From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Thu Aug 13 2009 - 05:40:25 EDT
Internal State Department report criticizes Africa Bureau
Wed, 08/12/2009 - 6:39pm
By Elizabeth Dickinson
http://oig.state.gov/documents/organization/127270.pdf
Do State Department bureaus mirror the turmoil in the regions they cover? If
a critical new report (
<http://oig.state.gov/documents/organization/127270.pdf> pdf) on the Bureau
of African Affairs ("AF" in bureaucratic parlance) is any indication, the
answer may be yes -- at least for certain offices.
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concludes her seven-nation tour of
Africa this week, AF is receiving mixed and strongly worded reviews back in
Washington. A periodic report just released by the department's Office of
the Inspector General praised the work of a bureau strapped for resources
and burdened with demands, while raising serious questions about staffing
shortfalls, planning priorities, and a public diplomacy program that is, in
the report's words, "failed." Compared with other regional bureaus, Acting
Inspector General Harold W. Geisel said in an interview, the Bureau of
African Affairs received a worse review.
"These guys have been operating under incredible pressure, with crises
popping up all over the continent; that's the good news. The bad news is
that the bureau as an entity in the State Department was not operating as
well as we would expect it to operate," said Geisel.
The report seems to have elicited different reactions among officials and
Foreign Service officers within AF, welcomed by some and criticized by
others, who feel that their functional groups were unfairly maligned.
The OIG report, divided into sections to address policy implementation,
resource management, and management controls, was released early this month
and covers an assessment period between April 20 and June 5, 2009. The
evaluation concluded a month after President Barack Obama's nominee for
assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Johnnie Carson, was sworn
in on May 7. The bulk of the research took place while the bureau was under
the leadership of acting Assistant Secretary Phillip Carter III, a rumored
pick to be the next U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia. Carter's interim leadership
was praised by the OIG as a time of "renewal"; Carson is likewise seen as a
strong leader for the bureau.
Yet the report is highly critical of AF in other respects. First, it cites
inadequate staffing, declining morale, lack of qualified job candidates, and
a failure to mentor young officers as key shortcomings. "There is no bureau
that is more difficult to staff overseas than AF," the report reads. OIG
attributes the difficulty to perceptions about the poor quality of living
abroad and insufficient hardship or danger pay. Hence, positions in Africa
often remain vacant or are filled with candidates without the necessary
experience.
Meanwhile, demands on embassy staff have only ballooned: "Embassy platforms
are collapsing under the weight of new programs and staffing without
corresponding resources to provide the services required," the report says.
There is, for example, just one financial economist and one international
economic position mandated within the bureau's economic team, rending State
"an unequal partner in discussions" with other U.S. branches and
multilateral institutions.
"Several embassies," according to the report, "had significant morale,
performance, or leadership issues." Citing interviews and site visits, OIG
notes deficiencies in leaders' abilities to facilitate staff cooperation and
to mentor young colleagues. Staff survey responses demonstrated that there
is "considerable dissatisfaction with the African Bureau, ranging from lack
of communication from the regional desks to front office disinterest in all
but the crisis posts."
In addition to leadership challenges, AF's policy planning was criticized
for being largely short-term and reactive rather than strategic and
broad-based. "There's always a problem in bureaucracies that the urgent
outweighs the important. They were doing a good job of fighting fires ...
but it was too much time being spent on the crisis of the moment and not
enough time being spent on our strategy," Geisel said. The report goes
further, saying that the "focus of the bureau appears to be more on the
process and timeline for generative new MSPs [Mission Strategic Plans] and
the new BSP [Bureau Strategic Plan] rather than on the content," a
shortcoming attributed to "procrastination, a lack of buy-in to the
enterprise, or poor understanding of performance measurement on the part of
missions and other offices."
That lack of foresightedness plays out in several specific Africa policies,
including food aid ("the United States helps feed Africa, it is not focusing
as it might on helping Africans feed themselves") and HIV/AIDS ("programs
spend more on medication than prevention"). OIG cites staff worries that,
while HIV/AIDS occupies a large portion of embassies' humanitarian attention
thanks to the massive and widely lauded PEPFAR program, comparatively little
time or attention is paid to other development priorities such as promoting
education and combating corruption.
Another sticky issue addressed in the report is the initially antagonistic
relationship between U.S. embassies and personnel from the Department of
Defense's new military command for Africa, AFRICOM. "The activation and role
of the command was misunderstood at best, if not resented and challenged by
AF," the report finds. While the report notes improvements between the two
teams, misunderstandings remain. Embassy staff received little instruction
as to how they should integrate and work with AFRICOM officials, for
example. And within the department, there is "considerable internal debate
about the wisdom of military funding of U.S. development and public
diplomacy activities in Africa" -- things like combating HIV/AIDS.and
building wells for drinking water.
Resentments may be exacerbated by the fact that AFRICOM's funding often far
outstrips that of AF. "The military deals in resources that the State
Department can only dream about, either in a pleasant dream or a nightmare,"
Geisler said. In one instance, a military information support team (the
military equivalent to an embassy's public affairs staff) was funded with
$600,000 for their campaign in Somalia, while the State Department had to
make do with a mere $30,000.
"It's a totally different scale," said Geisler. Perhaps for this reason, OIG
suggests that the State Department's overall very successful peacekeeper
training and support programs be transferred to AFRICOM if State fails to
receive adequate funding and staff for them.
The report's most strongly worded criticism goes to AF's public diplomacy
office, which the report deems utterly failed, devoid of long-term strategy,
marginalized within the wider bureau, and technologically ill-equipped. So
poor was its performance, the OIG determined, that AF should commission an
independent review within 90 days to examine the roots of the shortcomings.
Asked why he felt the public diplomacy shop had performed poorly, Geisel
blamed management: "The leadership of the bureau in my opinion took its eye
off the ball," he said.
That notion, however, is disputed by some within the bureau. One official,
who declined to be named, explained, "Public diplomacy is seen by some State
Department officials as conveying a message. That is 10 percent of what we
do. Probably 90 percent is to create relationships and mutual understanding
with the public in other countries. What they [OIG] are commenting on is
their understanding of 10 percent."
The report offers several other insights into the workings of U.S.-Africa
policy. The much-touted Africa Growth and Opportunity Act -- passed in 2000
and since amended four times to offer trade incentives if African economies
liberalize -- has had a limited impact, according to the report. "Poorly
developed infrastructure, a lack of affordable credit, weak merchandising,
and an inability to meet U.S. phytosanitary regulations are among the many
factors that thus far have limited the intended trade promotion and
diversification effects of AGOA." So although trade between the United
States and the continent has risen almost fourfold between 2001 and 2008,
non-oil trade accounts for just 4.9 percent of 2008's $104.7 billion trade
figure.
Also of note was the report's observation that Somalia remained "the hottest
of many policy fires burning within the bureau."
The report is both good and bad news for the Obama administration as it
tries to craft its policy toward a continent that expects much from the
first African-American U.S. president. Obama campaigned on a promise to
boost foreign assistance and revamp the State Department, the need for which
seems substantiated by the OIG's report. Much hope rests with new Assistant
Secretary Carson, who is almost universally held in high regard by State
Department officials.
Compliance procedures under the OIG require the Bureau of African Affairs to
follow up with progress reports on its compliance with the 19
recommendations mandated in the report. The first reporting period concludes
toward the end of this month -- 30 days after the final OIG analysis was
circulated to AF staff, though most in the bureau had seen earlier drafts.
Elizabeth Dickinson is assistant editor at FP.
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