Security issues curtail Afghanistan recuitment

Fabio left this newspaper clipping from Financial Times in my locker, and I found it today:

The swimming pool at one of Kabul's favourite expatriate hangouts is normally dominated by journalists, aid workers and muscle-bound private security contractors, who have to check their handguns in at the door.

But on a recent hot summer's weekend, the usual crowd of young, unattached danger junkies had their peace shattered by a dozen children, determined to make as much noise and displace as much water as possible.

The regulars looked on with bemusement as a birthday cake was produced for one of the children to share with his mostly American friends.

Despite an expat community that isestimated to be about 5,000-strong, foreign children are an extremely rare breed in Kabul, a city deemed a "non-accompanied post" for most development organisations, the UN agencies and embassies working there.

Only the city's small community of Christian missionaries have dared bring their children to a city where most foreigners are only allowed to venture out from the razor-wire topped blast walls that surround their compounds in armoured vehicles.

It was the missionary kids making the racket at the swimming pool.

Small wonder then that the reaction of Nord Anglia, a British company that runs private schools overseas, was "no way", when it was approached to open up a school in Kabul.

The ban on bringing offspring, or even spouses, on assignments in Afghanistan explains the constant difficulty organisations face in attracting experts to work in the country and stay there for a respectable amount of time.

Up to 30 per cent of United Nations posts in Afghanistan remain unfilled, the organisation said.

Yet there is no shortage of unattached, young adventurers looking for excitement.

However, this younger crowd often lacks the experience and qualifications required by aid organisations, particularly for more senior management level posts.

Project leaders for the big NGOs often find themselves being begged to stay on by their bosses in London, Geneva or Washington, who have completely failed to find a successor to step into their shoes.

The turnover of soldiers, consultants and even diplomats is so great that some people don't bother collecting the business cards of people who will, inevitably, soon be leaving town.

Employers do their best to attract the staff they need, and compensate them for the dangers and discomforts they face.

Many receive danger pay, which can make a year's stint in Kabul extremely lucrative, and generous holidays.

British diplomats who can only venture outside the embassy compound with good reason and permission from their security manager, are entitled to two weeks off for every six weeks they work and the return flights to London come courtesy of the Foreign Office.

"It's difficult to keep a relationship together," one British diplomat confides.

"You may be able to go home every month and a half but in the meantime, you are living a very different life from your partner. They can find it hard to relate to."

Some senior executives in Afghanistan's handful of large companies, and officials in the large aid agencies choose to keep their family near them, either in Dubai or Delhi, and the daily flights to these destinations mean that popping home for the weekend is not out of the question.

Diplomatic sources say the city's two biggest embassies - representing the US and UK - should formalise such arrangements to encourage people to stay in Afghanistan for longer.

Until recently, Islamabad was also a good option for Kabul-based workers looking for a more suitable place to house their families.

A modern-city of many embassies but little soul, in many ways it is the polar opposite of Kabul.

The crowd attracted to Afghanistan's free-wheeling, largely rule-free capital are bored to tears by Islamabad.

But for young families, the tree-lined roads, international schools and spacious villas are perfect.

All that changed at the beginning of the month, when the British Foreign Office ordered the children of diplomats to leave the country.

It followed a security review, conducted in the wake of the September bombing of the Marriott Hotel, another sign that Islamists, once confined to Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas, have succeeded in exporting their struggle deep into Pakistan's heartland.

The UN has also moved its security status for Islamabad up to phase four - an honour the city now shares with Kabul and Kandahar, the southern Afghan city from where the Taliban emerged in the early 1990s.

It also means UN staff will no longer be able to live in the city with their children.

So, as the shrieks of expatriate children will fade from the swimming pools of south-west Asia, it looks likely that the difficulty of recruiting the experts needed to deal with the region's huge problems will only get worse.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008