Goodby to Pam and My Job.

This week my heart is heavy. My job has been eliminated – the whole program will be closed down as of the end of June. More about that below. The thing that makes me downright despondent, however, is that PAM ANDERSON WAS VOTED OFF DANCING WITH THE STARS! Can you believe it? Sure she has quite a few miles on her chassis, but it is still a stunningly alluring frame. Moreover, she performed well. She is coordinated, flexible, balanced, graceful, and athletic. In short she can dance. Admittedly, this week she gave a flawed performance – not as good as previously. Still, her judge’s scores were good enough that she could have been saved by a decent audience vote from across America. It did not happen. Why? No body has more fans than Pam. I think it was Steve Martin who said it something to the effect that a sure measure of the adoration that she commands could be calculated by a simple statistical survey of the number of American males that hold up her poster once or twice every week. One can only surmise that her fans are simply not watching, and that too is lamentable. The Football Hall of Fame running back, Emmitt Smith, made the show culturally acceptable for manly watching five years ago when he not only participated but won the competition! There were already a few of us who were “closet” watchers (what’s not manly about watching a difficult athletic competition where 50% of the contestants are females and most of those females are firm-bodied, graceful, and wearing skimpy costumes), but Emmitt made it respectable. I guess the word is still not out. So long, Pam. You deserved better from your fans.


With that nod to beauty, culture, and smut, I’ll move to a serious topic.

As I reported a few days ago, the US State Department, in concert with the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MCN), has decided to close down the program that I am employed in. I was surprised. The CNAT program has some problems, but it is structured in a way that insured that most of the funding is likely to make it to the aid projects. There were three, somewhat vague, reasons given: 1. To more fully reflect the current Afghan environment, 2. To better support the Ministry of Counter Narcotics in their goals and desires for help from the USA, and 3. Because the Minister has made it clear that he wants to concentrate on capacity building in Kabul (capacity building is the current term for increasing capabilities). Well, these reasons could mean just about anything. One thing they surely mean is that the funds that would presently go to these Provintial CNAT teams will now go somewhere else, and they will flow through the MCN.

During the years I spent in South East Asia in the Vietnam War era, I became aware of some of the massive problems with dispensing foreign aid, particularly when obliged to dispatch it in association with corrupt local officials. I was elated, therefor, to learn that this program employs a model that bypasses most of the favorite corruption channels. Basically, the administrative funds for offices, supplies, transportation, etc. go through the contractor, CPI, and the salaries are paid by the Embassy directly to the CNAT team members. Project funds are dispersed by the CNAT --- with some accounting controls and some monitoring by the International Advisors. CNAT is accomplishing some projects for about 35% of what other organizations are paying contractors for similar jobs. This, I think, is a design that should be studied, refined, and replicated rather than tossed aside. Worse, some think it is being tossed into the potential cash-skim drawer of a central agency that cannot possibly be controlled. It is no secret some observers feel that the newly sworn present Minister of MCN was involved in the disappearance of massive amounts of aid money at his last position.

One of the saddest part of this situation is the fact that, although the CNAT program may, indeed, contain problems, it also contains personnel assets trained and experienced in most of the undertakings of a counter narcotics strategy. These persons also have community development experience and professional contacts. These are capabilities that take substantial time and effort to develop. So far there is no sign of any plan to try to move them into other CN elements.

The most apparent problems with our present program is its lack of clear direction. But these problems are administrative and could be corrected. I was very intrigued as I answered the qualification questions in the application process. It was apparent that they were looking for persons with experience in successfully implementing central policy at the field level. This is a topic that I have worked on, researched, and written about. I am (truly) a minor expert. In my view, the State Department (and CPI) has failed CNAT by not having an administrative template for the program that contains operations manuals, procedural directives, and all the other Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) that everybody bitches about, but that keep ninety five percent of what an organization does in line with its strategic direction. Everything about CNAT has been vague, so it is inevitable that different persons, and different locations, will behave in different ways – mostly with genuine intent to fulfill perceived policy.

Did you ever think you would hear someone standing up for rules and regulations? They are a pain in the neck, but they are important. It is not easy to write good ones, but it is better to have poor ones than to have none. Without SOP’s, mid and upper level managers typically become uneasy about what they think is happening at the field level and try to gain control by issuing orders and memos controlling minutia. They often require their personal approval for routine things like travel, supplies, working-level contacts, etc.

One of the most frequent negative remarks I hear about the contracting in Afghanistan is this very situation (at least with respect to Department of State contracts) That the contractors are being given a contact to accomplish a overarching objective (like train police officers) without the kind of detailed specifications that would help guarantee performance to a certain standard. The big contracting companies will likely dust off some manuals they already have from a past project and do OK. The smaller ones, or the ones with projects that have not been accomplished elsewhere, have problems.

By the way, during my working career, I had the opportunity to work within two agencies that had very different results in accomplishing headquarters objectives at the field level. The Forest Service (USFS) is (or was) probably the most successful agency that has ever been studied in this regard (see the book The Forest Ranger). The Forest Service Handbook contained detailed direction about almost anything that was done at field level and those who did those tasks regarded the Manual as a Bible – they would not dream of deviation. Meanwhile the US Customs Service (USCS) also had fairly detailed directives. At the field level, however, the USCS personnel regarded a headquarters directive as no more than a suggestion. Deviation was great in magnitude and frequent in occurrence. The reason the USFS was successful is that the workers regarded the direction from headquarters as sensible, authoritative, and necessary, The USCS workers thought their SOP’s were stupid and annoying. An explanation of this difference would take a long time, but the USFS success had a lot to do with most of the mangers coming up through the ranks and genuine input from the field to all policy and directives.