The Foreign Service Journal, March 2022

96 MARCH 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Marc Gilkey is a Senior Foreign Service officer who has served with the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) for more than 25 years. He is currently posted in Bangkok, where he serves as the regional manager for South Asia. He has served previously in Afghanistan, Mexico, India, Belgium and Colombia, in addition to assignments in Washington, D.C., with USAID. He is a Navy veteran. I arrived in Bangkok in August 2021 and was in quarantine for two weeks when the events at the Kabul airport unfolded. Sitting in a hotel room and feeling quite helpless, I reflected on my year in Afghanistan—a lifetime ago, it seemed. I also thought about the work done around the world by the United States Department of Agriculture, which President Abraham Lincoln described as “The People’s Department” at its creation in 1862. With USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, I have enjoyed an abundance of experiences and opportuni- ties, and as I consider the numerous chap- ters, none have beenmore memorable than the time I spent in Afghanistan. e During the winter of 2004, USDA was instructed by then-President George W. Bush to place agricultural advisers in the provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan, so that expertise from the department could be applied tomeet technical needs for the reconstruction of Afghanistan’s agricultural sector. As a platform for reconstruction efforts, the PRTs were an alternative model that combined both security and reconstruction. USDA technical exper- Winter in Kabul, 2005 BY MARC G I LKEY tise would be strategically placed in the PRTs throughout Afghanistan. A call for volunteers was sent through- out USDA, and I could not resist this chal- lenging opportunity. Before long, on New Year’s Day 2005, I was on a plane to Kabul. After an emergency stop in Azerbaijan, we touched down at Kabul International Airport, which would later be called the Hamid Karzai International Airport and, most recently, was the backdrop for great sadness and desperation. e Winter in Kabul is cold, crisp and quiet, at least it was in January 2005. On the ground, USDA had 10 volunteers from an array of agencies: Natural Resources Conservation Service, Food Safety Inspec- tion Service, Farm Service Agency, Food and Nutrition Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Our lifeline inWashington, D.C., was Otto Gonzalez of the Foreign Agriculture Service; without the support of his team, we would have been rudderless. My job seemed simple. As the USDA provincial reconstruction team coordina- tor, I would have the luxury of staying in Kabul in a warm “hooch”—basically a modified shipping container—and devel- oping strategies to advance the rebuilding of the agricultural sector. The reality was a bit different: I was to be behind the scenes and do everything possible to clear the path for my colleagues who were sent to the front lines in Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Helmand, Parwan and beyond. Working in Kabul at the embassy also gave USDA a seat on the country team, which enabled critical coordination with both the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The importance of diplomacy and devel- opment in strengthening the agricultural sector in Afghanistan cannot be empha- sized enough. e For the first six months of 2005, the atmosphere was quite permissible for movement within Kabul and back and forth among the numerous PRTs, as well. I visited the Ministry of Agriculture regularly and even had a satellite office there. The goal was to help build the ability of the Afghan central government to support and provide services to the agricultural sector. The aimwas to implement a national REFLECTIONS The ever-present mountains of Afghanistan, the Hindu Kush, is a great watershed that supplies rivers that can serve as hubs of agricultural production and economic growth in the country. But a lack of modern farming methods, including irrigation development, and dependence on erratic weather patterns, have made farming difficult and limited output to a fraction of its potential. COURTESYOFMARCGILKEY