The Foreign Service Journal, March 2022

32 MARCH 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL It was both the best and the worst thing I’d experienced in my career. The worst for obvious reasons, and the best because of my colleagues. It’s amazing what smart people can do when all the normal constraints are removed. We improvised, and so did the Afghans. My former Afghan political adviser took his family and waded far down a sewage canal to enter at Abbey Gate, where our Marines pulled him in. Soon after, ISIS attacked us there. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed, along with many Afghans. It was just devastating, not least for our consular officers who had worked side by side with some of the same Marines. We hunkered down for a while and then everyone said they wanted to get back out there. They wanted to get back to work. It was so humbling. Again, I was in awe. When it was over and I was back in Washington, they asked me to lead the Afghanistan Task Force. Suddenly I cared who had gotten on which plane, where they had flown, and how they had landed. I was “elsewhere” now, and I had to help sort it out. James P. DeHart, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister Counselor, is the U.S. coordinator for the Arctic region at the State Department. He has also served as senior adviser for security negotiations and agreements, as assistant chief of mission in Kabul and as deputy chief of mission in Oslo, among many other assignments. He is a former chair of the FSJ Editorial Board. In August 2021, he went to Kabul as deputy for the evacuation and later directed the Afghanistan Task Force in Washington. MEDDocs Offer Support Through Chaos Bob Y. Shim In the dawn hours, I arrived in Kabul on a C-17 with a Depart- ment of Defense medical team. My first impression was how quiet and serene everything seemed. This illusion was shattered by the flood of scenes I witnessed during an initial tour of the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) perimeter with Ambassador Ross Wilson—thousands of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder, knee-deep in the sewage canal outside Abbey Gate, waiting for the slightest opening to enter; the road outside East Gate also knee-deep with hastily discarded clothing, children’s toys and other personal belong- ings; Marine medics treating the injured and those who passed out after days of standing outside in the heat; and the periodic bursts of gunfire and flashbangs in the distance. Similar scenes played out daily for our small team from State’s Bureau of Medical Services (MED)—me and two medical providers—deployed to render assistance to our State Depart- ment colleagues. We quickly realized the extreme limitations of what the three of us with our portable kits could do in this aus- tere setting, but we dove in, caring for Embassy Kabul personnel who were working around the clock. We set up a small makeshift health unit at the Joint Com- mand Center and supported consular teams on excursions to the gates to screen potential visa recipients. Looking back, pro- viding care for the State Department staff—even when reduced At Hamid Karzai International Airport, Ambassador Ross L. Wilson talks with the Marines at the gates. BOBSHIM The flight out of Kabul at the end of the evacuation. JAMESDEHART