Diplomats fear 'death sentence'
02/11/2007 12:08 - (SA) Rice makes worldwide appeal US a 'nation of discontent' Iraq deaths drop to new low Washington - US diplomats fear a "death sentence" if they are forced to serve in Iraq and bureaucrats are said to be so thin on the ground that billions of dollars in war funding risks going astray. The mood of US civil servants is turning gloomier even as the administration grapples to counter criticism that its armed forces are overstretched by Iraq and the global "war on terror". The bureaucratic front of the Iraq mission has long been bedevilled by insecurity in the field and the reluctance of US government experts to serve in a conflict zone. "Provincial reconstruction teams" (PRTs) are short of the kinds of experts in engineering, agriculture and trade that President George W Bush has said are essential to Iraq's recovery. And now, the State Department's foreign service officers are up in arms over a directive that will force some 50 diplomats to serve in Iraq on pain of dismissal unless more volunteers are found. Keith Crane, an expert in post-conflict economies at the Rand Corporation, said he sympathised with the rebellious diplomats, following a bad-tempered meeting held last week at the State Department. 'Ridiculous thing to try to achieve' "If I were in their shoes, my big question would be, 'What is the job I'm being asked to do, and is that job likely to result in a reduction of violence?'" he said. "If you're sent to some PRT and are told you should throw money at small businesses in a war zone, that's a waste of time and a ridiculous thing to try to achieve," Crane argued. Complaints were voiced at a meeting on Wednesday of hundreds of diplomats and senior officials to hear Harry Thomas, the State Department's director of human resources, describe the new policy of forced deployments. Jack Crotty, a member of the foreign service for 36 years, was among the most vocal, calling the forced deployment to the US embassy in Baghdad or in Iraqi PRTs a "potential death sentence". US diplomats have not been forced to serve abroad against their will since the Vietnam War era, but now the embassy in Baghdad - the biggest in the world - lacks dozens of officials to staff its sprawling activities. The State Department has not received applications for about 50 of 250 Baghdad jobs to be filled by mid-2008, said Thomas, after the department announced the new rules on October 26. But Mark Bellamy, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who is now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, queried "how do you do diplomacy and development work in an environment as violent as this?" "And there are widespread misgivings about the nature of the mission," he said, citing the siege mentality of life in Baghdad's Green Zone and the struggles faced by PRTs in Iraq's outlying provinces. Worrying lack of control Diplomats complain that they are being asked to do the jobs of experts in alien fields owing to the inability of other US government departments, such as agriculture and commerce, to send their own people to PRTs. "Expecting a bureaucrat at the Department of Agriculture, whose primary job is to write big cheques to rice farmers in Arkansas, to effect change in Iraq is fundamentally wrong and misguided," said Crane. "In real conflict zones, with people getting shot at all the time, you just can't do economic reconstruction," he added. With the Pentagon too stretched to supply its own security teams to US diplomats, the State Department has come to rely on the expensive services of private companies such as Blackwater. The role of the hired guns is mired in controversy after Blackwater guards opened fire at a Baghdad road junction in September, leaving 17 Iraqi civilians dead. Subsequent inquiries have suggested a worrying lack of control over the money extended to the security contractors, and for the more than $18bn earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction in general. One government audit said that until earlier this year the State Department had only two staffers in Iraq overseeing as many as 700 employees of the security contractor DynCorp. The result was "an environment vulnerable to waste and fraud", the report said. News24 is now available on your cellphone. Click here to get News24 headlines on your Facebook profile.
Alrededor de cincuenta puestos en la Embajada de Estados Unidos en Bagdad siguen vacantes pero no hay voluntarios; el Departamento de Estado ha declarado que si siguen vacantes, comenzarían a forzar las asignaciones. "Debemos seguir adelante con la identificación de oficiales para servir si es necesario dirigir asignaciones", declaró la Secretaria de Estado Condoleezza Rice este viernes.

"Si otros dan un paso al frente, como algunos han hecho, encontraremos cómo ocupar estos nuevos trabajos como hemos hecho antes – con voluntarios. No obstante, no importa cómo se ocupen, estos trabajos deben ser ocupados."

Desde que la vacante de 48 diplomáticos en la embajada fue anunciada, tan sólo 15 diplomáticos se han ofrecido para trabajar allí; las asignaciones diplomáticas son prácticamente siempre ocupadas por voluntarios.

Sin embargo, en la reunión del Departamento de Estado, Jack Crotty – un veterano del Departamento de Estado con 36 años – subrayó el principal problema: es "una potencial sentencia de muerte". "Una cosa es si alguien cree en lo que pasa allí y se ofrece", decía Crotty, "pero es otra cosa enviar a alguien en una asignación forzada", prosiguió.

No obstante, el Embajador de Estados Unidos para Iraq, Ryan Crocker, respondió que tales miedos eran equívocos: "debemos ir y servir, no debatir la política, no estar de acuerdo con ella".

Mark Bellamy, un antiguo secretario de estado asistente, quien se encuentra en el Centro de Estudios Estratégicos e Internacionales, también cuestionó la misión diplomática. "Cómo se hace la diplomacia y el trabajo de desarrollo en un ambiente tan violento como éste", demandó Bellamy. former deputy assistant secretary of state who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, also questioned the entire diplomatic mission.

La Zona Verde puede ser un lugar desmoralizador para que un diplomático viva. Además del riesgo físico, la violencia que rodea la vida cotidiana en Bagdad crea una atmósfera aislada. La idea de viajar más allá de la zona fortificada es estrafalario y sólo bajo gran guardia.

La única asociación que los diplomáticos tienen con iraquíes promedio es con aquellos que trabajan en la embajada. También estos iraquíes temen por sus vidas, ya que son catalogados de "contribuidores".