Today's Update

Today was another fine day at the IEC working on external relations issues. Right now I am putting together a short presentation that will be given to election observers later this week. Attendees will include electoral NGOs such as IFES and NDI, and stakeholder national and supranational entities such as the US Embassy and the European Union. It sounds important, but it's really just a basic powerpoint from information you can mostly pull of the IEC website. And they are coming all the way to the IEC to get the info!

This evening was especially interesting. I was invited for dinner at the NATO-ISAF base by an American military officer I met at the IEC. We ate dinner, drank coffee, and had a great conversation on geopolitics with two State Department officials--one from the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (OCRS) and the other a foreign service officer--and a second US Army officer responsible for election-related security. It was reassuring to hear about the efforts being made on the part of the US forces to ensure the security of the elections, and in particular the election compound.

One of the State Department officials actually just graduated from Georgetown MSFS about fourteen months ago. We ended up knowing quite a few people in common, including my classmate Yushin, who is currently working at the OCRS in DC for the summer. She told me that there are a large number of MSFS grads working in Kabul right now. Apparently, one MSFS alum who I emailed back and forth with quite a bit from DC this spring, John Dempsey, was recently appointed one of Richard Holbrooke's top advisors on afghansitan.