My Travels: Kabul

Overview:

Landlocked and mountainous, Afghanistan has suffered from such chronic instability and conflict during its modern history that its economy and infrastructure are in ruins, and many of its people are refugees. The Taliban, who imposed strict Islamic rule following a devastating civil war, were ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001 but made a rapid comeback to take over almost all of the country after US forces left in 2021. Hibatullah Akhundzada became the supreme commander of the Taliban in 2016 and is now head of state of their interim government in Kabul, called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. He fought in the resistance to the Soviet military occupation in the 1980s and went on to lead the Islamic courts during the Taliban's last period in government in 1996-2001.

Source: BBC Country Profile

OIG/ISP Team:

The OIG Team Kabul

The inspection took place in Kabul between February 2 and March 11, 2014. Some team members went out to Herat, Mazar el Sharif, Bagram, and Kandahar as well. It seemed that Dick Hecklinger (team leader) had the most difficult embassies, and this was my third inspection with him. Caroline Mangelsdorf., an experienced management cone officer was our deputy team leader. Caroline had some medical issues subsequently and, while she couldn’t travel, continued working as a Retired Annuitant (REA) like myself, on the inspection report quality review team. She continues to this day working from her home in San Francisco. Quite a large team of 20 Inspectors was required for such a large and complex embassy included Richard Behrend (POL), Beatrice Camp (PD), Calvin Carlsen (DS), Roger Cohen (IT), (MGMT), David Davison (MGMT), Darren Felsburg (DS), Cory Forer (DS), Alcy Frelick (CONS), Shawn O'Reilly (DS), Chuck Rowcliffe (DS), Timothy Williams (IT), Seth Winnick (POL), Colwell Whitney (CONS), and Joyce Wong (POL) conducted the inspection. We had five Management Inspectors including my boss Ralph Kwong, ISP Management division director who covered facilities and consistently provided great support and is responsible for me to conduct the survey work for inspections at CGFS/Charleston since I live there. It was my first time working with our lead inspector, Don Hays, who was with the 101st Airborne in Viet Nam before joining the Foreign Service and quite a character. He was EUR/EX director and ended up being nominated as Ambassador to the USUN office in New York. Don helped me sort out some thorny issues with the employee association. Also, my first time working with Dave Davisson a very experienced Management Officer who covered HR. Karen Davidson covered GSO and Georgia Huber grants. I also found out later that Alcy was from San Francisco. I couldn’t travel with the team to Kabul via UAE because my visa application was not approved. Apparently, I didn’t have an exit stamp in my passport from the last time I was in UAE. Consequently, I had to go via London to Istanbul via business class because it was over fourteen hours. I had to overnight in Istanbul and take a Turkish Airline flight to Kabul. Upon arrival in Kabul, an embassy vehicle and Expeditor met me.

American Embassy Kabul:

The Management Counselor was Greg Stanford a long serving FSO who I had worked with in Bangkok. Francisco Lloret was the FMO who I subsequently inspected in Tel Aviv and is now heading up the training office at CGFS/CHS. His deputy was Bob Meister who is now in Yerevan. The Senior HRO was Kathryn “Dare” Morgan who I had worked with in Bangkok. Dare is now a Special Advisor in GTM/EX. I never understood why the Department changed the office of HR to Global Talent Management. Anyway, she is using her vast experience overseas assisting the EX office. Mission staff serve for 1 year, of which 65 days can be away from the mission. As a result of the tour-of-duty and leave policies, the Department generally assigns three people to cover what would normally be two full-time positions. Security concerns restrict employee travel off the embassy compound to mission-essential meetings or activities. A serious HR issue was the expected departure of many key LE staff members under the Special Immigrant Visa program which adversely affects the continuity and institutional knowledge that LE staff members normally provide. LE Staff are eligible to apply for a special immigrant visa (SIV) after one year of U.S. Government. Given the rapid turnover of staff it was hard to fill vacancies and increase the workload of American staff to provide HR services.

Two former OIG/ISP inspectors were TDY at the time. REA Tom Furey (CONS) volunteered to go to Afghanistan. Besides his work he got into excellent shape joining in Peloton cycling fitness classes. Tom was the premier co-CLO on inspection teams who would arrange for most excursions. I have very fond memories of the trips Tom arranged in India. The other was Peter Kaestner, the famous bird watcher, who was CG in Mazar el Sharif in the north near the border with Uzbekistan. We happened to have dinner with Peter in the embassy dining hall and reminisced about our times together on the inspections of Nassau/Caracas and Yemen/UAE.

It was almost 13 years after the United States began its military engagement in Afghanistan and 2014 was considered a transition period in anticipation of a reduction of U.S. and allied military and a decreasing level of assistance. Likewise the embassy was transitioning to a smaller, more normally structured mission. Overall, U.S. direct-hire personnel under chief of mission authority dropped from 500 employees at the time of the inspection. All this planning was predicated on having a major Bilateral Agreement with the GOA for troop drawdown and a date for withdrawal.

Findings:

Overall there were 77 recommendations in the final inspection report. That breaks my previous record of Caracas, Venezuela inspection which had 71 recs.

The first priority was the need to undertake a fundamental review of embassy programs and staffing, in consultation with other agencies, to right size the number of U.S. direct-hire and other personnel.

The Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security managed separate construction and physical security upgrade projects in Kabul. OBO had spent over $1.3 billion since FY 2002 for construction and physical security upgrade projects in Afghanistan. However, other bureaus like Diplomatic Security and INL also funded projects but there was no coordination in executing a master plan. We recommended that the embassy coordinate the phasing and sequencing requirements of all ongoing and planned projects, including those funded by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

There was no tracking of eligible temporary duty visitors of other agencies to prepare partial-year invoices for respective agencies for International Cooperative Administrative Support Services.

Given the weaknesses in management of grants it was recommended the Foreign Service Institute, schedule training for Embassy Kabul contracting officers, contracting officer's representatives, grants officers, grants officer representatives, and government technical monitors on how to monitor contracts and grants and maintain complete contracting files.

In the area of Human Resources (HR) we recommended that the embassy perform a management review of its internal organization, with the goal of eliminating unnecessary layers of supervision and develop a plan to address the turnover of locally employed staff and even consider changing the number of years to become eligible for the SIV program. More opportunities for Eligible Family Member (EFM) positions should also be considered with the assurance that training be provided before arrival. Supervisory skills training for the embassy's supervisory local employees was also recommended. Also Off-shoring and Outsourcing certain HR services should be considered. The Embassy Kabul's overtime policy to include the requirement for proper justification for all overtime. The Check-In and Check-Out Procedures were not being adequately enforced to require completion of documents and submission by all employees. The embassy had used its own personnel system (the Afghanistan Civilian Tracking System) to account for American and Afghan staff in country. With the deployment of WebPASS there was no need to maintain the previous system. There were also issues of employees being overpaid post allowances that needed to be referred to the Bureau of the Comptroller and Global Financial Services for collection.

In the area of facilities and General Services the embassy needed identify and dispose of unneeded property and consolidate storage sites. Also, review its pending unauthorized commitments to determine whether ratification is authorized and take action accordingly.

Kabul Embassy Air represented a group of aircraft funded by the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) and the Department SCA bureau. Embassy Air also uses Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) aircraft, when available. Embassy personnel also use Embassy Air instead commercial flight. It was unclear who was responsible for operating and maintaining the aircraft so we recommended that Embassy Kabul and the Bureaus of Administration, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Diplomatic Security, and South and Central Asian Affairs, review the cost recovery method for spreading the costs for its operations.

There were major financial and internal control problems for the Kabul Embassy Employee Association (KEEA) that took up a lot of my time. It was rumored that $40,000 was not accounted for and large stocks of liquor were missing. While there were large amounts on deposit with the State Department Federal Credit Union the required reconciliation of accounts and inventories were not being reconciled. We also recommended that the contract between KEEA and its chief operating officer be reviewed for potential conflicts of interest. There was also an issue with U.S. tax withholding requirements for U.S. citizen employees of the KEEA.

One questionable funding request was for approval to purchase cat food for the hundreds of cats on the embassy compound. After checking with CGFS policy folks they said it was justified to control the prevalence of rats and other rodents.

Highlights:

Snowcapped mountains surround Kabul.

Entrance to Embassy

Vendors set up their market Friday's outside the the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) compound.

With Roger Cohen

Dave Davisson in front of one of the shops on the compound. At one of the stores in a strip mall outside the compound where I found a Buster Posey Giants Baseball Jersey which I promptly purchased. About twice a week we would to the compound for dinner at the huge military mess hall or a pizza joint on the compound.