A shortage of experienced diplomats in Iraq has forced the United States State Department to force Foreign Service officers to serve in Baghdad against their will. If 48 positions aren’t filled soon then a draft will fill them.
AFSA is the Association the represents 11,500 professional diplomats. In those ranks are 6,500 Foreign Service officers and 5,000 Foreign Service specialists including those working in security. Like many in the military they are refusing to go into Baghdad and like the military those refusals are beginning to fall on deaf ears.
Since the year began in 2003 the diplomats that have served have done so as volunteers. Ambassador Harry K. Thomas, Jr. has said that the well has run dry of those volunteering to go on the dangerous mission.
Thomas has let it be known that if there are not volunteers for the 48 positions that need to be filled by mid-November then the diplomats would be ordered to report to Baghdad under threat of dismissal. If this were to happen it will be the largest diplomatic call-up since the Vietnam War era.
AFSA contends that ‘directed assignments of Foreign Service members into a war zone would be detrimental to the individual, to the post, and to the Foreign Service as a whole. AFSA urged the State Department to find ways to increase the pool of qualified voluntary bidders.’
There have been 200-300 diplomats that are prime candidates to fill the positions that have been left open. Once notified the applicants would have 10 days to either reject or accept the position. If not enough agree to go then there will be diplomats that are ordered to go. The only way out in that case would be a medical condition or extreme personal hardship.
There was a “town hall” meeting last week in Washington where about 300 diplomats showed up to let Thomas know what they thought of the new directive. Jack Crotty told the AP that the policy is tantamount to a “potential death sentence.”
Some of the most vocal critics are the seeking to shift the blame of the early planning in the war. The diplomats are letting it be known that during the early phase of the war in Iraq that there suggestions were ignored by the Defense Department under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld.
‘No country’s diplomatic corps has people with many of the skills now needed in Iraq: oil and gas engineers, electrical grid managers, urban planners, city managers and transportation planners. If any U.S. defence planner in 2003 thought that the State Department and other civilian federal agencies had such people on staff in large numbers (Arabic-speaking or not) ready to rebuild Iraq, they were wrong,’ says John Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA).
Many in the diplomatic service are already stationed abroad. At this time while 21% of the military is stationed abroad there are 68% of the diplomatic services serving the country on foreign soil.
The most serious challenge for the service is that there is a lack of Arabic speakers among the ranks. In 2006 only 10 of the 34,000 employees at the State Department were fluent in Arabic.
The diplomatics do have a right to be worried about their personal safety in Iraq. The preparation time that they receive is much less than during the Vietnam War.
Naland said, ‘Foreign Service members receive very little preparation before deploying to Iraq — less than two-weeks of special training to serve in a combat zone. Contrast that to their predecessors 40 years ago who received four to six months of training before deploying to South Vietnam…’
No one wants to go to Iraq. When even the diplomats are trying to get out of duty perhaps that should be a wake up call to the Bush Administration. The war effort has failed, leave.
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