12 MONTHS PRECEDING A U.S. EMBASSY EVACUATION
Background: Throughout 2014, the political, economic and security situation in Yemen deteriorated significantly. By August 2014, an Iranian backed Houthi militia movement had marched into the capital city, Sana'a, and assumed de facto control of the city; but stopped short of directly overthrowing the Yemeni government.
Issue: With the legitimate internationally recognized Yemeni government formally in control of Sana'a, the U.S. Embassy was in a tough situation. Pulling out too soon could imperil the fragile government and embolden the Houthis but staying too long could put us in jeopardy. We needed to develop an emergency action plan that would balance the our need to remain against our need to remain safe.
Our team was responsible for putting together and executing our emergency action plan. This post will only focus on certain elements of it. One of the biggest pillars in our defensive plan was our 430-person local guard force. It represented the bulwark of our defensive posture against external threats.
One of our team members was placed in charge of the guard force and its $8,000,000 budget and given complete autonomy to reshape it.
Insight: Upon assuming control of the 430-person guard force, our team member wanted to understand everything from the day to day minutia to the strategic challenges. Our team member conducted intensive quantitative and qualitative research. And discovered the following issues:
Transition from an unarmed guard force to an armed guard force: our team member foresaw problems with having two groups in the guard force, weapon carriers who stood in harm’s way and those without weapons removed from relative danger. Grumbling was already occurring about “unfairness” and “favoritism,” two charges which cripple morale and security.
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Discipline and conduct problems: The guard force was plagued by unexcused absences, sleeping on the job, and insubordination. In the time period prior to assuming control, our team member discovered that there were 123 cases of unexcused absences, 35 cases of sleeping on the job and 15 cases of insubordination.
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Lack of growth potential: Guard force salaries were among the lowest at the U.S. Embassy. The jobs had virtually no promotion potential. Nearly all other jobs required English language proficiency, which many of the guards did not possess.
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Language barrier: The inability of the guards to speak English also meant that they could not effectively communicate with Americans without utilizing a few individuals who could act as interpreters. This led to very filtered information flowing to the top of the chain of command.
There could be no improvement in our crisis preparedness until and unless these issues were addressed.
Strategy: The insights above led to a multi-pronged strategy as follows:
Removing the language barrier: Previously, a lack of Arabic fluency would mean that concerns were voiced through the few English speaking guard supervisors. This gave them enormous power over the other guards. Our team member's Arabic allowed them to communicate directly with the guard force. Daily and weekly meetings were convened with rotating groups of guards participating without the need for language interpreting. Now communication could occur without "misunderstanding."
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Dichotomy between armed vs. unarmed guards: Our team member did away with any distinction by receiving approval to arm and train the entirety of the guard force, male and female. Now all the guards would rotate through all positions, eliminating charges of unfairness. As an added benefit, the Embassy became even more of an unappealing target because our enemies observed that all of our guards were trained with weaponry.
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Discipline and conduct problems: Problems in the past were usually handled days and weeks after they occurred. Our team member utilized a two-step approach of both modifying consequences and changing behavior:
First, our team member instituted immediate disciplinary hearing the moment a violation occurred (whether at 2 am or at the end of a very long day). This vastly sped up pairing of consequence with a violation.
Second, our team member used their Arabic and insight of Yemeni culture to turn “if you look weak, your enemies will think you are weak” into the guard force's mantra. Previously, shirking responsibility was viewed as a way socially appropriate and sanctioned way to "fool" the Americans. However, now the guards began to see shirking responsibility for what it truly was: endangering their fellow colleagues.
Growth potential: Previously, there were 15 full scholarships available to the guard force to study English. English was the most prized field of study because it allowed for advancement to far more lucrative positions. However, scholarships covering just 3% of the guard force would not provide sufficient incentive and motivation. Our team member sourced and negotiated a new contract worth $100,000, representing just 1.25% of the total budget, for a total of 150 English scholarships. Now 33% of the guard force would be covered and rotating through 12 week programs, which meant that 100% of the guard force would receive English language training every year.
Trust, morale, efficiency and discipline blossomed within the guard force. In fact, an additional insight was revealed. Many guards communicated that the reason for their unexcused absences was that sometimes it was too dangerous to travel or there was a lack of gas. Our team member utilized this insight to arrange for temporary sleeping quarters that could accommodate guards for those periods of instability.
Outcome: There were many positive outcomes but we will focus on just two that particularly stand out and highlight that dramatic impact that can occur when investing in insight and strategy.
Metrics: Over the course of 12-months, unexcused absence fell by 98% (123 to 2), sleeping on the job fell by 97% (35 to 1) and insubordination fell by 93% (15 to 1).
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Response in the hours following the Houthi coup: In January 2015, the two events happened that triggered our full crisis response:
The first event was a attack on a U.S. Government vehicle traveling through a checkpoint. Our analysis of the attack led us to believe that it did not fit within any historical pattern and thus our team deduced that it was a pretext to a larger action. Our crisis response was to speak to the 80-person guard shift on duty and explain that they would be held over while bringing in the night shift early (the sleeping quarters our team member arranged earlier in the year allowed for this).
The second event, a few hours later, was the Houthi seizure of the Presidential Palace and arrest of the Yemeni President. Despite the coup and checkpoints that sprang up, we had tremendous security at our compounds, which the Houthi's did not count on. Later on we discovered that they were going to use the vehicle attack as a pretext to march on our compounds but were dissuaded by the security posture we were able to maintain.