by Kim Ghattas
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We landed in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, at eleven at night on Sunday, January 9. This time the hotels had been booked in advance, and Bernadette was with us on the plane as part of the line officer plane team, rather than scrambling to assemble a motorcade.
Our hotel, the Emirates Palace, appeared like a glittering mirage at the end of a long monotonous road. A gigantic brown building with dozens of domes, it was a cross between an Indian palace and a mosque with a two-mile-long private beach. My room key looked like a gold coin. Ten pounds of gold were used every year to sprinkle flakes into glasses of champagne and on caviar and other delicacies. Gold, it was thought, was a powerful aphrodisiac. The hotel offered $1 million custom-made holidays. This was the Arab-world version of the “1 percent.” The other 99 percent were like Bouazizi, desperate and ready to kill themselves for a job and some dignity.
By Monday morning, the fire had started slowly spreading across the region. There were three dead in food riots in Algeria, and 250 university graduates had staged a protest in Riyadh—and it was all in the United Arab Emirates’ English-language newspaper the National with the front-page headline “The Frustrated Generation.” The United Arab Emirates was small and rich, and though under its modern facade there were human-rights abuses and censorship, it didn’t have to worry about frustrated youth. Emirate newspapers could afford to write in English about unrest elsewhere with an editorial reminding rich Gulf countries of their duty to help poor North Africa by boosting trade ties. Other Arab newspapers, most of them controlled by the state, ignored the protestors, fearful of stoking the anger and inciting their own population. They were seemingly unaware of the futility of their efforts. Privately owned satellite television stations like al Jazeera and al Arabiyya were already showing extensive footage of the protests.
On page 2, the National ran a picture of Clinton meeting the minister of foreign affairs Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed in Washington in April 2009. She was the same woman who had traveled from Washington with us on the plane, and yet in that old photo she looked different. Her hair had grown from her sharp presidential campaign cut into a softer style, blond locks framing her face a shade lighter than in years past. Chelsea had asked her mother to grow her hair for the wedding, and Hillary had liked the result. The one-tone pantsuits still made guest appearances, but her wardrobe now included more fashionable, sleeker styles.
The politician burned so often by the media in the past had relaxed; released from the acrimony and gutter fighting of American domestic politics, she was coming into her own, allowing the world to see the real Hillary more often than at any time in the past. Democrats and Republicans praised her performance on the world stage, and world leaders, even those who resented U.S. influence, always seemed eager to welcome her. People did ask what it was that she had actually achieved so far as secretary of state. After all, there was still no peace in the Middle East, Iran was still enriching uranium, and Pakistan was still a mess. Few of her predecessors had managed tangible successes either and Hillary believed her success would be more intangible but longer lasting. Her public diplomacy efforts were often scorned by foreign policy wonks, but she believed it was an essential part of maintaining American leadership.
Before leaving, officials had told us that the whole trip had been organized around the idea of engaging with civil society. If in the past it was an element that was tacked onto every stop, Clinton had wanted this trip designed around it. Even in the United Arab Emirates, where dry diplomatic talk with the foreign minister always centered on Iran and Iraq, Hillary was to sit down for a town hall with women and would meet with students at a green-energy research center. Civil society was a buzz word on every part of the trip, including on our surprise stop.
As usual, it wasn’t on our printed schedule to keep it under wraps, but everybody was excited about going to Sana’a, Yemen. It was one country on a shrinking list of places that Clinton had not been to yet, and over dinner in Dubai the day before our visit, the secretary asked who had visited and what their impressions had been of the country. She was always keen to get the opinions of people outside her circle of advisors and listened intently to the stories of photographer Stephanie Sinclair, who had spent some time in the country photographing child brides to draw attention to their plight.
Walking down the steps onto the tarmac in Sana’a, we were greeted by the sight of a plane with a red tail adorned with a white crescent. The Turks were here as well! It wasn’t Davutoğlu, but his president, Abdullah Gul. Our motorcade of armored vehicles sped through wide, empty roads into the center of the city, banners welcoming President Gul fluttering above our heads. There were none for Clinton since no one was supposed to know she was coming. But Gul had just spent two days here and was leaving the palace of President Ali Abdullah Saleh just as we were arriving. The Turkish president had signed dozens of agreements, encouraging trade between the two countries and abolishing the need for visas between them, and he had fought back a few tears as Yemeni students sang a eulogy to Ottoman soldiers who fell in Yemen during World War I. Turkey’s policy for a neighborhood with zero problems was clearly expanding beyond its immediate borders.
In the front passenger seat of Clinton’s SUV, Fred was tense but satisfied with the security measures he saw in place. He had worked in Yemen in the aftermath of the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, but having a mental image of the country did little in this case to abate his concerns about security. Yemen was worse than Pakistan. No matter how upset the Pakistanis were with America, the last thing the government wanted was an attack against the American secretary of state, and they had enough control and power to ensure it didn’t happen. In Yemen, however, it didn’t matter how happy Saleh was that Clinton was gracing his country with a visit—he was not fully in control of his own territory. Tribes kidnapped Western tourists, al-Qaeda targeted the American embassy, and political opponents used guns to express their anger. This was where the Christmas Day underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been trained and sent on his mission aboard a plane to Chicago in 2009.
On quick day visits with no hotel rooms to set up a mobile office on a secure floor, the plane team of line officers often went for a tour of the city they were in, with some help from the U.S. embassy, while the secretary went about her official business. But here, Fred forbade anyone from leaving the airport. Securing Evergreen’s package was enough of a challenge and required all the resources at hand. Bernadette stayed on the plane with a handful of others, including Lew and his metal case full of passports. The Ravens stood guard at the bottom of the steps, in the sun, awaiting our return several hours later.
Yemen was one of the poorest countries in the world, so despite the corruption that goes with power in the region, Saleh’s palace was modest compared to the opulence that his oil-rich neighbors displayed. But it had as much, or as little, style. Beyond the tall, elaborately carved wooden doors was a dark, carpeted, windowless foyer. The walls were lined with aging wood-and-glass display cases for the various gifts he’d received from visiting foreign dignitaries, mostly guns, including some from American generals. There was also a gold-plated MP5 9 mm submachine gun: a gift from Iran in 1986. Clinton had brought him a silver tray, perhaps a symbol of what the United States had to offer him if only he listened to them more.
As First Lady, senator, and secretary of state, Hillary had stood next to countless political leaders and smiled for the cameras. Most of the time, it was genuine. She had a knack for becoming friends with everyone, from the boorish Boris Yeltsin to the quiet president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak. She often ended up liking people she never expected to like because she had come to understand and empathize with their history and background. Sometimes with less savory characters, the smile was forced, but still she tried to always focus on why she was there and what she was trying to achieve.
With her delegation, Clinton was ushered into a room that hadn’t been updated since the eighties, taking a se
at on a faded pink and earthen green upholstered chair. The local Yemeni press corps overran the American reporters and almost pushed Fred and his agents out of the way as they competed to snap pictures of the historical event. Above the pink and green curtains, the sun shone through stained-glass windows. An old TV in a wooden frame with legs stood in a corner, silent, unlike the Saudi king’s television from a year ago. A silver sculpture of two rearing horses stood on a low wooden table between Clinton and Saleh.
Hillary had never met the Yemeni president before. He had been at the White House in 2000 to meet President Clinton, but their paths had not crossed at the time. She looked at the man sitting in front of her and saw a stereotype of a man who had ruled too long. Wily and ruthless, he told her that governing Yemen was like dancing on the heads of snakes—that was how you governed Yemen for thirty years and survived.
He had come to power in 1978, after two decades of civil war in the country, as the president of North Yemen. He presided over the union with South Yemen in 1990 and navigated its tribal politics with shrewd cunning, crushing political opponents and using a system of patronage to keep people loyal and dependent. He had opened the doors of his country to Islamic jihad fighters returning from Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet Union and then sent them to fight against secular tribes in the south when the war broke out again in 1994. Counterterrorism was all that American officials talked about when they came to the poorest country of the Arab world. The United States saw Yemen as a necessary partner in the fight against al-Qaeda and gave the country $300 million a year in counterterror aid. Saleh always argued for more, warning, or more likely threatening, that without aid his country would turn into a failed state like Somalia. American officials sitting down with him felt a sense of foreboding around him; despite the smiles, his history, arrogant demeanor, and dismissive talk of his people’s rights gave the impression that he was a violent ruler.
On the wall of the dark lobby, a fading portrait of Saleh in earth tones showed him as a larger-than-life figure sailing a boat full of people, leaving choppy seas behind him. “Through the waves of rebellion and the storms of treason, you have sailed us to safe shores,” said the Arabic lettering in one corner. But the people of Yemen were unhappy, and after quickly going through the counterterrorism aspect of the agenda, Clinton spent her meeting explaining to Saleh why he had to engage with the opposition, embrace reform, and be smart about his budget. She didn’t try to pretend she understood the complex tribal politics of the country, but with her politician’s cap on she attempted to explain to him why even he would benefit from reform. Saleh insisted he was not like other Arab leaders; he did listen to his people. Well, I am going to sit down with members of civil society, she told him, our diplomats from the embassy see them all the time, and I will listen to what they have to say.
Like so many leaders around the world who crave attention from the United States, Saleh, with his bottle-black mustache, was basking in the glory of the visit, probably barely listening. He had been to the White House five times since 2000, but now Hillary Clinton, the representative of the world’s superpower, was sitting on his dark-pink couch, in his palace. He repeatedly thanked her for visiting his country, telling her many times that it was historic. American counterterrorism officials visited often, and he relished the leverage it gave him over the United States. But no American secretary had come to visit him since James Baker in November 1990. Yemen held a rotating seat on the Security Council then, and Baker had come to ask Saleh to vote in favor of a resolution authorizing force to get Saddam Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait. He had warned Saleh that he would risk losing the $70 million of yearly aid he was getting from the United States if he voted against it. Saleh, a long-time ally of Saddam, decided he could live without American aid. The Iraqi leader had been doing his own wooing and was hoping to build an anti-American axis in the region, starting with Baghdad and Sana’a.
But when the U.S. aid was cut down further to a pittance, Yemen descended deeper into poverty and crucial ties between the two countries withered. Pakistan had experienced something of the same in the 1990s after aid had been cut. America lost touch with a troubled country that then veered off course. It was a vicious cycle: the United States could not keep pouring aid into countries to keep them steady, but the aid it was giving fed an addiction to external support that often encouraged corruption. Projects that the United States believed were necessary were not a priority in these countries, and America didn’t always listen, often believing it knew best: democracy and prosperity had to fit the American template. Countries started feeling entitled to the money and resented the United States when aid was cut because they hadn’t abided by the guidelines. There was little understanding outside America of how Congress operated and the hold it could have on the government’s purse.
Standing on the steps of the palace after an elaborate lunch, Clinton was not her usual effusive self. She had replaced her own pearl necklace with the elaborate traditional silver necklace that Saleh had given her, but it was the only warm gesture she was willing to make in public toward a man whose arrogance had been revolting. She gave only perfunctory thanks for his warm hospitality and moved on to give a quick overview of what had been discussed. Standing to her left, his sunglasses on, Saleh looked her up and down. There were no questions.
In 1990, Saleh had taken Secretary Baker on a walking tour of the heart of the city, the merchant souk. This was well before al-Qaeda, the attack against the USS Cole, 9/11, and the underwear bomber. We would still get a tour, though in armored vehicles. The day before our arrival, DS agents had tested the route through the souk full of people and vendor carts. It had taken over an hour to get through; long enough to give someone time to launch an attack. DS cleared the path as much as possible. Thankfully, Gul’s own visit and drive through the souk meant all the diplomatic activity was not necessarily a giveaway about Clinton’s impending arrival. Just as on all such visits, Fred’s “assets” were invisible to my eyes, but I knew they were everywhere, on rooftops, on corners, in civilian clothes.
Children waved and screamed, “Ahlan, ahlan,” Arabic for welcome, as we drove through the souk. Men with their traditional large daggers on their belts looked ever so slightly threatening but smiled broadly. It was an unusually warm welcome in a country that was so vilified in the American press and that arguably could have the same reasons to resent America as Pakistan did. Perhaps they were too amused by the novelty of seeing American vehicles making their way uphill through the narrow alleys, barely an inch to spare between the heavy armored vehicles and the sandstone walls of the buildings along our path.
The contrast between Saleh and his people could not have been greater. The questions at the town hall were some of the most thoughtful and politically cogent we’d heard in two years of endless Hillary-style public diplomacy. Young and old, students and members of parliament, they knew exactly what ailed their country and what the solution was; they were asking for very specific assistance from the United States. There was no ranting, no hatred, no lecturing, just facts. Saleh was perhaps right to say he was not like other Arab leaders: his people had not lost their spark, despite his dictatorship. He had in fact failed to ever fully control this tribal society and what we were witnessing was a fringe benefit of chaos. The women were feisty, everyone’s criticism of their leader was remarkably vocal, and their respect for America astonishingly intact. They thanked Hillary for American aid because it had high impact, and they asked for more. They said there had to be an end to the one-party rule because it bred terrorism—and wasn’t the United States trying to fight terrorism, after all? They also pushed her on American foreign policy decisions. One man asked her about Obama’s failure to close Guantánamo Bay but said he wanted a “real answer, not a politician’s answer.” The moderator got the signal from the line officer that it was time to wrap up, but Hillary was enjoying this breath of fresh Arab air too much. She did her own moderating.
“Oh, no, n
o. We will take two more, two more questions. Just two more.”
One man told her that Yemenis like him who had lived and studied abroad were sometimes regarded with suspicion back home, like “intruders.” He wanted to know how we could make his fellow countrymen accept him as someone who wanted to help build up the country. The final question came from a woman who said that the key to fighting terrorism was improving human rights, so she suggested that the best way to fight terror was for America to declare a war on human rights violations.
We were clearly in the presence of a very thin slice of the population in a poor rural country with high rates of illiteracy and 40 percent unemployment. Rabid, radical militants were unlikely to have made it through a security screening for a town hall with the American secretary of state, and many of those attending were known to the U.S. embassy through exchange programs and NGO work. But that still left a pool of random people whose opinions were never vetted in advance of these events. Even compared to Iraq, where we had attended a town hall organized under similar conditions, the contrast was great. Hillary was delighted by what she heard.
“Wow. I was quite hopeful about Yemen before I came today. And having listened to all of you, I am more so. But these last two young people really give me a lot of confidence in Yemen’s future.”
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Dusk was falling and it was time to move on. After a night and half a day in the Sultanate of Oman, we landed in Doha, just as a crisis erupted in Beirut, a three-hour flight away. Hezbollah and its allies had been threatening to walk out of the coalition cabinet, and they carried out their threat at the exact minute that Lebanon’s prime minister Saad Hariri walked into his first-ever meeting with President Obama at the White House. He walked out a former prime minister. Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran were closing in on the country. Clinton’s first meeting in Doha, with Gulf ministers, turned into a crisis meeting about Lebanon. The Sunni monarchies, as usual, were fretting about Shiite Iran, and now they were in a panic about losing Lebanon to Hezbollah, which they viewed as a cloak hiding Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. The battle between East and West, between the United States and Iran, between pro-America and pro-Iran, Sunnis and Shiites, was fought on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis in Beirut. The battle lines had ebbed and flowed since that bloody day in Beirut in 1983 when a bomb truck had driven into the marine barracks.