Better answers for Afghanistan

The following letter to the editor in today's Washington post demonstrates a very different attitude than that of Matthew Hoh and is seems to be from the kind of person I would like to have as a fellow Foreign Service Officer.

Better answers for Afghanistan

I agree with many of former Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh's criticisms of the international effort in Afghanistan ["U.S. official resigns over Afghan war," front page, Oct. 27], particularly our failures to demand that the Afghan government address corruption and, relatedly, to give non-ideological insurgents incentives to stop planting roadside bombs. That said, I don't agree with Mr. Hoh that there is nothing here worth fighting for.

Our divergent conclusions are no doubt the products of our experiences. Mr. Hoh watched close friends die in Iraq and was then assigned to Zabul, a province that can make Kandahar and Helmand look like Disney World. I watched close friends write textbooks in Palo Alto, Calif., and then volunteered for Kabul, a province where I am greeted at work every day by cheerful, 18- to 30-year-old Afghan men and women eager to bring peace, stability and, yes, even democracy to their troubled country.

Is my experience typical? No. But from what I understand, neither is Mr. Hoh's. Most of Afghanistan is still somewhere between the Kabul bubble and the Zabul blunder, skeptical of embracing foreign troops but loath to return to life under the Taliban.

It is this undecided majority that represents our ever-shrinking window of opportunity. If those people can be convinced that a democratic government is their best bet for a brighter future, a more stable Afghanistan and a more secure world seem achievable. If not, we will have wasted billions of dollars and thousands of lives. But we're not at that point yet. As long as the undecided majority remains undecided, there's some hope, some possibility and something here worth fighting for.

Benjamin Joseloff, Kabul
The writer is a fellow at the Afghanistan Legal Education Project.

Apparently Word Is Getting Out

From Abu Muqawama: Putting Matthew Hoh in Context and Asking Hard Questions of the Washington Post

I particularly like this part:


"Matt Hoh is NOT a Foreign Service Officer. This basic fact, central to the article and its headline, is wrong, despite the wording in his letter.

Matt is a "3161" State Department employee, a special category of temporary appointments brought on for 12 month assignments in certain areas of expertise-- engineering, ag, business, rule of law, etc. Some may sign on for a second 12-month tour.

This is a very different thing than being an FSO-- a commissioned, career diplomat who is a generalist and is appointed not as a result of an online job application and single interview (sometimes over the phone), but after a series of competitive oral, written, and physical exams.

Referring to Matt as a "U.S. Official" is about as accurate as referring to a postal employee as a U.S. official."

Explaining Hoh's Employment

A comment on yesterday's Washington Independent post about the resignation of civilian expert Matthew Hoh, a temporary employee of the State Department serving in Afghanistan, by Steve Donnelly, who served in a PRT in Iraq, explains Hoh's employment far better than I did. I have copied it below:

"For clarity, there is a federal provision, heavily used by OHRA & CPA and their successor agencies to staff Iraq reconstruction, under which certain critically needed people are specially appointed to the government for a limited period of time, not to exceed 3 years. The provision is 5 USC 3161, and the civilian experts and specially skilled appointees are typically referred to as 3161's.

They are neither contractors, because they have no contract, nor foreign service officers, because they are not in the foreign service. They are special federal appointees supposedly appointed based on their unique and critically needed skills.

One important provision of 5 USC 3161 is that the need for that specific appointee must be verified as a condition of the appointment.

Some head scratching may be warranted as to Hoh's special appointment under 3161 as a senior governance adviser in Afghanistan inasmuch as his work history indicates no background in local or provincial government operation that would, theoretically, serve as the basis for a 3161 special appointment as a Senior Governance Adviser.

My understanding is that State announced a few months ago that they would be filling the civilian expert staff positions in Afghanistan with military officers due to the treacherous nature of the operating environment. So, unlike Iraq, it is kind of a non-civilian civilian surge.

This instead of the actual civilian experts with substantive experience in local/provincial politics & governance, community engagement, and essential services who answered Ambassador Crocker's emergency call to Iraq in 2007/2008.

As one of the few dozen of senior civilian expert special appointees who left wife and life to answer Ambassador Crocker's call for a "Civilian Surge" in Iraq, I am proud of my service, and of the work that myself and a small contingent of actual civilian experts accomplished there.

There were plenty of challenges and frustrations, and especially with the US bureaucracy, experienced by city managers from Miami Beach, transportation engineers from Anaheim, and planners from Crofton, during our appointments and service; but the point was to work the problem.

There was no shortage of Iraqis who had lost family members to the US and had every personal reason to hate us, nor, according to SIGIR, were all of our US reconstruction efforts successful. But the civilians of both countries found common ground, begrudgingly or otherwise.

I have trouble with the idea that a special appointee, who volunteered to serve in a very difficult assignment, should quit so easily after four months, and pass up on abundant opportunities to accomplish his primary goals through some other means, whether at the Embassy, State or otherwise.

Just quitting, and tarring the system through the press is no way to get the mission he swore to pursue accomplished.

Moreover, for those relatives with civilians and military serving in harm's way, these kinds of personal opinions of currently serving federal employees, against the context of serious war-fighting, are particularly hard-felt.

I see on your blog references that Foreign Service Officers are distancing themselves from Hoh. For myself and my Iraq "civilian" surge colleagues, I can only make the same point---he was not a civilian expert in governance either.

Plenty of head-scratching to be done.

Steve Donnelly, AICP
Crofton, Maryland
Former Senior Urban Planning Adviser, Iraq (PRT, 2007/8)"

And this from State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly:

"Without minimizing the obvious passion and depth of feeling of Mr. Hoh in terms of his perception of the mission in Afghanistan, yes, I would draw a distinction between his situation and somebody who'd been in the foreign service and had a stake in the foreign service for 20 years or more."

Before The Inevitable Criticism Starts...

There is a story in today's Washington Post about Matthew Hoh, who is called a Foreign Service Officer, resigning in protest over the war in Afghanistan.

As soon as I heard a few days ago that this story was going to break, I had flashbacks to the whole directed assignments to Iraq debacle. The blogsosphere is already full of this story (google listed 164 hits in just the past 24 hours) and I am just waiting for the inevitable criticism to start: "Those Foreign Service Officers are just a bunch of cowards. They don't want to serve in dangerous places while our men and women in uniform are dying."

So for the record, he wasn't a Foreign Service Officer in the terms you think of. He was hired as a non-career, one-year renewable hire. He was one of those folks hired directly for his experience and expertise, the very kind many have said should be hired rather than the Department going through the time-consuming process of selecting generalists via the Foreign Service Officers Test (FSOT) selection process (which can take a year or more to navigate).

I am not saying we shouldn't make such hires. I have not yet served in Afghanistan, so I can't judge what he experienced or his analysis of it. But I can say that he is not someone who took the written and then oral exam, who went through A-100, who did a consular tour whether he was consular coned or not. So whether you agree or disagree with his motives and decisions, don't direct your praise or criticism at us. We are not one-year renewable hires. We are career officers.

Also for the record, the directed assignments debacle was nonsense from the start. The Department never needed to direct a single person to Iraq and Afghanistan because career officers have and continue to step up and serve in those and other dangerous posts. Of the 1,000 needed in Afghanistan, there are only 80 vacancies. The missions in Afghanistan and Iraq are the only missions staffed at close to 100% precisely because even though we are short-staffed, we are stepping up. Within a few years, it will be rare to find anyone in the Foreign Service who hasn't served in one of those places, many more than once.

Just saying.

ON EDIT:
State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly clarified for the press that Hoh was not a commissioned Foreign Service Officer. He said that while he does not want to diminish all of the personal sacrifices Hoh made both as a marine and during his four months as a non-career employee with the State Department, it was important to recognize the difference between his resignation and the resignations of Foreign Service Officers who had years invested in careers in the Department.

To date, he said, while there have been resignations of FSOs in protest over Iraq and Bosnia, NO Foreign Service Officers have resigned over Afghanistan.