The Foreign Service Journal, September 2009

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 39 I will concede that there are critical conditions in every conflict zone that always need to be con- sidered, whether military or civil- ian officials lead the effort. For example, the one area in Iraq on which I wish we had focused more quickly was the electric grid. We needed to get the lights back on, and we failed. True or not, most of the population in my area of Bagh- dad believed SaddamHussein was better than the Amer- icans at providing electricity. This failure did more harm to our cause than all the rockets fired by Shia extremists. Tangible progress on a quality-of-life issue (more hours of electricity, more water, more honest cops on the street) would have made a big difference. Instead, be- cause the U.S. military was in charge, the Iraqi popula- tion saw us as failing. I urge the Foreign Service to make “governance in conflict zones” a new core compe- tency, for both USAID and State officers. In addition to working with each country’s political lead- ership, we need to figure out how to make local governments work at the micro-level: distributing water and other resources, turning the lights and power back on, and re- viving the business sector. Let me be clear: I am not ar- guing in favor of abandoning traditional diplomacy or shifting all State and USAID’s energies completely over to conflict resolution. Managing the complex relation- ships we have with France, Russia, India, China, etc. will always remain a priority. However, there is no denying that development operations in conflict zones constitute a growth industry, one that is increasingly relevant to modern diplomacy. We need our best and brightest in Haiti just as much as in Moscow. ■ F O C U S The Foreign Service should make “governance in conflict zones” a new core competency, for both USAID and State officers.