Diplomats facing “draft” for Iraq
WASHINGTON - The State Department will order as many as 50 U.S. diplomats to take posts in Iraq next year because of expected shortfalls in filling openings there, the first such large-scale forced assignment since the Vietnam War.
On Monday, 200 to 300 announcements will be sent to selected “prime candidates” for 50 open positions, said Harry Thomas, director general of the Foreign Service. Some are expected to respond by volunteering, he said. If an insufficient number volunteers by Nov. 12, a department panel will determine which ones will be ordered to report to the Baghdad embassy next summer.
“If people say they want to go to Iraq, we will take them,” Thomas said in an interview. But “we have to move now, because we can’t hold up the process.” Those on the list were selected by factors including grade, specialty and language skill, as well as “people who have not had a recent hardship tour,” he said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice previewed a possible shortfall in June, when she ordered that positions in Iraq be filled before any other openings at the State Department headquarters in Washington or abroad are available.
At the time, Rice said it was her “fervent hope” that sufficient numbers would continue to volunteer. Her order followed a request by Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Baghdad for an increase in the number and quality of economic and political officers.
Although a few skilled individuals were ordered to “hard-to-fill” diplomatic posts in past decades, there have been no mass “directed assignments” in the Foreign Service since 1969, when an entire class of 15 to 20 junior officers was sent to Vietnam, Thomas said.
Those who receive the selection letters will have 10 days to file a written notice of objection. The review panel will consider the objections, but Thomas made clear that a serious, documented medical condition is likely to be the only valid excuse. The department has the authority to fire anyone who refuses to accept an assignment.
The union representing U.S. diplomats has officially objected to the Iraq call-up.
“We believe, and we have told the secretary of state, that directing unarmed civilians who are untrained for combat into a war zone should be done on a voluntary basis,” said Steve Kashkett, vice president of the American Foreign Service Association. “Directed assignments, we fear, can be detrimental to the individual, to the post, and to the Foreign Service as a whole.”
Kashkett said the association had contended in meetings with Rice and Thomas that a diplomatic draft is unnecessary and that “thousands” of diplomats have volunteered for Iraq over the past five years. “We’re not weenies, we’re not cowards, we’re not cookie pushers in Europe,” he said. “This has never been necessary in a generation.”
Thomas also praised the service and noted that more than 1,200 of 11,500 State Department personnel have served in what has become the largest U.S. embassy in history. But its sheer size - about 6,000 people, including several hundred Foreign Service officers and specialists and more than 1,000 other Americans, along with third-country nationals and local Iraqi hires - and the truncated, one-year U.S. tours there have strained the service.
The number of diplomatic positions in Iraq has increased every year since the embassy opened in 2004. The expansion of Provincial Reconstruction Teams - made up of diplomats who work with local communities outside of Baghdad - from 10 to 25 last summer as part of President Bush’s new strategy added another 30 Foreign Service personnel and many more outside contractors.
Volunteers have filled all but about 50 slots that will be empty as of next summer, Thomas said.
At congressional hearings last summer, Kashkett testified that medical and psychiatric symptoms have become a growing problem for personnel serving in high-danger zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, the constant need for personnel in Baghdad has drawn new dividing lines between those who have volunteered and those who have not.
Although the secretary of state has the authority to direct assignments, “State Department discipline exists on paper only,” one senior official said. “They rarely make people go to places they don’t want to go.”