The Foreign Service Journal, February 2007

create single-officer American Pres- ence Posts in numerous cities around the globe. In view of the uncertain security environment in some target cities, it is unclear how such facilities will function safely given their limited physical security support. Staffing Iraq and Afghanistan From the day she took office, Sec. Rice has made her top management priority the staffing of Iraq and Afghanistan. To fill those positions, State implemented a number of incentives such as substantial extra pay and special leave arrangements. But as the number of war-zone posi- tions continued to increase and the most eager initial volunteers finished their tours, the task of staffing those positions became increasingly diffi- cult. By the spring of 2006, the Bureau of Human Resources was preparing to rotate another year’s worth of vol- unteers into Iraq and Afghanistan even as it geared up to find another set of volunteers for the follow-on rotation for summer 2007. In so doing, it became clear that, while the Career Development Program would likely be a long-term aide to staffing unaccompanied and hardship posts, it would not solve the short-term need to staff Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore, the Bureau of Human Resources proposed to AFSA (which has legal negotiating rights on assign- ment and promotion procedures) a series of new personnel policies intended to get employees to volun- teer for war-zone duty. The first proposal, to which AFSA agreed in May 2006, gives employees who complete Iraq tours on Provin- cial Reconstruction Teams or at Re- gional Embassy Offices outside of Baghdad a guarantee that their next assignment will be to one of their top five choices. Such specific guarantees of preferential treatment in onward assignments have never before been made in the Foreign Service assign- ments rules. Only time will tell if State will be able to make good on F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 43 State concluded in 2004 that the “fair share” system would not attract enough volunteers to fill the increased number of dangerous and hardship positions.