Washington's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, acting special representative Laurel Miller has stepped down, just as the United States is preparing to send thousands more troops to the region.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Miller was returning to a position at the Rand Corporation and that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had not yet decided what to do with the post.
The office was created when US officials decided that the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan are inextricably linked and ought to be dealt with together.
The development has spawned confusion inside and outside the State Department about the future of the section known as the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, or SRAP.
The decision to phase out SRAP first came under then-President Barack Obama and the expectation was that its duties would over time be transferred to the regional bureau. A U.S. diplomat familiar with the situation said Tillerson and his staff had been repeatedly warned about SRAP’s coming phase-out and the need to transfer the policy portfolios in a proper way.
Miller's responsibilities will now fall under the department's South and Central Asian Affairs Bureau, which has a much bigger footprint that includes India. But this bureau is itself leaderless, with no assistant secretary appointed to lead it and no one nominated by the new administration for Senate approval.
President Barack Obama created the office in January 2009 when he named Richard C. Holbrooke, a celebrated diplomat who brokered the Dayton peace accords to end the Bosnian war, as the first special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
Richard C. Holbrooke January 2009- December 2010
Marc Grossman December 2010- May 2013
James F. Dobbins May 2013 - July 2014
Daniel F. Feldman July 2014-
Jarrett Blanc (Acting)
Richard G. Olson November 17, 2015 – November 17, 2016
Laurel Miller (Acting) November 2016