The Foreign Service Journal, October 2013

20 OCTOBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Defense University con- vened a group of senior civilian and military veter- ans of Iraq and Afghanistan. They advised the State Department to opt for a small contingent of highly experienced diplomats in postwar Libya, rather than the huge footprint being employed in Iraq and Afghanistan. They did so because they felt a small cadre of highly experienced officers could best engage the new government and civil society, encouraging Libyans to rebuild their own country. That model previously suc- ceeded in Colombia and El Salvador, among other places. Weighing the Risks So who should decide which risks are acceptable? Rajiv Chandrasekaran wrote admiringly in the Aug. 13, 2011, Washington Post about Carter Malkasian, a State Department temporary hire who served for two years in the Garmser district of Afghanistan’s Helmand province. There he basically rewrote his own job description and security protocols to reflect local conditions. “Carter Sahib” learned Pashto, adapted to local customs and won the trust of local elders, thus gaining great if subtle influ- ence. He even eschewed an armored convoy, instead traveling in a pickup truck with the district police chief. When I asked Malkasian if he ever worried that the police chief would betray him to the Taliban, he responded that there was a bigger down- side to betraying him than supporting him. As that comment shows, Malkasian took calculated risks that he deemed acceptable. But not all State employees have that luxury. In April, 25 year-old FSO Anne Smedinghoff and four other Americans were killed by an improvised explosive device while attempting to deliver donated textbooks to a school near a coalition base in Zabul province. In the midst of our mourning over the tragic loss of an aspir- My own close calls in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 quickly made me averse to asking my staff to assume risks I would not accept. ing officer, few people asked why a dozen U.S. govern- ment civilians and soldiers were outside the wire, on foot, for what was essentially a photo op. The State Department is unlikely ever to convene a Zabul Accountability Review Board, given that similar incidents in Afghanistan and Iraq have been exempt from the review requirement since 2005. So we may never find out just who in Kabul decided such a mission was worth risking a dozen lives— much less why. But the Foreign Service ought to be asking that question anyway. The challenge, of course, is striking a balance between risk aversion and reckless- ness, to arrive at the reason- able amount of risk to attain policy objectives. Too often, the assessment comes not from the officers actually facing the danger, but from policymakers and career civil servants who may well never be in such a situation. The resulting bad deci- sions affect not only FSOs, but local nationals, contractors and members of nongovernmental organizations who work for or with the U.S. government—as well as innocent bystanders. My own close calls in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 quickly made me averse to asking my staff to assume risks I would not accept. This sometimes meant refusing orders to undertake activities I deemed not worth the danger to my staff. (Even then, I sweated every convoy we sent into the red zone.) Personal exposure is a healthy caveat when decision-makers are assessing the risks they want others to take. Expeditionary diplomacy and development missions are often partnered—or led, as in the case of provincial reconstruc- tion teams—by the military. And whereas State and USAID strive for zero casualties, our colleagues at the Department of Defense only seek to reduce them, since they view them as a necessary cost of waging war. This is an important distinction to bear in mind. The author (at left) visits the Taza Power Plan in northern Iraq in 2004.