The Hill quotes Atlantic Council Zalmay Khalilzad Chair on Afghanistan James Cunningham on his experience as ambassador to Afghanistan and the security risks involved and precautions taken by the State Department:
“The net effect is you limit the ability of people to move around,” said James Cunningham, who served as ambassador to Afghanistan from the summer of 2012 through December 2014 and is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
In Afghanistan, civilians have been removed from some parts of the country because of decisions that Cunningham said “were clearly influenced by this heightened sensitivity in Washington to security issues.”
“Those decisions may have come out the same way anyway,” he acknowledged, “but it was clear that there was closer attention being paid to the cost-benefit ratio of having people in various places.”