Fate of SRAP office hangs in balance

WASHINGTON: The State Department confirmed that the acting Special Representative of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Laurel Miller, has completed her tenure and the post remains vacant for now.

A number of media outlets reported on Friday that the office of the SRAP has been shut down after Miller signed out, but the State Department clarified later no such decision was reached.

"The department will maintain the Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs Offices, which currently report to the Office of the Special Representative, to address policy concerns and our bilateral relationship with these two key countries," the department's spokesperson Heather Nauret said adding that the Secretary has not made a decision about the future of the Office of the SRAP.

But with no special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in place, the fate of the Office of the SRAP hangs in the balance.

Even though Nauret did not say that Miller won't be replaced, the department did indicate that Secretary Tillerson has not been contending with its working.

"We have over 70 special envoys, special representatives, special ambassadors, one of the things we want to understand is did we actually weaken our attention to those issues, because the expertise for a lot of these areas lies within the bureaus, and now we've stopped it out of the bureau," the Secretary had stated in his testimony to the House Appropriations Committee on Foreign Operations earlier this month.

The SRAP office was set up in 2009 and late Richard Holbrooke became its first head.

The office remained operational after Holbrooke's sudden death, and under other high level diplomats. Yet, the Obama administration had already decided to phase out the SRAP office.