They’re sitting on a powder keg and if they don’t change, it’s going to explode.” I was exasperated. It was the first week of January 2011, and we were planning another trip to the Middle East. This time I wanted to go beyond the usual agenda of official meetings and private cajoling about needed political and economic reforms in the Arab world. Jeff Feltman, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, my top advisor on the region, agreed. Trying to drive change in the Middle East could feel like banging your head against a brick wall, and Jeff had been doing it for years, under several administrations. Among other roles, he had served as Ambassador to Lebanon during some of its most tumultuous recent history, including the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005 that triggered the Cedar Revolution and the withdrawal of Syrian troops, as well as the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. These experiences would serve Jeff well in the weeks to come as we tried to stay one step ahead of a wave of upheaval that would sweep the region. The period ahead would be fluid and confusing even for experienced diplomats.
I turned to two of my speechwriters, Megan Rooney and Dan Schwerin. “I’m tired of repeating the same old things every time I go there,” I told them. “I want to say something that really breaks through this time.” The upcoming annual Forum for the Future conference in Doha, the capital of energy-rich Qatar, would provide an opportunity for me to deliver a message to many of the Middle East’s most influential royals, political leaders, business tycoons, academics, and civil society activists. Many of them would be gathered in the same room at the same time. If I wanted to make the case that the region’s status quo was unsustainable, this was the place to do it. I told Megan and Dan to get to work.
Of course, I was not the first American official to push for reform. In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Egypt and made a remarkable admission: for more than half a century, the United States had chosen to pursue “stability at the expense of democracy” and “achieved neither.” That would be true no longer, she promised. Four years later in President Obama’s major speech in Cairo, he too called for democratic reforms.
Yet for all the words delivered in public and even more pointed words in private, and despite the persistent efforts of people from all walks of life to make their countries more prosperous and free, by early 2011, much of the Middle East and North Africa remained locked in political and economic stagnation. Many countries had been ruled for decades under martial law. Across the region corruption at every level, especially at the top, was rampant. Political parties and civil society groups were nonexistent or tightly restricted; judicial systems were far from free or independent; and elections, when they were held, were often rigged. This sorry state of affairs was dramatized anew in November 2010, when Egypt held flawed Parliamentary elections that nearly eliminated the token political opposition.
A landmark study published in 2002 by leading Middle Eastern scholars and the United Nations Development Program was as troubling as it was revealing. The Arab Human Development Report painted a devastating portrait of a region in decline. Despite the Middle East’s oil wealth and strategic trading location, unemployment was more than double the global average, and even higher for women and young people. A growing number of Arabs lived in poverty, crowded into slums without sanitation, safe water, or reliable electricity, while a small elite gained increasing control over land and resources. It was also not surprising that Arab women’s political and economic participation was the lowest in the world.
Despite its problems, most of the region’s leaders and power brokers seemed largely content to carry on as they always had. And despite the best intentions of successive American administrations, the day-to-day reality of U.S. foreign policy prioritized urgent strategic and security imperatives such as counterterrorism, support for Israel, and blocking Iran’s nuclear ambitions over the long-term goal of encouraging internal reforms in our Arab partners. To be sure, we did press leaders to reform, because we believed that would eventually provide greater long-term stability and inclusive prosperity. But we also worked with them on a wide range of security concerns and never seriously considered cutting off our military relationships with them.
This was a dilemma that had confronted generations of American policymakers. It’s easy to give speeches and write books about standing up for democratic values, even when it may conflict with our security interests, but when confronted with the actual, real-world trade-offs, choices get a lot harder. Inevitably, making policy is a balancing act. Hopefully we get it more right than wrong. But there are always choices we regret, consequences we do not foresee, and alternate paths we wish we had taken.
I talked with enough Arab leaders over the years to know that for many of them, it wasn’t a simple matter of being content with how things were; they accepted that change would come but only slowly. I looked for ways to build personal relationships and trust with them, to better grasp the cultural and social views that influenced their actions, and, when possible, push for more rapid change.
All of this was on my mind as 2011 dawned and I prepared once again to visit the Middle East. I had spent much of 2009 and 2010 working with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah II of Jordan to bring the Israeli and Palestinian leaders together for direct peace talks, only to see them fall apart after three rounds of substantive negotiations. Time and again I had told both sides that the status quo was unsustainable and that they needed to make the necessary choices that would lead to peace and progress. Now I was thinking the same thing about the entire region. If Arab leaders, many of whom were America’s partners, failed to embrace the need for change, they risked losing control of their increasingly young and alienated populations and opening the door to unrest, conflict, and terrorists. That’s the argument I wanted to make, without too many of the usual diplomatic niceties diluting the message.
As we planned a trip around the theme of economic, political, and environmental sustainability, events unfolded on the ground that raised the stakes even higher.
The pro-Western government in Lebanon was teetering on the verge of collapse under intense pressure from Hezbollah, a heavily armed Shiite militia with significant influence in Lebanese politics. On January 7, I flew to New York to discuss the crisis with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the son of the assassinated former leader, Rafic Hariri; and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, both of whom were visiting the United States.
At the same time, reports were coming in of street protests in Tunisia, a former French colony on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa between Libya and Algeria that had been ruled for decades by the dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. For the many European tourists who flocked to its beaches and cosmopolitan hotels, it was easy to ignore the dark side of Ben Ali’s Tunisia. Women enjoyed more rights there than in many other Middle Eastern nations, the economy was more diversified, and extremists were not welcome. But the regime was ruthless, repressive, and corrupt, and beyond the glitzy tourist destinations, many people lived in poverty and despair.
The unrest had begun with a single heartbreaking incident on December 17, 2010. A twenty-six-year-old Tunisian man named Mohamed Bouazizi was selling fruit from a small cart in Sidi Bouzid, a poor provincial city south of the capital, Tunis. Like so many others in Tunisia, he was part of the underground economy and struggled to make enough money to provide for his family. Bouazizi did not have an official permit to sell his produce, and on that day he had an altercation with a female police officer that left him humiliated and desperate. Later that day he set himself on fire in front of the local government offices. That act galvanized protests across Tunisia. People took to the streets, protesting corruption, indignity, and lack of opportunity. On social media they passed around lurid tales of Ben Ali’s corruption, some derived from reports by U.S. diplomats about the regime’s excesses over the years, which had been released by WikiLeaks not long before the protests began.
The regime responded to the protests with excessive force, which only fueled public outrage. Ben Ali himself visited Bouazizi in the hospital, but the gesture did little to quell the growing unrest, and the young man died a few days later.
On January 9, as I flew from Washington to Abu Dhabi for the start of my trip, which would take me from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to Yemen, Oman, and Qatar, security forces in Tunisia intensified their crackdown on protesters. Several people were killed. Most observers saw it as yet another example of a familiar cycle of repression in a region that had become numb to such convulsions.
The UAE is a tiny but influential Persian Gulf nation that has grown exceedingly wealthy because of its extensive oil and natural gas reserves. The government, under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, was investing in solar power as a way of diversifying its economy and hedging against future volatility in the global oil market, a rare instance of foresight and smart planning in a petrostate. At the high-tech Masdar Institute in the desert about twenty miles outside of Abu Dhabi, I spoke to a group of graduate students about the region’s shrinking oil supplies and declining water tables. “The old strategies for growth and prosperity will no longer work,” I said. “For too many people in too many places, the status quo today is unsustainable.”
No place in the region seemed to represent my warnings better than Yemen, at the foot of the Arabian Peninsula. The contrast between its dusty and medieval capital, Sanaa, and the sleek and modern UAE cities of Abu Dhabi and Dubai could not have been starker. Yemen, a tribal society that had been ruled since 1990 by a strongman named Ali Abdullah Saleh, was plagued by violent separatist insurgencies, an influx of al Qaeda–linked terrorists, widespread unemployment, dwindling water supplies, dreadful child survival statistics, and, counterintuitively, a surging population that was expected to double in the next twenty years. Yemen’s population is one of the most heavily armed and least literate on earth.
America’s relationship with President Saleh was emblematic of the dilemma at the heart of our Middle East policy. He was corrupt and autocratic, but he was also committed to fighting al Qaeda and keeping his fractious country together. The Obama Administration decided to hold our noses, increase our military and development aid to Yemen, and expand our counterterrorism cooperation. Over a long lunch at his palace, I talked with Saleh about how we could work more closely together on security. I also pressed him on human rights and economic reforms. He was not so much interested in hearing that as he was in showing me the antique rifle that had been a gift from General Norman Schwarzkopf. He was also adamant that I see the Old City of Sanaa before leaving and insisted that I take a tour.
The Old City is right out of the Arabian Nights, a jumble of mud-brick buildings whose façades are covered with decorative alabaster work, almost like gingerbread houses. Crowds of curious onlookers watched from spice shops and cafés as we passed. Most of the women wore veils, either headscarves called hijab or the more extensive face coverings called niqab. The men wore large curved daggers at their belts, and quite a few carried Kalashnikov rifles. Many of the men were chewing khat leaves, the Yemeni narcotic of choice. I was in a wide armored SUV that could barely fit through the narrow streets. The car came so close to some of the walls of the shops and houses that if the windows had been open, I could have reached inside.
My destination was the Mövenpick Hotel, which sits on a rise overlooking the city, where I met with a large group of activists and students, part of Yemen’s vibrant civil society. I opened our meeting with a message intended not just for Yemenis but for people across the Middle East. “The next generation of Yemenis will be hungry for jobs, health care, literacy, education and training that connect them to the global economy, and they will be seeking responsive democratic governance that reaches and serves their communities.” The entire region had to figure out how to offer young people a vision for a future of opportunity resting on a foundation of stability and security. My remarks set off an energetic exchange of ideas and venting by the crowd. Students who had studied abroad spoke passionately about why they had returned home to help build their country. Despite their frustration over repression and corruption, they were still hopeful that progress was possible.
One young woman in the crowd was named Nujood Ali, who successfully fought for a divorce at age ten. She had been forced to marry a man three times her age who had made her drop out of school. This wasn’t uncommon in Yemen, but to Nujood, it felt like a prison sentence. Desperate to escape what quickly became an abusive marriage and to reclaim her dream of an education and an independent life, she boarded a bus and made it to the local courthouse. Everyone towered above her and paid no attention until a judge asked the young girl why she was there. Nujood said she wanted a divorce. A lawyer named Shada Nasser came to her rescue. Together they shocked Yemen and the world by fighting in court—and winning. I suggested that Nujood’s story should inspire Yemen to end child marriage once and for all.
The next day provided more contrasts when I went on to Oman, whose ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said, had made wiser choices over the years that helped his country build a modern society while remaining true to its culture and traditions. “Let there be learning, even under the shade of trees,” he had proclaimed. In the 1970s the entire country had three primary schools, which educated fewer than a thousand boys and no girls. In 2014, Oman has universal primary education, and more women than men graduate from the country’s universities. Oman is a monarchy, not a democracy, but it has shown what is possible when a leader focuses on education, empowers women and girls, and puts people at the center of its development strategy. In 2010, the UN Development Programme ranked Oman as the world’s most improved country in human development since 1970.
That same day, January 12, as Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri was in Washington preparing to meet with President Obama, his government fell apart amid factional infighting, a curse stalking every Lebanese government that has tried to balance the interests and agendas of its mixed citizenry of Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, and Druze. Meanwhile violence was escalating on the streets of Tunisia. It didn’t feel like a full-blown crisis yet, but there was definitely a sense that the region was starting to shake.
My final stop was Doha, Qatar, for the speech to the regional conference that we had been working on so intently. Early on the morning of January 13, I walked into a crowded meeting room full of Arab leaders and outlined the region’s challenges as bluntly as I could: unemployment, corruption, a sclerotic political order that denied citizens their dignity and universal human rights. “In too many places, in too many ways, the region’s foundations are sinking into the sand,” I said, echoing the themes I had highlighted over the course of the trip. Offering a direct challenge to the assembled leaders, I continued, “You can help build a future that your young people will believe in, stay for, and defend.” If not, “those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries’ problems for a little while, but not forever.”
Few Arab leaders are accustomed to hearing criticism delivered publicly and directly. Although I understood their feelings and customs, I thought it important that they take seriously how quickly the world was changing around them. If I had to be a little undiplomatic to do that, so be it. “Let us face honestly that future. Let us discuss openly what needs to be done. Let us use this time to move beyond rhetoric, to put away plans that are timid and gradual, and make a commitment to keep this region moving in the right direction,” I said in closing. After I was finished the American journalists traveling with me were buzzing about how blunt my words had been. I wondered if any actions would follow.
The next day, with demonstrations in Tunisia swelling, Ben Ali fled the country and sought refuge in Saudi Arabia. Protests that had begun with a dispute over a fruit cart had grown into a full-fledged revolution. I had not expected events to underscore my “sinking into the sand” warning so quickly or dramatically, but now the message was undeniable. Yet as significant as these events were, none of us expected what happened next.
The protests in Tunisia proved contagious. Thanks to satellite television and social media, young people across the Middle East and North Africa had a front-row seat to the popular uprising that toppled Ben Ali. Emboldened, they began turning private criticisms of their governments into public calls for change. After all, many of the same conditions that drove frustration in Tunisia were present across the region, especially with regard to corruption and repression.
On January 25, protests in Cairo against police brutality grew into massive demonstrations against the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak. Tens of thousands of Egyptians occupied Tahrir Square in the heart of the city and resisted efforts by the police to force them to disperse. Day after day the crowds in the square grew, and they became focused on a single goal: driving Mubarak from power.
I had known Mubarak and his wife, Suzanne, for nearly twenty years. He was a career Air Force officer who had risen through the ranks to become Vice President under Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian ruler who fought the Yom Kippur War with Israel in 1973 and later signed the Camp David Accords. Mubarak was injured in the extremist attack that assassinated Sadat in 1981, but he survived, became President, and cracked down hard on Islamists and other dissidents. He ruled Egypt like a pharaoh with nearly absolute power for the next three decades.
Over the years I spent time with Mubarak. I appreciated his consistent support for the Camp David Accords and a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. He tried harder than any other Arab leader to convince Yasser Arafat to accept the peace agreement negotiated by my husband in 2000. But, despite his partnership with the United States on key strategic matters, it was disappointing that after so many years in power his regime still denied the Egyptian people many of their fundamental freedoms and human rights and was badly mismanaging the economy. Under Mubarak’s rule, a country known to historians as the “breadbasket of antiquity” struggled to feed its own people and became the world’s largest importer of wheat.
In May 2009, Mubarak’s twelve-year-old grandson died suddenly from an undisclosed health problem. The loss seemed to shatter the aging leader. When I called Suzanne Mubarak to offer my sympathy, she told me the boy had been “the President’s best friend.”
For the Obama Administration, the protests in Egypt presented a delicate situation. Mubarak had been a key strategic ally for decades, yet America’s ideals were more naturally aligned with the young people calling for “bread, freedom, and dignity.” When asked by a journalist about the protests on that first day, I sought to offer a measured response that reflected our interests and values, as well as the uncertainty of the situation, and avoided throwing further fuel on the fire. “We support the fundamental right of expression and assembly for all people, and we urge that all parties exercise restraint and refrain from violence,” I said. “But our assessment is that the Egyptian Government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.” It would turn out that the regime was certainly not “stable,” but few observers could have predicted just how fragile it actually was.
On January 28, President Obama joined a meeting of the national security team in the White House Situation Room and asked us for recommendations about how to handle events in Egypt. The debate around the long table went back and forth. We delved once more into questions that had bedeviled U.S. policymakers for generations: How should we balance strategic interests against core values? Can we successfully influence the internal politics of other nations and nurture democracy where it has never flowered before, without incurring negative unintended consequences? What does it mean to be on the right side of history? These were debates we would have throughout the so-called Arab Spring.
Like many other young people around the world, some of President Obama’s aides in the White House were swept up in the drama and idealism of the moment as they watched the pictures from Tahrir Square on television. They identified with the democratic yearnings and technological savvy of the young Egyptian protesters. Indeed Americans of all ages and political stripe were moved by the sight of people so long repressed finally demanding their universal human rights, and repulsed by the excessive force the authorities used in response. I shared that feeling. It was a thrilling moment. But along with Vice President Biden, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, I was concerned that we not be seen as pushing a longtime partner out the door, leaving Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and the region to an uncertain, dangerous future.
The arguments for throwing America’s weight behind the protesters went beyond idealism. Championing democracy and human rights had been at the heart of our global leadership for more than half a century. Yes, we had from time to time compromised those values in the service of strategic and security interests, including by supporting unsavory anti-Communist dictators during the Cold War, with mixed results. But such compromises were harder to sustain in the face of the Egyptian people demanding the very rights and opportunities we had always said they and all peoples deserved. While before it had been possible to focus on the Mubarak who supported peace and cooperation with Israel and hunted terrorists, now it was impossible to ignore the reality that he was also a heavy-handed autocrat who presided over a corrupt and calcified regime.
And yet many of the same national security interests that had led every previous administration to maintain close ties with Mubarak remained urgent priorities. Iran was still attempting to build a nuclear arsenal. Al Qaeda was still plotting new attacks. The Suez Canal remained a vital trade route. Israel’s security was as essential as ever. Mubarak had been a partner in all these areas, despite anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments among his own people. His Egypt served as a linchpin of peace in a volatile region. Were we really ready to walk away from that relationship after thirty years of cooperation?
Even if we did decide that was the right choice, it was far from clear how much influence we could actually have on events on the ground. Contrary to popular belief among many in the Middle East, the United States has never been an all-powerful puppet master able to achieve any outcome we desire. What if we called for Mubarak to step down, but then he refused and managed to stay in power? What if he did step down and was succeeded by a lengthy period of dangerous disorder or by a successor government no more democratic and actively opposed to our interests and security? Either way, our relationship would never be the same and our influence in the region would erode. Other partners would see how we treated Mubarak and lose trust and confidence in their relationships with us.
Historically, transitions from dictatorship to democracy are fraught with challenges and can easily go terribly wrong. In Iran in 1979, for example, extremists hijacked the broad-based popular revolution against the Shah and established a brutal theocracy. If something similar happened in Egypt, it would be a catastrophe, for the people of Egypt as well as for Israeli and U.S. interests.
Despite the size of the protests in Tahrir Square, they were largely leaderless, driven by social media and word of mouth rather than a coherent opposition movement. After years of one-party rule, Egypt’s protesters were ill prepared to contest open elections or build credible democratic institutions. By contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood, an eighty-year-old Islamist organization, was well positioned to fill a vacuum if the regime fell. Mubarak had driven the Brotherhood underground, but it had followers all over the country and a tightly organized power structure. The group had renounced violence and made some efforts to appear more moderate. But it was impossible to know how it would behave and what would happen if it gained control.
These arguments gave me pause. Along with the Vice President, Gates, and Donilon, I counseled caution. If Mubarak falls, I told the President, “it all may work out fine in twenty-five years, but I think the period between now and then will be quite rocky for the Egyptian people, for the region, and for us.” But I knew the President wasn’t comfortable sitting by and doing nothing while peaceful protesters were beaten and killed in the streets. He needed a path forward that urged Egypt toward democracy but avoided the chaos of an abrupt regime collapse.
On Meet the Press on Sunday, January 30, I tried to set out a sustainable approach. “Long-term stability rests on responding to the legitimate needs of the Egyptian people, and that is what we want to see happen,” so I said that we hoped to see a “peaceful, orderly transition to a democratic regime.” My using the word orderly rather than immediate was intentional, although unpopular in some quarters of the White House. Some on the President’s team wanted me to at least foreshadow Mubarak’s departure, if not call for it. I, however, thought it was crucial that the rhetoric from me and others in the administration help Egypt achieve the reforms most of the protesters sought with a soft landing rather than a hard thud.
When I spoke with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit that week, I urged the government to show restraint and demonstrate that it would be responsive to the demands of the people. “It’s going to be challenging for President Mubarak to make the case that he’s heard people after thirty years unless he holds free and fair elections and doesn’t try to engineer his successor,” I told Aboul Gheit. “That is not tomorrow’s business,” he responded. “Tomorrow’s business is to pacify the people and settle them down.” But he agreed to pass along my concerns.
Mubarak, however, wasn’t listening. Even as unrest escalated and the regime’s control of the country appeared to be slipping, he delivered a defiant speech late on the evening of January 29 in which he fired many of his Cabinet Ministers but refused to resign or limit his own term in office.
I recommended to President Obama that he dispatch an envoy to talk with Mubarak in person and persuade him to announce a strong package of reforms, including an end to the country’s repressive emergency law that had been in effect since 1981, a pledge not to run in the elections already planned for September, and an agreement not to put forward his son Gamal as his successor. These steps might not satisfy everyone, but they would be significant concessions and give the protesters a chance to organize ahead of the elections.
For this delicate assignment, I suggested Frank Wisner, a retired senior diplomat who had served as Ambassador to Egypt from 1986 to 1991 and had developed a strong personal relationship with Mubarak. They had spent many hours together discussing the region and the world. Like his great friend Richard Holbrooke, Wisner cut his diplomatic teeth in Vietnam before representing our country in hotspots all over the world. In addition to Egypt, he served as Ambassador in Zambia, the Philippines, and India before retiring in 1997. I thought that if any American could get through to Mubarak, it would be Wisner. But some in the White House were skeptical of Wisner and his mission. They were ready to cut Mubarak loose. President Obama was losing patience, but he ultimately agreed with me to give diplomacy one more chance.
Wisner met with Mubarak on January 31 and delivered our message. Mubarak listened but didn’t give an inch. He was stressed, maybe even bewildered by what was happening around him, but he was in no way ready to give up his power. Like so many autocrats before him, he had come to view himself as inseparable from the state. Mubarak was enough of a realist to know he couldn’t sit in his palace and ignore the protests altogether. So he sent out his newly appointed Vice President, the longtime intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, to propose a national dialogue about possible reforms. Two days earlier Mubarak had selected Suleiman to fill the long-vacant Vice Presidency as a half-hearted attempt to calm the protests. Neither the promise of a national dialogue nor the appointment of a Vice President placated anyone.
That night the military also released a remarkable statement declaring that it would not use force against the Egyptian people and recognizing the legitimacy of the protesters’ rights and demands. This was an ominous sign for Mubarak. If the military abandoned him, there was no way he could remain in power.
The first day of February saw more huge protests. That afternoon in the White House Situation Room, the national security team once again debated what to do. Halfway through our discussion, we received news that Mubarak was going on television to address the nation. We turned to the large video screens and waited to see what the embattled leader would say. Mubarak looked old and tired but sounded defiant. He promised not to run in the September election, to seek reforms to the Constitution, and to ensure a “peaceful transfer of power” before the end of his term. But he did not lift the emergency law or say that his son would not run in his place, nor did he offer to begin handing over any of his absolute powers. Mubarak had actually come around to much of what Wisner had asked of him, but it was too little, too late—both for the crowds in the streets and the team in the Situation Room.
“That’s not going to cut it,” President Obama said, visibly frustrated. Then he called Mubarak and said the same thing. We debated whether the President should make a public statement declaring that he was done waiting for Mubarak to do what was right. Once again senior Cabinet officials, including me, counseled caution. We warned that if the President appeared to be too heavy-handed, it might backfire. But other members of the team appealed once again to the President’s idealism and argued that events on the ground were moving too quickly for us to wait. He was swayed, and that evening he went before the cameras in the Grand Foyer of the White House. “It is not the role of any other country to determine Egypt’s leaders. Only the Egyptian people can do that,” President Obama said. “[But] what is clear—and what I indicated tonight to President Mubarak—is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now.” When Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked at his briefing the next day to define “now,” his answer left little room for doubt. “Now means yesterday,” he said.
Things in Cairo got worse. Regime supporters came out in force and clashed violently with protesters. Men wielding clubs and other weapons swept through Tahrir Square on camels and horses, cracking heads. I called Vice President Suleiman to make it clear that such violent repression was absolutely unacceptable. The Egyptian leadership did not repeat this tactic in the following days. On February 4, I spoke once again to Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit. In earlier conversations he had come across as confident and upbeat. Now he couldn’t hide his frustration, even desperation. He complained that the United States was unceremoniously shoving Mubarak out the door without considering the consequences. Listen to what the Iranians are saying, he warned. They are eager to take advantage of Egypt’s potential collapse. His fear of an Islamist takeover was visceral. “I have two granddaughters, one six and the other eight,” he told me. “I want them to grow up to be like their grandmother and like you. Not wearing a niqab like in Saudi Arabia. This is the fight of my life.”
His words stayed with me as I flew to Germany to address the Munich Security Conference, a key gathering of leaders and thinkers from across the international community. For all our talk about supporting democracy, what did that really mean? Surely more than just one election, one time. If Egypt’s women saw their rights and opportunities rolled back under a newly elected government, was that democracy? What about if minorities like Egypt’s Coptic Christians were persecuted or marginalized? If Mubarak was going to leave the presidency and Egypt was going to begin a transition, then these questions about what would happen next would become relevant and pressing.
In Munich, as in Doha a month before, I made the case for political and economic reforms across the Middle East. “This is not simply a matter of idealism,” I said. “It is a strategic necessity. Without genuine progress toward open and accountable political systems, the gap between people and their governments will only grow, and instability will only deepen.” Of course, these transitions would look different and proceed at different speeds in each country, depending on their unique circumstances. But no nation could ignore the aspirations of their people forever.
At the same time, I warned, we should be clear-eyed about the risks inherent in any transition. Free and fair elections would be necessary, but not sufficient. Functioning democracies require the rule of law, an independent judiciary, a free press and civil society, respect for human rights, minority rights, and accountable governance. In a country like Egypt, with a long history of authoritarian rule, it would take strong, inclusive leadership and sustained effort from across society, as well as international support, to put these building blocks of democracy in place. No one should expect them to appear overnight. My words that day may have sounded out of tune with the hope and optimism many felt watching the protests in Cairo, but they reflected the challenges I saw ahead.
At the same conference in Munich, Wisner, as a private citizen and no longer playing any role for the administration, appeared via satellite to offer his personal opinion on the situation. This distressed the White House, which thought it had his assurance that he would not discuss his mission publicly. Wisner made waves by saying Mubarak shouldn’t go immediately but should oversee a transition. His comments came across as contradicting the President, and the White House was annoyed that Wisner had overstepped his brief. The President called me to express his unhappiness about the “mixed messages” we were sending. That’s a diplomatic way of saying he took me to the woodshed. The President knew events in Egypt were not in America’s control, but he wanted to do right by both our interests and our values. So did I. I knew Mubarak had stayed too long and done too little. But beyond getting rid of him, the people in Tahrir Square seemed to have no plan. Those of us who favored the stodgy-sounding “orderly transition” position were concerned that the only organized forces after Mubarak were the Muslim Brotherhood and the military.
By February 10, hundreds had been killed in clashes with security forces. The violence fed the protesters’ rage and their demands that Mubarak resign. Rumors swirled that he would finally bow to the pressure. Expectations ran high as Mubarak delivered yet another address to the nation. This time he announced the transfer of some of his powers to Vice President Suleiman, but still he refused to step down or accept the need for a transition in which he relinquished power. The crowds in Tahrir Square were infuriated.
The next day, February 11, Mubarak finally accepted defeat. Vice President Suleiman, looking worn and drawn, appeared on television and announced that the President had stepped down and ceded all his powers to the military leadership. An Army spokesman read a statement pledging to “conduct free and fair presidential elections” and answer “the legitimate demands of the people.” Mubarak himself did not speak, instead quietly departing Cairo for his residence on the Red Sea. Unlike Ben Ali in Tunisia, he did not flee the country, staying true to his defiant promise, “I will die in Egypt.” That last act of stubbornness left him exposed to prosecution and retribution, and he has spent the following years under house arrest, in court, or in the hospital as his health reportedly declined.
About a month later I visited Cairo and walked through Tahrir Square myself. My security team was nervous about what we were heading into; it was a complete unknown. But as Egyptians thronged around me, the overwhelming message was one of warmth and hospitality. “Thank you for coming,” several people said. “Welcome to the new Egypt!” others shouted. They were proud of the revolution they had won.
Then I met with a number of the students and activists who had played leading roles in the demonstrations. I was curious to hear about their plans to move from protests to politics and how they planned to influence the writing of a new Constitution and contest the upcoming elections. I found a disorganized group not prepared to contest or influence anything. They had no experience in politics, no understanding about how to organize parties, run candidates, or conduct campaigns. They didn’t have platforms and showed little interest in forming them. Instead they argued among themselves, blamed the United States for a variety of sins, and were largely dismissive of electoral politics. “Have you considered forming a political coalition and joining together on behalf of candidates and programs?” I asked. They just looked at me blankly. I came away worried that they would end up handing the country to the Muslim Brotherhood or the military by default, which in the end is exactly what happened.
The acting head of state was Mubarak’s Defense Minister, Field Marshall Mohamed Tantawi, who had promised to preside over a smooth transition to a democratically elected civilian government. When I met him in Cairo, he was so tired he could barely hold his head up. The shadows under his eyes reached practically down to his mouth. He was a professional soldier through and through, whose bearing and appearance reminded me of General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Pakistan. Both men were committed nationalists, devoted to the military cultures that produced them, and uneasy with both their dependence on aid from the United States and the political and economic threats they perceived to their respective militaries’ enormous powers. As Tantawi and I talked about his plans for the transition, I could see him choosing his words carefully. He was in a difficult position, trying to save his beloved Army from the wreckage of the Mubarak regime, protect the people, as the Army had promised to do, and do right by the former leader who had nurtured his career. In the end Tantawi followed through on his promise to hold elections. And when his preferred candidate, former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik, narrowly lost to Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, he allowed the result to stand.
Throughout the delicate transition process, the United States tried to walk a tightrope, promoting our democratic values and strategic interests without taking sides or backing particular candidates or factions. Yet despite our efforts to play a neutral and constructive role, many Egyptians viewed America with distrust. Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood accused us of having propped up the Mubarak regime and suspected that we would collude with the military to keep them from power. Their opponents feared the prospect of Islamist rule and alleged that the United States had conspired with the Brotherhood to force out Mubarak. I wasn’t sure how we could be accused of both aiding and foiling the Muslim Brotherhood, but logic never gets in the way of a good conspiracy theory.
When I returned to Egypt in July 2012, I found the streets of Cairo once again seething with protests. But this time they weren’t directed at the government—they were directed at me. Crowds gathered outside my hotel, and as we drove into its parking garage through the side entrance, people banged on our vehicles. Egyptian police did nothing to stop them, and my Diplomatic Security agents were forced to push the crowd back themselves, something they ordinarily wouldn’t do. Once inside my room more than a dozen stories up, I could hear the din of angry anti-American chants. My security and staff spent an anxious night prepared to evacuate the hotel if required. Despite warnings of more protests in Alexandria, I insisted we stick to the plan and fly there the next day to officially open a renovated American Consulate. After the event, as we left to get into our cars, we were forced to walk near the angry crowd. Toria Nuland, my intrepid spokeswoman, was hit in the head by a tomato (she took the blow gracefully), and a man pounded his shoe against my car’s window as we pulled out heading to the airport.
In Cairo, along with separate meetings with Morsi and the generals, I sat down with a group of concerned Coptic Christians at the U.S. Embassy. They were deeply anxious about what the future held for them and their country. It was a very emotional, personal conversation.
One of the most moving scenes from the revolution in Tahrir Square was when Christian protesters formed a protective circle around their Muslim comrades during the call to prayer. The reverse happened when the Christians celebrated a Mass. Sadly, that spirit of unity had not lasted. Just a month after the fall of Mubarak, there were reports from the city of Qena that a group of Salafists had cut off the ear of a Coptic Christian schoolteacher and burned his house and car. Other attacks followed. Morsi’s election only heightened fears in the Christian community.
In our meeting, one of the more agitated participants brought up an especially outrageous canard. He accused my trusted aide Huma Abedin, who is Muslim, of being a secret agent of the Muslim Brotherhood. This claim had been circulated by some unusually irresponsible and demagogic right-wing political and media personalities in the United States, including members of Congress, and now it had turned up in Cairo. I wasn’t going to let that stand and told him in no uncertain terms how wrong he was. After a few minutes of conversation the embarrassed accuser apologized and asked why a member of the U.S. Congress would make such an assertion if it wasn’t true. I laughed and said that unfortunately plenty of falsehoods are circulated in Congress. After the meeting Huma went right up to the man, politely introduced herself, and offered to answer any questions he had. It was a characteristically gracious move on her part.
Privately I was furious at the attacks on Huma by several ignorant House members. So I was grateful to Senator John McCain, who had gotten to know her over the years, when he went to the floor of the Senate and made his own disdain clear: “When anyone, not least a member of Congress, launches vicious and degrading attacks against fellow Americans on the basis of nothing more than fear of who they are, in ignorance of what they stand for, it defames the spirit of our nation, and we all grow poor because of it. Our reputations, our character, are the only things we leave behind when we depart this earth. And unjust acts that malign the good name of a decent and honorable person, is not only wrong, it is contrary to everything we hold dear.”
Several weeks later, with Huma sitting at his side at the White House’s annual Iftar dinner to break the Ramadan fast, President Obama also defended her, saying, “The American people owe her a debt of gratitude—because Huma is an American patriot, and an example of what we need in this country—more public servants with her sense of decency, her grace and her generosity of spirit. So, on behalf of all Americans, we thank you so much.” The President of the United States and one of our nation’s most renowned war heroes make quite a one-two punch. It was a real testament to Huma’s character.
In our meeting I told the Coptic leaders that the United States would stand firmly on the side of religious freedom. All citizens should have the right to live, work, and worship as they choose, whether they be Muslim or Christian or from any other background. No group or faction should impose its authority, ideology, or religion on anyone else. America was prepared to work with the leaders that the Egyptian people chose. But our engagement with those leaders would be based on their commitment to universal human rights and democratic principles.
Unfortunately the months and years that followed proved that my early concerns about the difficulties of democratic transitions were well-founded. The Muslim Brotherhood consolidated its power but failed to govern in a transparent or inclusive fashion. President Morsi clashed frequently with the judiciary, sought to marginalize his political opponents rather than build a broad national consensus, did little to improve the economy, and allowed the persecution of minorities, including the Coptic Christians, to continue. But he did surprise some skeptics by upholding the peace treaty with Israel and by helping me negotiate a cease-fire in Gaza in November 2012. Once again the United States faced our classic dilemma: Should we do business with a leader with whom we disagreed on so many things in the name of advancing core security interests? We were back on the high wire, performing the balancing act without easy answers or good options.
In July 2013, with millions of Egyptians again protesting in the streets, this time against the overreaches of the Morsi government, the military under Tantawi’s successor, General Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, stepped in a second time. They removed Morsi and began an aggressive new crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.
As of 2014, the prospects for Egyptian democracy do not look bright. Sisi is running for President with only token opposition, and he appears to be following in the classic mold of Middle Eastern strongmen. Many Egyptians seem tired of the chaos and ready for a return to stability. But, there is little reason to believe that restored military rule will be any more sustainable than it was under Mubarak. To do so it will have to be more inclusive, more responsible for the needs of the people, and eventually, more democratic. In the end, the test for Egypt and other countries across the Middle East will be whether they can build credible democratic institutions that uphold the rights of every citizen while providing security and stability in the face of old enmities across faith, ethnic, economic, and geographic divides. That will not be easy, as recent history has shown, but the alternative is to watch the region keep sinking into the sand.
King Abdullah II of Jordan managed to stay ahead of the wave of unrest that washed away other governments in the region during the Arab Spring. Jordan held credible legislative elections and began cracking down on corruption, but the economy remained stagnant, in large measure because Jordan is one of the world’s most energy-starved nations. Roughly 80 percent of its energy came from natural gas delivered via pipelines from Egypt. But after the fall of Mubarak and the rise of instability in the Sinai, those pipelines, which also carried gas to Israel, became the frequent target of attacks and sabotage, interrupting the flow of energy into Jordan.
Costly government subsidies were keeping the price of electricity from spiraling out of control, but as a result the country’s public debt was ballooning. The King faced a difficult dilemma: cut the subsidies, let energy prices rise, and face the wrath of the people, or maintain the subsidies and run the risk of financial meltdown.
One obvious answer lay to the east, in Iraq, where the United States was helping the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki rebuild its wrecked oil and gas industry. A less obvious and more controversial source of energy lay to the west, in Israel, which had just discovered extensive natural gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean. The two countries had been at peace since the signing of a historic treaty in 1994, but Israel remained deeply unpopular among the Jordanian public, a majority of whom were of Palestinian origin. Given all his other troubles, could the King risk more protests by pursuing a major new trade deal with Israel? Could he afford not to? Over lunch with the King at the State Department in January 2012, and in follow-up discussions with his Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, I urged them to start talking to the Israelis—in secret if necessary.
With U.S. support, Jordan began negotiating with both Iraq and Israel. An agreement with Iraq was signed in 2013 that, with the construction of a pipeline from southern Iraq to Aqaba on the Red Sea, should provide Jordan 1 million barrels per day of crude oil and more than 250 million cubic feet of natural gas. After a year of secret talks with the Israelis, a deal was announced in early 2014 to use Israeli natural gas from the eastern Mediterranean to fuel a power plant on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea. The King was not wrong to have been cautious; representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan slammed the agreement with the “Zionist entity” as “an attack on the Palestinian cause.” But it promised a future of greater energy security for Jordan and a new source of cooperation for two neighbors in a region of enormous challenges.
Perhaps our most delicate balancing act in the Middle East was with our partners in the Persian Gulf: Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The United States had developed deep economic and strategic ties to these wealthy, conservative monarchies, even as we made no secret of our concerns about human rights abuses, especially the treatment of women and minorities, and the export of extremist ideology.
Every U.S. administration wrestled with the contradictions of our policy toward the Gulf. The choices were never harder than after 9/11. Americans were shocked that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers and Osama bin Laden himself hailed from Saudi Arabia, a nation that we had defended in the 1991 Gulf War. And it was appalling that money from the Gulf continued funding extremist madrassas and propaganda all over the world.
At the same time, these governments shared many of our top security concerns. Saudi Arabia had expelled bin Laden, and the kingdom’s security forces had become strong partners in the fight against al Qaeda. Most of the Gulf states shared our worries about Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon along with its aggressive support of terrorism. These tensions were rooted in an ancient sectarian split within Islam: Iran is predominantly Shiite, while the Gulf states are predominantly Sunni. Bahrain is an exception. There, as in Iraq under Saddam, an elite Sunni minority rules over a Shiite majority. In Syria the situation is reversed.
To support our shared security interests over the years and help deter Iranian aggression, the United States sold large amounts of military equipment to the Gulf states, and stationed the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain, the Combined Air and Space Operations Center in Qatar, and maintained troops in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, as well as key bases in other countries.
When I became Secretary I developed personal relationships with Gulf leaders both individually and as a group through the Gulf Cooperation Council, a political and economic association of the Gulf countries. We created a U.S.-GCC security dialogue to intensify our cooperation. Most of the focus of our discussions was on Iran and counterterrorism, but I pressed leaders on the need to open up their societies, respect human rights, and offer more opportunities to their young people and women.
Occasionally, as in an egregious case of child marriage in Saudi Arabia, I was able to make some headway. I learned about an eight-year-old girl whose father forced her to marry a fifty-year-old man in exchange for about $13,000. Saudi courts rejected pleas from her mother to stop the marriage, and it did not look like the government was going to intervene. I knew that embarrassing governments with public condemnation can backfire, making them dig their heels in deeper. Instead of calling a press conference to condemn the practice and demand action, I looked for a way to persuade the Saudis to do the right thing and still save face. Quietly reaching out through diplomatic channels, I offered a simple but firm message: “Fix this on your own and I won’t say a word.” The Saudis appointed a new judge who quickly granted a divorce. It was a lesson I’ve learned all over the world: There’s a time to get on a soapbox—and I’ve been on quite a few—but sometimes the best way to achieve real change, in diplomacy and in life, is by building relationships and understanding how and when to use them.
I responded differently to the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia. In May 2011, a Saudi woman activist posted a video online of her driving a car and was subsequently arrested and detained for nine days. In June, a few dozen women across Saudi Arabia took the wheel in protest. I spoke with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on the phone and raised my personal concern on the issue. In this case I also spoke out publicly, calling the women “brave,” expressing how moved I was by their actions. When another group of women again protested the ban on October 26, 2013, some opponents falsely pointed to the date—my birthday—as proof that the protests were organized outside Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately for the kingdom and its women, the ban continues.
When I traveled to Saudi Arabia in February 2010, I balanced my itinerary between security talks with the King and a visit to a women’s university in Jeddah. Both were memorable in their own way.
I was greeted at the airport in Riyadh, the capital, by Prince Saud al-Faisal, a seventy-year-old Princeton-educated royal who had served as the kingdom’s Foreign Minister since 1975. Like most Saudis I met, he alternated between wearing tailored bespoke suits and long flowing robes with a kaffiyeh headdress. I appreciated spending time with the Prince, who understood the forces, representing tradition and modernity, that were competing for ascendancy in the region.
King Abdullah, who was in his eighties, had invited me to visit him at his desert camp an hour outside of town, and in a first for me, he sent his personal luxury tour bus to pick us up. The bus was lavishly appointed, and the Prince and I sat across the aisle from each other in plush leather seats as we drove through the countryside. I noticed a number of encampments filled with camels. The Prince and I started a funny conversation about the popularity of the kingdom’s camel population, which seems to stem from both practical and sentimental reasons. He discussed the long history nomads had with their camels but told me that he personally didn’t like them. I was surprised—imagine an Australian hating koala bears or a Chinese loathing pandas—but then I haven’t had to spend too much time around camels myself, and I’ve heard they can be ornery.
Soon we arrived at what had been described to us as a desert “camp,” but which turned out to be a massive air-conditioned tent pitched over a palace with marble floors and gilded bathrooms, surrounded by trailers and helicopters. The dignified monarch in long black robes was waiting for us. Contrary to some of my American colleagues, who like to get right down to business, I usually start my side of an official conversation with small talk as a signal of my respect and friendship. So I continued with the camel theme. “I want you to know, Your Majesty, that His Highness thinks camels are ugly,” I said, gesturing to Prince Saud. The King smiled. “I think His Highness was not being fair to camels,” he said. The King, the Prince, and I bantered for a while, and then he invited our entire traveling party, consisting of nearly forty people including the press corps, to join him for an elaborate lunch. He walked me down what seemed like an endless buffet table, with two stewards trailing behind with our trays. There were dozens of dishes, ranging from local favorites like lamb and rice to lobster and paella. The journalists and staff, for whom meals on the road are often catch-as-catch-can, looked like they’d died and gone to foodie heaven. Waiters hovered nearby, ready to refill our plates. I sat next to the King at the head of a long U-shaped table with a giant flat-screen television in the middle of the hollow space prominently positioned so the King could watch soccer and off-road racing while he ate. He turned the volume up very loud so that no one else in the crowded room could hear what we discussed. I leaned in and we began to talk.
We spent four hours together that afternoon, delving into the region’s challenges, from Iran to Iraq to the Israelis and Palestinians. The King spoke forcefully about the need to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and urged us to take a harder line with Tehran. He expressed his hope that more Saudi students would be allowed to study in the United States, which had become more difficult since 9/11. It was a productive meeting, and it signaled that our partnership was on firm footing. The differences between our cultures, values, and political systems are vast, but working together where possible advances America’s interests.
The next day I got a firsthand reminder of how complicated this all is. Huma’s mother, Dr. Saleha Abedin, is vice dean at Dar Al-Hekma, a women’s university in Jeddah, where I had arranged to hold a town hall discussion with the students. As I walked into the auditorium, I saw the crowd of young women, all with their hair covered under hijabs and a few with their faces covered as well.
In Arabic, Dar Al-Hekma means “The House of Wisdom,” and I talked to the students about how much wisdom there is in making sure that girls as well as boys have access to education. I quoted the Egyptian poet Hafez Ibrahim, who wrote, “A mother is a school. Empower her and you empower a great nation,” and I talked about my own experiences with all-women’s education at Wellesley. The students peppered me with probing questions about everything from Iran’s nuclear ambitions to the plight of the Palestinians and the prospects for health care reform in America. One of them asked me what I thought of Sarah Palin and if I’d move to Canada if she ever became President. (No, I said, I would not flee.) These women might have limited opportunities to participate publicly in their ultraconservative society, but there was nothing limited about their intelligence, energy, and curiosity.
Throughout the entire event, one of the female security officers, who was covered head to toe in black with two tiny slits for her eyes, kept vigilant watch on all the Americans. She was not going to let any of the male staff or journalists get anywhere near these students. As I was wrapping up onstage, she approached Huma and whispered to her in Arabic, “I would love to have a picture with her.” When I finished, Huma pulled me aside and pointed to this shrouded woman. “Should we go to a private room to do it?” I asked, out of respect for her modesty. She nodded, and we ducked into a small office. Then, just as we were about to take the photo, the woman pulled off her veil, revealing a huge smile. The camera snapped, and the veil came back down. Welcome to Saudi Arabia.
Almost exactly a year later the delicate balance of our relationships in the Gulf threatened to unravel. The wave of popular protests that started in Tunisia and crashed into Egypt did not stop there. The call for political reform and economic opportunity spread across the entire Middle East. No country was untouched. Yemen was almost torn apart, and President Saleh eventually was forced to leave office. Libya descended into civil war. The governments in Jordan and Morocco made cautious but real reforms. In Saudi Arabia the Royal Family opened their deep pockets in an attempt to placate citizens with more generous social welfare programs.
Bahrain, as the home base for the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, was an exceptionally complicated case for us. In this least wealthy of the Gulf monarchies, demonstrations took on a sectarian cast, with the majority Shiites protesting against their Sunni rulers. In mid-February 2011, crowds demanding democratic reforms and equality for all Bahrainis, regardless of sect, gathered at a major traffic intersection in central Manama called the Pearl Roundabout. Events in Tunisia and Egypt left security forces across the region on edge, and a few early incidents of excessive force in Manama brought more angry citizens into the streets.
Around 3 A.M. on Thursday, February 17, a handful of protesters camped out in the Pearl Roundabout were killed in a police raid, sparking widespread outrage. But the Sunni leaders in Bahrain and in neighboring Gulf countries did not see the largely Shiite protests as a popular outpouring for democracy; they saw the hidden hand of Iran. They worried that their large adversary across the water was fomenting unrest in order to weaken their governments and improve its own strategic position. Given Iran’s track record, this was not an unreasonable fear. But it clouded their perception of the legitimate grievances of their people and hastened the use of force.
I got on the phone with the Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al Khalifa to express my concern about the violence and the possibility of events spiraling out of control. The next day would be crucial, and I hoped his government would take steps to avoid further violence around the funerals and Friday prayer services, which had become times of mobilization across the region. Responding to peaceful protests with force was a recipe for more trouble. “This is a misreading of the world we are in, which is becoming a much more complicated environment,” I said. “I want you to hear it from me. We do not want any violence that allows outside interference in your internal affairs. In order to avoid this, there has to be effort at genuine consultations.” We both knew that “outside interference” was code for Iran. My point was that excessive force could lead to instability that Iran would be able to exploit, which was the very thing his government was trying to avoid.
The Foreign Minister sounded worried, and his answers only heightened my concern. He said that the police action had not been planned, blamed the protesters for starting the violence, and promised that his government was committed to dialogue and reform. “These deaths were catastrophic,” he said. “We are at the brink of a sectarian abyss.” That was a chilling phrase. I told him that I was sending Jeff Feltman to Bahrain immediately. “We will come with suggestions, trying to be helpful and productive during this difficult time. I’m not saying there is an easy answer. Your situation is particularly challenging because of the sectarian situation you face. I have no doubt you have a big neighbor interested in this matter in a way other countries do not.”
Spurred to action by fears of growing violence and encouraged by Jeff, who spent a lot of time on the ground in Manama over the following weeks, the Bahraini Crown Prince tried to organize a national dialogue to address some of the concerns of the protesters and ease the tensions gripping the country. The Crown Prince was a moderate who understood the need for reform and was the ruling family’s best chance to reconcile the competing factions in the country. Behind the scenes Jeff was working to broker an understanding between the Royal Family and the more moderate leaders of the Shiite opposition. But the protests kept growing, and by March, protesters were calling for an end to the monarchy altogether. Clashes with police were getting bigger and more violent. It seemed as if the government was losing control, and conservative members of the Bahraini ruling family were putting pressure on the Crown Prince to abandon his mediation efforts.
On Sunday, March 13, our defense attaché at the embassy in Riyadh reported unusual troop movements in Saudi Arabia that might be heading toward Bahrain. Jeff called the UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, or AbZ, as he was often referred to, who confirmed that a military intervention was about to be launched. Bahrain’s government was going to invite its neighbors in to help provide security. They had not seen the need to inform the United States, as they did not intend to ask our permission or entertain any entreaties to stop. The next day thousands of Saudi troops crossed the border into Bahrain with some 150 armored vehicles. About five hundred police from the UAE followed.
I was concerned about this escalation and worried about a bloodbath if Saudi tanks started rolling through the barricaded streets of Manama. And the timing could not have been worse. At that very moment we were deep into diplomatic negotiations to build an international coalition to protect Libyan civilians from an impending massacre by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, and we were counting on the UAE and other Gulf nations to play key roles. The Arab League had voted on March 12 to request that the UN Security Council impose a no-fly zone in Libya, and their active participation in any military operation would provide legitimacy in the region. Otherwise the international community might not be able to act. After Iraq and Afghanistan, we weren’t going to risk looking like we’d launched another Western intervention in a Muslim country.
I was in Paris for meetings on Libya, as was AbZ, so we arranged to meet at my hotel. On the way in, he was asked by a reporter about the situation in Bahrain. “The Bahrain Government asked us yesterday to look at ways to help them to defuse the tension,” he said. I was worried exactly the opposite was about to happen. The next day the King of Bahrain declared a state of emergency. I spoke with the Saudi Foreign Minister and urged him to hold off using force to clear the protesters. Just give Jeff a little more time to make negotiations work, I said. Even twenty-four hours might make a difference. We were close to a deal with the major Shiite political party to pull back from the key areas of the city in exchange for the government affirming the right to peaceful protest and starting a good-faith dialogue. Saud al-Faisal was implacable. The protesters needed to go home and let normal life resume, he said. Only then could we talk about a deal. He blamed Iran for stirring up trouble and supporting radicals. It was time to end the crisis and return stability to the Gulf, he said.
Early on March 16, security forces moved in to clear the Pearl Roundabout. Riot police supported by tanks and helicopters clashed with protesters and used tear gas to evict them from their makeshift camp. Five people were killed. The arrival of the Saudi troops and this new crackdown further inflamed Shiite opinion across the country. Under pressure from hard-liners in both camps, the negotiations between the opposition and the Crown Prince collapsed.
I was in Cairo meeting with the Egyptian transitional authorities and was dismayed by the reports coming in from Bahrain. In an interview with the BBC, I spoke candidly about my concerns. “The situation in Bahrain is alarming,” I said. “We have called on our friends in the Gulf—four of whom are assisting the Bahrain security efforts—to force through a political solution, not a security standoff.”
“So what leverage do you still have on countries like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia?” the BBC’s Kim Ghattas asked. “They’re your allies. You train their armies. You supply them with weapons. And yet when the Saudis decided to send troops into Bahrain—and I believe Washington made clear it wasn’t pleased about that—they said, ‘Don’t interfere. This is an internal GCC matter.’ ” It was true, and it was frustrating.
“Well, they are on notice as to what we think,” I replied. “And we will intend to make that very clear publicly and privately, and we will do everything we can to try to move this off the wrong track, which we believe is going to undermine long-term progress in Bahrain, to the right track, which is the political and economic track.”
Those might sound like reasonable words—and they were—but they were more pointed than how we usually speak in public about the Gulf countries. My message was heard loud and clear in the Gulf. In Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, our partners were angry and offended.
On March 19, I was back in Paris putting the final touches on the Libya coalition. With Qaddafi’s forces closing in on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, UN-backed air operations were imminent. I spoke once again with AbZ and emphasized that America remained committed to our partnership, as I did personally. There was a long silence on the phone and the line went dead. Had things gotten that bad, I wondered? Then we were reconnected. “Did you hear me?” I asked. “I was listening!” he responded. “Good, I was talking and talking and then there was a long silence, and I thought, what have I done here?” He laughed. But then he got serious again and delivered a sharp blow. “Frankly, when we have a situation with our armed forces in Bahrain, it’s hard to participate in another operation if our armed forces’ commitment to Bahrain is questioned by our main ally,” he said. In other words, forget about Arab participation in the Libya mission.
This was turning into a disaster. I had to fix it, fast. But how? There were no good options here. Our values and conscience demanded that the United States condemn the violence against civilians we were seeing in Bahrain, full stop. After all, that was the very principle at play in Libya. But if we persisted, the carefully constructed international coalition to stop Qaddafi could collapse at the eleventh hour, and we might fail to prevent a much larger abuse—a full-fledged massacre.
I told AbZ that I wanted to reach a constructive understanding. He asked if we could meet in person. “I am hearing you now, and we want a way out. And you know we are keen to take part in Libya,” he said. A few hours later, just after 6 P.M. in Paris, I sat down with him and told him that I could craft a statement that would stay true to our values without being insulting to them. I hoped that would be enough to convince the Emiratis to rejoin the mission in Libya. If not, we were prepared to go forward without them.
That evening I held a press conference at the stately home of the U.S. Ambassador in Paris. I spoke about Libya and stressed that Arab leadership in the air campaign was crucial. Then I turned to Bahrain. “Our goal is a credible political process that can address the legitimate aspirations of all the people of Bahrain, starting with the Crown Prince’s dialogue, which all parties should join.” Bahrain had the right to invite in forces from neighboring countries, I added, and we welcomed word from the Gulf countries that they would provide a major aid package for economic and social development. “We have made clear that security alone cannot resolve the challenges facing Bahrain,” I continued. “Violence is not and cannot be the answer. A political process is. We have raised our concerns about the current measures directly with Bahraini officials and will continue to do so.”
The differences in tone and substance from what I said in Cairo were relatively small, and I felt comfortable that we had not sacrificed our values or credibility. Few, if any, outside observers even noticed any change at all. Soon the Arab jets were flying over Libya.
I wished we had better options in Bahrain and more leverage to produce a positive outcome. We continued to speak out in the months that followed, emphasizing that mass arrests and brute force were at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain’s citizens and would not make legitimate calls for reform go away. We also continued to work closely with the government of Bahrain and with its Gulf neighbors on a range of issues.
In November 2011, in a speech at the National Democratic Institute in Washington, I addressed some of the questions that had arisen about America and the Arab Spring. One that we heard often was: Why does America promote democracy one way in some countries and another way in others? In short, why do we call on Mubarak to give up power in Egypt and mobilize an international military coalition to stop Qaddafi in Libya, while retaining relations with Bahrain and other Gulf monarchies?
The answer, I said, began with a very practical point. Circumstances varied dramatically from country to country, and “it would be foolish to take a one-size-fits-all approach and barrel forward regardless of circumstances on the ground.” What was possible and made sense in one place might not be possible or wise in another. It was also true, I said, that America has many important national interests in the region, and they will not always align perfectly, despite our best efforts. “We’ll always have to walk and chew gum at the same time.” That was certainly true in Bahrain. America will always have imperfect partners who doubtless view us as imperfect too, and we’ll always face imperatives that drive us to make imperfect compromises.
I saw this in February 2012 when I returned to Tunisia, where the convulsions of the Arab Spring had begun. The riot police were gone. There was no more pepper spray in the air. The din of protest had quieted. A moderate Islamist party had won a plurality of the votes in an open, competitive, and credible election. Its leaders promised to embrace freedom of religion and full rights for women. The United States pledged significant financial support, and we began working to boost trade and investment that would get the economy going again. The new government faced many challenges, and the years ahead would be rocky, but there was reason to hope that, in Tunisia at least, the promise of the Arab Spring might actually be realized.
I wanted to talk to the young people who had provided the emotional core of the revolution and who stood to gain the most if democracy took root in Tunisia. About two hundred of them met with me in the Palais du Baron d’Erlanger, a center for Arab and Mediterranean music perched on a cliff above the sea. I spoke about the hard work of making a transition to democracy and about the role their generation could play. Then I took questions. A young lawyer asked for the microphone. “I think that there exists among many young people in Tunisia and across the region a deep feeling of mistrust towards the West in general and the United States in particular. And many observers partly explain the surge of extremism in the region and in Tunisia by this skepticism,” he said. “And even among the mainstream of moderate and pro-Western youth, there is a sense of despair and fatalism when it comes to the possibility of building a real and lasting partnership that is based on mutual interests. So is the United States aware of this issue? And how do you think we can address it?”
He had just put his finger on one of our biggest challenges. And I understood that the distrust he and so many others felt was connected to the compromises we had to make in the Middle East. “We are aware of it,” I responded. “We regret it. We feel that it doesn’t reflect the values or the policy of the United States.” I tried to explain why America had worked with autocrats in the region for so long, from Ben Ali in Tunisia to Mubarak in Egypt to our partners in the Gulf. “You deal with the governments that are in place. And yes, we did. We dealt with the governments that were in place, just like we deal with the governments elsewhere. Right now, we’re in a big argument with Russia and China because they won’t agree to the Security Council resolution to help the poor people in Syria. But we don’t stop dealing with Russia and China across a whole range of issues because we have serious disagreements with them. So I think part of it is to recognize the reality that governments have to deal with, and to look at the whole picture.”
I knew this wasn’t very satisfying, but it was the truth. America will always do what it takes to keep our people safe and advance our core interests. Sometimes that means working with partners with whom we have deep disagreements.
But there is another part of the big picture that is often lost, a truth about America that is easy to miss amid the daily headlines of one crisis or another. The United States has sacrificed enormous amounts of blood and treasure to help other people around the world achieve their own freedom. Looking around at the open and engaged young Tunisians, I rattled off a string of examples, including how America helped the people of Eastern Europe emerge from behind the Iron Curtain and nurtured democracies across Asia. “I will be the first to say we, like any country in the world, have made mistakes. I will be the first to say that. We’ve made a lot of mistakes. But I think if you look at the entire historical record, the entire historical record shows we’ve been on the side of freedom, we’ve been on the side of human rights, we’ve been on the side of free markets and economic empowerment.” The young lawyer nodded and sat down.