The Foreign Service Journal, October 2018

16 OCTOBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL administration, accompanied the Secre- tary on his recent visit to Pakistan and India. He has been tasked with bringing about a political solution in Afghanistan. It was the fourth special envoy appointment in a month by an admin- istration that has so far avoided naming high-level diplomats to focus on special problem areas, AP observed on Sept. 5, and part of Pompeo’s effort to restore “swagger” to the State Department, which suffered significant losses to its senior ranks under his predecessor, Rex Tillerson. On Aug. 16, Secretary Pompeo named Brian Hook, senior policy adviser to the Secretary of State and head of the Policy Planning Staff at State, special represen- tative for Iran. Hook will lead the newly established Iran Action Group. Stephen Biegun, former Ford Motor vice president of international govern- mental affairs, was named special rep- resentative for North Korea on Aug. 23. Biegun served in a number of national security and foreign policy roles prior to joining Ford in 2004, including as an adviser to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). And on Aug. 17, Career Ambassador James Jeffrey was appointed Special Representative for Syria Engagement. The career diplomat is a three-time U.S. ambassador, to Albania (2002- 2004), Turkey (2008-2010) and Iraq (2010-2012), and also served as deputy national security advisor (2007-2008). Many in the foreign policy com- munity are skeptical of the value of special envoys. With their own staffs, they tend to create a separate foreign policy bureaucracy that operates inde- pendently of the State Department’s geographic bureaus. “Special envoys can offer much more consistent focus on an issue,” Steven Heydemann, a professor of govern- ment at Smith College and fellow at the Brookings Institution, told AP. But he said that without a clear division of labor between a special envoy and other diplomats at State, the positions “can be a source of confusion and mixed mes- saging.” Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said special envoys bring a “sin- gular focus” to complex foreign policy challenges and “the authority to cut across agencies and regions in order to advise the secretary on the overarching strategy.” They ensure that all expertise within the department is brought to bear, she said. A cross the map, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, new militant organiza- tions continue to appear on the radar, and Stanford University’s Mapping Militants Project helps track them. While the website does not offer actual interactive maps, it contains “interactive diagrams” that map out relationships between the groups and show how they evolve over time. The Mapping Militants Project seeks to “find patterns in the evolution of militant organizations in specified conflict theatres and to discover the causes and consequences of their evolution.” Users can select “Map Options” to display features such as group leadership, size and ideology. One can view active and/or inactive organizations, organization events, as well as the rise and decline of different groups over time. Select the “Maps” tab at the top of any page to find basic descriptions of the vari- ous groups, broken down by geographic area. The break- down includes international, Middle East and North Africa, Asia, Central Asia, Europe and Latin America. Also on the “Map” page, each group listing has a link to that group’s inter- active diagram, which opens in a new page. The project was developed by Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, which is housed within the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. A National Science Foundation–Department of Defense partnership provided start-up funding. Profiles are updated regularly to keep information current. SITE OF THE MONTH: MAPPING MILITANTS PROJECT : WEB.STANFORD.EDU/GROUP/MAPPINGMILITANTS/CGI-BIN