Ms. Karen Malzahn, a Foreign Service officer, was the deputy principal officer in the US Embassy in St. Petersburg, Russia, when she volunteered to serve with a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Afghanistan. From her commitment in the fall of 2005, Malzahn bid on and accepted a position in Mazar-e-Sharif. She also coordinated several training opportunities en route, including a NATO course in Oberammergau, Germany, and State Department training in the US, of her own accord. Malzahn arrived in Kabul, Afghanistan, for her inprocessing and a brief orientation in October 2006. Foreign Service officers posted to PRTs are members of the embassy staff in the field. From Mazar-e-Sharif, Malzahn supported Swedish and Norwegian PRTs in the German-led Regional Command-North. There had been a brief gap between her arrival and the departure of her predecessor. The exigencies of travel complicated Malzahn's work with these two PRTs spread across five provinces, as did the offset personnel rotation schedules of the different national teams. Operational emphasis, though, stayed clearly focused on helping develop or enhance the legitimacy and reach of the Afghan national government through development and reconstruction actions at the provincial and district levels. Cultural and ethnic differences complicated all actions in the diverse northern arc of Afghanistan. Uzbek, Pasto, Tajik and Hazara groups and their elites vied for inclusion and influence. The PRTs worked through Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development on projects. Counter-drug efforts maintained high visibility, especially in the easy-to-reach (by Afghan standards) area around Mazar-e-Sharif. Raising and supporting indigenous capabilities through a balance of institution-building and development brought daily challenges. Malzahn found that everyone wanted to get to the Americans with their issues. At the end of almost a year in Afghanistan, Malzahn and her successor arranged a brief transition, face-to-face, after corresponding. She returned to the US at the last possible moment to attend the National War College en route to her next posting.

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