The Secretary

by Kim Ghattas

  “As someone with a deep respect for Islam, visiting Pakistan is a special honor. And I have several members of my staff, Muslim Americans, who accompanied me on this trip, and I know I can speak for them and say that we are all very pleased to be here,” she said. She told them about her visit to the Badshahi mosque in the morning, a stunning reminder of the grandeur of the Mughal Empire and the fifth-largest mosque in the world.

  “One cannot stand in the midst of the mosque without appreciating the contributions to human thought and cultural expression that emanate from Pakistan.”

  She worked hard to mollify her audience, show respect for their culture and their religion, and promised them that the United States stood by their side. Mostly, she was trying to impress on them that the battle against militants wasn’t a war for America; it was a battle for Pakistani democracy.

  When she was finished speaking, Clinton took questions from the audience and, as usual, picked at random.

  “What can the Americans give Pakistan that we can now trust you and believe this time in your sincerity and that the Obama administration is not going to use us like the Americans did in the past when they wanted to destabilize the Russians in Afghanistan?”

  The audience erupted in wild applause. Thinking back to my own disappointments in Beirut, I couldn’t help but relate.

  Hillary had learned the art of saying, “I’ve learned from my mistakes.” It was how she transformed what had been a weakness during her days as First Lady into a strong point during her campaign for the presidency. It was a magic, disarming utterance, and she put it to work on a bigger scale. America, she told the Pakistanis, had made a mistake when it shifted its attention away from the region after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. She then tried to explain why this time it really was different, that America was there for the long term.

  The world had rarely heard an American official apologize for past mistakes. This approach didn’t go down well with Republicans back in the United States; but around the globe, it went a long way to buy goodwill. And yet, Clinton could not hide that all the issues high on America’s agenda—finding bin Laden, fighting the Taliban, al-Qaeda, making it possible for American soldiers to eventually leave Afghanistan—were short-term concerns. Vali knew that the only way the Pakistanis would be convinced this was really a long-term relationship was if it indeed became a long-term relationship. But if America could create a small opening, perhaps Pakistan would walk through it.

  The questions continued. If Clinton thought the Pakistani journalists had been a feisty bunch, she found the students—those who had rarely or perhaps never had a chance to speak to a politician, let alone a high-ranking American official—even more passionate.

  “I wanted to say that why American government always support Indians as compared with Pakistan, although Pakistan always standing with Americans in every battle?”

  Rapturous clapping.

  The U.S. Agency for International Development attracted the students’ wrath as well.

  “USAID did betray us, and this is a fact. Even back when you were just an intern in Ford Administration back in the seventies, and later on when you became First Lady, even in the eighties, they did that. My main question is: What is the difference that we will see between Obama administration and Bush administration toward Pakistan?”

  It was relentless. Even I was starting to feel under attack.

  “I can’t believe we’re putting her through this,” Jake thought, standing at the very top of the auditorium, looking down at the rows of students.

  For more than an hour, the students pounded Hillary, letting out their frustrations, fears, and disappointments. It was akin to national therapy for a country in a perpetual state of insecurity. After that first session, Hillary went to a small room nearby for a round-table interview with Pakistani newspaper editors and another intense round of ping-pong. There was no pause.

  Half an hour later, we made our way to the motorcade. Vali, who had sat in on the interview, filled in Jake and Philippe, both of whom had stayed outside to catch up on e-mails. The world didn’t stop turning during those trips. It was good to get away from Washington and immerse oneself in the issues of each country visited, but there were still urgent problems to solve around the globe and other trips to plan. Philippe and Jake were half listening, typing away on their BlackBerries, a skill every Washingtonian had mastered.

  “Oh, by the way,” Vali suddenly added as an afterthought. “She also said she doesn’t believe that no one in Pakistan knows where bin Laden is.”

  Jake and Philippe almost dropped their BlackBerries on the floor. This was big. Jake called the White House and spoke to the deputy national security advisor Denis McDonough. This was going to make news, Jake said, in a good way—her statement would help move the dial with the Pakistanis.

  “Good, own it, run with it,” came the reply. Clinton’s answer was consistent with the administration’s overall take that Osama bin Laden was somewhere in Pakistan. There was no point skirting the issue anymore.

  After lunch, we made our way to the Governor’s House of Punjab. A huge white building left over from British colonial rule, with columned arcades, perfect green lawns, and palm trees, it was home to Salman Taseer. An outspoken liberal and self-made business tycoon, the governor’s ties to the Bhutto family and the Peoples Party of Pakistan went back to the late 1970s. He had struggled under the dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq, spending six months in solitary confinement in the Lahore Fort, but it had strengthened his resolve to fight against the darkness of dictatorship rule. Now, he was fighting religious extremism.

  Taseer’s wife, Aamna, was a bit nervous about hosting the former First Lady. She had attended Hillary’s speech at a women’s college in Lahore in 1995 but had only seen her from afar. She seemed immediately at ease when Hillary addressed her by her first name. An odd thought crossed Aamna’s mind: “She’s a real human being.”

  Hillary also displayed her usual sense of humor to the delight of the Pakistani couple.

  “Mrs. Clinton, I should probably let you know that when I lived in London I used to throw rocks at the American embassy in Grosvenor Square,” said Taseer, who loved cracking jokes.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Governor,” she replied deadpan, “so did I.”11

  Aamna had asked for a selection of finger food to be served, mostly Pakistani, but had added some smoked salmon sandwiches just in case. Though she had had an elaborate Pakistani lunch after the town hall, Hillary ate the samosas presented to her by stiff servants wearing red tunics and starched turbans. On her way out, she complimented the beaming cooks who had lined up to greet her.

  “The food was delicious; thank you!” Hillary made their day. It shouldn’t have mattered, because she represented unpopular America, but somehow it did because it was a human moment that transcended the acrimony of politics and years of distrust.

  “If only there were more of these moments,” Aamna thought. “Maybe things could be different between us.”

  “Your aides said it wasn’t possible but I was really hoping we could take a photograph with my children,” she ventured. She couldn’t resist.

  “Oh, I love family photographs,” exclaimed Hillary, posing for several of them with Salman and Aamna, their two sons, and their daughter-in-law. The couple’s daughter, Shehrbano, was in the United States attending college in Massachusetts. Hillary told Shahbaz, the eldest son, she liked that his name meant “eagle” in Urdu. Bill Clinton’s Secret Service name was Eagle. Hillary’s name was still Evergreen.

  Then, all smiles, Hillary headed with aplomb into her eighth event of the day—a roundtable with businessmen who were eager to know how their country’s largest trading partner could facilitate trade even further and what additional aid their country would get. The businessmen had hit on a pet peeve of Hillary’s—tax evasion by the elite in developing countries—and she had come prepared. In fact, this peeve was the whole reason behind the roundtable. Clinton wanted t
o know when they were going to start paying their taxes to help fill the coffers of the state instead of asking for the United States to help solve their problems. She always wondered why charming, educated, entrepreneurial Pakistanis were unwilling to give up an iota of their power or their money for the good of their country.

  Clinton recognized that the United States and other donor countries had fostered that dependent attitude, helping to bail out Pakistan repeatedly over the years for fear it would collapse. It was a codependent relationship. But it was time for Pakistanis to decide what kind of country they wanted to live in.

  * * *

  In 1965, Pakistan was hailed as a remarkable example of postindependence nation building, and experts predicted great economic success. Today, barely 3 million of the country’s 174 million people paid income taxes because of a combination of tax exemptions and endemic tax evasion, especially by businessmen and landowners. Only oil-rich countries collected so little taxes because they had enough revenue. But with a $55 billion debt, Pakistan could not afford to forgo all that income, spending all its money on the military while its people suffered through power outages and its infrastructure fell apart.

  While Hillary pressed hard, her team and the traveling press slumped on the rigid upholstered wooden chairs, almost comatose in the fading daylight of the large wood-paneled basement reception room. The second day of any trip was always the worst: my body clock was stuck in limbo, not quite in the United States anymore but not yet adjusted to the new location. I was nauseous from the jetlag, from the heat, and from the heavy curry lunch. I fell asleep for an hour before we departed Punjab.

  We landed back in Islamabad in the early evening. Clinton was going to the army headquarters to meet the generals: the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency Ashfaq Kayani and the army chief Ahmad Pasha. The press was not invited, so we were driven to the embassy compound, where a barbecue dinner was under way around the swimming pool.

  Clinton preferred to meet the generals in a more informal atmosphere than their offices, so Kayani welcomed her at his house. He too asked for a picture with Hillary with his wife and children. He saw her as someone of substance who spoke for Obama and the United States. She saw him as someone with whom she could have a real conversation.

  The meeting was businesslike but friendly. There was always an inherent tension in those exchanges—after all, America and Pakistan were indirectly fighting each other in Afghanistan. But the mood was positive because of her two days of outreach. She didn’t pull out her briefing note cards. She had been briefed ad nauseam, and she knew the subject matter enough that she could cite detailed aid budget figures and discuss exactly how many CIA officers had to be allowed into the country to ramp up the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

  But in all of her conversations, Pakistani officials had given evasive answers, and the generals were no different from the civilians. When she told them that the United States and Pakistan had a common interest in lowering tension with India, she received only partial answers. When she warned that if Pakistan didn’t hold a serious trial for the suspects of the 2008 Mumbai attack it would give terrorists a signal that they could continue to operate out of Pakistan, they brushed her concerns aside with niceties. Clinton didn’t necessarily doubt their intentions but, as she left the meeting, she worried about their ability to overcome history.

  Our third day in Pakistan rolled around; everybody except Clinton was starting to flag. She soldiered on in meetings with tribal leaders and a town hall interview with women journalists. Her team had hoped for a repeat of the electrifying town hall meeting in Seoul with an all-women audience, a real moment of connection between women. But the Pakistani women were feisty, asking her repeatedly if she understood why the United States was being criticized. There was barely a question about women or education, and there were no softballs. They chided Hillary for drone attacks and wanted to know why the United States didn’t just make India give Kashmir to Pakistan. Kashmir was an obsession here, and nationalism had such a strong hold on people’s psyches that it seemed to leave no room for other feelings.

  * * *

  Some of the traveling journalists had stayed behind at the embassy compound, writing longer articles reflecting on Clinton’s three days in Pakistan. The work space that was set up for us at each stop so we could write our stories was a refreshing change from the usual cramped, windowless hotel rooms that were commandeered for our purposes. The large airy hall that housed our filing center overlooked the compound’s pool, and an assortment of finger food magically appeared in the evenings. Internet access, phone lines, printers, and multiple electrical outlets were always set up. We also used our time that morning to read up on the news for our next stop. We had just been told that we were indeed going to Abu Dhabi, and then on to Jerusalem.

  By the end of the visit, the tone of the Pakistani media coverage had changed, and the newspaper headlines were less acerbic. It wasn’t a lovefest, but Hillary’s charm offensive had made a dent in the wall of mistrust.

  The United States and Pakistan were de facto at war, with Islamabad using the proxy of militant groups. Everybody knew it, even if no one acknowledged it publicly. But the Obama administration wanted to believe that change was possible. Hillary didn’t want to overestimate what had been achieved; this was a relationship that was going to require constant tending, and change would come five degrees at a time. But as the plane took off from Chaklala, she felt good: being a punching bag had been tough, but it had been worth it.

  In the middle section of the plane, Vali was still high on adrenaline, eager to go over the trip with his colleagues. But there was no one to talk to. The Pakistan Books were shut and cast aside. Different books came out. Vali had been briefing the secretary almost nonstop since leaving Washington. Suddenly he was not the one they needed.

  “Okay, guys, we need to brief her on the Mahmoud Abbas meeting this evening,” said Jake. The Palestinian president was waiting to meet Clinton in the United Arab Emirates. It was a five-hour flight to a whole new set of complicated interactions and more countries with too much of a past.

  Vali had been in government for only ten months, and he already knew that he would never again say: “The U.S. government should do this or that.” He had come to appreciate how enormously complicated it was to be the world’s only real superpower, to have to think about and react to every issue under the sun, and to get things done. This was a sobering moment—one book shut, one book opened, one country down, another to go—barely any time to think or reflect.

  “If only people on the ground could see that,” Vali thought as he watched the others passing around notes and making calls to Washington and Abu Dhabi to prepare for their arrival.

  “Every country believes that the United States sleeps and wakes up thinking about them and just them. They’re really just a tiny speck on the map.” Just a few pages in a big book.

  6

  HALLOWEEN IN JERUSALEM

  As we flew east and back in time, Lew Lukens, the logistics guru, pried the classified phone handset out of its base on the plane’s wall below his window. Sitting up in his leather seat, in the middle section of the plane, he called Abu Dhabi. He was dreading having to inform forty people that they would be sleeping on the plane. The whole world seemed to be descending on the small emirate for its first-ever Formula One Grand Prix that weekend, and the embassy was having trouble finding hotel rooms.

  But there was good news: the secretary and her staff could be accommodated at the opulent Emirates Palace. Ground staff from the embassy were preparing to set up a secure floor with offices where Paul and his colleague could work on the next day’s briefing book, and Hillary’s aides would hold their morning meetings. Signs appeared on the walls with the State Department seal, and red arrows pointed to various rooms. A couple of marines would be standing guard. Lew would bring over the communication kit that traveled everywhere with the secretary so that she could hold secure conference calls with Washington
on the road. There weren’t enough rooms for everyone, but eventually the embassy found a brand-new hotel on the other side of town. It wasn’t officially open yet, and the traveling press corps would be its first customers. Setting up a filing center would be too much for staff to handle, so we would be confined to our rooms.

  Lew was a blue-eyed, unflappable, longtime Foreign Service officer in his early forties; he had lived abroad as the son of a diplomat. Now, as the head of the department’s Executive Secretariat, Lew was in charge of all travel, communications, budget, and security for the secretary and all the other officials of the department. Without him, the secretary would be sitting in her office on a never-ending videoconference call to the world.

  The unpredictable and punishing traveling schedule meant Lew, a father of two, had missed countless family events. But he did love the challenge the trips presented. They were like a puzzle with moving pieces, from the secretary’s wish to visit as many countries as possible on a given trip, to the crew’s required fifteen hours of rest in between twenty-four-hour days, to motorcades with insufficient vehicles for forty people, and nonexistent hotel rooms in desert countries. This particular trip had been quite the Rubik’s Cube.

  When he left Washington, Lew was not aware of any stops between Pakistan and Morocco. Huma, his main point of contact for planning the trips, had known that Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem were on the itinerary but had not shared the information. The meetings with Abbas and Netanyahu were not fully confirmed, and much depended still on whether the Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, would be able to extract a concession or even the promise of one from either side. Even nine months into this job, Huma still had political campaign reflexes—she wanted the flexibility of switching gears or directions at the last minute. If she’d told Lew about stops in the Middle East, he would have reached out to local U.S. embassies to make preparations, and calls to hotels and the hiring of buses for the motorcade would have given away their arrival, when the meetings with Abbas and Netanyahu had not been scheduled yet. Expectations would have been built up unnecessarily, and if the schedules had not aligned, or if nothing tangible emerged from the talks, the headlines would be about Clinton’s failure as she flew back to Washington. But the secrecy and the sudden news of our Middle East stops had only fueled anticipation about what Clinton was going to do in the region. Perhaps it was true that there was a deal in the works between the Palestinians and the Israelis? Otherwise, why would Clinton suddenly fly to the region? In the Sisyphean endeavor of American peacemaking in the Middle East, hopes seemed to spike dramatically every time the United States announced an initiative or a senior official made a visit, and the crash was only more painful.