The Foreign Service Journal, February 2003

If the security situation con- tinues to pose a threat to the personal effects of employees, a post may request authorization for emergency shipment and storage of household effects. If should be noted, however, that approval of this request can pose something of a Catch-22 for employees. If such storage is approved and an employee elects not to ship his/her effects out of country, he/she risks rejection of a claim if there is a subsequent loss of those effects in country. If, on the other hand, he/she chooses to make an emergency shipment to storage, the employee could be faced with spending the remainder of the tour without any personal effects. A further complication in this regard is the issue of personal effects for employees at, or returning to, an unaccompanied post. Whether dependents are not returning due to a State Department prohibition or due to personal choice, the handling of personal effects for the employees can be a problem, since the packout would not have been done with an eye toward later splitting the shipment between safe haven and post. Any travel away from post by someone filling a designated “essential” position raises the problem of how to cover that essential position during the employee’s absence. Posts should consider TDY replacements and should discuss needs for such with Washington as soon as identified. As the evacuation continues, there needs to be a recognition from Washington that non-essential tasks must be dropped as requirements, given the reduced F O C U S F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47 The greatest criticism of our process was failure to provide early information to employees on how to prepare for an evacuation. AN INVITATION FOR S U MM E R F I C T I O N O nce again the Foreign Service Journal is seeking works of fiction of up to 3,000 words for its annual summer fiction issue. Story lines or characters involving the Foreign Service are preferred, but not required. The top stories, selected by the Journal ’s Editorial Board, will be published in the July/August issue and on the Journal ’s Web site. The writer of each story will receive an honorarium of $250. All stories must be previously unpublished. Submissions should be unsigned and accompanied by a cover sheet with author’s name, address, telephone numbers and e-mail address. Deadline is April 1. No fooling. Please send submissions to the attention of Mikkela Thompson, Business Manager, preferably by e-mail at thompsonm@afsa.org. S tories will also be accepted by fax at (202) 338-8244, or by mail: Foreign Service Journal , 2101 E St., NW, Washington, D.C., 20037 ATTENTION ALL WRITERS