An employee of a British embassy in the Middle East struggles with telecommunications during the Arab Spring.
“I am a local employee working in a British embassy in the Middle East. We are a medium-sized embassy and, like most British representations, we have a large contingent of locally-recruited staff.
The embassy is particularly known for its relations with the local business community, and the UK Trade & Investment team provides well-received support to British companies. At the same time, we also have good relations with government ministries and I find that we are well-regarded.
Earlier this year, my country was one of the nations affected by the ‘Arab Spring’. Previously, there were signs that people were unhappy with a lack of democracy, government corruption, and also unemployment and poverty. However, no-one expected the demonstrations to grow so quickly and become so important.
The first day of protests was relatively peaceful; people wanted to quietly express their opinions and, while there were large demonstrations, life continued in the city as normal. Towards the evening, the police attempted to disperse the crowds using tear gas and water cannons. That caused the protests to escalate.
Over the next two days, I continued to work in the embassy while the numbers on the streets swelled considerably. Local staff were allowed to go home, but some colleagues in other sections had to remain in the embassy: security staff guarded the building, and our consular team were very involved in trying to evacuate British citizens.
I understand that the atmosphere inside the embassy was very tense. Events were unfolding so rapidly and the embassy was busy with the political and consular response to the crisis. Our UK staff had to move out of their homes and were living out of suitcases practically on top of each other, and they were extremely tired from working long hours.
Local employees were very anxious about our country. My team had to work from home and contribute to the work by noting down what key opinion-formers were saying on television about the future, contacting people who were at the protests, and also getting in touch with our sources to try to discover how the government would respond.
It soon became very difficult to contact people because the mobile phone signals were cut. We had no internet and could only use landline phones. We discovered just how reliant we are on mobiles – not least because we often didn’t have people’s landline numbers. There was also a curfew in place.
We lost touch with the embassy over the weekend, which was particularly difficult as we didn’t know whether we were expected to come into work on Monday or stay at home. There wasn’t an established protocol as to whether we should contact the embassy or they should contact us.
One of the lessons we have learned is that, in future, we should have a stricter protocol in place so we know whose responsibility it is to contact whom. Many of us communicate by SMS text message, but now we have the landline phone numbers of our colleagues and we all know who to contact in the case of an emergency.
Another lesson learned is the importance of knowing the skills and talents of the different members of the organisation, so that when a crisis hits we are able to make best use of their skills and they are able to cover the work easily. We should all share information better as we go about our day-to-day roles.
We are aware of the economic situation in the UK. We are always looking for efficiency savings, from simple things such as turning off the lights and air conditioning when we go home, to voluntary early retirement. The FCO is also localising some of the jobs that previously would have been carried out by a British civil servant. There are the skills in this country to perform those roles.
Although sometimes home government staff want to see a British face when they work with the British embassy, the FCO culture is to give credit to local employees and treat everyone as an equal member of the team. So while there were some teething problems in the first few days of the Arab Spring, we do have a good team and I really enjoy working here.”