The Foreign Service Journal, March 2005

Oct. 24, 2004, leaving a wife behind, when a mortar or rocket hit his trail- er at Camp Victory, the U.S. base next to Baghdad International Airport. When Jacobson learned of his friend’s death — the first of a State Department employee since the war began two years ago — his first reaction was despair: “Why did it have to happen? Why are we in that God-forsaken place? Why Ed?” he wrote. After reflecting on Seitz, and the State Department’s efforts to bring peace and democracy to Iraq, Jacobson rested better. “Ed Seitz didn’t go to Baghdad for the big oil companies, or to ensure President Bush’s re-election, or all the other such non- sense uttered by newscasters and political pundits these days,” Jacobson wrote. Rather, he went to help make the world a safer place. State Department employees do similar work in many dangerous places around the world, many of which never make the headlines, and risk their lives every day. But as Seitz’s death — and that of a second Foreign Service officer, James Mollen, on Nov. 24 — demonstrates starkly, nowhere are the risks greater right now than in Iraq. And nowhere are the stakes higher, not only for Iraq but for the State Department and its reputation. More than 200 State and USAID employees are currently stationed in Iraq (compared with around 150,000 U.S. troops). Most of them serve in Baghdad, where the largest U.S. embassy in the world reopened last June, more than 13 years after it closed on the eve of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. (The political section alone has 17 officers.) About 50 others are assigned to outposts in Mosul, Kirkuk, Hillah and Basra. In addi- tion, five smaller regional teams are working directly with military units, assisting in working with local Iraqi officials. Projections are that by the end of 2005, whoever is ambassador will oversee a mission of about 1,500 employees, including Foreign Service officers from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, representatives of other government agencies, and foreign nationals. A Return to Diplomacy All agree that the embassy’s task would be a daunting one even under the best of conditions. It is helping to ensure security, shep- herding the transition to a stable, democratically-elected government and rebuilding a wartorn country all at the same time. To pull off that juggling act, says Francis J. Ricciardone, who left his post as ambassador to the Philippines to serve as Negroponte’s deputy chief of mission and help guide the planning effort for the new embassy last year, State not only assembled its largest mission in the world, but its best. “This is an all-star team,” he told reporters last June. Most of the American diplomats in Iraq, like their military colleagues, remain committed to the cause and supremely confident that they can bring the stability to Iraq that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.- led military government that handed over power to the Iraqis last June, failed to achieve. But so far, Embassy Baghdad, like its predecessor, is struggling. The secu- rity situation remains untenable, and most diplomats rarely leave their compound, severely limiting their contact with Iraqis and making it very difficult to do their jobs. The only road to the airport is frequently closed, requiring travelers to use helicopters. Over 500 American soldiers have been killed since the CPA’s June handover of power, while the total U.S. civilian death toll since the war began is nearly 100, and the ongoing insurrection has wreaked havoc on reconstruc- tion efforts. When the embassy opened last June, the Foreign Service was buzzing with anticipation. Ricciardone wasn’t exaggerating about the prestige of those sent to run Embassy Baghdad. John Negroponte, a 37-year Foreign Service officer and previously the U.S. repre- sentative to the United Nations, was named ambas- sador. Between 1960 and 1997, he’d served in eight different posts in Asia, Latin America and Europe. He’d cut his teeth in Vietnam, where he worked on the Paris Peace Talks, and earned his first ambassadorship, to Honduras, in 1981. Controversy mired his stay F O C U S 18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 5 Shawn Zeller is a staff reporter for Government Executive magazine. Embassy Baghdad’s task would be a daunting one even under the best of conditions — let alone the ones that currently prevail there.