American diplomats made a habit of frequenting truck stops to converse with drivers and gauge the political atmosphere inside Iran, a country they cannot visit. The officers wrote about the lively conversations and colorful characters they encountered in the cafes. One rig operator said all his children had emigrated to the United States, Canada, and Europe. “Why does America have a problem with Iran? We’re good people—Americans are good people. There are no problems between us.”
Ethnic Turkmen were eager to complain about how Iran’s Shia majority discriminates against them in a society dominated by ethnic Persians. Turkmen children are forbidden to speak or study their language in school. “Turkmen sometimes marry Persians,” one trucker said. “But we never allow them to marry our daughters.”
The officers saw the Farap border as an entrée into a sector of Iran’s population unseen by policymakers.
None had ever applied for a U.S. visa or had much contact with Americans, although several older members of the group fondly recalled the days when their country was “full of Americans.” Everyone we encountered was friendly, hospitable, and appeared comfortable talking openly, in contrast to the truck stop in Berzengi, near Ashgabat, where Turkmen police have a visible presence.15
Eight months later, visiting diplomats were stunned to hear how copies of President Obama’s Cairo speech had caused a brawl. This much-anticipated speech addressed the Muslim world to generally good reviews. Distributing copies of speeches translated into local languages is a basic part of embassy work. Much of it happens electronically on embassy Web pages, but hard copies are often distributed as well, so American officers had left behind copies of the speech, translated into Farsi, at the truck stop cafe. The friendly proprietor promised to hand them out to anyone interested.
Not long afterward, eight to ten Iranians were eating dinner at the cafe, and she decided to offer them copies of the speech. One driver read the speech and made enthusiastic comments about Obama. A second trucker disagreed, and a heated argument ensued. Several friends joined in on both sides, and before long fists were flying in a full-scale brawl.
The officers noted two divergent views on offer at the truck stop. In general, older drivers were more favorably disposed toward the United States and willing to talk. Younger drivers were more reticent and those who did talk were negative about the United States. The officers apologized to the cafe owner, worried that enlisting her help in sharing the speech had caused trouble. But she seemed to enjoy her role as amateur diplomat, responding happily, “Come back after the 14th, after the President’s [Berdimuhamedov’s] visit. There will be lots of Iranians here again!” 16
ANOTHER ANCIENT PEOPLE for whom modern states mean little are the tribal people of Papua New Guinea.
Indonesians often say that although Papua is a seven hour flight from Jakarta the province is really 2,000 years away. Papua’s several hundred indigenous cultures—each with its own language—are alien and exotic to most Indonesians. Many communities in the Papuan highlands lived with ancient technology until a few decades ago. Long-running tribal wars, usually conducted with spears and arrows, are common in the central highlands. For most Jakarta officials Papua remains mysterious, a dark place filled with tribal conflicts, separatist sympathizers and chronic governance problems.17
The separatism is rooted in a sense of inequality. Relations between some 1.5 million indigenous Papuans and migrants from other parts of Indonesia are troubled. The economic disparity between the two groups—migrants are more prosperous—stokes resentment. Papuans lag in health care and education. Malnutrition is common, and malaria and tuberculosis are widespread. The HIV/AIDS infection rate is far above the national average.
But Papua is attractive to international mining companies, some of whom have had a presence for decades. A case in point is Freeport-McMoRan, whose troubles in Papua illustrate how American support for businesses overseas can sometimes trump other foreign policy efforts such as human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.
Freeport-McMoRan has been in Indonesia for forty years, and its copper and gold mining operations there represent 45 percent of the company’s income, which also makes it the largest taxpayer in Indonesia. That long history extended through the Suharto era of 1967–1998, when it took political savvy (and payment to local troops for protection) to stay afloat in a country run by one of the most corrupt dictatorships in Asia. To be fair, Freeport also embraced corporate social responsibility—building roads, schools, and hospitals to benefit Indonesians.18
But corruption was only one of many problems. The seat of government is in Jakarta, but the gold is in Papua, and, as the embassy explained, Papua can be violent. In addition to separatists, there is an active union movement and determining which groups are behind which actions can be difficult. In 2009 unknown assailants carried out more than a dozen attacks near Freeport-McMoRan’s mines, killing several. There have been long-running clashes between Indonesian security firms and Papuan insurgents, and in December 2009, Papuan separatist leader Kelly Kwalik was killed in a shootout. The embassy report stated that he was widely believed to have been involved in a series of shootings targeting Freeport, including an attack that killed two Americans.19
This violence was a backdrop to yet another problem—Freeport’s need for security. The embassy dutifully chronicled the turbulence,20 and a Forbes magazine article painted it in even starker terms. In addition to using Indonesian troops for protection, Freeport also spent $28 million in 2010 on its own security force. It was sufficiently alarmed to bring in Triple Canopy, a private U.S. security firm staffed by former U.S. Special Forces.21
The cables described a disturbing situation in which the Indonesian government used its own troops to protect a foreign mining interest, which in turn supplemented this with its own security forces. Human rights organizations said Indonesian security forces abused Papuans and pilfered the mining operations, some of which were environmentally ruinous. Freeport added to the tension by hiring technicians from outside Papua (who sometimes had better skills), leaving separatists, union activists, and environmentalists frustrated.
The rights of native Papuans gained little traction in this narrative, nor did the separatists who hoped to win back Papua for native Papuans. While any expropriation of Freeport would be a red flag for the U.S. government, many of the union demands seemed modest—a living wage, better working conditions, and more say in the exploitation of Papua’s resources.
This is an old, old story that’s played out many times elsewhere—Exxon, United Fruit, and W.R. Grace in Latin America, for example. While it is unthinkable that the U.S. government would ever abandon its advocacy of U.S. industries abroad, the embassy cables implicitly pose questions: How many times must we repeat the past? Is there another way to support U.S. businesses while also advancing Indonesian transparency, upholding the rights of indigenous Papuans, and protecting the environment? This remains Indonesia’s problem to solve, but when the center of the conflict is a forty-year relationship with a U.S. company that is also its largest taxpayer, there ought to be room for the United States to use its good offices.
ANTHROPOLOGY 201: MODERN PEOPLES
Embassy encounters with people from modern societies whose lives are nonetheless restricted for political, religious, or cultural reasons offer some of the most interesting reading. Social issues in Saudi Arabia and Iran caught the eye of observant officers who strayed from the usual political themes to portray groups ranging from wealthy Hejazis from western Saudi Arabia to Iranian punk rock musicians.
TURNING TO SAUDI ARABIA, Americans are often baffled by Saudi tolerance for such a restrictive society. People imagine menacing imams and lurking religious police. Trying to understand why anyone would prefer to live in such a world grips American diplomats, too. The consul general, the lead officer in Jeddah, offered a thoughtful analysis of this question with a stunning opening line:
There is no subject dearer to the hearts of even moderately well-of
f Hejazis (inhabitants of the Western Province) than leaving Saudi Arabia. The most stilted gathering can be brightened up at once by steering the conversation to a fondly anticipated (or remembered) stint outside the Kingdom.
The writer described social gatherings with people whom she said
bear an interesting secret . . . While outwardly seeming perfectly normal, even a slight acquaintance with them reveals that they are not at all what they seem.
There is a topic absolutely guaranteed to fill the most recalcitrant conversational lull: leaving Saudi Arabia . . . Smiles then light up faces. Voices vibrate more. Even the posture straightens. Men and women begin to talk enthusiastically of the trip they just took, the trip they are looking forward to taking, or their favorite trip of all time about which they are happy to reminisce.
One man (interestingly the majority of these daydreamers are men) mentioned casually that at heart he was a Spaniard “somewhere from Andalucia.” Another vouchsafed that Paris was his true home. A third shared that he never felt as well as in England, “Saudi Arabia’s historic twin” (a surprise, possibly, to the British).
The officer was amazed at precise details offered regarding airlines, car rental, hotels, and sights, “as if disgorged from a photographic memory. The slightest incident is recalled with pleasure.” The downside, inevitably, is a discussion of the return to Saudi Arabia, and the accompanying sadness. “That indeed is the predominant sentiment of the Hejazi returnee: impending doom as individual freedom (what in the West is considered ‘normal’ life) is to be surrendered to the stifling strictures of Wahhabi Islam . . . No amount of money or status can buy them freedom.”
She went on to pose the question—if the Wahhabi lifestyle is so awful, why not change it? The answers were sobering.
This could spell revolution! . . . The overthrow of the monarchy! . . . If there weren’t the possibility of escape, maybe we would be forced to do something but since we can periodically leave, we don’t have to . . . That’s what trips to the West are for.22
She concluded with the poignant observation that the greatest frustration among younger Hejazis is never having even been asked what kind of country they want; presumably a less restrictive form of Islamic monarchy.
This cable is dynamite, and it is easy to see why it got the “secret” classification. The diplomat is telling Washington that wealthy, educated, and well-traveled Saudis are essentially disavowing their own society. They find it oppressive, and they have more reason to know than most, since they can compare their country with those they visit.
The officer’s frustration with them is equally revealing. Why don’t they change their own society? Because they fear the conservatism of the masses and the risk that small modernization gains painstakingly achieved would be lost. The officer was unpersuaded that these elite were in a position to know the views of the masses. Nonetheless, it is clearly easier to dream of one’s next sojourn in Paris than to man the barricades in Jeddah.
AS A FITTING CODA to these examples of the strange ways in which modern lives and repressive regimes can clash, consider the story of the Iranian garage band Yellow Dogs. In 2009 its members made their way to Istanbul to apply for visas to perform a concert tour in the United States. The consular officers were fascinated by the picture they painted of the underground music scene in Tehran, and their visa interview soon turned into a reporting cable on the lives of Iranian youths. The consulate wrote that the musicians “reinforced the impression that Iranian society spans a far broader and more complex spectrum than many outside observers realize.” 23
The musicians described a scene where “drugs are cheap and easy to find, creative expression is at its most free, and participants are among Iran’s most tech-savvy citizens.” Some of the group’s political predictions did not come to pass, but their images of Iran’s youth culture seemed dead on, with their descriptions of hours spent playing video games, watching online TV, and blogging. “They told us with bemusement that they regularly play ‘Guitar Hero’ online and beat players from the U.S. or Europe. When they tell their online competitors they are from Iran, the other players express shock that Iranians are allowed to use the Internet—and that they are so good at video games.”
The Yellow Dogs got their visas and performed on concert tours, were interviewed on CNN and featured in Rolling Stone’s Middle Eastern edition, and were highlighted in No One Knows About Persian Cats, a film about the Iranian rock music scene. The exposure led to a coveted invitation to play at South by Southwest, and it seemed the group was poised to break out. They never went back to Iran and began a new life in Brooklyn. They applied for and were granted political asylum in the United States.
In one of the cruelest ironies imaginable, two members of the group, along with another Iranian musician, were slain on November 11, 2013, by a fellow Iranian musician who then committed suicide. Articles on the group quoted the embassy cable from WikiLeaks, stressing how the band opened America’s eyes to a younger generation of Iranians. “I wish all this attention was just for a new release of an album,” said surviving member and lead singer Siavash Karampour. “It took us three bodies to become famous.” 24
THE MANY FACES OF GOD
Embassy reporting about religion suggests that Washington ought to consider the world’s faiths more frequently than in the once-a-year International Religious Freedom Report. While politicians talked endlessly about Islamic fundamentalism, officers took a wider view, writing cables describing a variety of belief systems and how they influence local life. Religion and local politics commingle, suggesting that faith and foreign policy are logical, if not always comfortable, bedfellows. They reported on the influence of religions as familiar as Catholicism and as exotic as animism, showing that religion and foreign policy intersect in ways that policymakers might not have contemplated.
Like most other countries, the United States recognizes the Holy See and sends a small contingent of diplomats to its embassy in Vatican City. These officers analyze the enormous reach of Catholicism and its global influence. Some of their cables made the Vatican sound like a hip place, noting Pope Benedict XVI’s first foray on YouTube and explaining how the Vatican went green, becoming the first carbon-neutral country in the world.25 Benedict took an intellectual approach to climate change, linking it to issues from disarmament to the protection of human life to the rights of environmental refugees forced to migrate by the degradation of their natural surroundings.
The cables also described a church that struggled to cope with relentless sex abuse scandals, the first of which broke in the United States in 2002, several years before the issue surfaced in Europe. In Ireland, the abuse revelations of the Ryan Report in May 2009 and the Murphy Report of November 2009 marked an era which officers assessed as one of increasing secularization. “Once ensconced in the Irish Constitution, the Irish Catholic Church reached the height of its prestige and power with the 1979 state visit of Pope John Paul II but it has been falling ever since. At the same time, the Murphy Report reflects Irish shame over the collaboration of Ireland’s state bodies, including its schools, courts, and police in the appalling abuses and cover-up that occurred for decades.” 26
U.S. diplomats in the Holy See also wrote about the complexity of managing modern church-state relations. Ecumenism was an important platform for the pope, and the Vatican busied itself mounting interfaith dialogues with Muslims and Jews, among others. The thicket of historical and contemporary complications to this approach were on display in a May 2009 visit to Israel. Pope Benedict XVI spoke at—but not in—the Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem, to avoid seeing an unflattering depiction of Pope Pius XII, who is accused of doing too little to help Jews during the Holocaust. The trip was almost derailed before it got underway, when the pope decided to reinstate a breakaway Catholic group that included Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson. Six months after his Israel visit, Benedict decreed Pius as “venerable” (along with the immensely more popular John Paul II). This act—a
first step in a series that lead to elevation to sainthood—reactivated Jewish ire.
Although the pope may be the only religious leader with such a lengthy rule of his own country, the cables also shed light on patriarchs, rabbis, imams, and other religious leaders. Many dealt with the struggles of so-called minority religions, especially native U.S. groups such as Seventh-day Adventists, Scientologists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons. Explaining the practices of those religions and encouraging other countries to accept their presence was a major challenge for U.S. diplomats.
Germans (among other European nations) have steadfastly refused to grant Scientologists permanent resident visas. Reporting on refusals to two American Scientologists who had hoped to train local church staff, a U.S. officer wrote that the Germans felt the applicants were unable to demonstrate that their cost of living would be met by the Church of Scientology during their one-year stay in Germany and cited the applicants’ inability to provide any evidence of health insurance. In other contexts, these objections might have been overcome, but the German official also categorized the Church of Scientology’s activities as posing “a threat to Germany’s constitutional order” and wondered why the U.S. government was interested in a “residence permit denial case.” 27
In Russia, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Evangelical Lutherans struggled to find legal meeting places in a state that excelled at creating a maze of bureaucratic obstacles to worship.28 Meeting places were also a problem in Shanghai, where the consulate reported that a ruling authorizing expatriate Mormons to meet legally came with strings attached—the rent for the authorized space was one of the highest per head in Asia. In addition, a member of Shanghai’s religious affairs board was required to attend and observe services every week—versus once a year under a previous arrangement. And Chinese Mormons could no longer meet in the same location as the expatriate members.29
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