Authors: Kim Ghattas
In Washington, analysts and activists were coming forward with suggestions about how
the administration should punish Bibi if he didn’t halt settlement construction: link
elements of aid to a stop in settlement construction, announce a review of the strategic
relationship between the two countries, or even boycott a settlement products. Obama’s
and Clinton’s statements were taken as a sign that the administration was ready to
go to the mat with Bibi. Previous presidents, like Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and
George H. W. Bush, had gone that route with Israeli leaders—if America stood its ground,
it could pay off.
The Israelis were livid. Bibi didn’t like to be told what to do, especially not in
public. He wasn’t going to let an American administration push him around again. He
was convinced that Hillary and Rahm wanted to throw him under the bus and had turned
Obama against him.
10
But a few days later, Obama called for settlements to stop, and this time he used
Clinton’s more elaborate wording.
“I’ve said very clearly to the Israelis both privately and publicly that a freeze
on settlements, including natural growth, is part of those obligations [that Israel
will have to meet],” he told NPR in Washington.
But, as in 1998, Hillary had been ever so slightly ahead of the White House—and this
time of herself. She had spoken more forcefully than the president, and it had taken
the White House by surprise. A nascent policy on settlements was crystallized with
a statement: “No natural growth.”
A few days after his NPR interview, Obama flew to Riyadh and then on to Cairo, where
his prose enchanted the crowds. He promised again to work hard for peace, telling
the crowds that “all of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers
of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear.” And he
promised a new beginning with the Muslim world, which had grown weary of being lumped
together in the same group as Osama bin Laden. With every lofty line, expectations
rose higher and higher, in the halls of the American University of Cairo and across
the region. There was only one way to go from there: down. But it was a question of
how hard and fast the fall would be and how damaging to American interests.
5
THE SHRINK WILL SEE YOU NOW
Nine months into her job and Hillary had already flown 140,000 miles crisscrossing
the world. She had honed her voice and style as secretary of state with friendly audiences
in Asia, Africa, and Europe. She had made a few more missteps along the way, tripping
over names of officials and mistakenly saying the United States had no diplomatic
ties with Burma. She had reconnected with allies, reset relations with rivals like
Russia, and started spinning her web of diplomatic connections and initiatives. It
was time for the frying pan.
On the morning of Tuesday, October 27, when the State Department sent another one
of its cryptic e-mails announcing that the secretary had no public appointments, we
were already on a plane. It was a seventeen-hour journey to another country that warranted
surprise visits: prickly Pakistan. A nuclear power as well as India’s neighbor and
archenemy, Pakistan had helped prop up the Taliban government in Afghanistan on its
western border during the 1990s, and the Taliban sheltered al-Qaeda.
The Obama administration’s policy toward Pakistan was still in flux, and Clinton’s
team was still shaping the contours of the trip as we boarded the plane. The trip
Book was an untamed mess. Schedules were never final with Hillary, and there didn’t
ever seem to be enough reading material in the Book to satisfy her voracious appetite.
In Pakistan, the advance teams from the Line were still negotiating the content of
the agenda of her talks, the exact look and location of her town halls, which shrines
she would visit, and what security arrangements would be needed. Just like Lebanon
and Iraq, Pakistan was one of those countries where security concerns kept American
officials from fully engaging with the local population, but the State Department
was still planning a Hillary template trip.
The relationship with Islamabad was broken, and attempting to fix it required a bold
approach, such as having the secretary connect with average people as she had done
so well in other countries. None of her predecessors had bothered with public diplomacy
in Pakistan; they instead focused on meetings with the country’s generals. Rice only
once spent the night in the country. Pakistani officials were a slippery bunch and
the people often openly hostile to the United States. Over three days, in two cities,
Clinton would face a battery of town halls with students; meetings with tribal leaders,
women’s groups, and businessmen; and interviews with feisty journalists. She had essentially
agreed to be a punching bag. The idea was to help Pakistan release some of its anger
toward the United States by allowing people to vent their frustrations and disappointments
at the secretary. Jake, Huma, and Philippe were nervous about putting their boss in
this position: it was a gamble with no guarantee of success. But even the tiniest
bump in the dismal 19 percent approval ratings of the United States in Pakistan would
be welcome.
President Obama and his National Security team were exploring a new strategy for the
war; American soldiers were still fighting against al-Qaeda and the Taliban across
the border in Afghanistan. Obama had already increased troop numbers and was considering
sending in even more soldiers, but if he wanted to make progress in Afghanistan, Islamabad’s
help was crucial. Even after agreeing to help fight al-Qaeda in 2001, Pakistan was
still a base for radical militants. The administration was still determining how to
handle Pakistan: Clinton’s trip was in large part a live test of nascent policy.
Pakistan was not exactly an American ally nor was it an enemy. Pakistan wanted strong
ties with America, but the relationship between the two countries was long and fraught.
Each distrusted the other equally. The United States was one of the first countries
to recognize an independent Pakistan in 1947. The new country was born from the partition
of British India, which gave birth to Muslim Pakistan and secular India. Washington
provided Pakistan with generous aid. But when the young nation sent 30,000 soldiers
into the contested border territory of Kashmir in 1965 and provoked a war with India,
the United States cut off military and economic aid to both countries. By 1975, American
military aid flowed into Pakistan again but then stopped in 1979 because of concerns
that Pakistan was trying to build a nuclear weapon. When the Soviet Union invaded
neighboring Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979, America’s priorities in the area shifted.
Now concerned with fighting the advance of Communism, Washington turned a blind eye
to Pakistan’s nuclear program, cozied up with its leaders, and in the 1980s the aid
started up again. The two countries and their intelligence agencies started working
together to fund and arm the anti-Soviet Afghan guerrillas. Many of them had strong
Islamic militant views and wanted the Communist unbelievers out of their land—their
war was a jihad. Millions of Afghan refugees fled into Pakistan, and America sent
$5.6 billion of military, economic, and food aid to support Pakistan. In 1989, the
jihadi guerrillas defeated the Soviets and forced them to withdraw from Afghanistan.
The job was done, Communism had been dealt a blow, the United States forgot about
Afghanistan, and Pakistan was left to deal with the collapsing country next door,
where civil war raged. Afghan refugees continued to cross the border, fleeing the
fighting in their villages and towns. Pakistan was still hard at work on its nuclear
program, despite warnings from Washington. In 1990, the United States became concerned
enough that it once more stopped all military aid and drastically cut back economic
assistance to Pakistan. A decade later, the September 11 attacks put this fraught
relationship under unprecedented strain. When Washington asked President Pervez Musharraf
to show whether his country was with the United States or against it, Pakistan chose
the cash cow. Military aid flowed again. The Pakistanis were getting seasick from
the on-again, off-again relationship.
But it was a lucrative one. Plagued by years of unchecked military power, corruption,
rampant tax evasion, ballooning debt, extremism, and an all-consuming rivalry with
India, Pakistan’s economy had become addicted to outside aid, its generals avid recipients
of military assistance. The Pakistanis wanted the money with no strings attached.
Just a few weeks before Clinton’s trip, Congress had approved the Kerry-Lugar-Berman
bill, a new package of aid for Pakistan—$7.5 billion over five years in nonmilitary
assistance. The idea was to help shore up the civilian government and state institutions,
after years of military dictatorship—if the Pakistanis could show that they were really
building a civilian state. Though Pakistan complained that this was interference in
its internal affairs, the government still took the money. The contradictions were
giving America a headache, and though the relationship was a drain and a nuisance,
no one dared contemplate the risk of letting go of Pakistan again.
* * *
Flying across the Atlantic, Hillary was in her cabin being briefed by the top man
in charge of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, Richard Holbrooke, a longtime diplomat,
and by his deputy Vali Nasr, the expert outsider. An acclaimed academic and author,
Vali had never been in government before and had not yet traveled on Hillary’s plane.
An authority on the Islamic world and a professor of international politics at the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, Vali was born in Tehran.
Although he left Iran after the 1979 revolution to settle in the United States with
his family, Vali’s background enriched his perspective, allowing him to see the world
from a non-Western point of view. He had spent a year living in Pakistan in 1989 while
researching his PhD thesis about Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan, and he knew the
country intimately. Back then, American embassy staffers traveled around the country,
went on trips to the idyllic Swat valley, and held glamorous cocktail parties where
they mingled freely with Pakistanis. How things had changed.
Almost exactly thirty years ago, as the United States was emerging from the trauma
of the Vietnam War and the Soviets were plotting their invasion of Afghanistan, the
Iranian revolution that deposed the U.S.-backed shah was still in full swing. On November
4, 1979, Americans started watching television every evening for news about the hostages
held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. On November 20, in Saudi Arabia, gunmen stunned
the world when they seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam. The
following day in Iran and in Pakistan, conspiracy-driven news reports claimed America
was behind the desecration of Mecca in a plot to take over the Gulf region. American
diplomatic missions and schools in Pakistan were mobbed by angry anti-American crowds
across the country. The U.S. embassy in Islamabad was torched and besieged for a whole
day; three people were killed, and four hundred Americans were evacuated out of Pakistan.
It had taken four hours for Pakistani forces to react to the pleas for help from the
embassy and control the mob. Pakistani officials then complained that the American
evacuation was an overreaction. Washington was preoccupied with Communism and fighting
the Cold War and saw the violence in Pakistan as an aberration. Few connected the
dots of the events from Iran to Saudi Arabia, Islamabad, and later to Beirut, dots
that signaled the swell of militant, political Islam that would eventually lead to
the attacks of September 11. Soon, life at the embassy returned to normal, and American
diplomats resumed drinking cocktails with Pakistanis at fancy parties in Islamabad
or Lahore.
In 2009 the American diplomatic mission in Pakistan still occupied the same thirty-two
acres of rolling hills but was now shielded from the dangers of the outside world
by several layers of security, a walled-off compound within a larger diplomatic enclave
with checkpoints at every turn. Almost all the embassy staff lived within the compound.
As in so many other countries where Americans were targets, life in a fortress deprived
diplomats of real encounters with average Pakistanis. American diplomats saw Pakistan
mostly through the prism of the liberal elite, the English speakers who seemed open
to the West and were very much Western in lifestyle. But they were often also nationalists
who held grudges against America. The lack of contact fed the mistrust that the general
population felt toward the United States, so Vali was enthused by the decision that
Hillary and her team had taken to leave the fortress and reach out more widely to
the people.
Fred Ketchem was less happy. He had been to Pakistan once before, in 1992. He always
found it helpful to have a mental image of the country where he was about to deploy
his agents and protect the secretary, but Pakistan had only become more dangerous
since his last visit. American diplomatic missions continued to be attacked; an American
journalist, Daniel Pearl, had been kidnapped and beheaded in 2002, and others had
been gunned down in the street. Since that first trip to Asia, Fred had started to
adapt to the secretary’s elastic concept of the Bubble, but his can-do attitude didn’t
stop him from pushing back as much as he could against what he saw as risky exposure.
In a way, it was easier for him to feel in control of security in a country like Iraq
or Afghanistan with thousands of American troops. In Pakistan, there was not enough
trust and too many unknowns. But Hillary’s team was determined that she would go beyond
government buildings and embassy compounds and into everyday Pakistan.
In Washington, at every planning meeting, Fred would bring with him a list of all
the new threats that had emerged. Every time someone put forward a proposal for a
visit to a shrine or a mosque, the Diplomatic Security’s first reaction was: “No.”
Huma understood the concerns, but she was exasperated.