Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir (45 page)

Before the secretary was to arrive at nine the next morning, I had a breakfast scheduled with the CIA director Leon Panetta at 7:30
A.M.
, followed by a brief airport meeting at 8:30
A.M.
with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who was due back to Baghdad from northern Iraq and would also be at planeside to meet Secretary Clinton. I hoped that the meeting with President Talabani would be brief, just to present my credentials.

I walked into President Talabani’s home just outside the Green Zone at 10:30
P.M.
Foreign Minister Zebari, having somehow taken a shortcut to be there ahead of me, stood in the receiving line. The president greeted me in a friendly, avuncular style that belied eight years of war in Iraq, not to mention his own heroic history of fighting in the mountains against Saddam Hussein’s forces. Like Zebari, President Talabani had put on a few pounds since his days in the mountains, but at seventy-eight years of age, and in chronic ill health, he showed no sign that he would rather be in any other place in the world than welcoming me to his home, and invited me into his dining room for a full-blown Kurdish feast. It was 11
P.M.
when I entered the dining room and saw the piles of rice pilaf, eggplant, salads, lamb, and turkey. “Which part of Turkey do you like the most?” he asked, using an English language play on words that in the scores of dinners and lunches that were to follow he seemingly would never tire of. The food that was displayed in various platters along the middle of the table reminded me of what the Kurdish mountains look like—steep and high, with valleys in between then still more mountains steep and high.

Talabani did not eat much during the dinner but took great care to make sure his guests were well fed. He continually surveyed the table of some twenty people from his seat in the middle for signs that someone’s plate was not at least 90 percent full. His watchful eyes would come to rest on a plate that fit that description, and with a mock sense of urgency he would quickly motion the waiter or an Iraqi dinner guest nearby to attend to the potentially starving American.

We talked Iraqi politics and U.S. relations. Over the course of my career I had met leaders like Talabani before. He was first and foremost a reconciler of conflicting views, a mediator who relished the possibility, however long the odds, of taking two people who did not like each other and finding ways they could get along. That is a skill in any country, but in Iraq it was rare and something that we needed a lot more of.

He was also very good at it, far better than some of his foreign interlocutors, especially jet-lagged, get-to-the-point American visitors. His sense of humor was disarming, but it often had a deeper purpose. Some of those who listened to his jokes through to the often-flubbed punch line completely misunderstood what he might be probing for or sizing up, or how he might be stalling for time for some reason the visitor had no idea about. Talabani enjoyed telling one story about how he told a senior visitor from Iran that his ambassador, sitting next to him, had agreed with the U.S. ambassador at the time on something, and after glancing mischievously out the corner of his eye for the look of panic to emerge in the Iranian ambassador would say, “They both think my kebabs are the best in Baghdad.”

Talabani often tried to hint about the need for U.S.-Iranian dialogue. He also, to the great consternation of many Americans, kept some excessively close Iran relationships, which were indeed troubling. Kurds and Iranians are not known to have a history of close relationships. But all history is local. Months later, I was to visit Talabani’s hometown of Sulemaniyah and the nearby village of Halabja, where Saddam Hussein had used poison gas and killed hundreds in their homes. That day, Iran had opened its border crossings and taken in many refugees, including children who had just become orphans. Many people are alive in Halabja because of what the Iranians did that day.

Talabani was also a creature of Baghdad and its relative cosmopolitan and secular feel. But this comfort level in the big city meant that he was losing touch with the growing problems in his region of the eastern part of Kurdistan, in Sulemaniyah. Later during my time in Iraq he was
to spend an increasing amount of his work time dealing with local issues in Sulemaniyah as political opposition grew to challenge the hold of his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. His political problems prompted Washington analysts to conclude he was somehow a spent force, but to analyze his position in Baghdad in terms of his base in Sulemaniyah was to misunderstand his role.

Over the course of my time—and his meals—in Baghdad, I would come to respect Talabani’s judgments about other politicians and in particular about Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “There is a good Maliki, and a bad Maliki. We need to encourage one, and discourage the other,” he liked to say. In Iraq, the powers of the president were very weak, but Talabani’s capacity to talk to all sides meant that he could if possible punch above his already considerable weight. In the take-no-prisoners world of Iraqi politics, there were very few politicians with such skills.

My convoy lumbered back to the embassy, the speed bumps seeming to hit with added force on my exhausted body. At 1
A.M
. I staggered up to where I remembered my bedroom was located to lie down, and just as I did that night in Cameroon, thirty-five years ago, asking myself as I went to sleep what I had gotten myself into. I slept through until the morning.

After the breakfast with CIA director Panetta, I took a helicopter out to the airport to await the arrival of Secretary Clinton. While waiting I spoke briefly with chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen. I thought about the attention being paid Iraq: CIA director, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, secretary of state. Who’s coming tomorrow? I asked myself.

Secretary Clinton put herself through a grueling day: meetings with Zebari, Prime Minister Maliki, President Talabani, and women who had lost their husbands to war and violence (alas, sometimes at the hands of our forces). Also, a kind of holdover from her days on the campaign trail: the proverbial town meeting with all sorts of people, young, old, women, men, muftis, seculars in gray suits, sheiks in flowing robes and keffiyehs, women in black chadors and checkered
shemaghs
, just about everybody.

The secretary batted every question thrown her way effortlessly, a tour de force. She posed for numerous photos and worked lines of people. I stood on the side in this embassy “common room,” wondering what the Iraqis were thinking of her and the whole event. Sometimes events that are culturally specific, such as a New England town meeting, make more sense in a place like New Hampshire than in Baghdad. They don’t necessarily make the leap over the cultural divide, and I was not sure this town meeting had done so. But I also wasn’t sure it hadn’t. I didn’t know what to think. There was such a campaign feel to it I wanted to clap my hands and cheer for her, but she was secretary of state, I kept having to remind myself.

Finally, at the end of the long day there was the meeting with the U.S. Embassy staff in the large embassy atrium. The advance team had ensured that the crowd was in place when Secretary Clinton emerged on the second-floor balcony after a small meeting in my office with the United Nations representative Staffan de Mistura and his senior staff. As she walked slowly down the main staircase, waving each step of the way, the crowd, two-thirds of which was affiliated with the military in some way or another, surged with enthusiasm. She got up on the platform specially constructed on the instructions of her advance team. The deep-blue velvet drape and piping backdrop had a professional look to it. I thought about how the embassy in Tirana had hosted senior visitors, including Secretary Eagleburger, or how Embassy Skopje had hosted Secretary Albright without any stage or bunting or drape and piping. I thought back to how in Tirana we had asked Secretary Eagleburger to stand on a wooden crate turned on its end (“Hill, if I fall and kill myself, I’ll have you fired!”).

Secretary Clinton, seeming to make eye contact with every person in the room, spoke eloquently and passionately, and with a sincerity that brought tears to some eyes. She said how important Iraq was to her, a top-tier issue, and how much she valued the staff at this embassy. She kindly introduced me as the ambassador she would leave behind, and said she would look forward to working with this embassy in the years ahead.
To thunderous applause she walked the rope line, connecting, it seemed, with everyone she shook hands with or simply touched. She took photos effortlessly with people, waited patiently as employees turned amateur photographers fumbled to find the flash switch on their cell phone cameras. She finally made her exit out of the embassy to the waiting car, her nervous security detail beginning to breathe a sigh of relieve that it was all coming to an end soon. I said good-bye in the car on the edge of the helicopter landing pad, and she made clear that I should call her whenever I needed her help—and I would really need help, she said in mock seriousness. Exhilarated and grateful, I stood on the edge of the landing zone in a line with a few other embassy personnel, all of us waving farewell to our secretary with the expectation she would be back soon.

Three months later, Vice President Joe Biden took the lead on Iraq policy and she never returned.

• • •

Embassy Baghdad was the biggest embassy the world had ever seen, the joke being that like the Great Wall of China it was visible from outer space. But to the military it was no larger than many of the “forward operating bases” (FOBs) that dot the Green Zone, and small compared to the giant military bases that housed the major army formations. Even though it was a diplomatic establishment, there were legions of uniformed military working on the “new embassy compound,” or NEC, as it was known to the military. To many it was indeed another FOB in Baghdad, like Camp Liberty and Camp Union.

In the middle of the NEC stood the chancery building. With its large atrium, the chancery was something out of the central drawings of the generic embassy. But in addition to the chancery, there was an Annex One, where the consular section and many of the administrative operations were located. There was also an Annex Two, where many of the foreign assistance implementers were housed. And of course, there was also a large recreation building that housed a “food court,” with an off-brand coffee shop, a Pizza Hut, a Subway sandwich shop, and a small
commissary for buying primarily soft drinks, frozen foods, some limited clothing, a few electronic goods, and DVDs whose selections were clearly geared to a young age group. There was also a post office and a unisex barbershop where for four dollars one could get a haircut that could turn the most shaggy-haired political section wonk into a marine recruit look-alike. It paid to pay attention to what the barber was up to.

There was also a bar called “Baghdaddy’s,” which was open two nights a week and otherwise would be used for community events including church services. Next to the bar stood an indoor basketball court, the back half converted to a gym whose weight and cardio machines seemed to be in full use morning, noon, and night. Outside the food court there was a large cement terrace that Chris Klein dubbed the “corniche,” where groups of people barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs and sometimes brought in an Iraqi caterer to grill shawarma on a huge spit.

The NEC was built to last, a contrast to the U.S. military bases with their temporary structures, usually a down-on-its-luck Saddam-era palace or Republican Guard cement building complex with such kitsch décor as a plastic chandelier, surrounded by Containerized Housing Units, or “CHUs” (pronounced “chews”), erected by one of the many U.S. contractor firms that accompany the U.S. military to war in this age. The NEC also had a few CHUs, but by and large buildings and even the beginnings of some actual landscaping suggested a different kind of overall facility than the American presence elsewhere. Buildings on the NEC also had “overhead cover,” a deluxe option, not found on military bases, that protected the buildings from 107mm rocket fire. We looked like we planned to stay.

I thought the latter point was an important one, and felt that it was my best means to show the Iraqis that we desired a “normal” relationship (albeit, with overhead rocket-proof protection of our buildings), and that the scale of the embassy, its bricks and mortar, would help suggest our commitment to a long-term relationship.

The staff of this “expeditionary” embassy was an extraordinary
mishmash of people, only a minority of whom were Foreign Service officers. Many were active-duty military, or often reservists, working in the “Joint Directorate for Strategic Effects” (better known as J9) of the USF-I Command. The J9’s mission was to engage and influence Iraq’s political leadership, government officials, and civilian society in general—it was essentially a parallel embassy run entirely by a major general, with some 250 people attached. The embassy also employed legions of support staff: gardeners, cafeteria workers, auto mechanics, housing engineers, most of whom were on loan from other U.S. embassies around the world. Beyond that there were technical assistance contractors providing services to the Iraq government through such U.S. government agencies as the Agency for International Development (AID) or the Treasury Department. Throughout the embassy, in order to fill out sections such as Economic or Commercial, there were one-year contractors, known as 3161s, a number that refers to the civil service code that permitted the temporary hiring of persons with needed skills.

And then, of course, there were the security force contractors. Normally, an embassy’s outer fences are protected by host country security services, usually simply police. For obvious reasons, Embassy Baghdad could not rely on the Iraqi government to provide such protection, hence the engagement of contracting companies that in turn would hire guards from other countries, such as Peru and Uganda. There were also mobile security teams that would protect diplomats and others on their visits to Iraqi government facilities.