The Foreign Service Journal, March 2005

Still, in late November, USAID head Andrew Natsios was forced to freeze the assignments process and call an all-hands meeting to ask vol- unteers to come forward to fill 23 high-priority posts in Iraq as well as Afghanistan and Sudan. “We’re still recovering from the dark years of the 1990s,” says Rebecca Cohn, who has overseen placement of USAID offi- cers in Iraq. As a result of repeated budget cuts during that period, few new officers were hired, and the remaining work force is older and less interested in tak- ing risky assignments. Some USAID veterans also complained that the security situation in Iraq was mak- ing development work too difficult. “Some USAID officers were saying, yes, we agree to worldwide avail- ability, but only where we can do development, not where we are being shot at,” says William Carter, AFSA’s USAID vice president. Since coming to the agency in 2001, Natsios has tried to win new hiring authority from Congress, and to develop a “surge capacity” of skilled development workers willing to take short-term assignments. The surge capacity would consist mostly of retired USAID officers. Neither of these efforts, however, has pro- gressed enough to help with the Iraq hiring situation yet, says Carter. He estimates that it takes two years “to get a raw recruit brought in the door and actually func- tioning,” given USAID’s training requirements. So Natsios urged veteran employees to come forward, cit- ing the growing importance of foreign aid in the post- 9/11 world. “I thought it was just going through the motions,” says Cohn, “and the next process was going to be forced placement.” But Natsios’ plea worked: by F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 21 The burgeoning commitment to Iraq has begun to erode morale among Foreign Service officers worldwide.