The Back Channel

by William J Burns

  The savagery of Israeli-Palestinian violence was high on the agendas of most of the other Arab leaders I visited that summer. Hosni Mubarak was worried about the mood on the Egyptian street, and the impact on Egypt’s treaty relationship with Israel. He had a grudging respect for Sharon’s toughness, but worried that he was relying so much on force and so little on offering any kind of political future for Palestinians that he would ultimately just dig the hole deeper. Mubarak was well acquainted with Arafat’s slippery disposition, and knew that the weakness of his hand made him even less likely to concede much under Israeli pressure. Waving his arms in the air dismissively near the end of one conversation, he said, “Those two deserve each other, but we can’t let them drag us all down.” King Abdullah was even more exposed in Jordan, and shared Mubarak’s frustration.

  Distance insulated leaders in the Maghreb to some extent from the passions of the Levant. Morocco’s King Mohammed VI was more concerned with establishing himself on the throne and the apparently inexhaustible conflict with the Algerians over the Western Sahara than the ugliness farther east. In Algiers, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s comb-over remained one of the country’s true architectural marvels. He dominated our three-hour conversation with his impressions of other leaders and their conflicts, without any hint of introspection. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia professed to want to fight corruption and open up his political system, with an enthusiasm that seemed heavily contrived.

  In Beirut, the political cast of characters eyed one another nervously, as they had for decades. Prime Minister Rafik Hariri took a wary view of Sharon, who had helped drive the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and of Arafat, the proximate target of that invasion. Hariri was then still somewhat optimistic about Bashar al-Assad in Syria, who seemed to lack his father’s guile and experience, but might give Lebanon more room to maneuver.

  My first meeting with Bashar in Damascus offered a glimpse at the banality of an evil that would emerge in its full and horrific form ten years later. He asked me to see him at home, which was still the relatively modest house in which he had lived before becoming president. He greeted me at the door with his wife, Asma, alongside, a few of his children’s toys visible in a corner of the living room. Asma had been raised in London and spoke fluent English. Bashar’s was more halting, and we switched back and forth to Arabic.

  Bashar was pleasant but cocksure, betraying none of the tentativeness that you might expect from someone who had been in power for little more than a year. He pronounced himself with conviction on regional events and American policy (about which he had nothing good to say). He dismissed Arafat as vain and indecisive, and said airily that the only thing Sharon and Israel understood was force. He was patronizing about King Abdullah in Jordan, and displayed little deference toward Mubarak or the senior Gulf leaders. Bashar’s fascination with modernity seemed more about gadgets and technology than political or economic progress. As I later told Powell, the most generous conclusion you could draw was that Bashar was a work in progress, but we should have no illusions about any dramatic shift in Syrian behavior. His regime’s capacity for mendacity and brutality would remain the cold heart of its survival strategy.

  On the Arabian Peninsula, leaders were preoccupied with leadership transitions and domestic challenges, along with the emotions aroused in their own societies by nightly television images of violence in Palestine. I saw Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s mercurial president, in Sanaa. He punctuated his comments with expansive waves of the camel riding crop he kept in his hand, which his aides ducked with a practiced air. Sultan Qaboos of Oman, with whom I would deal frequently years later when he hosted secret talks with the Iranians, was full of wise insights and quiet dignity. Amir Hamad in Doha engaged in the favorite Qatari sport, poking fun at the Saudis and asserting his own independence. Bahrain and Kuwait were eager to sustain strong relations with the United States, and not to get caught in any of the various regional crossfires.

  I met Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, de facto ruler of his country given King Fahd’s infirmity, at his horse farm outside Riyadh. In that conversation and a number of others over the succeeding years, I found him to be refreshingly direct and candid. He found American officials to be energetic but slow-witted students, naïve about the Middle East and often oblivious to the consequences of their actions (or inaction). In the summer of 2001, Abdullah’s anxieties were mostly about the unfolding mess in Palestine. He urged greater White House interest and activism. Despite his frustrations, he was hospitable and warm. That evening, he challenged me to join him in a Bedouin form of bocce. With a twinkle in his eye, he asked if I knew how to play. When I said no, he smiled broadly and said, “Good.” Although he had eased himself out of his chair with some apparent difficulty, he managed to bend his knees when he tossed, and had some well-honed flair in his wrist motion. His agility and experience more than compensated for our thirty-year age difference—and I knew when I was being played. The crown prince beat me handily.

  I also stopped in Abu Dhabi to meet Sheikh Zayed, the aging but thoroughly engaging leader of the United Arab Emirates. Zayed made clear how pained he was by American policy on the Arab-Israeli issue. “Ten years ago,” he said, “I had such hopes for the region and America. Now I don’t have much hope left. I know that George Bush and Colin Powell are good men. Please help open their eyes to the consequences of what’s happening.” American political stock in the Middle East faced a bear market, and in the summer of 2001 the most pressing priority was to stop the hemorrhaging of capital caused by Israeli-Palestinian violence.5

  Iraq and Saddam featured in all of these conversations, but didn’t overwhelm them. Nor did they overwhelm debate in Washington. While the vice president and the Pentagon quietly agitated for a tougher line on Saddam and more active support for the exiled Iraqi opposition, there was not much sense of urgency. The immediate task was to try to put the sanctions regime on a more sustainable path and strengthen containment of Saddam. Powell took the lead in fashioning a new “smart sanctions” approach—lifting most of the ineffectual or even counterproductive sanctions on Iraqi civilians and substituting a more narrowly focused arms control regime to deny military and dual-use technology. The administration, like its predecessor, remained committed to the long-term goal of regime change in Baghdad, but also remained concerned about overreaching. In a closed briefing for some key senators after I returned from my travels in July 2001, I repeated that we had no doubt that Iraq and the region would be better off without Saddam, but added that that outcome obviously couldn’t be imposed from the outside. I had no idea how quickly the mood in the administration could change.

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  I WAS AT my desk in the State Department on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, reading my daily intelligence briefs, when the first images of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York flashed across my television screen. I watched in horror as the second tower was struck, and as the full magnitude of the assault began to sink in. The department was evacuated amid reports of possible further attacks; thousands of employees, many with tears in their eyes, filed quietly out of the building. I walked hurriedly among the crowds, found Lisa, and hugged her tightly. I went back to my office an hour or so later, along with a small number of colleagues, uncertain of what to expect—beyond a vastly transformed world.

  By that point, another hijacked aircraft had crashed into the Pentagon. Looking out my window on the sixth floor of the department, I could see the plumes of smoke across the Potomac. My thoughts turned quickly to ensuring that NEA personnel overseas were safe. Jim Larocco took the lead in calling each of our posts, and the bureau responded with its usual discipline and professionalism. On the seventh floor, Rich Armitage stayed in touch with the White House and with Secretary Powell, who was in Peru for a meeting of the Organization of American States. Powell began the eight-hour flight home as soon as he learn
ed of the attacks, but wouldn’t arrive until early evening.

  That afternoon, sitting in a virtually deserted building, I tried to collect my thoughts and think ahead. It was already clear that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks. The first step would obviously be a sharp strike against them and their Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. Three thousand innocent people had just been slaughtered in the worst assault on American soil since Pearl Harbor. We had to respond decisively. But we also had to look for opportunities amid crisis. In the first few hours after the attacks, there was a huge outpouring of international sympathy and support. Vladimir Putin was one of the first leaders to call the president and offer Russia’s solidarity, and the Iranian leadership was quick to denounce the attack. Was there a chance to mobilize regional and international action around a shared sense of revulsion? At this grim and painful moment, could the United States take advantage of almost unprecedented global support and retake the initiative in the Middle East? Could we shape a strategy that would not only hit back hard against terrorists and any states who continued to harbor them, but also lay out an affirmative agenda that might eventually help reduce the hopelessness and anger on which extremists preyed?

  Our computer systems were down most of that day, so I sat at my desk and wrote a note to the secretary in longhand, as legibly as I could. It was a hurried effort, covering four pages of yellow legal paper.

  My thinking was straightforward. The use of force and American military and intelligence leverage would be crucial in Afghanistan, but there were also considerable opportunities for imaginative and hard-nosed diplomacy. Adversaries like Iran had a stake in the removal of the Taliban, and a solid grasp of Afghan politics. Exploring cooperation with them might prove useful and create long-term openings.

  The demonstration effect of success against the Taliban and al-Qaeda could also help focus the minds of other states dabbling (or immersed) in terrorism, like Libya and Syria. Tough diplomacy and the weight of post–9/11 international opinion could have a decisive effect on Qaddafi and Assad, and we should exploit the moment. I doubted that Saddam was capable of any such epiphanies, but argued that this was the best opportunity we had had in years to strengthen containment of Iraq and build international support for “smart sanctions.” We could use the terrible events of 9/11 as the antidote to containment fatigue, and shore up constraints that were bent but not yet broken.

  I added that we might also have opportunities to create the cooperative security arrangements among the Gulf Arab states that we had discussed after Desert Storm a decade before but never made systematic. Amid all the awful violence of the Second Intifada, we might have an opening to reassert American leadership, press hard against violence, and re-create a sense of political horizon for Israelis and Palestinians. Finally, I encouraged a renewed focus from the new administration on the longer-term drivers of instability across the Middle East, on the value of carefully promoting greater economic and political openness. A regional economic development bank was one possibility; a new regional assistance initiative was another, with incentives linked to measurable progress on reforms and cooperation against terrorism.

  The trauma of 9/11 confronted us with the reality that the Islamist movement spawned in 1979—the year in which the Iranian Revolution, the Grand Mosque attack in Mecca, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan unleashed lethal regional and ideological rivalries—had become more extreme, more violent, and more global. There could be no wishing it away. What was unfolding was less a clash of civilizations than a clash within a civilization, a deeply battered Islamic world in the midst of a desperate ideological struggle. There were limits to what we could do directly to shape that debate. What we could do, however, was to help create a sense of geopolitical order that would deprive extremists of the oxygen they needed to fan the flames of chaos, and give moderate forces the sustained support they needed to demonstrate that they could deliver for their people.

  I handed the note to the secretary after he returned. He was tired and understandably preoccupied, but appreciative. One of the things I had admired most about Powell was the way he exuded confidence, even in the worst of circumstances. I could feel that now, unspoken but unmistakable. As I walked out, I said he could count on NEA. He smiled wearily and said, “I know I can.”

  We followed up over the next few days with more specific memos on Iran, Libya, and the Israeli-Palestinian issue, along the same lines as my hastily handwritten note. At a senior staff meeting on September 13, the first after 9/11, Powell echoed some of these themes, stressing alongside a message of American firmness and resolve that we had to be attentive to opportunities for diplomacy in even the worst national tragedies.

  As the U.S. military and the CIA moved swiftly in the fall of 2001 to support the Afghan opposition and overthrow the Taliban government in Kabul, we pedaled ahead slowly on a number of the Middle East initiatives we had suggested. In late September, Ryan Crocker began a direct dialogue with the Iranians about Afghanistan that helped produce a new Afghan government. In early October, I met quietly in London with a Libyan delegation led by Musa Kusa, Qaddafi’s intelligence chief, resuscitating talks about Lockerbie and terrorism that had begun in the Clinton administration. I returned to Damascus that same month and met Bashar, who soon thereafter began a modestly useful information exchange, which in one instance provided advance warning of a terrorist plot against U.S. facilities in Bahrain.

  In November, using the diplomatic momentum of the immediate post–9/11 period, Powell won Russian acceptance and UN Security Council passage of a “smart sanctions” framework for Iraq, which tightened controls on military and dual-use items, and loosened restrictions on civilian goods. That same month, he gave a speech in Louisville, Kentucky, emphasizing the importance of renewing a peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. He talked movingly about ending the daily humiliations of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, and with equal passion about Israel’s right to security. He appointed retired General Tony Zinni, the former commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), as a senior advisor to help negotiate a cease-fire and reopen the way to negotiations. All this was at least a start on the agenda I had tried to sketch, alone in my office, on that grim afternoon of September 11.

  That agenda was soon eclipsed by an alternative view. The new administration had been shaken badly and felt a call to action—the more decisive the better. “Containment” didn’t have much of a ring to it in the months after the al-Qaeda attacks on the homeland. It was not the season for nuance, caution, and compromise. It was the season for the risk-tolerant and the ideologically ambitious, bent on inserting ourselves aggressively into the regional contest of ideas, militarizing our policy, and unbuckling our rhetoric.

  After the pain and surprise of 9/11, it was time for the muscular reassertion of American might, time to remind adversaries of the consequences of challenging the United States. For many in the White House and the Pentagon, that was a message best served unilaterally, unencumbered and undiluted by elaborate coalition-building. Lost in the moment was the reality that the approach we advocated at State was no less hard-nosed, just more sustainable and more mindful of risks.

  Regime change in Iraq became the acid test of the administration’s post–9/11 approach. The overthrow of the Taliban had come almost too quickly and too easily. For “paleoconservatives” like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, the message sent in Afghanistan was necessary but insufficient. Another, bigger blow had to be struck to deter enemies in a region in which force was the only language people understood. For “neoconservatives,” like Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary Doug Feith at the Pentagon, Saddam’s forcible ouster was not just a message, it was an opportunity to create a democratic model in Iraq, begin the transformation of the whole region, and reassert American hegemony after a post–Cold War decade of naïve attachment to the promise of a peace dividend.

  For President George W.
Bush, the world had changed after September 11, and the humble realist lens that he had used in the months before no longer seemed to illuminate. Impatient and proud of his decisiveness, the president found containment of Saddam to be too passive, inadequate to the challenges of this moment in history. After 9/11, the policy terrain tilted rapidly away from the wider agenda for which we argued, and toward a single-minded focus on toppling Saddam. So did the bureaucratic playing field, with Powell increasingly isolated and considered by antagonists at the White House and the Pentagon to be too independent, too popular, and too moderate—and NEA considered a den of defeatists and Cassandras. In a Washington that rarely lacked for infighting and policy combat, the road to war in Iraq was distinctive for its intensity and indiscipline.

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  FOLLOWING 9/11, MY colleagues and I continued to believe we could contain Iraq and avoid war. We worried that an ill-considered, unilateral war to topple Saddam would prove to be a massive foreign policy blunder. We did not, however, argue frontally against the bipartisan policy of eventual regime change, nor did we argue against the possible use of force much further down the road to achieve it. Instead, sensing the ideological zeal with which war drums were beating, we tried to slow the tempo and direct debate in a less self-injurious manner. None of us had any illusions about Saddam or the long-term risk that his regime posed for the region. His brutality deserved every bit of international condemnation and ostracism it had received. We did not, however, see a serious, imminent threat that would justify a war. While most of us suspected that Saddam was concealing some residual WMD capacity, the evidence was hard to establish, and he always deliberately obscured his intentions in order to deceive and intimidate regional and domestic enemies. His conventional military capabilities had been shattered in Desert Storm, and his economy was in tatters after a decade of sanctions, and decades more of mismanagement.