The Foreign Service Journal, March 2006

The Time Is Now The Foreign Service is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the highest priority foreign-policy issue — win- ning in Iraq — because it has refused to take the one step that would guarantee it a key role, demonstrate seriousness of purpose to the military, and develop a cadre of true area specialists with extreme diplomacy skills. Specifically, the Foreign Service has refused to rec- ognize that service in wartime necessitates a complete commitment by all its personnel. Such a commitment requires, at minimum, the unam- biguous authority to order Foreign Service personnel to serve in Iraq through directed assignments. While some Middle East specialists and Arabists have served with dis- tinction and courage in Iraq, others have not shown up at all. They should be told clearly that they are needed by their Service and their country now in Iraq, or their ser- vices are not required at all. The Foreign Service, State Department and U.S. taxpayers did not spend the money to teach Arabic and develop area expertise to enable the beneficiaries of that training to avoid using their skills where they are most needed. With a couple of promotion and assignment seasons now past after the liberation of Iraq, we are hearing the first hints of blowback against those who have served in Iraq and are perceived to have been rewarded in the only two ways most FSOs care about: promotions and assign- ments. Foreign Service personnel coming out of Iraq have typically been quite happy with their onward assign- ments, and anecdotal evidence suggests promotion rates are high as well. If there were the clear possibility of directed assign- ments as well as continued recruitment of volunteers, there could be no concerns about unfairness, because everyone would have the same possibility of being sent to Iraq. Some officers have indicated that directed assign- ments would also reduce family pressures, given that offi- cers would no longer have a choice about going to Iraq and would no longer have to explain that they were choosing career over home. Instead, they could point out that they were complying with a well- known condition of service, just as is the case for military personnel. It is said that directed assignments risk significant resignations or the tear- ing apart of the Service for reasons of policy differences, but suspicion that those who volunteer for Iraq are being unfairly advantaged is a much shorter route to bad morale and a divided service than the certainty that every- one is equally exposed to service there. Qualified Foreign Service personnel can have an impact out of all proportion to their numbers in Iraq. That is a good thing, because we are outnumbered by about 1,000 to one, comparing uniformed military per- sonnel to Department of State direct hires. In the province of Anbar, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, there is one department employee (not an FSO) posted at the headquarters of the Marine unit charged with secur- ing the province. That officer has provided valuable polit- ical advice, based on intimate knowledge of the local lead- ership, to the Marine commander and has served as a liai- son with the policy-makers in Embassy Baghdad on both policy and development issues. He has been the walking, talking pivot point that has enabled the differing civilian and military cultures to work well together. A key element of his utility in these multifaceted roles has been his length of service — that employee has been in the desert for almost two years. Given the importance of his mission, that employee should be a widely imitated example, not the exception he has become. In other key postings, such as Najaf, the Foreign Service has never managed to fill the two slots mandated for that city, sometimes described as the Vatican of Shia Islam. The same is true for other critical locations throughout Iraq. In Najaf, several officers have rotated through a single slot for up to a year each, but the lack of experience and language skills has kept them from being as effective with gov- ernment and religious figures as personnel with those skills could have been. They did the best that could be done with the skill they had. The Service is at fault for F O C U S 44 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 6 Henry S. Ensher has been a Foreign Service officer since 1983, serving in Hermosillo, Jeddah, Muscat, Damascus, Vienna, Algiers, Tel Aviv, Baghdad and Washington, D.C. He is currently the director for political affairs in the Office of Iraq within the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. The question of how to staff “extreme diplomacy” posts needs to be addressed as an immediate operational issue.