The UK Foreign Office is flying blind

You might, very reasonably, expect the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) to speak the language of the countries their policy affects. Or that when they brief politicians on crucial issues, that they have “immersed” themselves deep within foreign populations to understand fully the impact any new measures might have. Or that FCO security measures are strict enough to keep officials safe – but not so strict that they strangle any meaningful contact outside the embassies.

In recent years, any observer expecting these basic requirements will have been disappointed. In 2012, it was discovered that just one in forty diplomats spoke the language of the country where they are posted. Though critics have pointed to troubling deficiencies in the FCO’s Russia coverage (officials entirely failed to predict events in Ukraine after most of the Russia desk was suddenly disbanded), it is in the Middle East – that most crucial, complex and sensitive of regions, that the FCO’s recession of expertise is being keenly felt.

Just three out of the sixteen Middle Eastern ambassadors can reportedly speak Arabic. Two Parliamentary investigations have now noted an “alarming” shortfall in the numbers of Arabic speakers at all levels of seniority. A recent Parliamentary report into FCO activities in the Gulf found that one in four staff had “low levels of Arabic proficiency,” while 40% had language skills which “had not reached the required standard for their grade.” It doesn’t help that the pass mark for Foreign Office language exams has also dropped to less than thirty percent.

This has very real effects. In Afghanistan, the controversial decision to extend British military activity into deepest Helmand was orchestrated almost entirely by officials in London. Whereas, nineteenth century reforms had required that a majority of the “Indian office” in Whitehall consist of people who had served in India for at least a decade, the Afghan section of the FCO in London, as late as 2010, included no-one who had actually served on a posting in Afghanistan. What few FCO officials were operating in-country had spent “almost no time living amongst Afghan rural communities, did not speak Pashto, and had only a superficial understanding of Helmand’s families, culture and history.” Dr Kim Howells, former Minister at the Foreign Office, recounted to the House of Commons Defence Committee last week that in order to acquire any “on ground” exposure to the situation in Afghanistan, he had to break the FCO’s strict safety rules and hitch a ride on an American plane to Helmand.

In Iraq, American civilians took leave once every six months; while British diplomats were owed a two week holiday every six weeks. Thanks, once again, to overly protective security restrictions, they largely remained in their compounds, isolated from the local population. There was a “serious failure to reach out to people who understood Iraq and the area.” In 2011 the FCO closed the British Consulate General in Basra. By Spring 2014, shortly before Daesh’s meteoric expansion, there was no Defence section in Kurdistan, no Development office in Iraq, and the political section of the British Embassy in Baghdad consisted of three relatively junior, (“although extremely able”) employees on short-term deployments. Having royally messed the country up – the Foreign Office has now withdrawn.

The current Coalition government have, since coming to power in 2010, made cutting the national budget deficit a key pledge. Most of these cuts were laid out in the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review, and those levied on the FCO have been, proportionally, some of the greatest imposed on any Government department. The cuts mandated a ten percent cut in expenditure, but with much of the departments spending tied up in international agreements, “conflict & peacekeeping” budgets, and other ring-fenced activity – it is the core operations budget, which includes staff salaries, travel and language training – that has now seen a nearly thirty percent reduction. By next year – mandarins have been told they must cut another five hundred jobs (equivalent to roughly ten percent of the current manpower). A compounding effect has been that after a decision by Gordon Brown to shut down the in-house language school in 2007, language skills were already fast deteriorating. The school was out of action for six years, until the former Foreign Secretary William Hague re-opened it in 2013. Its closure had been dubbed “moronic” and “profoundly mistaken” by Foreign Office insiders at the time.

You may not like the decisions the Foreign Office make in the Middle East, especially its backing of dictatorships, its cavorting with ruthless monarchs, or its post-colonial air of amoral superiority – but gone are the days of expertise. To save just a few million pounds per year, the past two governments have taken dangerous steps towards Britain having as its ambition a strong place in world affairs, but having its capability largely an illusion. With this new-found blindness – British and Arab lives are at stake – and have been lost as a result of a disorderly and irresponsible savaging of Foreign Office budgets. The cuts should be reversed.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.