The Foreign Service Journal, April 2008

Who Needs Rest? I’d like to share my letter to the Government Accountability Office in response to the new ban on business- class travel: “I just read the GAO report, which says: ‘The Federal Travel Regulation states that a rest period en route or upon arrival would invalidate the need for premium-class travel. Our interview with General Services Ad- ministration officials further con- firmed that if a flight arrived at its des- tination (either on the outbound or return) by the evening, at such a time that the traveler was provided a rea- sonable opportunity to get a night of rest, the traveler had a rest stop on arrival and should not be entitled to premium-class travel for that particu- lar itinerary.’ “At the moment, I live and work in Madagascar, the fourth-largest island in the world, lying off the southeast coast of Africa. I would invite you to come and visit us. It is incredibly poor, but the people are friendly and the scenery is spectacular. However, I do need to warn you that for your return to Washington, the very short- est route available takes 24 hours and 48 minutes. It leaves our lovely capi- tal at 1:30 a.m. and arrives at Wash- ington’s Dulles Airport at 6:18 p.m., having crossed eight time zones. “That should not be a problem for you; unlike me, I expect you would be able to go home for a restful night’s sleep. (I would have to check into a hotel.) Next morning, bright and early, you would report for work and that ‘overnight rest period’ will have meant that — despite the 25 hours of travel — you will not have traveled in business class. I only hope that on the first day back nobody asks you to make any important decisions because — trust me on this — you will be far from your normal alert and produc- tive self! “This is the flaw in your report from my perspective. It is easy to quantify the taxpayer dollars spent to pay for our travel (and, by the way, I completely agree these should be spent wisely and frugally). However, you make no attempt to quantify what is more difficult to measure — low- ered productivity, damaged morale, impaired decision-making. Believe me, no matter how short or long the trip, I want the negotiating team going to face off against the North Koreans to address their nuclear capabilities traveling in premium class! I expect, when you think about it, you will prob- ably agree.” George N. Sibley Deputy Chief of Mission Embassy Antananarivo We Did Not Abandon Afghanistan The December article by Thomas Eighmy, “Remembering USAID’s Role in Afghanistan, 1985-1994,” touched a sore point with me. I was the USAID representative for Af- ghanistan in 1992, operating from Embassy Islamabad, with two satel- lite offices: one in Peshawar and one in Quetta. Over the years it has become leg- end that the U.S. government turned its back on Afghanistan as soon as the Soviets withdrew in the late 1980s. That simply is not true. As Eighmy (who was an outstand- ing officer on the O/AID/REP staff) points out, the USAID program for Afghanistan grew to a level of about $250 million. I no longer remem- ber the exact totals, but my recollec- tion is that the program was still a robust $100 million or so in 1992, with a total U.S. Foreign Service staff of about 18 officers and scores of Afghan and Pakistani employees between the main office in the embassy and the two satellite offices, not to mention the many NGOs and contractors who assisted us in carrying out the pro- grams. That level of commitment was still going several years after the col- lapse of the Soviet Union. Eighmy correctly reminds us that in April 1992, four U.S. government officials were prepared to fly to Kabul to reopen the U.S. embassy. They included Peter Tomsen, who would have become the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, an administrative officer, a diplomatic security officer and me. Had the circumstances allowed, we would have flown into Kabul that April or May and, I am convinced, a robust USAID program operated from within Afghanistan would have followed quickly. At the time, there was talk of spending over $200 million to start a new program. But we were unable to make that flight, because a deal that had been brokered with the United Nations to make Kabul a kind of “international city” was suddenly broken by the var- ious factions of the mujahedeen that had moved into the city and begun tearing it apart. 6 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 8 L ETTERS