Customer Reviews

Embassies Under Siege: Personal Accounts by Diplomats on the Front Line (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy)

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"Embassies Under Siege" tells the story of some of the greatest tragedies and dramas of modern diplomacy. Told by Americans who experienced shattering events, these first-hand accounts speak of courage, terror, and blunders as ordinary foreign service officers attempt to cope with extraordinary circumstances. The immediacy of the writing, brevity of the chapters, and the harrowing reality of the assassinations, bombings and hostage-takings make this a quick read. Yet you will ponder the lessons of "Embassies Under Siege" long after you've finished the book. A must-read for anyone interested in foreign affairs and the challenges of diplomacy in developing countries.

The premises of this book are that during the late 70" and 80's budget cuts decreased the amount of money the State Department could spend on the embassy program. The cuts they chose to make were to the site security forces and the actual compound security equipment. The book also gives the reader a nice little run down of all the attaches they have faced over the past 25 years.

The most interesting parts of the book were the known safety issues that were brought up by embassy staff, but could not be corrected due to funding problems. Then to correlate these safety issues with the events that have taken place or the past few years, it is chilling to see the mistakes that were made. Overall this is an interesting book.

Having served in a security role as a Marine Security Guard with the Department of State, I found this book fasinating! It really shows in detail the circumstances surrounding several different situations that occured at embassies throughout the world. It also shows our Diplomats at their finest. The Department of State is not usually looked upon as a "macho" agency in the US Government. This book also shows the close relationship between the US Marine Corps and the Department of State. A very good book for aspiring Diplomats to read concerning the other side of Diplomacy!!!

"Embassies At War" can be a subtitle for some of the chapters in this book. I can only speak of my experience as a member of the US Embassy in El Salvador during the civil war there. I served with the USMILGROUP as the senior advisor to the National Training Center at La Union during 1991-1992. Here are some of my observations on comments made by Ambassador William Walker in his chapter on the War in El Salvador.

- Ambassador Walker's assertation that the FMLN policy was not to target the Americans is partially true. A splinter faction of the FMLN declared "Kill Americans" week in June of 1985 and killed four US Marines who were Embassy guards and an American civilian. Allegedly, within a week of the killings Delta Force with US Rangers in support visited this group's base camp and killed over 100 of them. Soon afterwards, the FMLN stated officially they were not out to kill Americans anymore. Afterall, the last thing they needed was for the 82d Airborne Division to drop in on their little war. However, "Kill Americans" week was still an annual event. From time to time they took opportunities to kill Americans and sometimes they were successful.

- The war had come to a stand off by 1987 for two reasons. The US military aid and advisory effort really had its effect in making the Salvadorean Armed Forces (ESAF) more combat effective and they had the FMLN outgunned. Until that point in the war, the FMLN had been armed with hand me down weapons provided from the Sandinistas and American made weapons provided by their socialist Vietnamese friends from stocks we left behind there in 1975. In 1988, at a meeting with the Soviets, Cubans and Sandinistas, the FMLN argued that they could break the stalemate and still win the war if they received modern weapons that equalled that of the ESAF. President Gorbachev, stung by increased US aid to the Afghan mujahadeen and Angola rebels, agreed to do this and modern infantry small arms and crew served weapons soon flowed from the East Bloc nations of Europe through Nicaragua and Cuba to rearm the FMLN.

- The 1989 offensive was not really well thought out by the FMLN leadership. Like the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the signs and warnings were there. Embolden with their new arsenal, the key FMLN objective of this offensive was to spark a popular uprising to overthrow the Salvadorean Government. FMLN guerilla fighters were armed with their new weaponry, but each fighter also carried one or two extra older weapons to hand to the population they expected to rally to their cause. This did not happen. However, the leadership of the FMLN was always dogged by poor leadership and poor decision making. By concentrating their entire military offensive on the capitol, they left the rest of the country alone and allowed the ESAF to divert reserves and other forces to push the FMLN out of San Salvador.

- Whether Jennifer Cosolo was innocent or not was never really confirmed. She and her Congressional friends asserted her innocence when she embarked on her speaking tour soon after being released. However, when the cease fire agreement was finally signed in Mexico on New Years Day 1992, she was one the very few Americans invited by the FMLN to attend the ceremony.

- There are conflicting stories about what really happened during the standoff between the US Special Forces soldiers (who had just arrived only days before) and the FMLN at the Sheraton Hotel. One story has it that the Americans were housed at the hotel waiting for inprocessing and assignment when the offensive started. Against orders and the ROE in place at the time, they fired on an FMLN column working its way past the hotel from its base camp on the volcano just outside of town. Though told to avert conflict with the American Adviors, the column's comandante also disobeyed orders and ordered an assault on the Americans. A stand off ensued with the Americans fighting off attempts by the FMLN to seize the upper floors of the hotel. Allegedly, Delta Force led by BG William Garrison, arrived on the scene to assume negotiations to release the trapped SF soldiers. Fears that this was an excuse for US intervention into the war, the FMLN readily agreed to an offer they couldn't refuse and ended the siege of the Sheraton. Stories that the Team was actually captured are totally false. The team was immediately sent home to a hero's welcome, but was later quietly broken up due to their failure to obey the ROE and the potential embarressment they caused.

- The legacy of the 1989 Offensive was that it proved to those who were attuned to the war that neither side was going to win. Despite new and potentially better weaponry, the FMLN had failed strategically and tactically to defeat the ESAF, topple the Salvadorean Government or win over the population. If anything, they lost popular support once and for all with this offensive. On the other hand, despite years of arming, training and advising the ESAF, they were still not strong enough to defeat the FMLN. With a 56,000 man standing Army in 1989, to expand the ESAF further would have had diminishing returns.

- The American media never understood the war in terms other than Vietnam and treated the war as if it was Vietnam Part II. The US media did no research into the dynamics of the war but relied on their bias and the unverified word of the FMLN and their friends. They ignored the fact that human rights violations were rampant on BOTH sides. That the FMLN lost popular support way before 1989 due to the decision of the leadership to destroy and disrupt the economy in a way that only the population, but not the Government, suffered. Due to their bias, the media failed to report on the US and ESAF successes in the Psyops arena, civic action efforts, the amnesty program and the training and enforcement of human rights within the ESAF. In the end all this made a big difference in stopping the FMLN and their Socialist friends. As with today's happenings, the media and the Congress used the war as a focus point for resentment and anger against the Republican Reagan Administration. However, the Salvadorean Government did no favors for themselves in their treatment of the US media and their inability to stop the human rights violations.

These sad chain of events happened a long time ago and are mostly forgotten now except by those of us who were there. The media and their friends have found other causes of the moment to focus on and even the US military and Diplomatic Corps has not looked back on how the advisory effort could be applied to today's War on Terrorism. There are valuable lessons to learn from all the situations outlined in this book and can be applied by the Country Team today. They include having a current NEO Plan, staying tuned to local and national political and social happenings, publishing a realistic Emergency Action Plan, table top exercises that the Country Team can use to game possible scenarios and having contingency plans to receive additional resources, manpower and equipment in response to a political or natural emergency. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is going to be posted to an Embassy in a country at war or to a country in political and social upheaval.