The Foreign Service Journal, March 2007

bers in the combined uniformed armed forces and reserves. State employs only about 6,500 active-duty Foreign Service officers, about the size of one military brigade, and these officers staff all U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide. State does not have a reserve corps or barracks from which to deploy: State employees are forward-deployed. Filling a new FS position in Iraq means a job somewhere else in the world needs either to be vacated or left unfilled. And yet, over 1,500 from the State Department have volunteered to serve in Iraq, out of an active-duty pool of just over 10,000 (including State specialists). There are currently close to 200 State Foreign Service members serving in Iraq, about 50 of them at PRTs. USAID has only about 1,000 Foreign Service employees total. About 25 per- cent of USAID FSOs have served in a critical-priority country (Sudan, Afghan- istan, Pakistan and Iraq) over the past five years and more than 70 are currently serving in Iraq. From the other side come some civil- ian perceptions that the military is all about “breaking down doors,” possessing a “shoot-’em-up” mentality. “Warriors and poets” is Pope’s summary of the differences. “We were told to learn to play nicely with each other, even though State was not very well regarded by several of our high-ranking col- leagues in the military,” says one PRT veteran who asked not to be identified. He adds that there were “many inherent biases between the two organizations. This ten- sion was exacerbated by whatever relationship State and Defense officials had or did not have at the highest level.” The good news appears to be that many cultural barri- ers between the services are being overcome and cooper- ative work is now going on in many PRTs. Yet it is a fluid situation in each team, because personalities and individ- ual perceptions still matter and conditions and relation- ships change when civilian and military personnel rotate out. Still, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s October 2006 status report concluded that “in general, the civilian and military organizations within the PRTs are effectively working together, coordi- nating their activities, and synchronizing their efforts with coalition stability operations in the provinces.” Several PRT veterans point to one key difference between Foreign Service and military personnel: the mil- F O C U S 28 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 7 On the Ground in Iraqi Kurdistan By Jennifer Mergy, Iraq Provincial Action Officer The most rewarding moments here as part of the Regional Reconstruction Team in Erbil are in the field. I enjoy the intera- gency cooperation and the direct contact with Iraqis. One such trip was to areas hit by flash floods in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Sulaymaniyah province. The day trip in- volved logistics and security arrangements with multiple parties — U.S. Civil Affairs, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, USAID, the Regional Secur- ity Office, Public Affairs, the South Korean coalition partner, the governor of Sulaymaniyah and the local mayor. When we arrived at the flood-damaged site, the villagers and local officials met our group and expressed their concerns. I was able to talk with the women about their emergency coping strategies and, more broadly, about their role in the community. As a follow-up to the trip, I was part of the preliminary eval- uation committee that reviewed the flood-relief project propos- als. As an RRT officer, I also coordinated with international organizations, including the United Nations, to ensure these efforts were not duplicated and there was a balance among food items, non-food items and infrastructure initiatives. The whole experience was professionally gratifying because it combined demonstrating our sympathy for the plight of the flood victims and working toward an emergency assistance package. Personally, I was touched by the interaction with vil- lagers who lived far from the region’s politics and appeared to view American military personnel and diplomats simply as peo- ple making a sincere effort to help others in need. Jafati Valley, Sulaymaniyah Mergy visiting a school in Iraqi Kurdistan.