassy of Afghanistan stands.

"So one day it was there. The next day it just was, it was gone," said US postal worker Trina Thompson, who has done rounds in the neighborhood for 25 years.

That was in March 2022 and then-deputy ambassador Abdul Hadi Nejrabi watched it all. It was he who handed the keys to the embassy back to the US government.

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Kabul had fallen to the Taliban seven months earlier and Hadi Nejrabi and his diplomatic colleagues represented a government that no longer existed.

Soon their bank accounts were frozen and they were no longer paid.

The embassy was still offering consular services to Afghan citizens but "we reached a point the State Department officially asked us to close the embassy and just hand over the keys," Hadi Nejrabi told AFP.

A team from the State Department's Office of Foreign Missions went to the embassy to oversee the closure.

"We checked every room, and then we just came out and we locked the door and I just gave the key," the former diplomat said.

It is this State Department section which is responsible for the upkeep of other countries' embassies.

Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, states are supposed to respect and protect other countries' embassies in cases where diplomatic relations are severed.

- 'Border on theft' -

The State Department lists 29 such buildings which it is supposed to be looking after: three associated with Afghanistan, six with Venezuela, and 11 with Iran -- these three countries have no relations with the United States now. But the list also features three buildings for China and six Russian ones.

The buildings now off limits to the Russians include consulates in San Francisco and Seattle and a massive compound in Maryland.

They were closed in a spat of tit for tat reprisals after the 2016 election won by Donald Trump.

The Russian Embassy told AFP these closures are illegal under the Vienna Convention and "border on theft."

"While property rights of the Russian Federation for these six objects are recognized and have not been challenged by the US side, continuously denying access for Russian diplomats even to inspect the grounds and buildings is preposterous, cementing the bilateral relations' 'toxic legacy' of previous years."

Elsewhere in Kalorama the embassy of Iran has stood empty since 1980, after the Islamic revolution that ousted the US-backed shah.

The squat, blue-domed building used to host fancy receptions for the Washington diplomatic crowd. But unlike the Syrian embassy, it looks far from reopening as US-Iran tensions remain fierce.

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