The Secretary (35 page)

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 seat 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, no. 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.”

*   *   *

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.

At a press conference with the Qatari foreign minister, Clinton answered four questions,
all about Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Iran’s influence. Tunisia wasn’t on anyone’s mind.
I called my mother in Beirut. Watching Lebanon from afar, its crises seemed more alarming
to me.

“So, the cabinet fell,” I ventured.

“Well, my child, we have been without a government for decades,” my mother said, speaking
to me in Dutch as she often did. “Another one goes, another comes, it’s their problem.
We just keep going.” Forty years in Lebanon had taught my Dutch mother a thing or
two about resilience. Though we were a country at peace, there was barely ever any
city water or power. Potholes were everywhere. Landfills of garbage destroyed our
coast. Red tape and bribes were normal. But we had adapted. We bought power generators,
ordered trucks of cistern water to fill up our tanks, and averted our eyes from piles
of rubbish. Like others around the region, we got used to the sad state of affairs;
defeated, we endured in silence. My family was luckier than most, but I recognized
this attitude in many countries, from Syria to China. It was hard to protest against
your government when your day was consumed with trying to feed your children and stay
alive, and when dissent was punishable with humiliation, torture, or death, even if
you were powerful.

In Lebanon during the Syrian occupation, I was frustrated by politicians who in private
complained about the humiliation of being at the mercy of their masters in Damascus.
I asked why they didn’t rebel, push back, and wondered whether they were cowards,
worried they would lose the privileges that working with an occupying power did provide—until
the former prime minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated. Then a spate of car bombs
targeted politicians and journalists who vocally opposed Syria’s stranglehold on the
country. The country’s upcoming leadership was wiped out. The investigation continues,
and no one’s been convicted yet, but there are few doubts about who did it. One politician’s
wife told me about the calls she received at work every day from Syrian intelligence
officers, recognizable by their accents, warning her that her husband would come back
to her in a coffin if he continued to openly criticize Syria.