USAID Brought Stability to Somalia and the U.S.

I was flying from Mogadishu to Nairobi last year in a tiny airplane chartered by the State Department when a military drone that was surveilling al-Shabaab territory hit the plane. In the aftermath I remember thinking: “Is the work worth risking my life?” Of course it is.

In Somalia, USAID rehabilitated irrigation canals to provide water to its vulnerable population; taught children to read and write (at a cost of about $150 per child) so they would have options other than being forced to join al-Shabaab; and built cell towers and restored water points in communities liberated from the terrorist organization.

In Marka, a town liberated from al-Shabaab in 2018, the trauma was still raw. Bullet-ridden walls, shuttered shops, and empty homes told their own stories when USAID contractors showed up to help rebuild at the government’s request. Our third-party monitoring implementer shared pictures of children peeking out from doorways, their eyes wide with fear. Hope was a whisper, barely audible.

That was three years ago. After USAID rebuilt the road through town, it was bustling with handcarts and motorcycles. The market was alive again. Photos show children playing near one of the eight schools USAID helped construct—schools that have given thousands of students a reason to dream again and offered parents hope for a better future, one without al-Shabaab. A young girl named Fatuma told our implementer that she wanted to become a doctor, not because it was a prestigious job, but because “no one should die just because they are forgotten.”

But now, I fear we are forgetting them again.

In January 2025, the project’s funding was cut. The peace committee we helped build will surely dissolve with no budget to support their mediation work. With no USAID workers left in the country, we don’t know what happened to the schools, but we know the teachers couldn’t work for months without pay and the government was not yet able to pick up the bill.

And al-Shabaab knows this too. They are not just fighters—they are opportunists. They will return to Marka and other towns slowly, not with guns at first but with offers: Food. Money. Protection. In a land abandoned by its allies, even the promises of warlords begin to look like salvation.

While Marka remains free from al-Shabaab, Aadan Yabaal, another coastal town in Somalia that was liberated in 2022, tells another story. In April 2025, al-Shabaab seized control of the town. The school built by USAID closed, the solar streetlights were likely destroyed, and the clan reconciliation committee ceased to exist.

We turned the tide once. USAID, United Nations partners, Department of Defense military advisers, Somali leaders, and community elders worked together to build something real. We saw warlords become ministers. We watched farmers sell tomatoes in markets that had been empty for years. We saw displaced families return home.

But now, we’re watching it all slip away. Not because we were defeated, but because we gave up.

When USAID was shut down in Somalia, we lost more than the roads we built, the streetlights, and schools. We lost the trust of people who believed us when we said we were partners. We surrendered the hope that once flickered in a place where darkness reigned.

Somalia is more than a battlefield. It is a front line in the fight for dignity, stability, and peace. We have not just lost ground. We’ve lost time and momentum—and if we don’t act quickly, we may lose an entire generation who once believed they had a future.

And that loss? It echoes far beyond Somalia’s borders.

—Monika Gorzelanska, former USAID program office director

Three Years from Retirement

After 17 years of dedicated service as a public diplomacy FSO, I was notified that I am being separated due to the Department of State’s recent reduction in force. This decision is deeply painful—not only on a personal level but because it represents a significant loss to the department’s global mission and capabilities.

Throughout my career, I have served on the front lines of U.S. diplomacy, voluntarily accepting challenging assignments in the developing world, including in Nepal during the 7.9 magnitude earthquake and, most recently, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I have spent the bulk of my career in sub-Saharan Africa, am a fluent French speaker, and have consistently chosen posts that advance U.S. values under difficult conditions in countries where many officers do not want to serve.

In Nepal, I did not go on authorized departure after the quake, choosing instead to stay behind and spearhead our social media accounts and media relations so that Americans in Nepal knew how to access our assistance, Americans abroad knew how to check on the welfare and whereabouts of their relatives, and both the Nepali and U.S. citizens understood how the U.S. government was assisting the victims of the earthquake.

My professional focus has been building trust and lasting relationships with journalists, civil society leaders, youth, and government counterparts—helping explain U.S. policies and values, managing educational and cultural exchanges, and promoting mutual understanding.

Most recently, I served in the J Bureau [civilian security, democracy, and human rights], leading a team working to protect and promote religious freedom in Africa and the Middle East. That mission was critical. We helped secure the release of several prisoners of conscience and get them to safety so that they could practice their faith in peace—upholding a core American value. Unfortunately, the elimination of the J Bureau precipitated my inclusion in the RIF.

My performance has never been in question. I have received awards in every position I’ve held, and I was competitively paneled into a prestigious long-term training detail at the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School, set to begin in August.

My commitment to professional growth, to the department, and to public service has been unwavering. I have just learned that despite urgent advocacy efforts by NDU leadership, the department is backfilling my training detail with someone who did not go through the normal competitive process. How does such a system reward merit and accomplishment?

I became a U.S. diplomat to serve the country I love. It has been an honor and a dream come true. All I want is to continue contributing to our nation’s diplomacy and global leadership. The department’s decision to separate seasoned officers like me—at a time when our experience, language skills, and regional expertise are most needed—will have long-term consequences for the institution’s capacity, particularly in regions like Africa, where relationships are built on trust and continuity.

I hope that as leaders in the department reflect on the impact of this RIF, they will recognize the depth of the talent and commitment we are losing—and the human cost of that loss.

—State FSO

Weapons Expertise—Gone

When I received my RIF notice on July 11, I was a tenured Civil Service employee serving as a senior adviser on chemical and biological weapons issues and project manager for a portfolio of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) nonproliferation programs valued at more than $50 million.

In addition to more than eight years of experience as a generalist project manager with the State Department, I also brought highly relevant subject matter expertise as a PhD physical scientist and maintained credentials, including contracting officer and grants officer representative certifications, to facilitate project implementation and oversight.

The office holding my position will continue to exist in the restructured organization chart, as it was established by statute. The RIF actions of July 11, however, eliminated virtually all working-level federal positions in this office, thus severely limiting its capacity to expeditiously respond to unanticipated WMD-related crises and proliferation challenges that may threaten the safety of Americans at home and abroad.

For example, the U.S. has and will likely continue to play a role in securing and verifiably eliminating remnants of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons program in Syria to bring greater stability to the region—which is a stated priority for the administration. And there are numerous other ongoing activities in the office that strongly align with the administration’s objectives to prevent designated terrorist organizations and Iran from gaining access to dual-use, WMD-enabling materials.

While this particular office was targeted, otherwise equivalent offices in the same bureau (i.e., retained in the reorganized State Department) were entirely unaffected by the RIF, including tenured and probationary staff members, suggesting the department did not follow standard RIF procedures as part of this reorganization.

—State foreign affairs officer

Further Fracturing State’s Broken IT Systems

I serve as a Foreign Service specialist and diplomatic technology officer in Washington, D.C. The State Department included my position in its reduction-in-force action on July 11.

After 12 years abroad, I returned to Washington, D.C., in 2023 to take part in the Bureau of Diplomatic Technology’s Executive Development Program (EDP). Following graduation from the EDP in 2024, I accepted a two-year domestic assignment with the clear understanding that it was a “detailed” assignment to the Office of Application Design and Delivery (ADD).

I have been serving in ADD in direct support of State’s enterprise platform optimization efforts, driving urgently needed reform of both its sprawling and duplicative IT infrastructure and its fragmented, siloed organizational structure. This role represented an opportunity for the department to realize a return on its investment in my professional development, while also allowing me to apply and expand the strategic leadership, executive decision-making, and communications skills I cultivated through the EDP.

Over the past year, I have led efforts to modernize legacy systems, improve interoperability, and realign IT investments with the department’s objectives. In one initiative, I identified a plan to save tens of millions of dollars annually through platform consolidation and optimization of a major software platform. With the department’s decision to eliminate my position, however, this plan now faces indefinite delay—and may never move forward.

In addition, I was given a 15 percent retention incentive based on my leadership, expertise, more than a decade of institutional knowledge, and skills as a graduate of EDP. Despite these qualifications, the department chose to eliminate the very employee it deemed critical enough to warrant a retention incentive. It is contradictory—and illogical—to simultaneously recognize the value of my skills with incentive pay while including me in a RIF.

The department cannot reform its fractured IT footprint if it removes the personnel driving that transformation.

—State FSS diplomatic technology officer

Fired in the Middle of a Move

I am an FS-2 Foreign Service officer with 15 years’ experience at the U.S. Department of State. On July 11, 2025, I was in the middle of my permanent change of station (PCS) move from a domestic assignment to my next overseas assignment, for which I was paneled on December 20, 2024.

I received my travel orders on June 18 and airline tickets to post on June 26. I packed up my house, shipped our only car, terminated the lease on our home, and unenrolled my child from daycare at the end of June. My family, including two toddlers, moved into a hotel as we awaited my consultations in D.C. before heading out to post—just two weeks before the RIF.

Overnight, with one email notification, we became homeless, jobless, without a car, and without school enrollment, cribs, high chairs, or any toys or clothing for our toddlers beyond what we had crammed into six suitcases.

We left our state of residence to move in with extended family, who were gracious enough to take us in, and awaited notification of how or when we would receive our belongings, which had already been shipped to post overseas, or our vehicle, which was awaiting shipment at the Baltimore port.

Beyond the personal financial costs of preparing for a PCS that was canceled last minute—including insurance, moving expenses, the purchase of a new POV specific to the country where we were assigned, snow tires, and food that’s expiring in a warehouse overseas—I have also not received reimbursement for my PCS voucher.

When I contacted the department to request reimbursement for the nearly $2,000 in overseas daycare registration and enrollment fees, I was told these were rejected because the education allowance is only for K-12. State also told me they would not reimburse me for the cost-constructed flight I booked for my consultations in D.C. that were canceled because of the RIF.

While we have since retrieved our vehicle and our unaccompanied air baggage (UAB) shipment, the department will not return our furnishings (household effects, or HHE) until I have separation orders, which I cannot receive because we don’t have a permanent address. We don’t have housing as I need to find full-time employment and my future job will dictate where in the U.S. we will reside. I can’t list my temporary address for my separation address, because I am unable to receive all of the furnishings we shipped for an unfurnished housing assignment where we currently are staying with extended family.

I joined the department as a Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Undergraduate Fellow as a sophomore in college. My six tours have included service in the highest danger post outside the Middle East, as a staff assistant in the Executive Secretariat, and as President Trump’s control officer. In every assignment at State, I earned awards, including a nomination for the department-wide One Team award and selection to participate in the Secretary’s Leadership Seminar, a yearlong executive program with the Harvard Business School to develop the department’s next generation of leaders.

It has been the honor of a lifetime representing the American people and advancing our political and commercial interests around the world. I’m devastated to lose my dream career, pension, and community of incredible colleagues around the world.

—State FSO

We’re Never Truly Closed

As a public diplomacy officer, I have saved countless vulnerable Americans from sending tens of thousands of dollars to scammers. Scammers always ramp up the pressure during holidays because they think the embassy will be closed and no one will respond to U.S. citizens who contact us.

The reality: We’re never truly closed.

The scammers didn’t know that I brought my laptop to every holiday gathering in the embassy community. I would open up the embassy’s Facebook Messenger and wait for the messages to start pinging. They always did.

U.S. citizens reached out because they’d been told they needed to send money urgently—usually at least $10,000—because their fiancée had been in an accident on the way to the airport to fly to America to meet them. Or the fiancée’s ship had been shot up by pirates, and if they didn’t send money to fix it, there would be an oil spill. Or their boyfriend had completed a peacekeeping mission but the U.S. military wouldn’t pay for their flight home, so the U.S. citizen had to send money. It was the same handful of fake stories, over and over again.

I would take the time to go through the story and gently point out the ways it didn’t make sense, sometimes coordinating with the duty officer or directing them to law enforcement resources to make sure we did everything possible to prevent the caller from losing their money to heartless scammers.

I’ve been promoted steadily up the ranks, have earned awards and prestigious stretch assignments based on my performance and leadership, and have worked tirelessly 365 days a year to protect our country and its citizens. None of that mattered. I was told I’m worthless, lazy, and useless simply because I was in a domestic assignment—a requirement for consideration for the Senior Foreign Service.

—State FSO

Ensuring Scientific Superiority

President Trump’s policy agenda includes advancing U.S. leadership and domination in emerging technology. I have led our engagement with key countries like the U.K., Ireland, and France, including on the specific technologies this administration cares about: quantum, AI, and biotech. I’m able to translate our scientists’ deep knowledge of emerging technologies into readable policy—a needed skill as we work to ensure the United States (not China) is the global leader in these fields.

But I was RIFed.

—State FSO