The Foreign Service Journal, June 2006

only way to get the attention of people so foolish as not to take full advantage of the generous TSP provisions is to hit them over the head, which your very straight language did. I hope FSJ readers listen, for our country at the moment simply refuses to save. Very dangerous. I would like to think that the Foreign Service community is more sensible, more able to foresee future needs and to plan for them. Bill Harrop Ambassador, retired Washington, D.C. More to the Colombia USAID Story I enjoyed Phillip McLean’s article “Colombia is Complicated” in the April FSJ. However, befitting the title of the article, the motivation behind the Colombian economic minister’s decision to order the closure of the USAID mission in 1976 is rather complicated. As chief of USAID’s Caribbean/ North Coast Loan Division, I back- stopped the Colombia portfolio dur- ing this period. At that time, USAID was providing annual cash transfer assistance in the form of sector loans in three strategic areas — education, health and agriculture. The loan agreements of these cash transfers obliged the Colombian government, which received the dollars as balance of payments assistance to the Central Bank, to invest an equivalent amount of pesos in these three sectors over and above their own budgetary alloca- tions. The objective was to seek a major increment in social-sector investments by the government. This model was in effect for sever- al years and resulted in significant gains. Loans totaling over $300 mil- lion were signed and disbursed annu- ally. However, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. While performing my oversight function, I encountered evidence that the government, faced with increas- ing inflation and rising foreign exchange reserves, had “sterilized” $300 million in the Central Bank, in effect not issuing local currency to the budget, and had failed to inform USAID that it was not meeting the agreed-upon targets regarding budget allocations. (In retrospect, USAID’s zeal to meet annual obligation targets had overrun itself and the Colombian absorptive capacity.) After further investigation confirmed my original assertion, my office prepared and delivered to the government, via the American embassy, an official U.S. government bill of collection for $300 million. The Colombian government grud- gingly paid the amount and subse- quently requested that the USAID mission be closed. So, as Paul Harvey says, you now know the rest of the story. Ronald F. Venezia FSO, retired North Bethesda, Md. Embassy Kabul History Just a quick correction to Joseph Schreiber’s April “Speaking Out” on opening new embassies: we left Embassy Kabul in 1989, not 1979. I know this because, as acting deputy chief of mission, I was part of the last group to leave in late January 1989, after Secretary Baker ordered our evacuation in anticipation of the com- pletion of Soviet military withdrawal. Also, one other minor detail: tech- nically, Embassy Kabul never actually closed; it just lost its American contin- gent. Our Afghan employees loyally stayed behind, taking care of the grounds until we reoccupied the embassy 13 years later, in the wake of the defeat of the Taliban. James F. Schumaker FSO, retired OSCE Project Coordinator Kiev Where’s the Fiction? What happened? Have you done away with the summer fiction issue? I hope not! While I don’t have a story to submit this year (too busy with my memoir), the summer fiction issue helped launch me into a writing career, and I suspect it has similarly helped many other FS writers. Foreign Service careers generate adventures and bring out the ‘wannabe’ writer in many of us. The Journal ’s summer fiction contest each year was encouragement to try and, in my case, to succeed in writing seri- ously for publication. Rather than drop this valuable source for begin- ning FS writers, I would make more of it — it could even be a money- maker for the FSJ — by anthologizing and publishing the entries and selling them in book form. I’m sure all or most of the authors would agree. Witness the success of AFSA’s Inside a U.S. Embassy. I hope the Editorial Board changes its mind. While I haven’t had stories published in the FSJ in a couple of years, I had plans to keep trying. Mary Cameron Kilgour USAID FSO, retired Gainesville, Fla. Editor’s Note: We are still holding the annual fiction contest. However, we will be spreading out publication of the winning stories over the coming year, rather than running them all in a single issue as in the past. Context Matters In order for the U.S. to effectively apply “transformational diplomacy,” it is essential to analyze thoroughly all the basic elements that have con- tributed and are in play in each coun- try’s society. While we are all human beings, each country’s way of thinking and acting has been conditioned by all that has happened in its formation, and it would be wrong and ineffective 8 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 6 L E T T E R S