The Foreign Service Journal, October 2011

16 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 complex that no single department or agency can meet its challenges. “Before, We Were a Team” Traditionally, the country team con- sisted of the ambassador, a handful of State Foreign Service officers, the De- fense Department attaché, the USAID mission director (where there was an as- sistance program), someone from the Central Intelligence Agency, and per- haps a representative from the Com- merce Department. In conflict and post-conflict countries, country teams were generally even smaller, to restrict the number of personnel put in harm’s way. Furthermore, becausemost civilians preferred not to serve in dangerous post-conflict posts, there existed a small cadre of personnel who, by choice, spent their careers serving in those en- vironments. It was a tight, proficient fraternity that worked very well. Now, however, more and more am- bassadors are expected to manage sprawling interagency missions. When I recently asked a respected career am- bassador about this trend, she noted that chiefs of mission have always been CEOs — but now they have to work with individuals whose primary loyalty is to their own agencies and who have no concept of what it means to be under COM authority. The current push for a whole-of- government approach gives such em- ployees false license to operate inde- pendently. And becausemany agencies have different, less precise reporting standards and requirements, their un- approved reports often get into the de- cision-making process in Washington. When I asked if a whole-of-govern- ment approach sometimes means that no one is in charge at embassies, the ambassador responded that the real problem too often is that the wrong per- son is in charge. Representatives from domestic agencies may have little over- seas experience and have not been sea- soned by a career in the diverse elements of diplomacy and develop- ment. This has led to a distribution of re- sponsibility to inexperienced personnel who have no particular commitment to the mission or their colleagues. The problem is compounded by the pres- ence of powerful combat commands, which often try to operate independ- ently in direct conflict withmission poli- cies and programs, and have to be reined in. As the ambassador lamented, “Before, we knew each other and had vast experience —we were a team.” Her observations track very closely with my own experiences as a USAID FSO in Grenada, El Salvador, Leban- on, and Serbia and Montenegro. In all those places, we had small missions composed of highly experienced indi- viduals who understood the conven- tions of being part of an embassy country team. More Is Better? That dynamic changed in 2003 with Operation Iraqi Freedom and the cre- ation of the Coalition Provisional Au- thority, which relied mainly on thousands of outsourced individuals, mostly from the private sector, who were temporary hires. Many had never been overseas before, much less worked in the most difficult foreign as- sistance venues: conflict zones. This proliferation of inexperienced actors with individual agendas led to chaotic programdesign and implemen- tation. More an occupier and surrogate than a promoter of Iraqi governance and development, the CPAwas the new model. Even when Embassy Baghdad succeeded the CPA, it continued to practice the philosophy that more is better. Seven years later, it is the largest em- bassy in the world, with a staff of about 8,000. Moreover, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey recently testified to Congress that State plans to more than double that number to 17,000 next year. This expanded work force, made up mostly of contractors, will require oper- ating costs of $3 billion a year. The U.S. presence in Afghanistan is not that far behind. It is conventional wisdom that the Bush administration under-resourced both the operational and reconstruction efforts in Afghani- stan, effectively enabling the resurgence of the Taliban insurgency. But the fail- ings of the coalition and the Afghan gov- ernment are far too complex to attribute simply to inadequate resources. In any case, the response of the Obama administration was amassive in- crease in troop levels and a concurrent fivefold increase in federal civilians to carry out stabilization and recon- struction, effectively creating a new bu- reaucracy within State spanning Wash- ington, Kabul and Islamabad. To meet the resulting demand for personnel, both State andUSAIDwere forced to deplete resources at other missions and hire a very large number of temporary personnel with little rele- vant experience. It is too soon to tell if 1,250 civilians, distributed between the embassy fortress in Kabul, four regional centers, forward operating bases and provincial reconstruction teams, will have enough impact on the lives of rural Afghan vil- lagers to turn them away from the Tal- iban. But the record thus far is not encouraging. On the contrary, the large foreign presence and sheer volume of U.S. assistance may actually fuel cor- S P E A K I N G O U T