The Foreign Service Journal, May 2003

decent, kind human being he was. Perhaps my most memorable experience in those long-lost, pre- conflict days in Afghanistan was a sev- eral-day trip by four-wheel-drive vehi- cle, with Arnie, my bride, an Afghan Foreign Ministry colleague and our USIS driver, from Kabul over the Hindu Kush to Mazar-i-Sharif, the ruins of Balkh (Bactria), and a small Turkoman outpost (Akcha). Arnie arranged the trip, and I think some- thing of the romance and adventure of life out there in the “boonies” kept me going when the bureaucracy worked in the opposite direction…. Even after all these years, his absence now hits hard. — Jack Harrod T HE CONSUMMATE POLITICAL OFFICER … When we first arrived in Kabul some 30 years ago as USAID contrac- tors, and rather timorously attended Ambassador Robert Neumann’s “Hail and Farewell,” this tall, good-looking chap bounded over, and addressed us by name, credentials and assignment, saying: “Hi, I’m Arnie Schiffer- decker!” We came to know him as a friend, and we also sometimes observed him in action as the consummate political officer. While seated at the Kabul Hotel with Afghan and American col- leagues from the Ministry of Planning, I would observe Arnie with a lone Afghan contact, doubtlessly dis- cussing the politics of the day. We would avoid eye contact but share the hotel’s plat du jour — fried sheep brains. Our paths diverged and crossed — we were both in Morocco and Pakistan but at different times, and sometimes in D.C. at the same time. And during one of those times, Arnie met Joanie at a crab feast in our back yard. When we had both retired, we were drawn again, by choice, to Afghanistan through volunteer work with the Afghanistan-America Foundation… — Tom & Bev Eighmy W HAT A RNIE TAUGHT ME … I first came to know Arnie some 30 years ago shortly after arriving in Kabul, my second post. A brusque and fragmentary cable from MED announced that the medical clear- ance and travel orders of a depen- dent were cancelled as that person had been ordered into involuntary psychiatric observation by the police. Frantic and without reliable phone communication to the U.S., I cabled the Afghan desk officer — Arnie. Over the next weeks Arnie dealt on my behalf not only with the department’s bureacracy but with police, family members and hospital authorities, until I knew what had happened and how it could be reme- died. Arnie taught me that what makes a life in the Foreign Service possible is not the “system,” but the quality, caring, and support of fellow FSOs and their families. Without Arnie’s humane and energetic intervention at a critical moment, I would have left the Foreign Service in disgust. — Lee Coldren A RNIE ’ S WISE COUNSEL … I was a second-tour economic officer in Casablanca when Arnie was the political counselor in Rabat. M A Y 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 53 A P P R E C I A T I O N