The Foreign Service Journal, September 2011

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 31 staffed, outgunned and underfunded—but you’re also ready to grasp your “opportunity to excel.” Now the fun starts. You attend a meeting in a room filled with 30 to 40 Army majors and lieutenant colonels, eagerly awaiting the State Department’s plan for taking over post se- curity. These green-suited col- leagues, most of whom are on their fourth deployment to Iraq, are excited because the timing of the plan directly affects their final departure date. You bravely stand up and brief your colleagues. As they ask ques- tions, the plan rapidly turns un- recognizable because of all the holes blown into it. But rest easy: It’s only Monday. You have six more working days until you have to go through the process again. Doing Our Part After a week goes by, you look around and suddenly real- ize that you are the only State employee for 100 miles. When your phone rings, the person on the other end almost always gives his military rank and name, followed by some letter and numbers (USF-I J-4, 4th ID G-4, 4/1 Cav. S-9, etc.) that end with “LNO” (liaison office). You are bombarded with logistical and security consider- ations until your head is spinning. You capture the moment to excel, make a decision, hang up the phone and say to your- self, “So that is how it is done.” Next thing you know, your e- mail inbox blows up with messages that half-thank you and half-threaten to report you if you ever do that again. On the surface, the project appears to be a straight-up landlord (U.S. Army)-approved renovation, something facil- ities managers do every day. But the construction is only a small piece of the pie. Once you start to hammer the square peg of expeditionary diplomacy into the round hole of De- partment of State regulations, the process becomes quite complicated. After all, State doesn’t build “CHUvilles,” as communi- ties made up of containerized housing units are familiarly known, on forward operating bases every day. You have to figure out how to comply with fire safety codes, the Ameri- cans with Disabilities Act and many other regulations. Combine that with the logistical complexities of transferring Defense Department equipment to State, which has never been done before, and your days are filled with a multitude of issues that were missing from the brochures you read be- fore coming here. Periodically a horn sounds, followed by an announce- ment: “Incoming, Incoming!” You immediately drop what you’re doing and scramble for one of a hundred bunkers scattered around the facility. If you’re lucky, you hear a muf- fled explosion in the distance — if you’re less lucky, you hear one close to you. But soon you get back to work. The process is labor-intensive and frustrating at times, but at the end of the day, we facility managers in the field are laying the groundwork for a revolutionary new concept. State has always been on the front lines in unstable parts of the world; but now we are no longer confined to major cities, or hidden in fortress- es out in the countryside. Making It Work Brief as my time in Mosul was, I believe my experience is a glimpse into the future. Far from being “risk-averse,” the Foreign Service is operating in areas it never even imagined before. The need to conduct surge operations in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti and so on only reinforces the need for expeditionary diplomacy. State has proven it can sustain operations in Iraq even under the most challenging conditions. And we Foreign Service facility managers will be regularly called upon to make it work, as we have done so many times in the past. Far from being “risk-averse,” the Foreign Service is operating in areas it never even imagined before.