The Foreign Service Journal, March 2007

my PRT commander to be very responsive to any request from State officials. However, we are obviously a military organization, first and foremost, so he reports to his headquarters, not to the embassy. I formally report to the PRT office in the embassy, which is extremely active and supportive of the State reps at the 24 PRTs around the country. The complexi- ty of what each of us is doing on our respective teams also gives us an indirect reporting relationship with other sections, particularly the political section, but also with our public diplomacy, economic and USAID col- leagues. However, those of us out in the field are seldom able to maintain close contact with Kabul. Phone service is irregular, and travel is not a routine matter. Though the journey from Jalalabad to Kabul would take less than three hours by road, we don’t travel overland due to security concerns. To get to the capital, we have to wait for a helicopter from Bagram Air Base or a plane from PRT Air, which has two small airplanes that are con- tracted to fly us in and out of the PRTs. They have a pro- posed schedule (they will come to Jalalabad on Sundays or Wednesdays), and we make a formal request for them to come here when we actually need to travel. There are no instruments at the Jalalabad Air Field, so I now know more about aviation than I ever wanted to! Aircraft can only land if the clouds are at least 12,000 feet above ground level (and if PRT Air remembers to request landing clearance at least 24 hours in advance, which doesn’t always happen). Travel is difficult, and I have only been to Kabul twice in the whole time I have been here. The challenges our dedicated colleagues in the embassy face are different, but no less compelling or overwhelming than those we face at the PRTs. Like us, they work very long hours; I received e-mails from the embassy on Christmas Day. Many of my colleagues in the capital are recently tenured mid-level officers who joined the State Department during the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative. As unit chief for the entry-level career development office a few years ago, I already knew them all, and am proud to be associated with them now as colleagues. Looking for the ONE One thing that I believe would greatly improve our ability to act as State representatives on Provincial Reconstruction Teams would be to have the wonderful OpenNet Everywhere system to connect us to the State unclassified computer system. When I worked in EUR/EX, I had a ONE key fob that would provide a code I could use to access the State system from any computer, anywhere in the world — my condo in Washington, a hotel in Germany, a friend’s house in England, or even a place like Jalalabad. To be sure, there has been real progress with com- munications during my time here. When I first arrived, the Internet went down with the sun (our computers are not solar-powered, so I never understood that correla- tion!). Even when the sun was up, it only worked about half the time. Communications are better now, but I only have a connection to the commercial Internet, and even that frequently goes out. So I can’t read cables or post reports, look up e-mail addresses, get salary state- ments, or do any of the multitude of tasks that are now done on the State intranet by colleagues both in Washington and at other posts. During bidding season, those of us at PRTs were sup- posed to be priority bidders, but I felt like we were actu- ally disadvantaged without access to the State communi- cation system. We couldn’t see current bid lists, find names and contact info for people to lobby, or even enter our selections in the HR system, without assis- tance from someone else. I was fortunate to have won- derful friends and colleagues in Washington who helped me, and I have been paneled into my first choice for onward assignment, as a management officer in London. I have proposed that ONE be provided to PRTs in messages sent via the DG Direct pipeline, in requests for e-Diplomacy grants, and by personally lobbying the DCM and our very energetic and responsive manage- ment officer back in Kabul. Everyone has said it’s a good idea, but so far no one has been able to make it happen. A Deteriorating Security Situation As you might expect, security is the dominant factor in everything we do. At some PRTs, my State col- leagues walk around alone in town, or drive their own vehicles, without military escort. State has generously provided me with a beautiful new Toyota Land Cruiser; unfortunately, the commander will only let me drive it within the confines of the PRT — about 200 feet in any direction. To leave the base, he requires that an armed 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 7