The Foreign Service Journal, March 2006

out increasing our human resources, and wind up getting stretched too thin everywhere.” “We have lost one officer slot in my office to the Iraq tax,” says a man- agement officer in Washington, “and several positions at each of the posts I manage. We are back to the old ‘do more with less’ syndrome that we experienced before Secretary Powell, and people are getting exhausted.” Another FSO in Washington com- ments: “The Iraq tax has resurrected the ‘do more with less’ mantra among managers, leaving many employees overworked. … If we are to have human-resources con- straints due to our staffing needs in Iraq, then man- agers need to re-evaluate work priorities.” “Right or wrong, I believe there is a divide being created,” writes an FSO who has not served in Iraq, “especially when the general perception is that service in Iraq equates to instant promotions and/or preferred onward assignments. Those of us serving elsewhere often feel that no matter how hard we work or how deserving [we are], we’ll be overlooked for someone who has ‘done time’ in Iraq.” “The whole world has to stop for Iraq,” observes a mid-level officer who has not served there. “It’s like nothing else exists, which is wrong. And, the people who go are supposed to get special treatment later, which I don’t think they are getting, so they must be getting awfully bitter.” “It’s creating extreme dissatisfaction,” comments an FSO serving in Baghdad, “because anyone who doesn’t serve here is unhappy that those who do receive special perks, yet those who serve here are disdainful of those who refuse to contemplate a tour at a danger post. We’re facing the distinct possibility of [repeating] the Foreign Service experience during the Vietnam War, when personnel were forced to serve their first tour in Southeast Asia on directed tours.” In addition, a num- ber of respondents note that single people feel pres- sure to take on more of the burden of unaccompanied assignments, especially Iraq, and some resent this. One FSO who has served in Iraq notes: “Over time, the placement of Iraq veterans in plum jobs primarily to reward [their] service is going to distort the assign- ments and promotion system. Good work needs to be done throughout the department at every post. We should not overcompensate Iraq ser- vice (beyond the financial incen- tives) or we risk permanently distort- ing the department’s internal profes- sional development.” An officer working on staffing another extreme-hardship post notes that the big issue for the Foreign Service is figuring out how to reward service in high-priority posts such as Iraq without penalizing officers “who serve in areas just as horrible, but considerably less glamorous.” “Iraq and Afghanistan are a generational marker,” explains a retired FSO who served in Iraq in 2003. “There were the Vietnam/CORDS [Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support] people and now we will have the Baghdad/Kabul group. This will shape and flavor the Foreign Service for the next gen- eration.” “I think it has lowered morale because of the whole chain of events,” says a public diplomacy officer serving in Washington, “It has ill-used the Foreign Service; early on, the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project was deep-sixed, and now the Foreign Service is pressed into very difficult and dangerous duty in circumstances that might have been less bad had the State Department been paid any attention at early phases.” “It’s hard to keep up the efforts to effectively repre- sent the U.S. in other parts of the world when the mes- sage is that if it’s not Iraq, it doesn’t matter,” writes a personnel officer from Washington. “If Iraq is such a high priority to the president, why doesn’t he support the Secretary of State by providing additional resources for that embassy? Instead it seems that we are heading back to the days of the mid-1990s when we were cutting operations to the bone, deferring maintenance. …” “The effect,” says a mid-level FSO who has served in Afghanistan, “is draining. Iraq is like a giant vacuum sucking up all resources.” Budgets elsewhere are shrinking, notes an FSO serving in a Middle East post, “workloads increasing, overtime increasing, staffing gaps increasing. … This is the first under-resourced F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 “The effect is draining. Iraq is like a giant vacuum sucking up all resources.” — A mid-level FSO who has served in Afghanistan