WORKING IN A WAR ZONE
Against the contentious backdrop of staffing, security, and the vagaries of Washington politics, the leaked cables provide day-to-day details about the actual experience of serving in Iraq. They demonstrate that it was indeed possible to perform traditional diplomacy along with diplomatic outreach work—meeting diverse groups of contacts and running programs. Timing helped. Iraqis had been coping with multinational forces since the initial invasion in 2003, and many yearned to form a more normal relationship that would exchange boots for books. By 2008, they were about to get their wish.
The Iraq cables paint a complex but surprisingly upbeat picture. Officers clearly found plenty to do, and their reports offer an eloquent rebuttal to some of the more outlandish statements at the town hall meeting. Iraq service, while of course dangerous, was full of meaningful opportunities to do what many officers hope for when joining the foreign service—to make an impact and a difference. For officers who had spent much of their careers competing for scarce programming resources, Iraq represented a bonanza—more than enough. Even rarely funded cultural programming was encouraged.
Public diplomacy officers faced a great challenge, since they were tasked with creating and running programs designed to reach the people of Iraq, rather than the government. The success of their work depended on access to students and professors, journalists, think tanks, democracy-building NGOs, and communities of artists and intelligentsia. The security situation complicated many aspects of their work, as hazards fluctuated from one month to the next and from one part of Iraq to another. Multiple cables reflect officers’ frustration at canceling, postponing, or circumscribing programs solely for security concerns. They clearly wanted to do more. Yet just as often, their cables reported successful events in which U.S. experts spoke to a wide range of audiences or offered artistic productions that resonated with all kinds of Iraqis.
In the province of Wasit, south of Baghdad, the PRT sponsored a comedic play performed by actors from the Iraqi television sitcom Mud House in a municipal auditorium with a seating capacity of eight hundred. The Iraqi police estimated more than forty-five hundred people showed up, and they somehow crammed fifteen hundred into the hall. When the PRT public affairs officer and the PRT commander walked onstage to open the show, the crowd “erupted with wild and unexpected applause . . . that mirrored the way Iraqis receive their soccer stars.” The officers described the play as a comedy set in agrarian Iraq in the 1950s, as seen through the characters in a family headed for the city of Baghdad. The actors performed a second night to accommodate those who had been turned away. In a cable, the post celebrated the success, writing that “no PRT member that attended has ever seen so many Iraqis smiling and laughing.” 9 This tentative foray into the world of theater marked a new opening for imaginative officers, who began using Iraqi theatrical troupes to perform plays that were recorded for broadcast and mass media distribution.
The Wasit play was hardly a one-off. Another cable describes, in hilarious detail, the PRT’s valiant effort to provide musical entertainment in the multicultural town of Ain Sifni, in Ninewa province in northern Iraq. Hoping to hook readers back in Washington, the post asks rhetorically:
What do you get when a US Army band plays an Eastern Orthodox wedding hall in a Yezidi town with Arabs, Christians, and Kurdish musicians under the watchful gaze of the Barzani patriarch, a crucifix, and the Iraqi flag, plus a banner celebrating the anniversary of an anti-Saddam uprising?
The presence of five wonderful American ambassadors—on tuba, trombone, French horn, and trumpets—made this gathering possible and helped it morph into a pinkie-dancing conga line to a caterwauling beat—a fleetingly inclusive Kurd-a-palooza in which we clearly danced to another’s tune.
The cable describes in giddy detail the PRT’s first-ever attempt at performing arts diplomacy and the lengths officers had to go to to overcome all manner of problems—both silly and serious. The stage, set for a variety show for local musicians, provided an irresistible platform for smuggled Kurdish flags. The public affairs officer solved the problem by ordering the town scoured for an Iraqi flag, “from whence it came we may never know.” The performance hall was “a barn-like venue with a lousy sound system and 250 people who would have been arrested in the Kennedy Center.” The PAO resolved the sound system distortion by having the PRT team turn off the electronic countermeasures employed against remote-detonated IEDS. The lack of signal meant no phone service, a by-product of which was an undistracted audience.
The writer described the town’s complex cultural crossroads, with competing Orthodox and Catholic churches, tombs of two prominent Islamic scholars, and security provided by Kurdish Peshmerga. The PRT leader met with nervous members of varying minority groups, all of which looked to the United States to guarantee their safety, a prescient request from the Yezidis, who came under horrific attack from Islamic State five years later and were driven to a mountaintop. The cable ended on a sober note, reminding readers that the Yezidi, a minority in a heavily Kurdish region that is itself a minority in Iraq, are “a group of people whose continued daily existence in a twice hostile world is their daily accomplishment. The power of our instruments . . . can quiet the crowd when we are all in harmony, but it cannot long overpower the indigenous noise of this place.”10
Another important aspect of engagement involved bringing American scholars to Iraq. Professor Mike Hannahan, director of the Civic Initiative program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, went to the Kurdistan region to discuss the American electoral system with more than 1,100 Iraqis at universities, ministries, and in the media. He hosted an election-themed video teleconference in English between his own students in Amherst and those at the University of Kurdistan–Hawker (UK-H), causing a faculty member to marvel, “I’ve never seen the students so excited about something.” At another regional university, students sat in the aisles once the auditorium seats were filled. The embassy told Washington to bring on more speakers. “Hannahan’s host institutions and the KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government’s) Ministry of Higher Education have a simple message for the USG: thank you for making the visit possible and please send more professors!” The embassy was eager to dispel security concerns and pleaded for longer visits. “The success of Professor Hannahan’s program demonstrates that American academics can and should come to Northern Iraq for extended periods for the purpose of building stronger ties between Iraqi and American institutions.” 11
Six months later, the University of Kansas Political Science Department chair Burdett Loomis had an equally successful visit to several universities in the Kurdistan region, discussing political transition issues for the new Obama administration. The post described unheard-of access for an academic, with Loomis invited to meetings with the regional governor, a luncheon hosted by the Minister of Education, media interviews and a rock star reception from deans, faculty, and students at several universities.12
Despite these triumphs, security trumped all other factors. The embassy outlined a three-day program request for Bard College’s Walter Russell Mead, with an ambitious schedule of meetings ranging from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dinner with Iraqi authors, meetings with faculty and students at the University of Baghdad, events with Baghdad-based NGOs, and media interviews. Mead was no stranger to hot spots, having traveled previously as an embassy speaker to places such as Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. The officers were frustrated. “Post has attempted to bring Walter Russell Mead to Iraq two times previously but security considerations have prevented the implementation of the trip . . . post believes it is time to engage Iraqis with high-level discussion on these matters with a well-regarded, non-Embassy source” (emphasis added).13
The embassy had made a point well known to State Department insiders. There is only so much talking and representing that diplomats can do. For decades, the State Department has turned to America’s best-selling writers, academics, journalists, former high-level officials
, and even Supreme Court justices to engage foreign publics through lectures, workshops, and seminars. This classic illustration of soft power connects illustrious Americans with their foreign counterparts. They willingly travel to tough destinations and forgo their usual speaker fees for the chance to represent the United States in a unique way. The State Department has featured musicians such as Wynton Marsalis and Yo-Yo Ma, who have performed concerts and offered master classes; writers such as Tom Wolfe and Frank McCourt; athletes such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and figure skater Michelle Kwan; dancer and choreographer Debbie Allen; architect Daniel Libeskind; photographer Joel Meyerowitz, and many more.
These cultural and intellectual ambassadors are an invaluable part of the State Department’s outreach. Embassies have learned that speakers can make an impact, but only if they are part of an overall strategy of engagement that includes the less exciting work of building audiences and laying groundwork. A famous cultural figure doesn’t just show up—the visit is the culmination of months of work by cultural affairs officers who cultivate audiences through frequent contact, demonstrating genuine interest in their art, and occasionally through small grant support when the art links to a higher purpose such as multiculturalism or promotes the values of civil society. While much lip service is paid to the goal of “mutual understanding,” showing interest and respect for the artistic endeavors of other cultures is a way in which diplomats actually fulfill that mission.
Such strategic planning happens as a matter of course in most embassies, but in Iraq, nothing was routine. The embassy was in need of a framework through which the work of diplomacy—including cultural and educational exchanges—could be institutionalized. The November 2008 signature of the Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA) was a watershed, the single most important document for how U.S.–Iraqi relations would be managed. After five years of operating under UN Security Council Resolution 1790 (which extended the mandate of the Multi-National Force–Iraq until 2008, the third such extension of the original mandate from 2004), the SFA was meant to normalize the bilateral U.S.–Iraqi relationship into one in which two fully sovereign and equal states would cooperate.
The SFA was built on seven key areas, including a pillar for cultural and educational cooperation. It offered public diplomacy officers an opportunity to think strategically about all the programming tools available—the cultural and academic speakers but also academic and nonacademic exchanges, English language teaching, and cultural programming. Officers were tantalized by the promise of making public diplomacy programming part of the routine work of the embassy, and in July 2008 newly arrived Public Affairs Officer Adam Ereli wrote to Assistant Secretary Goli Ameri, who headed the State Department’s ECA Bureau (Educational and Cultural Affairs), passionately calling for a higher level of programming and investment.
Ereli, an Arabic speaker and public diplomacy officer who had previously served as U.S. ambassador in Bahrain, saw the SFA as an important crossroads.
To Iraqis, this means that they are getting their country back and joining the community of nations as a full and respected equal . . . One of the prime minister’s inner circle said to me recently, “We want to be like any other country. Instead of American soldiers and checkpoints, we want to see American doctors and professors and students.” ECA programs are the peace dividend that Iraqis for so long have been waiting.14
In his cable, Ereli outlined ambitious possibilities for the Iraqi Fulbright program, calling for a ten-fold increase in the number of scholarships, already a hefty thirty-five per year. He asked for a Fulbright binational commission, a full range of other academic and citizen exchanges, English language teaching, and arts and cultural heritage programs, arguing that military engagement must be replaced with public diplomacy.
The Fulbright program is often seen as the jewel in the crown of academic exchanges. It was founded in 1946 by Senator J. William Fulbright, and over the years some 325,000 people—Americans and foreigners—have received grants. Each year the program awards about four thousand grants to foreign students and about an equal number to American students, scholars, teachers, and professionals. Embassies play a critical role in administering the program. They liaise closely with Fulbright binational commissions, and in countries where no commission exists, they administer the programs themselves through their public diplomacy offices. Talent spotting is a point of pride. As of this writing fifty-three alumni from thirteen countries are Nobel laureates; thirty-one are heads of state or government. This is enlightened self-interest—a Fulbright alum in a position of power or influence speaks English and has had years of living in the United States as a graduate student. That familiarity (and hopefully fondness) for American society and culture pays dividends when the person is sitting across the table in a high-level negotiating session.
Ameri came to Iraq three months later, bringing a delegation of key State Department ECA officials to meet with the deputy prime minister, minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and several Iraqi university presidents. The deputy prime minister offered to match U.S.-funded Fulbright scholarships one-for-one, doubling the Fulbright program. The president of an Iraqi university told Ameri and her delegation that student and faculty exchanges were crucial to democracy. “Students need to see democracy to believe it,” he said. An important subtheme, reiterated in many cables, was that Iraqi officials were not asking for a handout. They were prepared to pay for their part of these exchange programs.15 The expansion of the flagship Fulbright program became real in a ceremony announcing Iraq’s $2.5 million contribution. Ambassador Christopher Hill and Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih signed an agreement doubling the number of student grants from thirty-five to seventy.16
Public diplomacy officers seemed to be on a roll from 2008 to 2010, describing in cable after cable triumphant programs, first-ever accomplishments, and standing-room-only audiences of all kinds. A workshop for English-language teachers would normally be a routine part of the job, but thirty years of academic isolation “has left Iraqi English teaching professionals starved for contact and resources. The level of English language ability is generally dismal.” The post rhapsodized that the participants committed to resurrecting English language learning and that distribution of the State Department’s English Teaching Forum magazine was “riotous,” while a returned Fulbright Language Teaching Assistantship (FLTA) alumna, “mesmerized the conference” with tales of her Fulbright experience. “We believe there is a pool of excellent qualified candidates in Iraq for the FLTA.” The desperate tone in the reporting reflected that, inexplicably, Washington had dropped Embassy Baghdad from the program, and the post ended the cable strongly requesting Iraq’s immediate reinstatement.17
By 2009, Embassy Baghdad was proudly enumerating a catalog of exchanges and programs that would be the envy of any U.S. embassy, including the largest International Visitor Leadership Program in the world with one hundred and seventy participants; the largest Fulbright program in the region; a Young Leaders Exchange program, which sent more than two hundred Iraqi high school and university students to the United States each summer to focus on leadership, conflict resolution, and team building; the MEPI student leaders program, sponsored by the U.S.–Middle East Partnership Initiative; plus English-language teaching, student advising, and much more.
The embassy supported Iraq’s cultural heritage through a program for twelve Iraqi archaeologists and conservators who attended a six-month workshop on conservation techniques at Chicago’s Field Museum. The United States also provided funding for the Future of Babylon Project, where experts from the World Monuments Fund and the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage collaborated to develop a site management and conservation plan for the ancient site of Babylon.18 This was no doubt motivated in part to make amends for the fact that Iraqi antiquities were poorly protected in the 2003 invasion and were subject to damage, vandalism, and theft.
All these great exchanges would be for naught, Ambassador Crocker warned i
n early 2009, if the United States did not improve visa processing time for Iraqis seeking to visit the United States. Crocker railed against the 120- to 150-day waiting period required for most Iraqi visa applicants. “The SFA’s Joint Coordinating Committees are off and running. For example, this week seven Presidents of Iraqi universities arrived in Washington for meetings with U.S. counterparts to create educational partnerships. In January, representatives of 25 American universities came to Iraq to recruit students. This fall, the first several hundred of an eventual 6–7,000 Iraqis per year will come to U.S. universities on government scholarships.” He went on to lambaste the process of requiring a Security Advisory Opinion, the cause of the long delays. “We have the opportunity to bring thousands of young Iraqis every year for university degrees in the U.S. and in doing so, build the long term partnership we have never had with Iraq. We risk losing that opportunity due to our visa regulations.”19
FIGHTING THE WAR OF IDEAS
In a key allusion, Crocker mentioned “the relationship we never had,” and the cables offer evidence that FSOs were eager to meet ordinary Iraqis and build a foundation for mutual understanding. Learning another culture is a long-term endeavor, but officers wanted to take the first step and, one conversation at a time, deepen and broaden America’s knowledge of a country that everyone had heard of but few knew.
A cable from Erbil profiles Kurdistan’s so-called 1991 Generation, those born after the March–April uprising of that year, which followed the Gulf War and nearly succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein, thanks to a rough alliance between Kurds and Shi’a forces. When the tide turned, Saddam’s reprisals against both the Kurds and Shi’a were heavy. In the Kurdistan region, the median age was twenty, with more than 50 percent of its population under the age of twenty-five, and officers believed this demographic was the key to its future. Through interviews with the education minister, several university presidents, faculty, business leaders, and students, they found a Facebook-savvy generation frustrated with limited higher educational opportunities and even fewer career options.
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