Civil servants face danger on a daily basis in Afghanistan. Joshua Chambers hears two explain their roles liaising with military colleagues and departments back home, and the challenges of returning to life in the UK.
In roles often overlooked or underrated by the national press, civil servants have been working quietly but determinedly in Afghanistan to build stability and new institutions in a region ravaged by conflict and poverty. Speaking at CSL last month, some told of their experiences working in an environment very different to the well-swept streets of Whitehall.
The Ministry of Defence’s assistant head of support to operations, Mark Scully, had worked in a large NATO-led HQ just outside the southern city of Kandahar. There he gave policy advice, and reported back to the UK so that departments could understand the latest plans and developments. “It will be no surprise to hear that I found it a very challenging experience,” he said. “You work very long hours. Military operations are conducted 24 hours a day, seven days a week in several provinces, and have to be linked in with other governance and stabilisation efforts.”
Being a civil servant also made Scully’s relationships with his military counterparts difficult. “I didn’t have the luxury of blending-in in a uniform. I acted as a lightning rod for policy and political decisions,” he said. However, Scully said he relished the challenge because he could set the record straight about how policy decisions are made, and encourage people to use him to report back to the UK and improve future decisions.
Lindy Cameron, a senior civil servant who has worked for the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office in Afghanistan, told of her experience working with the civilian Stabilisation Unit to support Afghan governance in the city of Lashkar Gar, Helmand province. She advised civil servants to think about three things before deciding whether to go out there: “First, what you would do if something happened to you; secondly, how your family would cope; and thirdly, how you would cope with explaining to people what you’re doing when you’re out there.”
Thick, pervasive dust was ever-present, she said, and so was the very real risk of death or life-changing injuries. However, Cameron added: “When you’re out there you have a team with you, you have a sense of adrenalin coursing through your veins, and you find when you meet people from totally different backgrounds you all step up and cope with the pressure.”
Sometimes the challenge lies more in readjusting to life in the UK, she said. “You don’t have that team around you any more, and you’re in an environment where people don’t understand what you’ve done or why”. Two days after returning from Helmand, Cameron recalled, she found herself at a Kensington book group, “and I’ve never felt more out of place in my life. I felt very dislocated, very frazzled, and as if nobody would ever understand what I’ve been through.”
The Stabilisation Unit has since improved its support for people returning from conflict zones, Cameron said. Scully added that the MoD provides training courses and access to occupational welfare services for its civil servants. However, civilians “don’t have the same support network that you might have in the military,” he said. “If you’re in the Army, you’re in a regimental system and everyone goes away together and then comes back and has the same experiences. You don’t even have that in the same way in [civil service jobs within] the Ministry of Defence, which you might have thought would be somewhere where people understand these issues more than other departments.”
Despite the stresses, both said they found their time in Afghanistan hugely rewarding. And Cameron said it made the civil service values start to mean more than just words on a poster. “I’m probably better at my job as a result, and I miss it hugely,” she said.