Don’t Call Matthew Hoh a Foreign Service Officer

Spencer:

For clarity, there is a federal provision, heavily used by OHRA & CPA and their successor agencies to staff Iraq reconstruction, under which certain critically needed people are specially appointed to the government for a limited period of time, not to exceed 3 years. The provision is 5 USC 3161, and the civilian experts and specially skilled appointees are typically referred to as 3161's.

They are neither contractors, because they have no contract, nor foreign service officers, because they are not in the foreign service. They are special federal appointees supposedly appointed based on their unique and critically needed skills.

One important provision of 5 USC 3161 is that the need for that specific appointee must be verified as a condition of the appointment.

Some head scratching may be warranted as to Hoh's special appointment under 3161 as a senior governance adviser in Afghanistan inasmuch as his work history indicates no background in local or provincial government operation that would, theoretically, serve as the basis for a 3161 special appointment as a Senior Governance Adviser.

My understanding is that State announced a few months ago that they would be filling the civilian expert staff positions in Afghanistan with military officers due to the treacherous nature of the operating environment. So, unlike Iraq, it is kind of a non-civilian civilian surge.

This instead of the actual civilian experts with substantive experience in local/provincial politics & governance, community engagement, and essential services who answered Ambassador Crocker's emergency call to Iraq in 2007/2008.

As one of the few dozen of senior civilian expert special appointees who left wife and life to answer Ambassador Crocker's call for a "Civilian Surge" in Iraq, I am proud of my service, and of the work that myself and a small contingent of actual civilian experts accomplished there.

There were plenty of challenges and frustrations, and especially with the US bureaucracy, experienced by city managers from Miami Beach, transportation engineers from Anaheim, and planners from Crofton, during our appointments and service; but the point was to work the problem.

There was no shortage of Iraqis who had lost family members to the US and had every personal reason to hate us, nor, according to SIGIR, were all of our US reconstruction efforts successful. But the civilians of both countries found common ground, begrudgingly or otherwise.

I have trouble with the idea that a special appointee, who volunteered to serve in a very difficult assignment, should quit so easily after four months, and pass up on abundant opportunities to accomplish his primary goals through some other means, whether at the Embassy, State or otherwise.

Just quitting, and tarring the system through the press is no way to get the mission he swore to pursue accomplished.

Moreover, for those relatives with civilians and military serving in harm's way, these kinds of personal opinions of currently serving federal employees, against the context of serious war-fighting, are particularly hard-felt.

I see on your blog references that Foreign Service Officers are distancing themselves from Hoh. For myself and my Iraq "civilian" surge colleagues, I can only make the same point---he was not a civilian expert in governance either.

Plenty of head-scratching to be done.

Steve Donnelly, AICP
Crofton, Maryland
Former Senior Urban Planning Adviser, Iraq (PRT, 2007/8)

Thanks for making that point and for explaining it better than I did.

Not only was Hoh not a commissioned FSO, he was not a career Marine officer either.
He was in the Reserves:

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-hoh/4/920/712

Spencer, Digger is actually a she. Don't think you need to apologize for it though :-)

I was going to let that go. :)

Hey, so sorry about that -- stupid sexist assumption. And sorry that I'm just seeing these comments now. Our CMS doesn't send alerts to us; and yesterday was kind of a crazy day for me.

Not a problem. You certainly aren't the first to assume that a blogger, especially one who is also a Foreign Service Officer, is male. (Besides, I got a handshake yesterday on my next assignment, my top choice, so you'd have been hard pressed to rain on my parade!)



And I do really appreciate your putting in the correction.

I appreciate the correction and the link.

During the directed assignments fiasco, I had to switch my comments link from automatic posting to owner approval because one anonymous person posted "whimps and wienies" dozens of times when I tried to dispel the inaccuracies on the reporting on the town hall.