Negroponte Advises New Diplomats to Seek Challenging Posts
21 February NY Times - Negroponte Advises New Diplomats to Seek Challenging Posts by Thom Shanker.
Quote:
Entering his first full week as deputy secretary of state, John D. Negroponte on Tuesday urged a graduating class of new diplomats to seek overseas assignments in challenging, difficult and even hazardous posts.
Mr. Negroponte, only the third career Foreign Service officer to hold the deputy position, said the diplomatic corps was shifting its weight from historic centers of politics and policy to increase the American presence in world capitals more subject to turmoil.
Potential assignments in Iraq were very much on the minds of many students at the Foreign Service Institute, where 4 members of this class of 75 will go to work in Baghdad or with provincial reconstruction teams throughout the country.
Mr. Negroponte’s comments will resonate across the diplomatic corps because of an animated interagency debate here in Washington about the proper way to share the burden among the government’s civilian agencies and the military to carry out the Bush administration’s new Iraq strategy...
From the Foreign Service Journal
Iraq Rebuilding Short on Qualified Civilians
24 February Washington Post - Iraq Rebuilding Short on Qualified Civilians by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.
Quote:
In Diyala, the vast province northeast of Baghdad where Sunnis and Shiites are battling for primacy with mortars and nighttime abductions, the U.S. government has contracted the job of promoting democracy to a Pakistani citizen who has never lived or worked in a democracy.
The management of reconstruction projects in the province has been assigned to a Border Patrol commander with no reconstruction experience. The task of communicating with the embassy in Baghdad has been handed off to a man with no background in drafting diplomatic cables. The post of agriculture adviser has gone unfilled because the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided just one of the six farming experts the State Department asked for a year ago.
"The people our government has sent to Iraq are all dedicated, well-meaning people, but are they really the right people -- the best people -- for the job?" asked Kiki Skagen Munshi, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer who, until last month, headed the team in Diyala that included the Pakistani democracy educator and the Border Patrol commander. "If you can't get experts, it's really hard to do an expert job." ...