Report: State Department facing staffing crises, worsening morale

Located across 21 buildings on 104 acres on the banks of the Tigris in Baghdad, the new U.S. Embassy will have its own water wells, electricity and wastewaster-treatment. There will be huge residences for the Ambassador (16,000 sf) and the Ambassador's deputy (9,500 sf), six apartments for senior officials, and two huge office blocks for 8,000 staff. Recreation includes the biggest swimming pool in Iraq, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, a cinema, restaurants, tennis courts and an 'American Club' for evening functions. Budgeted at more than one-half billion dollars, the actual construction costs will probably never be known.

Saddled by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the State Department faces a staff shortage crisis amid “worsening morale,” according to an independent study that blames Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the problem.

The report, by the influential Foreign Affairs Council, an organization of retired American diplomats and ambassadors that monitors United States diplomacy and State Department management, said that about 200 existing jobs — mostly overseas — were unfilled and that the department needed an additional 900 training slots to provide essential language skills and other expertise.

All 1,069 new positions and increases in financing between 2001 and 2005 had been absorbed by assignments in Iraq, Afghanistan and other “difficult” posts, the report said, adding that in the “first two years of Secretary Rice’s stewardship, almost no net new resources have been realized.”

Read the rest at the NY Times

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