Authors: Kim Ghattas
STRICTLY EMBARGOED—NOT FOR BROADCAST—FOR PLANNING PURPOSES ONLY.
The secretary was going on the road again. We were given our destination and told
to prepare in secret. The unspoken rule was that we couldn’t share our plans with
anyone except with an editor or two at our organizations to help with setting up what
was needed for coverage of her visit once we arrived at our destination. Gaps in the
schedules of the president and vice president, the secretary of defense and secretary
of state always sent Washington buzzing with speculation. Gaps could mean a surprise
visit to an undisclosed location. Only a handful of countries fit into that category.
Journalists traveling with American officials always respected the embargo. On this
particular Friday, no one thought much of the fact that Clinton had no appointments.
After all, everyone was entitled to a quiet end of the week once in a while.
* * *
By the time Clinton was seen in public again, it was Saturday morning and she was
in Baghdad. We had spent the night incognito in neighboring Kuwait and traveled to
Iraq on a military aircraft. Our motorcade was now driving into an enclave on the
banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad—the Green Zone, where Saddam Hussein’s former
palaces now housed Iraq’s American masters, the country’s newly elected leaders struggled
to lead, and a new parliament was clumsily experimenting with democracy. Nestled in
a bend of the river, the Green Zone was protected on its northwest side by concrete
blast walls, barbed wire, and checkpoints. Humvees and Abrams tanks stood guard. Outside
was the “red zone”—the rest of Iraq, where 240 people had just been killed in four
suicide bombs over two days.
Since 2003, the violence in Iraq had ebbed and flowed; mostly it flowed, and recently
it was surging. Obama had openly opposed this war as a senator, and now as president
he wanted out. At the end of 2008, the Bush administration and the Iraqis had agreed
on a plan for U.S. troops to withdraw from the center of cities, retreating to their
bases by summer 2009. By the end of 2011, all U.S. soldiers were to leave Iraq. The
Bush administration thought there would be time to finagle a way to stay. Obama wanted
to make sure the departure would happen.
This war had torn at the fabric of the United States, soured international alliances,
and caused a deep schism between the United States and Europe. The war continued to
siphon off America’s wealth—the direct cost of the invasion and the occupation hovered
around $800 billion. Over the eight years since the invasion, this meant a spending
rate of $3,000 per second. Together with the operations in Afghanistan, America’s
wars had cost the country more than a trillion dollars. The toll on the economy and
the people went even deeper: America’s debt was ballooning and the long-term impact
on soldiers and their families was felt across the country. The world perceived America
as chastened and weakened. Pundits invoked Vietnam daily. There was talk of imperial
overstretch. America’s foes and friendly rivals were inordinately, smugly pleased.
This was some of the damage that Obama and Clinton were looking to repair.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq had overthrown a dictator but the war and the subsequent
years of occupation had killed more than 100,000 Iraqis. Although the United States
had rustled up a coalition of the willing, it had gone to war on its own terms, without
the UN, charging into the region with little planning for the day after. The war unleashed
all of Iraq’s internal demons. Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, the motive
for the war, were never found, further feeding the deep mistrust in Iraq and the region
of America’s motives. Now, Iraqis were still suffering, not only from military roadblocks
and night raids from occupying forces but also from the militants fighting the occupation—their
violence killed civilians too. People screamed daily in newspapers, at checkpoints,
on television that they’d had enough of being trampled on. Iraqis and their leaders
had pushed hard for the troop withdrawal plan, but suddenly, when the moment of withdrawal
crept up, many sounded wary. Though it was hard to imagine, they worried that their
lives would become more dangerous. What if America neglected them completely once
all U.S. troops had left, leaving them alone to face the militants who still planted
car bombs and the politicians who were already turning into authoritarian feudal lords,
with an army that was barely holding together?
After the invasion in March 2003, those who welcomed the removal of Saddam Hussein—and
even those who hadn’t—expected that almighty America would transform their country
into a well-ordered, prosperous Switzerland-like bastion on the Euphrates. Exhausted
by decades of dictatorship, an eight-year war with neighboring Iran, and years of
international sanctions, Iraqis were impatient for a decent life. Just weeks after
Iraqis had toppled Saddam Hussein’s statues across Baghdad and stood in front of cameras
hitting posters of his image with their shoes, my conversations with people in Baghdad
revealed swells of frustration and disbelief: Where was the water? Why was the city
power not on? Where were the jobs? The salary raises? The truck loads of medication?
The expectations were beyond what any country could have realistically delivered,
let alone a U.S. administration that naively thought things would simply fall into
place after the invasion because it had brought freedom to the people. But no one
in Iraq wanted to believe that a superpower which could, in just a few weeks of war,
remove a dictator as entrenched as the earth itself didn’t have a detailed plan for
what was to follow, as well as foolproof means to implement it. Iraqis had lived in
fear of Saddam for more than two decades; a whole generation had known only him as
a leader. He and his intelligence services instilled widespread fear, spying on everybody
and sowing distrust within families. A Sunni ruler, he had crushed Shiite dissent
and rebellion ruthlessly. He didn’t spare Sunnis who stood up to him either. But even
the Shiites, who had suffered the most and were expected to welcome American soldiers
with rose petals, quickly turned against the U.S. occupation. America’s swift removal
of their dictator confirmed to them that the United States was evil and all-powerful.
The looting and burning of government buildings in the days after the fall of Baghdad,
the destruction of the national museum, the power cuts, the chaos—it must have all
been part of the plan. Washington wanted to destroy Iraq. It wanted the chaos, they
clamored. Now, they were asking what Obama’s plan was. Sure, he wanted to leave, but
before that, could he please improve their living conditions? Maybe now American companies
could come and rebuild the country?
We had driven into the compound of the U.S. embassy inside the Green Zone—a sand-colored
fortress within a fortified enclave that had cost $700 million to build. The size
of Vatican City, with twenty-seven buildings, a swimming pool, outdoor tennis courts,
and neatly paved walkways with yellowing grass on either side, it was the largest
U.S. embassy in the world. No wonder Iraqis thought America was staying forever. But
the United States often harbored grand ambitions and wanted quick results; it tried
one thing after another, changed course and strategies, hoping something would stick.
And then it got tired with the project and started to downsize.
Inside the enclave of the embassy, we walked around freely. Fred reconnected with
colleagues he had worked with just a few months earlier. There was even a town hall,
always Hillary’s favorite event of the day. Iraqi NGO workers, teachers, and legislators,
all known to the U.S. embassy, had been invited to attend and told they were meeting
a VIP guest. A human rights activist named William went first. Was America going to
abandon Iraq? Others followed: What was America going to do to help modernize Iraq’s
agricultural sector? What was America going to do to empower women in Iraq? Could
she send more American NGOs to Iraq?
There was a deluge of requests, and, unusually, Clinton seemed to grow weary of the
questions. America was the occupier and it had responsibilities toward the country,
but the questions carried an abdication of initiative and an undertone of fatalism.
After years of being told what to do and think by Saddam, Iraqis were now looking
for definitive answers and solutions from someone else. Because of the security restrictions
in organizing the town hall, Clinton was facing a soft audience. The participants
still believed America had something to offer them, but their anger and despair did
not bode well for the day after America’s withdrawal. Across the country, others saw
the United States as a hegemonic power preying on their country’s riches, imposing
its will and offering nothing in return. Those two worldviews collided every day in
Iraq and across the Middle East.
A long day of meetings followed with Iraq’s president, prime minister, and foreign
minister, as well as a press conference. We had left Kuwait at 7:30 in the morning
and expected to return by early evening. But we were on “Hillary Time.” It was 11:00
in the evening when we landed in Kuwait. We were going to spend the night at the Bayan
Palace state guesthouse, which afforded the delegation some privacy to keep Clinton’s
next stop, Beirut, under wraps.
* * *
My home country was also on that exclusive list of troubled countries where U.S. officials
made unannounced, “surprise visits,” because of a bloody event that had permanently
altered how America saw Lebanon. In 1983, a few years into Lebanon’s civil war, a
suicide bomber drove his truck into the U.S. Marine barracks near the Beirut airport,
killing 241 troops. Shiite Muslim militants were blamed for the carnage, and they
coalesced into a group that called itself Hezbollah, Party of God. For them, America
was the Great Satan. Israel, which was often referred to as the Little Satan, had
occupied south Lebanon since 1978. Hezbollah strived to liberate the swath of occupied
land until Israel withdrew in 2000. An ally of Iran and Syria, the Party of God was
also working its way into Lebanese national politics while holding on to its arsenal.
Though the State Department listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, it formed
a part of the country’s social and political fabric: it represented the country’s
long downtrodden Shiites. The group now had allies in the coalition cabinet, Lebanon’s
mostly pro-Western government. New elections were around the corner, and Hezbollah
was always looking for ways to tighten its grip. Clinton was going to Beirut to check
in on the state of affairs.
We had spent the whole day on the move, filing our stories in the heat of Baghdad
and fading in our chairs waiting for Clinton. We were desperate for some rest before
the next day’s packed schedule. But our Kuwaiti hosts had laid out a lavish buffet
dinner for the secretary and her whole delegation. We freshened up and took our seats
at the tables under the garden tent surrounded by grass and hibiscus and oleander
trees. Hillary held court at the middle table, surrounded by Jake, Huma, Philippe
Reines, and Jeffrey Feltman, a former ambassador to Lebanon and the assistant secretary
of state for Near Eastern Affairs—the Middle East expert in the Building.
I was helping myself to some of the food from the buffet, scooping up some of my favorite
dessert, Umm Ali, when Mark Landler from the
New York Times
asked how it felt to be going home. I had tried not to think about it till now. I
hadn’t been able to tell my family that I was coming because of the security rules.
I continued piling up the soft, milky pastry with pine nuts and almonds, staring blankly
at Mark, smiling. I didn’t tell him that I felt like an Iraqi would have, sitting
on top of an American tank advancing into Baghdad in April 2003, though I wasn’t sure
whether the tanks were liberating or occupying. What was I doing on Clinton’s plane?
I was a journalist doing a job, but did I want my friends in Lebanon to know I was
flying in with the American secretary of state? Or was I going to keep it quiet upon
arrival? I was ambivalent about Clinton. I still found it hard to read her, and because
of that, I found it difficult to get a feel for America’s intentions toward my country.
At the end of the dinner, Clinton walked around to the different tables to chat. It
was the first time we were in a social setting with her. The mood was slightly tense.
She tried to appear informal but she wasn’t relaxed; she was still very much the politician
on duty. We had regular spats with her gatekeepers, who were intent on protecting
her while we pushed for access. She came to a stop behind me, one hand on the shoulder
of Matt Lee from the AP, one hand on mine. I stared at my plate, trying to come up
with some smart comment about the state of world affairs.
Instead, I turned around, looked up, and said, “Madame Secretary, when I was growing
up in Lebanon during the civil war, I never for a second imagined I would one day
fly back to Lebanon on the plane of the American secretary of state.”
I blurted it out because it neatly summarized the situation and all my emotions and
because obviously it was true. As a kid I’d had my share of wild dreams about my future,
but SAM and Hillary Clinton had not even featured. Hillary said she recalled watching
the horror of my country’s civil war on television with Bill. She said Lebanon had
suffered so much, and that’s why she was going, to show support. I was uncertain what
that actually meant.
* * *
The next morning, we checked out of the guesthouse of the Kuwaiti emir with its outdated
stuffy brown furniture from the 1980s. We loaded into the vans, almost leaving behind
Arshad Mohammed from Reuters, who had overslept, and made our way to the airport.
I was nervous during the two-hour flight to the Beirut–Rafic Hariri International
Airport, named after the billionaire prime minister who ran the country during much
of the 1990s and again from 2000 until he resigned in 2004. A Sunni politician with
broad appeal beyond Lebanon’s borders he had had an international Rolodex that could
rival Hillary’s, and had helped rebuild Lebanon after the destruction of fifteen years
of civil war, with all that it entailed of corruption, blind capitalism, and deal
making with Lebanon’s masters in Damascus. (Syria had occupied part or all of Lebanon
since 1975.) Hariri was blown up by two thousand pounds of explosive as his motorcade
drove along the city’s seaside promenade on Valentine’s Day in 2005.