Muhammar Qhadafi had already demonstrated an interest in broadening his influence in the region, and Libyan troops had recently been deployed to Uganda to prop up Idi Amin’s regime. There they were soundly defeated by Tanzanian forces, but, hardly stopping to lick his wounds, Qhadafi had been lavishing money and Islamic libraries on the impoverished countries of the region. Burundi had been vulnerable and largely isolated since the time of a genocide perpetrated by the minority Tutsi government in 1972. Though the president of Burundi had since been deposed, the successor government was still overwhelmingly Tutsi. Frances had been active in promoting democratization and respect for human rights in the regime and had, by dint of her forceful personality, established a number of positive programs designed to move the Burundi government in the right direction. Since Qhadafi was actively engaged in undermining such efforts, an assassination plot against her was not at all out of the question.
Frances and I went to lunch together one day while she was cooling her heels in Pretoria. It was then that she offered, as she put it, to elevate me from the motor pool to the front office. Would I like to come to Bujumbura, she asked, to serve as her deputy? I was too junior in grade for the job, with less than six years’ experience, but she understood that many of the problems an ambassador faces in managing an embassy in Africa are administrative in nature, and she wanted someone with such a background to complement her own political strengths. My administrative and management skills had been tested in three African countries, my knowledge and understanding of African issues were solid, and I spoke the official language of Burundi—French.
The job of deputy chief of mission (DCM) is a key position in an embassy, with responsibility for the operation’s day-to-day management as well as the coordination of the various U.S. government agencies and programs operating in the country under the supervision of the ambassador. When the ambassador is out of the country, generally for at least a month each year, the deputy is in charge of the operation. The biggest attraction for me was that my own personal goals had changed with the arrival of my twins: a desire to see the world had given way to the business of having a career, and the pinnacle of a career in the State Department is service as an ambassador. I knew that the road to an ambassadorship generally includes at least one stint as DCM.
The choice of a deputy was at that time the absolute prerogative of the ambassador. The problem was that because I was so young, thirty-two at the time, and relatively inexperienced, there was considerable resistance in the personnel system to my getting the assignment. Even though it was common knowledge that a DCM assignment was a big step up the career ladder, I actually received a letter from my ever-vigilant personnel officer (again, one I did not know), discouraging me from accepting the offer. Far from agreeing that the assignment would be career-enhancing, as well as personally rewarding, she actually suggested that it might not be good for my career.
That letter quickly found its way to my circular file. I accepted the assignment and prepared to move my family several thousand miles north, from cosmopolitan Pretoria to an isolated city in the heart of Central Africa.
When we arrived in Burundi in July 1982, the capital, Bujumbura, was a sleepy backwater nestled in the foothills arising from the Ruzizi plain along the banks of Lake Tanganyika, not far from the spot where Henry Morton Stanley greeted a fellow Englishman with the enduring question, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” There was only one stoplight in the town, and it rarely worked. The Burundians were reserved and formal toward outsiders and also very wary, no doubt a consequence of the periodic bloodlettings that plagued the society.
Unlike the peoples of most other African countries, the two major ethnic groups of Burundi, the Hutu (85% of the population) and the Tutsis (14%), lived mingled together in the hills of this Central African nation. There were no tribal zones. In the period before colonization, the country had been ruled by a royal group called the Ganwa through a chief known as the Mwami. In pre-colonial Burundi society, cattle, and the milk they produced, were signs of status and wealth. The Tutsi clan that came to dominate the government after independence had once been of such low caste that their members were not permitted even to milk the Mwami’s cows, a tangible measure of how discriminated against they had been.
After colonization by the king of Belgium (the Belgian colonies were property of the king, not of the country), the traditional royal system of governance in Burundi gave way to the authority of poorly trained and uneducated administrators drawn largely from the Tutsi tribe. At the time of independence in 1962, there was only one Burundi national who had even attained a university education. The Belgians had also conscripted an army made up mostly of low-caste Tutsi. Unable to touch the Mwami’s milk cows, they were nonetheless trained to wield modern weaponry. It was only a matter of time, once independence had been achieved, before the army emerged as the besttrained—and the only armed—organization in the country. The takeover it staged was brutal; in the intervening years, there had been paroxysms of violence so horrific that “genocide” is the only word to describe them. During the intensely violent era of the early 1970s, several hundred thousand Hutu were hacked to death by machete, or lined up in the national football stadium and massacred by the army. In interludes between the fits of killing, there were Tutsi governments that tried to ensure their own survival through less violent means. My stay there coincided with one of those interludes.
My embassy colleagues and I stayed busy for the next three years with activities ranging from the financing of health clinics in the interior to coordinating and overseeing the Peace Corps and USAID, and working with the Burundi government as it tried to write a constitution and empower a National Assembly. In the end, the government, still overwhelmingly made up of the minority Tutsi, could not shake off its paranoia and the conviction that the majority Hutu were bent on overthrowing them. They reverted to authoritarian rule and cracked down on the civil rights and liberties we and other Western governments had been encouraging them to install and respect. There was no understanding of concepts that we take for granted, including the linkage between majority rule and minority rights, or even the rule of law. The mistrust among the parties would not allow them to take the plunge and forge new political or legal arrangements.
Despite the country’s troubles, life outside of work could be very pleasant. The embassy had a boat on Lake Tanganyika that Susan and I took out frequently, looking for hippos and crocodiles. Our house was on a hill overlooking the town, the river, and the Ruzizi plain, and across to the mountains of eastern Zaire. We learned to play golf there, and our kids thrived, enjoying the warm weather and the French schooling. Susan went to work for the Cultural Center in Bujumbura, but after two years, life in Africa had lost its appeal for her. Instead of adventure, she saw Bujumbura as another outpost a long way from home. She spent increasingly long periods at home in California, where she could be closer to her parents and family. I began unreasonably to resent the times apart and, frankly, did not handle the problems in our marriage very well. There was no marital counseling available in Bujumbura, and even if there had been, I doubt I would have been a very good candidate for it. My work and outside activities began to crowd my family life, something I have regretted ever since.
Susan and I grew distant, and she returned to the States with the kids. Although our split was more or less amicable, it was definitive.
I left several months later, in the summer of 1985, after three years in Burundi, for a sabbatical in Washington, D.C., as a Congressional Fellow under the auspices of the American Political Science Association.
Twice in a normal career, a Foreign Service officer can take a year-long training assignment, once in mid-career and again for senior training. Mid-career training could be at a university for an advanced degree or else at one of our military war colleges, or could involve practical training in business or government. I applied for the Congressional Fellowship because it offered academic training at the Johns Hopkins Unive
rsity in Washington on how the congressional process worked, as well as hands-on experience in the offices of senators and representatives.
Ideally, a Fellow serves in both chambers of Congress and for members from both parties, but it often happens that the entire fellowship is in one house or with one party. I interviewed with several Republicans, including the offices of Pete Wilson from my home state of California, and Frank Murkowski of Alaska, before being offered a post in the office of the junior senator from Tennessee, Al Gore. It was not a partisan decision, although my personal views on domestic issues such as abortion and gun control were definitely better represented by the Democrats than by the Republicans. I saw myself, then as now, as center-left in my outlook on social issues and as a realist in foreign policy. I was by no means either extreme left or extreme right, then or now.
In Gore’s office, I handled issues related to domestic agriculture and the passage of the 1985 Farm Bill. I also had the chance to travel to Tennessee with the senator and to accompany him to a series of town meetings, driving across the state from Memphis to Nashville one crisp autumn Saturday.
The night we arrived from Washington, D.C., we stayed with Al’s uncle in Jackson, about forty-five minutes from Memphis. The next morning, I dressed in my finest double-breasted suit with a nicely pressed shirt I had carefully packed and a fancy tie. My shoes were polished to a high shine. I was not going to let the senator down by looking anything less than my best. Unexpectedly for me, he came to the breakfast table in a shopworn blue suit, a slightly frayed pale blue shirt, a nondescript tie, and shoes that looked like they had not seen polish in months. When we arrived at the first town meeting, I suddenly understood. The senator’s constituents were regular folk, dressed for Saturday activities in their coveralls, jeans, and ball caps. They were there to have their issues addressed by “Al,” their man in Washington, not to be overawed by some city slicker out to impress them with his wardrobe. I discreetly made my way back to the senator’s car, removed my coat, loosened my tie, and rubbed some dirt on my shoes to try to blend in a little better. What could be worse that an overdressed senator but an overdressed senator’s aide?
I learned a lot from that trip about American voters and their interests and concerns. And I watched as the senator treated his constituents with interest, compassion, and real friendship. He seemed to know the name of everyone he saw, and asked about family members by name as well. His very real comfort in front of audiences contrasted starkly with the unease he projected then and later in front of a television camera. He was approachable (I knew him even then as Al) and very funny. And he loved to be out there. He drew energy from his audiences, listening carefully and answering every question with passion and enthusiasm. He was with his people, and however mundane their concerns, they became his concerns.
Al was also dedicated to the issues, some of which—his support for the information technology revolution, for example—were far ahead of their time, generating no public interest then, and offering no political return. But he kept plugging away at them until they saw the light of day. In his senate offices we already had a rudimentary intra-office E-mail system that permitted us to communicate directly with the senator and office colleagues. We were on the cutting edge. Even Newt Gingrich later acknowledged, in a panel discussion, that Al Gore’s efforts had been instrumental in creating the regulatory framework that led to the rapid expansion of the technology we know today as the Internet.
In the spring of 1986, I moved to the House side, into the suite of offices in the capitol rotunda occupied by the majority whip, Tom Foley. The House was a completely different experience. I served as the congressman’s staff assistant on subjects that he dealt with in his capacity as whip. He was frequently asked to speak at events having little to do with his legislative agenda: the North American Association of Pakistani Physicians was one such event, the meeting in Washington of the American Association of Nuclear Power Plant Managers another. I would draft his talking points and try to figure out what questions might come from his audience. He took me to all the speeches he delivered and showed delight in introducing me to audiences as his “State Department aide.”
Foley was from Spokane, Washington, a conservative district on the eastern side of the state, and had been in the House since 1964. He and his wife, Heather, are two of the most thoughtful and friendly down-to-earth people I know. Heather served as the unpaid administrative assistant in the whip’s office, managing the schedule and the staff, and keeping Tom moving in the right direction. She would bicycle in to work from their apartment across town in the Kalorama neighborhood with her dog, who was a fixture in the office. Gently, but resolutely, she would bring order to the chaos that reigned as a result of the pace of work in the chamber. There are 435 members of the House, all with needs and demands that eventually find their way to the whip’s doorstep. Though most members are fine, affable public servants, they did not get to hold elective office by being wallflowers. Assertiveness is a trait of all politicians. The whip’s office was the arbiter of who got what; and since the whip was elected by his fellow representatives, care of the constituents was an essential part of the job description. Heather was acutely sensitive to the delicate balance between catering to the members and keeping them in line.
Tom’s office did not have a desk, but was outfitted to look like an English club drawing room, with deep cordovan leather couches and chairs and an elaborate stereo system that played opera with a fidelity worthy of the great opera houses of Europe.
He allowed me to sit in on every meeting that my workload permitted. In fact, I could perch in his office or follow him around when not doing my research in my own office upstairs, just behind the visitors’ gallery off the floor of the House. His knowledge of the history of the House was profound, and he could quote at will pithy aphorisms from earlier times. Tom was, and still is, one of Washington’s most eminent raconteurs.
There were regular Tuesday meetings with all the assistant whips, chaired by Speaker Tip O’Neill, to set weekly agendas and discuss strategies. These were free-flowing occasions, with the unruly House members passionate and loudly sharing their ideas. Finally Tom would gently sum up the debate and he, Majority Leader Jim Wright, and the Speaker would rein in the herd and dole out assignments.
We would also often be with Speaker O’Neill when he carried out his ceremonial duties. On one occasion, he received the newly arrived Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, who had replaced the long-serving Anatoly Dobrynin, a fixture on the Washington diplomatic circuit since 1962. Ambassador Dubinin sported a silver-colored Elvis-style pompadour that caught Tip’s attention. He could not get over it, and spent the first several minutes commenting to the ambassador on his haircut. The ambassador, new to Washington and wanting to make a good first impression, was obviously uncomfortable. He had doubtless assumed that in meeting the man third in line to be president of the United States, he would be treated to a learned discourse on American foreign policy as viewed by our elected representatives. Instead, all he got was a discussion of his high hair.
Just before I departed Washington at the end of the fellowship, Tom and Heather invited my twins and me to watch the Fourth of July fireworks of 1986 with them from the balcony of the Capitol building. We spent a wonderful evening celebrating the national holiday from the vantage point of one of our most illustrious institutions. After the fireworks were over, Tom opened the floor of the House Chamber and gave my seven-year-olds a guided tour. They sat in the Speaker’s chair and listened as he explained the importance of the mace as the symbol of the House in session—without the mace in place, no work could transpire on the floor. If the mace were withdrawn, work ceased. He showed them how new voting cards worked, permitting representatives to place votes from their desks on the floor. I treasure a picture in my office of Joe and Sabrina, wearing Statue of Liberty crowns on their heads, sitting at desks on the House floor next to Tom Foley, who would soon become Speaker of the House.
; I left Washington not long after this, in July 1986, for my next assignment, deputy chief of mission in the Republic of the Congo. Congo’s capital is Brazzaville, located on the northern bank of the Congo River, across from Kinshasa, capital of Zaire, the former Belgian Congo. I had first been to Brazzaville in December 1978 to help reopen our embassy that had been closed after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Congo had been convulsed by politics since its independence from France in 1960, and had been ruled by military dictators who found friends in the Soviet Union and among its allies. The government’s rhetoric was rabidly socialist, and they even displayed a hammer and sickle on their flag, which did not prevent the leadership from enriching itself at the expense of the population. The bureaucracy there was woefully slow, inept, and corrupt.
By contrast, most of the Congolese people were animated and vibrant, politically, culturally, and socially. The art school in the Poto Poto neighborhood was renowned for its creativity, and was home to many of the continent’s most distinguished and imaginative artists of the seventies and eighties. Political discourse, while heavy on socialist and anti-colonial rhetoric, peppered all walks of life. One of Africa’s most famous singers, Zao, made his name singing about African veterans of the French military (“Ancien Combatant”), a satirical song about those who fought for the colonial masters in Europe’s wars. Yet for all their egalitarian zeal, they loved their dark Pierre Cardin suits, their Mercedes, and their regular trips to Paris. Education in Moscow at the Patrice Lumumba University, perhaps, but vacations in France. Or as one Congolese official put it to me, “Just because we are socialist does not mean we have to be poor.”
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