by Kim Ghattas
On Pakistani television, split screens showed the aftermath of the bombing and Clinton’s arrival side by side, as if the two were linked. In the minds of many Pakistanis, they were. They saw the violence as a result of American pressure on their country to tackle militants. Hundreds of soldiers had died in the fighting and scores of civilians killed in bomb attacks. Pakistanis felt they were fighting America’s war and paying a heavy price for it. And Pakistan’s sensationalist media fed that narrative.
In the Middle East, the devising of conspiracy theories is an art form, but rarely before had I seen this level of unsubstantiated reporting. Even by Middle East standards, the Pakistani media were shameless. The Nation, Pakistan’s leading daily, published a front-page article claiming that America funded and supported the Pakistani Taliban in a bid to weaken Pakistan and bolster India. The article offered no proof, no supporting documents, no logic; it was seemingly just speculation by one author. But there it was, in black and white for millions of readers to see. Clearly, it must have been “the Truth.” The article was a fairly typical example of Pakistani sensationalist journalism—little care for the facts, no attribution to sources, and often focused on stoking anti-American sentiments. At its best, the Pakistani media were rambunctious and feisty; reporters asked the most unexpected questions. At Clinton’s press conference with the foreign minister, one earnest journalist asked whether President Obama would return his Nobel Peace Prize if he didn’t bring peace to Afghanistan. Hillary couldn’t resist laughing.
Pakistani journalists were a key target of her public diplomacy. On all her trips, Clinton gave a couple of interviews to local journalists, and in Pakistan, she wanted to take over the airwaves and fill the newspapers. She started with two television interviews with Pakistani journalists based in Washington that were to be aired the day of her arrival. In Pakistan over the course of three days, she was going to hold four separate group interviews, with seven television presenters, eight radio journalists, and six newspaper editors. She was also planning a town hall with five women journalists.
The questions they all asked were really just a long recitation of their grievances.
The wording of the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill was humiliating, they said, and there was a hidden agenda. Why wasn’t the money completely unconditional? They claimed American diplomats were breaking the law, walking around with arms in Islamabad at three in the morning. They said there was a secret marine barracks being built inside the embassy. Why wasn’t the United States helping Pakistan regain the territory of Kashmir? The Pakistani parliament had voted unanimously to condemn U.S. drone attacks against Pakistan, and yet the attacks only intensified. Obviously, the United States did not respect the Pakistani parliament.
Over and over, the journalists mentioned the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill and used the words “respect” and “trust.” Hillary smiled and patiently answered question after question. Every now and then, she whipped out her plain talk.
“Pakistan doesn’t have to take this money,” she said. The group of television journalists who had sat down with her for this interview in the U.S. ambassador’s residence were startled. Not take the money? It hadn’t even occurred to them.
“Let me be very clear: You do not have to take this money. You do not have to take any aid from us. Nobody is saying you must take this money so that we can help you rebuild your energy sector or put more kids in school or provide better maternal and child health. You don’t have to take the money.”
Undaunted, the journalist now argued that the $7.5 billion promised in the bill was but a pittance. Half defiant, half mocking, Talat Hussain from Aaj TV set out to prove the United States was not serious with its aid to Pakistan.
“Let me give you numbers. You talked about the civilian aid and the military aid [for Pakistan]. Your one base in Kyrgyzstan—you know how much Kyrgyzstan charges you? Seven hundred million U.S. dollars!” Wagging his finger, Hussain was referring to the Manas Air Base, opened in 2001 to support the transit of American military personnel in and out of Afghanistan.
Eyebrows arched, her head tilting to the right, Hillary smiled calmly.
“That is wrong.”
“Seven hundred!”
“That’s wrong. We negotiated the contract. I’m sorry, that is not right.”
“You negotiated it down.”
“No, no.”
The question was turning into a ping-pong match. Sitting in the back of the room, Vali couldn’t believe that the Pakistani journalist was trying to correct Hillary’s facts.
“They are charging you seven hundred million U.S. dollars. Give us a figure on that,” Hussain demanded, his hand raised, wielding a pen.
“Fifty million dollars.”
“Just one air base! Do you know how many air bases the U.S.uses in Pakistan?”
“And do you know how many billions of dollars we’ve provided to Pakistan?” Hillary asked with the faintest of scoffs but still smiling.
Hussain now complained that the aid to Pakistan during Pervez Musharraf’s seven-year rule had been all swallowed up by the military and American contracting agencies.
“Well, okay, but let me just stop you here,” Hillary interjected, leaning forward in her dark-emerald pantsuit and holding out her arm. “The United States did not install Musharraf.”
“You backed him. You supported him. George W. Bush lionized him.”
“Well, George Bush is not my president right now.”
“But he did it with the U.S.”
“Musharraf and Bush are gone. I’m very happy about Bush being gone. You’re apparently happy about Musharraf being gone.”
“But Musharraf is lecturing around in your country about democracy. Okay, let’s—” Hussain wanted the last word, but Hillary cut him off.
“Look, we can either argue about the past—which is always fun to do, but can’t be changed—or we can decide we’re going to shape a different future. Now, I vote that we shape a different future. And I cannot take responsibility for everything that was done in your country, just like you can’t take responsibility for everything that’s done in our country. But we can certainly try to chart a different course.”
* * *
Driving from one interview to the next, to meetings with officials, we watched Islamabad roll past our windows, a colorless administrative city on a grid system that appeared under siege. There were military checkpoints every few blocks, barricades surrounded official buildings, even people’s homes seemed to have unusually high walls topped with barbed wire.
When we finally made our way to the presidential palace for Clinton’s final meeting of the day, the sun had long set over the Margalla Hills that rim the northwest of the capital. The tiered palace looked like a wedding cake and, like all government buildings in Pakistan, gave off the air of a country much more well-off and stable than it had been for a while. Clinton walked through the lobby with her retinue, past glass displays of gifts given to the country’s rulers from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The golden doors of the elevator closed, and up they went to meet President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. We had been told to wait on the bus.
A Pakistani guard boarded and asked to check our IDs. Our State Department media handler pushed back. We were part of a “secure package.” There was no reason to screen us. The guard didn’t speak English, and the handler didn’t speak Urdu. They stood there, facing off tensely. The rest of us were too tired to argue, but these were the moments when American might and arrogance came face to face with the defiance of smaller powers. I could almost hear their silent thoughts.
We are here with the American secretary of state, she represents the world’s top superpower, we give you billions of dollars, without us you would be nothing. Who do you think you are?
I am guarding the Pakistani president, Pakistan is a great country with an ancient civilization, we developed our own nukes, we’ve tricked you for years into giving us money, and we don’t eve
n really like you, who do you think YOU are?
The Pakistani guard eventually backed down, and we got off the bus. Our phones and recorders were taken away. In most countries traveling with the American secretary of state meant you were waved through security but not in Pakistan. It wasn’t clear whether they didn’t trust that her guards had done their job right or whether they just didn’t trust us.
Clinton had insisted that her whole delegation, including the traveling press, be invited to the dinner that the president was throwing in her honor. Ministers, journalists, politicians, and members of parliament were also attending. Our invitations said eight thirty, and we waited in a one-hundred-foot-long rectangular room with wooden floors and crystal chandeliers in the company of some of the dinner guests. We were back on Hillary time—or perhaps it was Pakistan time.
“Sit down; tea will be served shortly,” the servants kept telling us as we paced the room and tried to walk around the palace. Just outside the door, in the marble-floored foyer, the walls were lined with portraits of Pakistan’s presidents starting with the founder of the country, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who was holding a cigarette in one hand. An abstract sculpture by Pakistani artist Amin Gulgee, The Message, stood in the middle, engraved with the words “God taught man what he knew not.”
Around ten o’clock, Hillary finally emerged, looking remarkably fresh in her white blazer, Huma by her side. We all walked into the dining room on the other side of the foyer. In between four pistachio-green walls, twenty-one round tables were set for dinner for two hundred people. The large main table stood in the middle, between the entrance and a lectern below a white gazebo on the opposite wall.
We sat down for a fifteen-course curry meal starting with a strange-tasting “creamy pasta sausage salad appetizer,” according to our menu. Sandwiched between the president and the prime minister, Clinton looked around the table to where her aides sat between the foreign minister and the top military brass, from the head of intelligence, Ahmad Shuja Pasha, to the army chief, Ashfaq Kayani, and the head of the air force. They were wearing civilian clothes, an unusual break from tradition, and it was a feat just to have them all around the same table.
The civilians and the military in Pakistan rarely spoke to one another, and they had barely acknowledged one another’s presence so far. Since Pervez Musharraf’s military dictatorship ended in 2008, Washington had spent a lot of time managing the relationship between the two sides. The military and the civilians distrusted each other deeply, and each vied for the upper hand in a constant political struggle. Hillary kept the conversation light, talking about her day, about how much she loved Pakistani mangoes. Out of her earshot, two of the military men were discussing the current military operations in the North West Frontier targeting the Taliban. Clamping down on militants in Pakistan was essential to stem the flow of fighters and supplies for al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Washington had been pushing Pakistan to act more forcefully. But the military chiefs weren’t discussing how much of a blow the operations were to the militants—rather, how training to maneuver helicopters over the region’s glaciers in the winter was a skill transferrable to the country’s border with India. Members of the American delegation listened, partly amused, partly annoyed.
Wearing glasses, his black hair slicked back, President Zardari got up for his speech, and, standing under the white wooden lattice gazebo, he spoke about the “healing touch” that the world and his country needed. Addressing Clinton, he added that together they could make a difference. Zardari, in his midfifties, had been thrust into politics after the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, in December 2007. He was known as “Mr. 10%” for allegedly skimming 10 percent off lucrative contracts while his wife was in power in the 1990s. Zardari spent several years in jail facing various accusations, including money laundering, but always denied the charges. After a decade in self-imposed exile because of corruption charges she herself faced, Bhutto had returned to Pakistan to run in elections as Musharraf’s grip on power waned. When she was killed, her widower stepped in and became president after their party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, won the elections in February 2008. For years, Pakistan had slumbered in and out of military dictatorships that couldn’t provide long-term stability because of the consistent exclusion of civilians from the system. When civilians took over, weak and disorganized, they blamed the army for all the country’s problems and lived with constant fear of another military coup. In a country where the military and intelligence agencies had become kings, the Americans wanted Zardari to succeed if only because he was a civilian.
It was Clinton’s turn to speak. Vali had gone over the speech with her earlier, emphasizing the key points she had to make as part of the general message of engagement and support she was bringing to Pakistan. But before the dinner, Zardari had taken out a picture of Clinton and Bhutto from 1995, when, as First Lady, Hillary had visited Pakistan with Chelsea. She had spent time with Bhutto and met her children and Zardari. The picture and the memory of a woman killed so violently had brought tears to Hillary’s eyes. She tossed the script and spoke from her gut.
“The reason why we do what we do, serve in public life, is to allow for our children to reach their God-given potential.… Our message is simple. The U.S. is ready and willing to work with you and support you.”
At the Gujranwala table, where I was seated, two ministers and three journalists smiled politely as they helped themselves to prawn biryani and harees, a hearty meat stew with wheat. Hillary was really wonderful, they told me, but they didn’t buy a word she said. The minute the United States won or lost in Afghanistan, they said, Washington would only talk to India.
“If the U.S. wins in Afghanistan, Pakistan will be left out of the game; we can’t have that,” offered one as he explained why the Pakistani army was withholding help on Afghanistan. Pakistan was playing a long-term game: it was in the country’s best interest to maintain a foothold in Afghanistan thanks to militant groups. I thought about how difficult it was for Americans to fully grasp the state of mind of people living in constant fear of their neighbor. Americans left the United States, invaded or liberated countries overseas, and then went home to their own country between two oceans, with a northern and southern neighbor that would never invade them.
When we finally returned to the embassy, well past midnight, our day had lasted thirty-two hours from the moment we had loaded into the vans outside the State Department in Washington that Tuesday morning. When Hillary was here in 1995, she had stayed at the Marriott Hotel in town. No American official delegations stayed outside the compound anymore, and the Marriott itself had been bombed in 2008 in an explosion that killed fifty-six people and wounded more than two hundred. The hotel was now protected by concrete barriers, barbed wire, and checkpoints. So Hillary was spending the night at the ambassador’s residence. Before retiring to her quarters, she went over the day with Jake, Vali, Huma, and Richard. Jake was going through her statements of the day, studying how to adjust the message for the rest of the visit.
In a nearby brown-brick building, Paul, the line officer, was getting the secretary’s daily briefing book ready. He had been flying solo to free a seat for someone in the large pack of journalists who wanted to accompany Clinton on this trip. His plane teammate would hop ahead on a commercial flight to each stop on our yet-to-be-determined itinerary. The daily briefing folder was a smaller version of the trip Book—a cordovan leather binder stamped in gold letters with “Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton” that was delivered by Huma to the secretary every evening while on the road. The book contained Clinton’s speeches for the following day; briefing checklists with talking points for her meetings, both on paper and on cards she could refer to during meetings; truncated briefing checklists, detailed instructions for how events or meetings would unfold. There were ten events on the next day’s schedule in Lahore.
The traveling press headed over to the “pods,” the spartan rooms for two housed in two-level
prefabricated visitors quarters by the football field at the bottom of the hilly compound. On the plane, Caroline Adler had distributed earplugs in blue transparent plastic containers, apologizing for making us bunk “à deux.”
SAM was sleeping across the border in Kyrgyzstan, at the Manas U.S. military base. The Ravens were better able to protect him there. In the morning, he would come back and pick us up for the one-hour flight north to the capital of Punjab.
* * *
A vibrant cultural city of eleven million people, Lahore looked depopulated on Thursday morning. In the front seat of the armored limousine carrying Clinton, Fred listened to his agents chatter in his left ear, watching for the security assets dotting the road, visible only to his expert eyes. We had been briefed by a DS agent before leaving Washington about what to do if our convoy got hit. It wasn’t going to happen, they insisted, but they wanted us to be prepared just in case. The priority would be to get the secretary safe, but we shouldn’t panic if we were separated from the main motorcade. Other cars and agents placed along the road would come to our rescue.
At every cross street, huge black curtains hung between buildings, blocking the view. The Pakistani population at large seemed to have been pushed back several blocks from the route of the motorcade. There was not a car in sight. Pakistani soldiers stood along the way, their backs to the road.
In 1995, Hillary had visited a village near Lahore and walked into people’s homes. The closest she could get to real people now was an auditorium packed full of students at the Government College University of Lahore. She stood on stage behind a lectern and delivered her opening remarks with a gentle smile and a soft tone to several hundred Pakistani students.