The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020

48 MAY 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Other Memorials Iraq and Afghanistan The next major change in plaque criteria took place in 2006. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had dramatically increased the number of American civilian employees in harm’s way overseas. In war-zone Iraq, for example, FSOs led dozens of Provincial Reconstruction Teams on which Foreign Service members were a small minority. The AFSA Governing Board became concerned that members of the Foreign Service could, in time, become a small minority of those honored on the plaques. Were that to happen, it would undermine the two purposes articulated by Secretary Stimson in 1933: to increase public appreciation for the sacrifices of the Foreign Service, and to inspire a spirit of sacrifice in future generations of Foreign Service members. The Governing Board also noted that many agencies or employee groups representing other federal employees who work at embas- sies—including defense attachés, Marine security AFSA President Barbara Stephenson (at podium), with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (far left), addresses Foreign Service colleagues and family members of the deceased at the ceremony on May 4, 2018. (Inset) At the May 2, 2014, Memorial Ceremony, AFSA honors those who lost their lives while on active duty. AFSA/JOAQUINSOSA The AFSAMemorial Plaques are not the only memo- rials displayed at the State Department. In the C Street lobby there are also individual plaques honor- ing: Foreign Service Nationals killed in the line of duty; Foreign Service family members who died overseas; U.S. Information Agency employees killed between 1950 and 1998, before the agency dissolved in 1999; federal employees who died in an airplane crash during a Department of Commerce trade mission in Croatia in 1996; employees and family members killed in the 1998 attacks on Embassies Nairobi and Dar es Salaam; dip- lomatic couriers; and military service members killed in the 1980 Iran hostage rescue attempt. And State’s 21st Street lobby has a memorial to Americans and foreign nationals who died supporting the department’s criminal justice and rule of law assistance pro- grams overseas. Elsewhere, at USAID head- quarters in the Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., the agency’s Memorial Wall contains the names of Foreign Service officers and other employees who died over- seas in the line of duty. —J.K.N. BOBBURGESS