The Foreign Service Journal, December 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2018 25 FSJ: Y ou served in many different countries and capacities over the course of your 37-year FS career. Which of your postings stand out the most in your memory, and why? REN: Iran was a wonderful tour. There were only two of us; we covered about 20 percent of the country, and there was a lot to report on. Algeria was my first ambassadorship. There was an insurgency and a blanket death threat against all foreigners, so we lived on the compound but developed a lot of ways to make contacts. It was very challenging, not least because of Washing- ton pressure to cut the post more than I thought wise. But I was and remain very proud of the work we did. I had a great staff, including Robert Ford, a brilliant officer. FSJ: Is it fair to say that your work in Iraq with the Coalition Provincial Authority was unique compared with all the rest of your Foreign Service assignments? How did you approach it? REN: In Iraq the CPA was unique, because as the occupying power we were governing the country. That is almost a throw- back to being a colonial power, except that we wanted to leave and to do so quickly. Yet at the same time many in Washington and CPA wanted fundamentally to change the political structure, and even the political culture, of the country. I don’t think we reflected much, if at all, on how contradictory these goals were. We made a lot of mistakes, and a lot has been written about them. I was a sort of utility diplomat for Ambassador Paul Bremer. My post was director of the Foreign Minis- try, and I was fortunate that I had a longtime association with Iraqi Acting Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zibari. However, I took on a variety of tasks. Early on I worked on negotiat- ing a memorandum of understand- ing between State and the Defense Department for the management of police training (then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld subse- quently overturned it). At one point I worked on making sure our people in Najaf were supported during the Shia uprising. I did a lot of work with the Kurds. I had known many of the Kurdish leaders when I served in Iran, and they came in as refugees after the collapse of the 1974 upris- ing against Saddam. Then I worked with them again when I was director of the Iran-Iraq office at the State Department. One very frustrating experience concerned trying to set up a foundation with $100 million to get Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen in Kirkuk to work together. This was the brilliant idea of Emma Sky, who knew Kirkuk well. It might not have solved all the prob- lems, but it would have given the different communities reason to cooperate. It’s too long a story for all the details here, although I tell it in my autobiography, Three Embassies, Four Wars: A Personal Memoir. But the bottom line was we got everything done and had all the communities on board. But then, because nobody told Emma or me of the secret decision to transfer sover- eignty to Iraq two days earlier than planned, the transfer of $100 million was rejected by the Federal Finance Bank in the United States as being too late by four hours; we no longer controlled the money. The foundation never came into being. I stayed on for another year after the CPA ended and worked with our military a lot. It was fascinating work despite some risk. We tried to accomplish a lot, but the instability set loose by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein will take years to settle down. FSJ: You were chief of mission three times: to Algeria, Bahrain and Afghanistan. Could you tell us a little about each posting? Ron Neumann, with Elaine Neumann holding the Bible, is sworn in by Secretary of State Colin Powell, as U.S. ambassador to Bahrain in 2001. American Diplomacy Award