Authors: Kim Ghattas
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 to 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.