'Hillary effect' cited for increase in female ambassadors to U.S.

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By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 11, 2010; A01

In the gated Oman Embassy off Massachusetts Avenue, Washington's first female ambassador from an Arab country, Hunaina Sultan Al-Mughairy, sat at her desk looking over a speech aimed at erasing misconceptions about her Muslim nation.

A few blocks away inside a stately Dupont Circle mansion, India's first female ambassador in more than 50 years, Meera Shankar, huddled with top aides after her prime minister's state visit with President Obama.

Nearby, in a century-old residence with its own ballroom, Latin America's only female ambassador in Washington, Colombia's Carolina Barco, dashed back from talking up free trade on Capitol Hill to showcase her country's culture and food.

There are 25 female ambassadors posted in Washington -- the highest number ever, according to the State Department.

"This is breaking precedent," said Selma "Lucky" Roosevelt, a former U.S. chief of protocol.

Women remain a distinct minority -- there are 182 accredited ambassadors in Washington -- but their rise from a cadre of five in the late 1990s to five times that is opening up what had been an elite's men club for more than a century.

A key reason is the increase in the number of top U.S. diplomats who are women, what some call the "Hillary effect."

"Hillary Clinton is so visible" as secretary of state, said Amelia Matos Sumbana, who just arrived as ambassador from Mozambique. "She makes it easier for presidents to pick a woman for Washington."

Three of the last four secretaries of state -- the office that receives foreign ambassadors -- have been women.

Madeleine Albright became the first female U.S. secretary of state in 1997. Condoleezza Rice served from 2005 to 2009.

Clinton, now in her second year, is especially well-known abroad because of her stint as first lady and her presidential run; she is seen by many as a globetrotting champion of women's rights.

"The pictures of U.S. diplomacy have been strongly dominated by photos of women recently," Shankar said. "That helps to broaden the acceptance of women in the field of diplomacy."

Claudia Fritsche, the ambassador from Liechtenstein, a principality that only gave women the right to vote in 1984, said the Albright-Rice-Clinton sequence has "a worldwide effect. . . . It's inspiring, motivating and certainly encouraging."

Albright said that when she spoke to foreign ministers around the world they told her governments had started thinking, "We need a Madeleine."

Some American diplomats said the appointment of a woman can be a visible way for a country to signal that is modernizing and in step with the United States.

A woman's touch

For many countries, a Potomac posting is prized, landed only by seasoned diplomats and influential political players. More women now have those credentials, a reflection of women's advancement in many parts of the world.

Eleven of the 25 female envoys in Washington are from Africa. Four are from Caribbean nations. The others are from Bahrain, the Netherlands, Croatia, Kyrgyzstan, Singapore, Oman, Colombia, India, Liechtenstein and Nauru, an eight-square-mile Pacific island with only 14,000 people.

Heng Chee Chan, the Singaporean ambassador and the longest-serving female envoy in Washington, said it has been a "quantum leap" for women in diplomacy since she arrived here in 1996.

In the beginning, she said people just assumed she was a man. When a table was booked under "Ambassador Chan" and she arrived asking for it, she was told, 'Oh, he is not here yet.' "

Many said they are still often bypassed in receiving lines and the male standing beside them is greeted as "Mr. Ambassador."

"Even when I say I am ambassador, people assume I am the spouse," said Shankar, who has represented India in Washington for nearly a year.

More than half of new recruits for the U.S. Foreign Service and 30 percent of the chiefs of mission are now women, according to the State Department. That is a seismic shift from the days, as late as the 1970s, when women in the Foreign Service had to quit when they married, a rule that did not apply to men.

"It was outrageous," said Susan Johnson, president of the American Foreign Service Association. "The idea was that a married woman could not be available for worldwide service. She would be having children and making a home."

That thinking is still alive in many parts of the world. But as the U.S. Foreign Service moves away from being "pale, male and Yale," the diplomatic ranks elsewhere are diversifying, too.

Johnson said the rise in female diplomats coincides with what she sees as a shift in investment away from diplomacy and toward defense. "Is the relative feminization of diplomacy indicative of its decline as a center of power and influence?" she wonders.

But she and others welcome the change and say it will have an impact.

Cathy Tinsley, executive director of Georgetown University's Women's Leadership Initiative, said gender diversity at the top of any organization leads to better decisions. When all the decision-makers have a similar background and mind-set, they can "amplify the error."

Barco, a mother of three who has served as Colombia's foreign minister, said capability and preparation -- not gender -- are what count. She held 630 meetings on Capitol Hill last year to lobby for a free trade agreement with the United States.

But several female ambassadors said they often bring a different perspective to discussions than their male counterparts and tend to focus more on certain issues such as poverty and lack of schooling for girls.

Shankar credited female leaders with turning the world's spotlight on the marginalization of Afghan women, and several U.S. diplomats said that since women have run the State Department, U.S. embassies have emphasized collecting information on rights abuses against women worldwide.

Several female ambassadors from developing countries said they are attentive to issues affecting families, such as health care and the lack of safe drinking water.

Albright said she guards against saying that women focus on "soft issues." "They are often the hardest issues: poverty, discrimination, education and health," she said.

Female envoys often pool their power to land meetings with busy U.S. senators or media personalities. A group recently met with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"There is a female kinship," Liechtenstein's Fritsche said, in her chic Georgetown embassy with its crushed-glass floor and rooftop views of the Potomac.

No matter that Washington has often been described as a "boys' club," said Barco, being a woman does have its advantages. For one thing, you get noticed.

And Chan said because of male-female seating patterns, she often gets prime spots, including next to George W. Bush and Henry Kissinger.

Leaving the hubby behind

While male ambassadors are usually accompanied by wives, female ambassadors are often here alone. Of eight interviewed, four are divorced and four said their husbands did not accompany them to Washington because of their own jobs.

Angele Niyuhire, 47, who arrived this fall as the new ambassador from Burundi, said her husband felt he could not leave his construction business. "It's considered normal if a woman goes with her husband but it's not seen as the same if a husband goes," she said.

So she moved to Bethesda with her two teenage daughters to run her small embassy out of a second-floor office on Wisconsin Avenue.

In Burundi, "a woman's traditional role is [to] take care of the house," Niyuhire said, but "if we women want to assume responsibility, we can't say, 'No, I am not going to take that job because my husband can't come.' "

Sumbana, a founding member of the Mozambique Red Cross and former member of the national parliament who arrived as ambassador a couple of months ago, said sometimes the men making appointments are overly concerned about what the husbands will do. "There is a tendency for men to think for women. They think, 'How can we post this woman? What would we do with her husband? How will the husband feel with his wife in a higher position?' "

Her husband stayed at his job in Mozambique.

Ambassadors' wives have historically played a huge role in entertaining -- a key part of an envoy's job -- so that duty falls to the female ambassadors. "We need a wife, too!" several remarked.

"It's a disadvantage that I am here by myself," said Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, the ambassador from Bahrain since 2008. Her husband and 17-year-old son live in Bahrain and her older son studies in London. "But that means I can work late and not feel guilty."

As Bahrain's first female ambassador to Washington and the first Jewish ambassador from an Arab country, Nonoo has become a well-known face back home. The former managing director of a computer company said being a woman helps erase misconceptions about women in her Persian Gulf country.

Nonoo and Al-Mughairy, Oman's ambassador, have both been questioned at forums about whether women in their countries are allowed to drive, a restriction in some parts of the Arab world but not in their nations.

"Oman has three cabinet members who are women," said Al-Mughairy, an economist. She recently wore a pink thob, a traditional dress, as she greeted hundreds of U.S. business and government officials who came to the Willard Hotel to celebrate her country's national day.

Being a female ambassador, Al-Mughairy said, "opens doors for me. People are curious to see me."

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Little word from U.S. on Nyi Nyi Aung, jailed in Burma

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By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 24, 2009; A07

After his arrest in September, the American was held for 17 days in a dank Burmese jail and denied food, medical treatment, sleep and the chance to speak with a U.S. government official. Even after he finally met with a representative from the U.S. Embassy, the American was transferred to solitary confinement in a cell for military dogs.

But the harsh treatment on what advocates say are trumped up charges has barely merited a peep from the Obama administration.

Nyi Nyi Aung, a Montgomery Village resident and Burmese democracy advocate who has traveled there often, appears to be politically inconvenient for both the United States and the Burmese military dictatorship at a moment when the two countries have taken tentative steps toward engagement after years of stormy antagonism.

"It is shocking to me that an American citizen has been treated this way and higher U.S. officials are silent on that," said Wa Wa Kyaw, Nyi Nyi's fiancee and also a U.S. citizen and Maryland resident. "It will let the generals think, 'We can do whatever we want, even torture and inhumane treatment of a U.S. citizen,' because America wants to do the engagement policy."

In one apparent concession to American sensitivities, the Burmese government in October abruptly dropped charges of instigating unrest in concert with pro-democracy groups. Instead, it accused Nyi Nyi of purely criminal acts -- allegedly possessing a forged Burmese identification document and failing to declare U.S. currency totaling more than $2,000. His lawyers say he is innocent of both offenses; they note that he appears to have been seized by authorities before he even made it through customs, where he would have had to declare the currency.

Officials at the Burmese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Burma, also known as Myanmar, is regarded as one of the world's most oppressive nations, ruled by generals who have enriched themselves while much of the country remains desperately poor. The National League for Democracy, the party of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landslide electoral victory in 1990, but the military leadership refused to accept it. Since then, she has been under house arrest for most of the time, as have hundreds of her supporters.

The 40-year-old Nyi Nyi was one of the leading organizers of demonstrations against the junta in 1988 and fled the country after a violent crackdown, eventually settling in the United States as a political refugee in 1993. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002 and earned a college degree in computer science, but he also remained deeply involved in Burmese democracy efforts.

Wa Wa said that her fiancee managed to often travel to Burma to visit his family and work with the Burmese underground because his U.S. passport is in his legal name, Kyaw Zaw Lwin. In his professional and personal lives in the United States, he has used Nyi Nyi Aung -- an amalgam of a childhood nickname and his father's first name -- and for years the Burmese government never made the connection.

But last summer Nyi Nyi's profile was raised when he helped deliver a petition to senior United Nations officials with 680,000 signatures calling for the release of all political prisoners in Burma.

Wa Wa, who has lived with Nyi Nyi since 2005, also has secretly traveled back to Burma even though she is a political refugee. "We have taken the risk because we want to organize and train the new generation for democracy and freedom," she said.

Nyi Nyi's mother and sister are serving prison sentences of five years and 65 years, respectively, for their involvement in 2007 anti-government demonstrations known as the "Saffron Revolution." Wa Wa said that he tried to enter the country again in part to see his ailing mother. But he appears to have been seized as soon as he landed at the airport in September.

Nyi Nyi's treatment in prison has attracted worldwide attention, with both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issuing statements on his case. Fifty-three members of the House of Representatives, including House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.), sent a letter last week to Senior Gen. Than Shwe calling for Nyi Nyi's immediate release and return to the United States.

On Nov. 6, Sen. Barbara Milkulski (D-Md.) sent Wa Wa a letter saying she had asked Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to condemn the detention in the "strongest terms possible." But Clinton -- who over the summer called for the release of another American, John Yettaw -- has been silent. Yettaw, who was tried for entering Aung San Suu Kyi's compound, eventually was freed through the intervention of Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), when he traveled to Burma and met with senior leaders in August.

Sources also said that Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell did not raise the case when he met with senior Burmese officials in a rare high-level visit to Burma last month, though it has been raised at lower levels. Jared Gensler, a Washington lawyer who is assisting Wa Wa, said Westerners put on trial in Burma are usually treated well and then deported, but Nyi Nyi appears to be the first American of Burmese descent on trial, which might account for the rough treatment.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the department is handling the case as it would for any American citizen. "Embassy representatives have monitored his court appearances and been able to talk with him in that setting," he said. "We continue to press the Burmese government for ongoing consular access as required by the Vienna Convention so that we can ensure that he is treated appropriately."

Human rights essential to U.S. policy, Clinton says

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Speech follows criticism that administration has lagged on issue

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that human rights and democracy promotion are central to U.S. foreign policy, in a major speech after months of criticism that the Obama administration was being too timid about denouncing abuses of basic freedoms abroad.

Clinton emphasized that the U.S. government could demand other countries observe human rights only if it got its own house in order, a reference to President Obama's moves to end torture and close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center.

She also put new focus on expanding the human rights discussion to include freedom from hunger and disease, an approach often emphasized by Third World countries.

But perhaps the most notable aspect of Clinton's speech was that she gave it at all, said activists and other experts on human rights. Her talk, and one last week by Obama at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, appeared to respond to concerns that the administration has not been forceful enough about abuses in places such as China.

"I think she went a long way in addressing what had become a kind of an issue that started to dog the Obama administration -- where do human rights and democracy fit with them?" said Sarah Mendelson, director of the human rights and security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In her speech at Georgetown University, Clinton outlined several elements of the administration's approach. First, she said, every country would be held accountable for hewing to universal human rights standards -- "including ourselves."

Second, Clinton said, the administration would be pragmatic. She cited, for example, the decision to begin "measured engagement" with Burma after determining that isolating the regime was not helping.

Third, the administration plans to work with grass-roots groups as well as governments. Finally, Clinton said, human rights should be viewed as a broad category that includes issues such as women's rights and development.

Clinton was assailed early in the administration for appearing to play down human rights problems in China and the Middle East. On a recent trip to Russia, however, she denounced attacks on human rights promoters in a local radio interview and at a reception with pro-democracy activists and journalists.

David J. Kramer, an assistant secretary of state for human rights and democracy during the Bush administration, praised Clinton's speech for reflecting a bipartisan tradition of support for democracy and freedom.

He noted that Obama administration officials were initially reluctant to adopt some of the Bush administration's emphasis on promoting "freedom" and "ending tyranny." Critics had said Bush undermined that effort by inconsistently applying the ideas, especially in the Middle East.

"They wanted to distance themselves from it. But I think they made a mistake," Kramer said.

Carroll Bogert, associate director at Human Rights Watch, said Clinton's speech differed from Bush administration policy in its emphasis on accountability for the United States as well as for foreign countries.

Although human rights activists are pleased with Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, they are upset that some detainees there may be held indefinitely without trial in the United States. The administration may deem detainees too dangerous to release, but also may lack enough evidence to produce in court to convict them.

"Guantanamo is not a place; it's an idea," Bogert said. "They're still going to detain people without charge."

Clinton emphasized that her speech was not a "checklist" on how countries are doing on human rights. But she did single out some cases. She denounced the prosecution of signatories to Charter 08, a pro-democracy document in China.

And she noted the harassment of an elderly Chinese doctor, Gao Yaojie, for speaking out about AIDS in China.

"She should instead be applauded by her government for helping to confront the crisis," Clinton said.

Staff writer John Pomfret contributed to this report.

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Hillary Clinton After Mideast Trip: Diplomacy Success? - TIME

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It was Halloween night in Jerusalem, and Benjamin Netanyahu came dressed as a peacemaker. "We're prepared to start peace talks immediately," the notoriously reluctant Israeli Prime Minister proclaimed, with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton standing at his side, poker-faced. "I think we should ... get on it and get with it."

It was a ploy, of course. The Palestinians were tangled up in themselves, yet again. They had elections looming, and their leader, Mahmoud Abbas, had to hang tough: he was demanding a total freeze to Israeli settlement-building on the West Bank — which was precisely what the Obama Administration had previously said it favored. Netanyahu was offering a partial freeze, not including new settlements in East Jerusalem, the desired capital of a future Palestinian state. This was a nonstarter for the Palestinians, but it had the holographic glow of a step forward. It was an "unprecedented" offer, Netanyahu trumpeted, with the joy of a chess master springing a trap.(See pictures from 60 years of Israel.)

It was a tough moment for Clinton, playing second fiddle at the Bibi-does-Gandhi show. President Barack Obama had softened his language on the settlements a few weeks earlier: instead of a total freeze, he had talked about Israeli "restraint" in settlement-building. And now Clinton seemed to cement the Administration's retreat, agreeing that Netanyahu's proposal was, indeed, "unprecedented," even though the U.S. still favored a total freeze. The most important thing, she added, was for the parties to get to the table as quickly as possible. The onus was back on the Palestinians — and the Palestinians quickly expressed outrage at the Obama Administration's retreat. Their Arab neighbors soon joined in, causing Clinton to backtrack two days later, telling reporters the Israeli plan "falls far short" of U.S. expectations, although she still insisted on calling it "unprecedented," which was neither diplomatic nor wise. (See pictures of Hillary Clinton behind the scenes.)

Suddenly the Obama Administration seemed wobbly on the Middle East; clearly, Clinton had been too bullish on Netanyahu's proposal (which had been negotiated over months with Middle East envoy George Mitchell and was seen, privately, by the Americans as real progress). But the Administration's mission was to get the parties into peace talks without preconditions. The Israelis were now in favor of talks. The Palestinians were setting preconditions. And Clinton had violated an essential rule of her job: boring is almost always better.(See pictures of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.)

Clinton's Three Qualities
For the past 40 years, the awkward Middle East press conference has helped define the job of Secretary of State. You go to Jerusalem or Ramallah; you stand there "guardedly optimistic" in public; in private, you try to move a comma, but the Israelis or Palestinians move a semicolon to block your comma. The result is almost always the same: gridlock. The breakthroughs, when they come, emanate from others. Walter Cronkite asks Anwar Sadat if he'd be willing to go to Jerusalem ... and Sadat, to everyone's surprise, says yes. The Israelis and Palestinians hold secret meetings in Oslo and reach what appears to be a breakthrough — they're talking! — which then becomes another dead end.

The job of Secretary of State is more thankless than glamorous; in some ways, the Department of State, a noble antique, is still trying to come to terms with the invention of the telephone. In an era when Twitter haiku-messaging rules, diplomacy moves at the speed, and requires the nuanced complexity, of literature. Power has drifted from State to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, especially in wartime. Only a few of Clinton's recent predecessors have distinguished themselves. Henry Kissinger, a National Security Adviser who belatedly became Secretary of State, was Richard Nixon's schizophrenic alter ego; George Shultz was a strong policy voice in the Reagan Administration; James Baker had clout because he was George H.W. Bush's best friend and a world-class dealmaker. Most of the others have been frustrated or forgettable. And yet this is Hillary Clinton we're talking about — the second most popular American in the world, an eternally compelling and supremely talented character, the subject of constant speculation, a walking headline. Her very presence in the job makes it crucial once more.

It is a cliché to say that by naming Clinton, Obama brought his most popular potential opponent into the tent. The conventional wisdom, too cynical by half, is that he thereby succeeded in neutering her, a theory bolstered by Clinton's reticence during her first nine months on the job, with special envoys like Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke doing the heavy lifting of diplomacy. But by naming Clinton, Obama also gave her great power, which cuts both ways: if she becomes dissatisfied with her role or the Administration's policies, she can become a torpedo aimed at the Oval Office. Colin Powell had similar power and a real gripe — the Iraq war — but never used it. Clinton has no such gripe, but as the Obama Administration settles in and policy differences begin to emerge among the key players, the Powell conundrum looms: How will Clinton choose to use her power? How will Obama react if and when she does?

Traditionally, the Secretary of State is judged on his or her ability to formulate policy, negotiate deals and manage the striped-pants bureaucracy. Clinton has no history as a global strategist, although her performance in the 2008 campaign indicates that she is a bit more conservative than the President, more the foreign policy realist than the Wilsonian idealist. It is also too early to judge her skill as a manager or negotiator — although her performance in Jerusalem indicates that she needs a few lessons in Middle East Haggling 101.

There are, however, three qualities that could make her a memorable Secretary of State. She brings a vision of departmental reform — the need to elevate foreign aid programs to the same status and rigorous scrutiny as diplomacy — that could change striped pants into chinos in the developing world. She is also the first elected politician to hold the office since Edmund Muskie briefly did during the Carter Administration, which has enabled her to better understand and interact with the politicians who run places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. But most important, she is an international celebrity with a much higher profile than any of her recent predecessors and the ability — second only to the President's — to change negative attitudes about the U.S. abroad.

She has the potential to become the most powerful public diplomat the U.S. has fielded in quite some time, although her performance so far, at home and abroad, has occasionally been perplexing. At home, she has often seemed tentative and deferential. In a conversation with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates aired by CNN in early October, Clinton's cautious formality took a backseat to Gates' brisk, humorous confidence on policy issues. Abroad, she seems far more confident, at times to the point of recklessness, as in Jerusalem. (See pictures of the last days of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.)

Independence and Candor

In the last week of October, Secretary Clinton moved squarely to the center of the world stage, attempting, at the behest of her special envoys, to improve the rocky alliance with Pakistan and nudge the Middle East pugilists into talks. In the course of the trip, there were the first stray wisps of a hint that Clinton wanted to begin asserting her independence, as the Administration, facing roadblocks across the world, struggled for a firmer foreign policy tone after an opening nine months that might be called the Rodney King — "Can't we all just get along?" — phase.

During her three days in Pakistan, she ran a gauntlet of town-hall meetings and media interviews that may have been unprecedented, to use the word of the week, for a U.S. Secretary of State. The trip, planned by Holbrooke and Pakistan specialist Vali Nasr, offered an unusually subtle itinerary for a U.S. diplomatic mission. A visit to a Sufi mosque that had been bombed by Sunni extremists, for example, sent a powerful message to Pakistan's moderate Islamic majority. "We saw her praying there," an academic named Shala Aziz told me, "and, for the first time, I'm thinking, The Americans have hearts."(See pictures of the suicide bombings in Islamabad.)

The big news was that Clinton allowed herself to be hammered with hostile questions from students, talk-show hosts and Pashtun elders — and that, on occasion, she pushed back, raising incredibly sensitive issues, like why no one in the Pakistani government knew where Osama bin Laden was, even though he had been in the country since 2002. Press accounts either emphasized the embarrassment of a Secretary of State's getting pummeled or fixed on Clinton's undiplomatic bluntness. But they missed the point: her candor, her willingness to listen to and acknowledge criticism, had begun to undermine the prevailing Pakistani image of the U.S. as arrogant and bossy, more interested in having the Pakistani military fight its war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban than in having a true strategic partnership. The contrast was especially sharp after George W. Bush's eight years of unqualified support for the military dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf. "In the past, when the Americans came, they would talk to the generals and go home," said Farahnaz Ispahani, a government spokeswoman and Member of Parliament. "Clinton's willingness to meet with everyone, hostile or not, has made a big impression — and because she's Hillary Clinton, with a real history of affinity for this country, it means so much more."

Transformative Experience
There are no toasts at state dinners in Pakistan, because there is no alcohol. There are opening statements, though, and Clinton's — delivered impromptu on the first night of her trip after tossing aside her notes — was surprisingly emotional. Earlier in the day, President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, had presented the Secretary with an album of photos from her first visit to Pakistan, in 1995, and a framed photo of Bhutto and her two sons with Clinton and daughter Chelsea. "It did bring tears to my eyes," Clinton said at the state dinner in her honor at the presidential palace, "because I so admired your wife. She gave her life ..." She faltered then, choking up, but quickly pulled herself together, talking about the "reasons why we do what we do — to provide opportunities for all."

Clinton's first trip to Pakistan as First Lady in 1995 had been a transformative experience for her — the beginning, I believe, of the process that made her a plausible candidate for Secretary of State. I traveled with her on that trip; when we set off, she seemed depressed and even more private than usual. The Democrats had cratered in the 1994 congressional elections, and she had been trounced in her efforts to enact a universal health care plan. It was a very personal defeat; as Clinton traveled the country trying to sell the plan, crowds shouted her down and cursed her. Privately she admitted she was shocked by the hatred. The trip to South Asia seemed a bit of a vacation — it was Chelsea's spring break — but also a retreat to a more demure, First Lady–like role after two years as health care policy czar, although it proceeded in a decidedly wonky, Hillarian fashion. Jackie Kennedy had gone to India and famously ridden an elephant; Hillary Clinton traveled to five countries and packed her schedule with visits to NGOs.

"That was the greatest trip, just unbelievable," Clinton says now. We were sitting in her hotel suite the day after her Jerusalem gaffe, the Secretary in an electric-blue shift rather than her usual formal jacket and pants. She was wearing glasses and appeared rather freckly without her makeup. "I guess that trip has animated and informed everything I've done since," she said. She emerged from the trip reinvigorated, with a new mission. By the end of 1995, at the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing, the First Lady had propounded a new Clinton Doctrine: "Women's rights are human rights."(See pictures of Beijing's changing skyline.)

Clinton is not an easy interview. She is preternaturally cautious, a consequence of her Methodist propriety and 20 years of insane public scrutiny. She does not like to talk about herself, but she did tell me one interesting story about Bhutto. When her husband was governor of Arkansas, she and Bill and Chelsea visited London and stood on the sidewalk outside Bhutto's hotel, waiting for the then Pakistani Prime Minister to arrive. "She was wearing a yellow embroidered shalwar kameez with a chiffon scarf. I was just a fan, standing on the sidewalk with everyone else. It was the only time I ever did anything like that," Clinton says.

When Clinton and Bhutto met formally, on the first day of the 1995 trip, they hit it off immediately, in part because Bhutto was also obsessed with the impact the Islamist tide was having on women and children. I remember asking Bhutto that day what the biggest change in her country had been over the past 25 years, and she said, "I used to be able to walk down the street wearing jeans, without a headscarf. Now I can't." When I asked her why, she said — bluntly — "The Saudis," who had been aggressively funding religious schools. Of course, Bhutto's acquiescence to, and participation in, the general corruption of the Pakistani government was part of the reason public schools were so inadequate and madrasahs became popular. (See pictures from the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto's assassination.)

Ironically, the rise of Sunni extremist groups like al-Qaeda has brought Clinton's interests — microfinance, education and health care — to the center of national-security policy for the first time. The impetus came not from the State Department but from the military, where counterinsurgency doctrine demanded that social services in war zones — schools, justice, economic development — reinforce the military's efforts to secure the population. As a result, there was immediate chemistry between Clinton and General David Petraeus, author of the Army's counterinsurgency manual, who became one of her prime military mentors when she served on the Senate Armed Services Committee. At one point, well before Obama made his presidential intentions known, I asked Petraeus if there was any potential Democratic candidate who understood how his mind worked, and he said, "You mean, aside from Hillary?"

It was Clinton who brought together Petraeus and Holbrooke ("my two alpha males," she calls them) for the first time — at her home in Washington on the Friday before the Obama Inauguration. The affection and respect she gained for the military while serving in the Senate has helped make the relationship between State and the Pentagon less fraught than usual — although Defense Secretary Gates' insistence on the need for bigger State Department budgets hasn't hurt. In fact, relations with the Pentagon have gone smoother, at times, than Clinton's relationship with the White House staff. Clinton was particularly irritated by the ridiculously strict vetting process that thwarted her favored candidate for USAID director, Paul Farmer, from getting the job. "It was all sorts of niggling things," says a Clinton adviser, "like, Farmer had at one point brought more than $10,000 in cash into Haiti. The money was for a needle-exchange program, but the amount was illegal."

Another of Clinton's military mentors, retired General Jack Keane, once told me, "I'm a Republican. I disagree with her about practically everything, but she'd make a hell of a Commander in Chief." There is a palpable toughness to the woman, a hard edge that contrasts with the President's instinctive impulse toward conciliation. One of the sharpest exchanges of the presidential campaign came when Obama accused Clinton of echoing the "bluster" of George W. Bush after she said the U.S. would be able to "obliterate" Iran if it used nuclear weapons against Israel. Clinton's edgier tone has been evident from the start of the Administration: she took a sharper position than the President on an Israeli settlement freeze by claiming, in May, that Obama wanted "to see a stop to settlements. Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions." And then, in Jerusalem, her use of the word unprecedented seemed a rhetorical leap beyond the No Drama ground rules.(Read "Clinton's Collateral Damage.")

The White House was not entirely thrilled with either statement. But then the White House staff is several steps removed from a negotiating process. The Palestinians are weak and divided. The Israelis have been difficult, as always: whenever Mitchell raises East Jerusalem in talks with the Israeli Foreign Minister, the Israeli stands up and walks out of the room. Despite Netanyahu's momentary, tactical enthusiasm for peace talks, his Likud Party has always favored the de facto incorporation of Palestinian lands into the state of Israel.

Hillary's Choice
The tensions between the White House and State raise a fascinating question going forward. Obama and Clinton are in substantive agreement on the President's diplomacy-first philosophy and on most policy issues — although neither is willing to disclose the content of their private conversations — but style often predicts substance in foreign policy; neither Obama's gauziness nor Clinton's inconsistent bluntness overseas seems particularly solid. There is a growing perception that the Administration's policies have been thwarted across the board: Afghanistan is a mess, Iran seems ready to scuttle the nuclear negotiations, there's no progress in the Middle East, the Syrians and North Koreans remain recalcitrant, the Russians have been offered a freebie on missile defense, and the Chinese have been given a pass on human rights with no apparent quid pro quos.

The White House argues that some progress has been made: Iran is on the defensive, and North Korea has said it will return to the six-party talks. Clinton argues, correctly, about the need for "strategic patience." But the only thing Obama really has to show for his efforts so far is a Nobel Prize for Potential and — no small thing — the wisdom to have refrained from doing anything so wildly stupid as invading Iraq. The President has been willing to use military force — the Predator drones that have decimated al-Qaeda's leadership testify to his lack of squeamishness — but this Administration is supposed to be about the efficacy of using subtler expressions of U.S. power. That doesn't happen overnight, but for Obama's policies to be considered a success, it has to happen sooner or later, in a way that can be explained to the public.

There is also a growing sense that the President's inexperience is beginning to show — not in his overall policy, which represents the views of a broad, moderate national-security consensus ranging from Brent Scowcroft to John Kerry, but in his execution of the details. The Afghan strategy review has been too public and taken too long; the Middle East peace hunt has become a wild goose chase. A letter to Iran's Supreme Leader is a productive gesture only if it gets a response; if it doesn't, it seems weak and supplicatory. A call for the Israelis to freeze settlements is effective only if it is accompanied by the credible threat of a reduction in aid. "You can't be seen pushing countries around — demanding [that] Israel freeze settlements, demanding that Hamid Karzai reform his government — and not get results," says Leslie H. Gelb, author of Power Rules. "The leaders of these countries are tough, successful politicians, and they'll begin to take you less seriously." (See pictures of the 1979 revolution in Iran.)

Clinton is unwilling to acknowledge these problems, and her staff is loath to admit her occasional mistakes. Her praise for the President is fulsome, and aides say the relationship with Obama really — really — is strong. But there are also burblings and emanations from Clinton's staff and friends, Foggy Bottom body language, that suggest there is a need for the Administration to produce a second act after the Rodney King phase. And the White House is perplexed by the uncharacteristic lack of discipline indicated by Clinton's occasional overseas gaffes.

These tensions are well within the boundaries of normal, creative policymaking. There is absolutely no indication that the Secretary is frustrated to the point of jumping ship — or returning to politics as a candidate for governor of New York, as has been rumored. Quite the contrary, she seems intent on making history as Secretary of State. To do that, though, she will have to have the same authority at home as she has abroad. She will have to become the President's primary foreign policy voice. Over the first nine months of the Obama Administration, seven different Obama officials have spoken on the Sunday talk shows about foreign policy. Clinton has been on each of the Sunday shows once. "Either you have one person sending the foreign policy message, with the clear approval of the President," says a former Republican Secretary of State, "or there is no message."(See pictures from eight months of Obama diplomacy.)

Aides to Obama say they would like to see her on the Sunday shows more often. (Indeed, Clinton's staff acknowledged that she was asked to appear two additional times but was traveling and unable to do so.) Ultimately, though, television is a metaphor for the larger questions that need to be resolved: How much can these former rivals — both extremely guarded and private people — really trust each other; and, if not Clinton, who will emerge as the President's alter ego on foreign policy? At this point, the strongest member of Obama's national-security team is Gates — but he's a Republican and an unlikely spokesman or presidential confidant on anything beyond Pentagon issues. General Jim Jones has settled in as National Security Adviser, but he's not a political animal — and every President needs a close foreign policy adviser who understands the intersection of long-term strategy, politics and diplomatic chess.

Clinton's value to the Administration was clear in Pakistan. She wowed a public so skeptical that it had been questioning the $7.5 billion in purely economic and humanitarian aid the Administration had promised. "How much damage control have you been able to do on this trip?" asked Meher Bokhari, a television-news-show host, at the end of Clinton's meeting with Pakistani women. The Secretary seemed nonplussed by the bluntness of the question. "I don't know," she said. "I hope some."

Afterward, I asked Bokhari to answer her own question. "Well, this trip was long overdue," she said. "The Pakistani people really needed to talk to an American about our concerns — the strings attached to aid programs, the drone attacks, their history of support for the military dictatorship. And it needs to be followed up. But if you ask me about the damage control" — she paused, thinking it through — "I'd have to say a lot. She accomplished a lot." (See pictures of Clinton meeting Michelle Obama.)

In the end, though, Clinton's success will be determined by whether she can expand her role beyond public diplomat. She will have to become a more sure-handed negotiator and, most important, a trusted adviser to a President who knows where he wants to go in the world but hasn't quite figured out how to get there.

Clinton rebukes Pakistan on hunt for al-Qaeda leaders - washingtonpost.com

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By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 30, 2009

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed doubt Thursday over Pakistan's failure to locate top al-Qaeda leaders in the eight years since they escaped over the border from Afghanistan, telling a group of Pakistani journalists that she found "it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to."

"So far as we know," she said, "they're in Pakistan."

Clinton's comments, the most direct public statement of a U.S. argument long made in private, came as she tried to balance assurances of strong economic and military support for Pakistan with reminders that the relationship is a "two-way street."

"If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together," she said, "then there are issues that not just the United States, but others have with your government and your military establishment."

Clinton, who made her comments during a day-long trip to the eastern city of Lahore, later met with the country's top military and intelligence officials.

After her three-day visit to Pakistan ends Friday, Clinton plans to travel to the Middle East over the weekend for hastily arranged meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, her second trip to the region as secretary of state.

Special U.S. envoy George J. Mitchell will meet Clinton in Jerusalem on Saturday, officials said, but there is little expectation of a major breakthrough in moving the Israelis and Palestinians toward direct talks by the end of the year. At the very least, the stop may provide some progress to report to Arab leaders at a conference the secretary plans to attend Monday in Morocco.

Speaking to the Pakistani journalists, Clinton was matter-of-fact, offering an example of some of the questions the United States would like more forcefully addressed even as it strives to respond to some of Pakistan's grievances. In a separate meeting with business executives in Lahore, Clinton contrasted the opulent conference room where they had gathered with Pakistan's low ranking on the Human Development Index -- 141 out of more than 180 countries -- and suggested that the widespread failure to pay taxes here may be related to the country's economic problems.

According to U.S. officials, who spoke before Clinton's late evening meeting with the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, and intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the Pakistani military's ongoing offensive in the tribal region of South Waziristan remains focused on air attacks. Meanwhile, 28,000 ground troops are working from the edges to shrink insurgent-dominated territory and encourage divisions among militant groups.

With Clinton's visit focused on "people-to-people" ties, the secretary was said to have resisted meeting with the military. But the military's importance in Pakistan's politics -- and the opportunity for a real-time progress report on the offensive as the administration reaches the final stages of its Afghanistan war strategy review -- was said to have persuaded her.

Officials traveling with Clinton expressed overall satisfaction with the trip, which has been an exercise in message calibration. A powerful explosion in the northwestern city of Peshawar, which killed at least 100 people, coincided with her arrival here Wednesday. In meetings with government officials and in public appearances, she praised the army's ongoing offensive, bemoaned what she called misunderstandings over congressional conditions imposed on U.S. military and economic aid to Pakistan, and pledged American respect for Pakistani culture and traditions.

She began her Lahore trip Thursday morning with a wreath-laying and a tour of the 17th-century Badshahi Mosque, a behemoth of red sandstone and marble.

Clinton held a working lunch with political opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, and his brother Shahbaz, the chief minister of Punjab province, and met with civil society leaders.

At a town hall meeting with university students, she parried critical questions about the aid conditions and U.S. drone missile attacks on insurgent sanctuaries in the western border areas, and said the U.S.-Pakistan relationship was strong -- and growing.

"That is one of the reasons I'm here today," Clinton said. "I do not want anyone, anywhere in the world -- particularly in my own country -- to have any misunderstanding about the people of Pakistan and the abilities, talents and positive contributions of the people of Pakistan."

Clinton Says No to Another Presidential Bid - washingtonpost.com

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By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A year and a half after the end of her historic presidential campaign, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday for the first time that she will not run for the job again, firmly setting aside a question that has followed her for most of the past decade.

She has dismissed the notion of a future presidential bid before, and even her most hopeful supporters have long conceded that a 2016 Clinton campaign would be unlikely.

But until this week, there always seemed to be a way to interpret her response as a "maybe." That was not the case in her interview with NBC's Ann Curry, who asked whether she had any regrets about not winning the presidency -- or any interest in seeking it again.

"Will you ever run for president again? Yes or no?" Curry asked.

"No," Clinton said.

"No?" Curry asked.

"No. No," Clinton replied. "I mean, this is a great job. It is a 24/7 job. And I'm looking forward to retirement at some point."

Clinton will turn 65 in October 2012, putting her at the older end of the range of typical White House seekers. Yet she remains the most viable female potential candidate in either party, after winning 18 million votes, raising more than $220 million and becoming the first woman in history to win a primary.

It is unlikely that any Democrat would challenge President Obama in 2012, when he is all but certain to run for reelection. If he were to win another term, it is unclear who would succeed him as the leader of the Democratic Party in 2016: Vice President Biden will turn 74 that year, making him older than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was during his presidential campaign in 2008 -- and leading to speculation that Clinton, or perhaps another woman, could emerge as a more viable candidate.

It remains to be seen whether Clinton's flat denial is enough to permanently put to rest questions about her future. Other political figures have ruled out a campaign only to reverse themselves, as Obama did after declaring in 2006 that he would not run for president in 2008.

In the interview, Curry asked Clinton if she ever wished she were president so she could make big decisions for herself. "I have to tell you, it never crosses my mind," Clinton said, adding that she is "part of the team that makes the decisions."

She also called "absurd" what Curry described as a concern by some "that you have been marginalized, that you -- that the highest-ranking woman in the United States [is] having to fight against being marginalized."

"I think there is such a -- you know, maybe there is some misunderstanding which needs to be clarified. I believe in delegating power. You know, I'm not one of these people who feels like I have to have my face in the, you know, front of the newspaper or on the TV every moment of the day," Clinton said. "I would be irresponsible and negligent were I to say, 'Oh, no, everything must come to me.' Now, maybe that is a woman's thing. Maybe I'm totally secure and feel absolutely no need to go running around in order for people to see what I'm doing. It's just the way I am. My goal is to be a very positive force to implement the kind of changes that the president and I believe are in the best interest of our country. But that doesn't mean that it all has to be me, me, me all the time. I like lifting people up."

U.S. Envoy Protests the Violence in Guinea - NYTimes.com

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By ADAM NOSSITER

CONAKRY, Guinea — The Obama administration has injected itself into the crisis in Guinea, taking the unusual step of sending a senior diplomat to protest the mass killings and rapes here last week.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for “appropriate actions” against a military government that she said “cannot remain in power.”

“It was criminality of the greatest degree, and those who committed such acts should not be given any reason to expect that they will escape justice,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters in Washington. She said that the nation’s leader, Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, and his government “must turn back to the people the right to choose their own leaders.”

The military seized power here last December, and pressure has been rising as Captain Camara, 45, backed off a pledge not to run in this country’s presidential elections in January. At a demonstration against him on Sept. 28, witnesses said soldiers opened fire on the crowds and raped and sexually assaulted female protesters. Human rights officials estimate that as many as 157 people were killed. The government has put the number at 56.

On Monday, William Fitzgerald, deputy assistant secretary of state, met with Captain Camara for two hours. He said he insisted, in strong language, that Captain Camara was responsible for the violence, despite the military strongman’s repeated denials. Mr. Fitzgerald said he also repeated that Captain Camara should not run in the elections, a key opposition demand.

“The message is, what happened on Sept. 28 is totally unacceptable, from every way you look at it — the killings, the gender violence,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in an interview at the United States Embassy here Tuesday. “I said, ‘Mr. President, whether you like it or not, it’s tied to you. You are responsible for Sept. 28. The buck stops with you.’ ”

The response from the captain was noncommittal, he said.

American pressure is limited in French-speaking West Africa, a region to which it has typically paid scant attention. But Mr. Fitzgerald’s meeting with Captain Camara is seen as significant by Africa experts as an example of President Obama’s push for good governance and human rights on the continent — the focus of a speech he gave in Ghana in July that is still widely commented on.

A month later, Mrs. Clinton traveled to eastern Congo to speak out against the systematic rape of girls and young women amid the sectarian strife there. She has made the fight against mass rape a major theme in a foreign policy that focuses on the plight of women in the developing world.

Mr. Fitzgerald’s visit comes after a week of international expressions of disgust over the violence at the Stade du 28 Septembre here. The stadium is named for the day in 1958 when Guineans voted against an offer of partnership from their colonial master, France, setting the stage for independence days later. Guinea was the first country in French-speaking Africa to declare independence.

The military government has claimed that many victims at the stadium were trampled. On Tuesday, The New York Times obtained photographs showing bodies in a pile and lined up, perhaps as many as 20, with no blood on them. But the bodies shown represent only a portion of the perhaps 160 dead, and scores of witnesses insist that most people were shot.

Days after the protest, the major hospital was still treating people suffering from gunshot wounds, and scores of people say they are still missing loved ones.

Sidya Touré, a former prime minister, who was at the stadium and was beaten by soldiers, said he saw the anonymously circulated pictures and speculated that the government allowed the bodies to be photographed to back their claims.

He said about 20 were indeed trampled in the frenzy of running from the bullets. But he, like many others, is adamant about the shooting.

“Absolutely,” he said in an interview Tuesday night. He said he was seated in the stands, with other opposition leaders.

“I saw people falling in front of me. I said, ‘Why are these people falling?’ ” Then, he said, he looked to his left. “I absolutely saw soldiers firing directly on people.”

France, a traditional partner of Guinea, has suspended military aid, and on Sunday its foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said, “It seems to me that today, one can no longer work with Dadis Camara, and there should be an international intervention.”

Captain Camara reacted angrily to these statements, telling reporters Monday that “Guinea is not a subprefecture, is not a neighborhood in France.”

The Economic Community of West African States, an alliance of West African nations, on Monday sent the president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, as a mediator between Captain Camara and the opposition. Diplomats and opposition figures here are skeptical, however, about Mr. Compaoré’s chances, as the opposition has insisted on a condition Captain Camara has not been willing to concede: that he not run for president.

American diplomats have previously refused to meet with Captain Camara. The special circumstances of last week’s massacre, however, dictated a meeting, diplomats suggested, and added urgency to their previous insistence that he not run.

“He’s a president in a bubble,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “I don’t think his advisers are telling him the truth about his popularity and his standing in the world.”

Captain Camara, known for a somewhat disjointed speaking style that is often hard to penetrate, nonetheless “was lucid,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

“There was no evidence of drinking or drug-taking,” he said.

“In America’s view, Moussa Dadis Camara can’t be president, and we are going to hold him to that,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

He acknowledged that “America’s leverage is not as strong here as it is in many parts of Africa,” but he said that sanctions, a visa ban and an asset freeze were all possibilities.

“I did say that he was becoming a pariah among world leaders, and that he had to think long and hard about possibly running for president, because the international community would not accept him as a leader,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington and Steven Erlanger from Paris.

Hillary Clinton Signals That She Intends to Make Women's Rights a Signature Issue

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 18, 2009

She talked chickens with female farmers in Kenya. She listened to the excruciating stories of rape victims in war-torn eastern Congo. And in South Africa, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited a housing project built by poor women, where she danced with a choir singing "Heel-a-ree! Heel-a-ree!"

Clinton's just-concluded 11-day trip to Africa has sent the clearest signal yet that she intends to make women's rights one of her signature issues and a higher priority than ever before in American diplomacy.

She plans to press governments on abuses of women's rights and make women more central in U.S. aid programs.

But her efforts go beyond the marble halls of government and show how she is redefining the role of secretary of state. Her trips are packed with town hall meetings and visits to micro-credit projects and women's dinners. Ever the politician, she is using her star power to boost women who could be her allies.

"It's just a constant effort to elevate people who, in their societies, may not even be known by their own leaders," Clinton said in an interview. "My coming gives them a platform, which then gives us the chance to try and change the priorities of the governments."

Clinton's agenda faces numerous obstacles. The U.S. aid system is a dysfunctional jumble of programs. Some critics may question why she is focusing on women's rights instead of terrorism or nuclear proliferation. And improving the lot of women in such places as Congo is complicated by deeply rooted social problems.

"It's great she's mentioning the issue," said Brett Schaefer, an Africa scholar at the Heritage Foundation. "As to whether her bringing it up will substantially improve the situation or treatment of women in Africa, frankly I doubt it."

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said that Clinton has to tread carefully in socially conservative regions, particularly those where the U.S. military is at war. "You might be right, in the narrow sense of women in that country or region need to be empowered, but you're saying something inimical to other U.S. interests," he said.

Despite Clinton's efforts to spotlight women's issues, it was her own angry response to what she perceived as a sexist question at a town hall meeting in Congo that dominated American television coverage of her Africa trip. A student had asked for former president Bill Clinton's opinion on a local political issue -- "through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton." Snapped Hillary Clinton: "My husband is not the secretary of state. I am."

Clinton is not the first female secretary of state, but neither of her predecessors had her impact abroad as a pop feminist icon. On nearly every foreign trip, she has met with women -- South Korean students, Israeli entrepreneurs, Iraqi war widows, Chinese civic activists. Clinton mentioned "women" or "woman" at least 450 times in public comments in her first five months in the position, twice as often as her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice.

Clinton's interest in global women's issues is deeply personal, a mission she adopted as first lady after the stinging defeat of her health-care reform effort in 1994. For months, she kept a low profile. Then, in September 1995, she addressed the U.N. women's conference in Beijing, strongly denouncing abuses of women's rights. Delegates jumped to their feet in applause.

"It was a transformational moment for her," said Melanne Verveer, who has worked closely with Clinton since her White House days.

Clinton began traveling the world, highlighting women's issues. She gradually built a network of female activists, politicians and entrepreneurs, especially through a group she helped found, Vital Voices, that has trained more than 7,000 emerging leaders worldwide. She developed a following among middle-class women in male-dominated countries who devoured her autobiography and eagerly watched her presidential run.

"She might not be having the same restrictions as we have, but she has had restrictions -- and she's moving on. That's a symbol to us," said Tara Fela-Durotoye, a businesswoman in Abuja, Nigeria.

Clinton's legacy is evident in such places as the Victoria Mxenge housing development outside Cape Town, South Africa, a dusty sprawl of small, pastel-colored homes she championed as first lady. When her bus rolled into the female-run project during her trip, a joyful commotion broke out. Women in purple and yellow gowns lined the streets, waving wildly.

A youth choir swayed outside a community center decorated with photos of Clinton on her previous visits to the project, which has grown to 50,000 houses. Clinton vowed in a major policy address last month to make women the focus of U.S. assistance programs. The idea is applauded by development experts, who have found that investing in girls' education, maternal health and women's micro-finance provides a powerful boost to Third World families.

Ritu Sharma, president of the anti-poverty group Women Thrive Worldwide, said she already sees the results of Clinton's efforts in the bureaucracy. When Sharma's staff recently attended a meeting about a new agricultural aid program, she said, one State Department official joked, "We have to integrate women -- or we're going to be fired."

Still, Sharma questioned whether the program would succeed in reaching poor women, especially given the weaknesses in U.S. foreign assistance.

"There's a lot of healthy skepticism about 'Will it really happen?' " she said.

In a sign of the priority she gives to the issue, Clinton has appointed her close friend Verveer as the State Department's first global ambassador for women's affairs.

"She will permeate the State Department, as I want her to, with what we should be doing about empowering and focusing on women across the board," Clinton said.

One issue Verveer has been concerned about is violence against women, particularly the stunningly high number of rapes in eastern Congo. Last week, Clinton, Verveer and the delegation boarded U.N. planes to visit the remote, impoverished region and meet with rape victims. Clinton pressed the Congolese president to prosecute offenders and offered $17 million in new assistance for victims.

"Raising issues like the ones I've been raising on this trip to get governments to focus on them, to see they're not sidelined or subsidiary issues, but that the U.S. government at the highest levels cares about them, is important," she said. "It changes the dynamic within governments."

Clinton's efforts are being reinforced by a White House women's council and a Congress with a growing number of powerful female members. One sign of that: Aid dedicated to programs for Afghan women and girls increased about threefold this year, to $250 million, because of lawmakers such as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who was recently named head of the first Senate subcommittee on global women's issues, and Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations.

It is striking how much time Clinton dedicates to women's events on her trips, even ones that receive little public attention. In South Africa, a clearly delighted Clinton spent 90 minutes at the housing project, twice as long as she met with South Africa's president. "It feeds my heart," she explained. "Which is really critical to me personally since a lot of what I do as secretary of state is very formalistic. It's meetings with other officials."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Clinton Has Praise and Criticism for Nigeria

by Jeffrey Gettleman

ABUJA, Nigeria — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sent a message of tough love to Nigeria on Wednesday, praising the country’s strong military and showing public appreciation for its huge oil industry, but also harshly criticizing the government for being corrupt.

Mrs. Clinton thanked Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and typically its biggest oil producer, for its help in resolving wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone and for providing peacekeepers to Sudan.

“The people in Liberia owe their freedom to you,” she said. “People across Africa owe so much to you.”

But when it came to the topic of corruption — and Nigeria is notoriously corrupt, from top ministers in the government to the plump police officers on the street — Mrs. Clinton took a decidedly different tone.

She told a crowd of civic leaders that the reason so many millions of Nigerians were desperately poor, despite the nation’s having so much oil, was “a failure of government at the federal, state and local level.”

She also spoke of flawed elections and a lack of public trust that has seriously eroded the credibility of the Nigerian government.

“Nigeria is at a crossroads,” she said.

America’s ties to Nigeria are a crucial piece of the reinvigorated relationship that the Obama administration is trying to strike with Africa. It has 150 million people and is the world’s fifth largest supplier of crude oil to the United States. It could supply even more, but heavily armed insurgents in the oil producing areas have hampered drilling operations by blowing up pipelines and kidnapping oil workers, seemingly at will.

There is some hope that this problem, which has been raging for years, may finally be easing. The Nigerian government recently offered an amnesty program to rebel fighters, and despite ample skepticism from experts and the rebels themselves, Nigerian officials said that many combatants had indicated that they were willing to surrender.

“There was a need to be bold and imaginative,” said Nigeria’s foreign minister, Ojo Maduekwe, who met with Mrs. Clinton for more than an hour on Wednesday. “Old methods were not going to be good enough.”

The United States and Nigeria already cooperate closely on military affairs, with many of Nigeria’s top officers having passed through American military academies. Mrs. Clinton said that the Nigerian defense minister asked her on Wednesday for specific American military help to quash the remaining rebels in the oil producing areas, and that the American government would look closely at the request.

Nigeria is the fifth stop on Mrs. Clinton’s 11-day, seven-nation African tour. Next she will go to Liberia and Cape Verde, then head home on Friday.

Earlier on Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton struck a more conciliatory tone with Nigeria’s leaders. At a news conference with Mr. Maduekwe, she said, “We strongly support and encourage the government of Nigeria’s efforts to increase transparency, reduce corruption” and prepare for a clean national election in 2011, after a deeply flawed one in 2007.

Mrs. Clinton avoided answering a question about the Nigerian government’s recent crackdown on an extremist Islamic group. According to some reports, more than 700 people were killed a few weeks ago, many of them civilians, and the rebel leader was widely believed to have been executed in police custody.

Mrs. Clinton said she did not have enough information to comment on the operation. The group at the heart of the government’s assault — Boko Haram, a Hausa expression meaning “Western education is prohibited” — has no known links to any broader organizations. Still, Mrs. Clinton said that “we have no doubt that Al Qaeda has a presence in North Africa” and that terrorists would “seek a foothold wherever they can.”

U.S. Ambassador Seeks More Money for Afghanistan Reconstruction

By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The United States will not meet its goals in Afghanistan without a major increase in planned spending on development and civilian reconstruction next year, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul has told the State Department.

In a cable sent to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry said an additional $2.5 billion in nonmilitary spending will be needed for 2010, about 60 percent more than the amount President Obama has requested from Congress. The increase is needed "if we are to show progress in the next 14 months," Eikenberry wrote in the cable, according to sources who have seen it.

Obama has asked for $68 billion in Defense Department spending in Afghanistan next year, an amount that for the first time would exceed U.S. military expenditures in Iraq. Spending on civilian governance and development programs has doubled under the Obama administration, to $200 million a month -- equal to the monthly rate in Iraq during the zenith of spending on nonmilitary projects there.

The State Department has reacted cautiously to Eikenberry's assessment, sent to Clinton in late June, even as senior officials say the administration is prepared to spend what is needed to succeed. The 2010 budget includes about $4.1 billion in State Department funding for nonmilitary purposes.

With massive amounts of money already flowing into Afghanistan, there are concerns about the country's ability to absorb it and the administration's ability to implement its programs, according to Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew.

"Right now, there is about $6 billion in the pipeline," including 2009 appropriations and a supplemental war-spending bill passed in June, Lew said in an interview. "We have a lot of money to spend right now. . . . We're not running out anytime soon."

Congress, currently on its August recess, would probably have similar concerns about whether the money could be effectively used.

"We've spent a lot of money there, not to great effect," a senior Senate staffer said. "We need to have a much clearer idea of what our goals are and what we can realistically achieve. It's premature to talk about dramatically increasing the budget."

Eikenberry, the staffer noted, is a retired three-star Army general and a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan who is used to working with far larger sums of Pentagon money.

Since 2001, the United States has spent $38 billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan, more than half of it on training and equipping Afghan security forces.

Obama's strategy will bring the U.S. military force in Afghanistan to 68,000 troops by the end of this year and will almost certainly include further troop increases next year. But the president has described U.S. military involvement as only one leg of a "three-legged stool" that includes development and competent governance.

Although spending on civilian programs pales beside the military budget, Obama has pledged substantial increases in U.S. civilian personnel and development funds, focusing on agricultural development and rule of law. The size of the U.S. Embassy is scheduled to grow this year to 976 U.S. government civilians in Kabul and outside the capital, from 562 at the end of 2008.

Eikenberry's $2.5 billion request includes an additional $572 million for the expanded agriculture program. U.S. Marines, who this summer launched an offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, are working with civilian officials to try to persuade farmers there not to plant opium poppy this year. The program includes the supply of seeds and fertilizers for alternative crops, loans to farmers, and payment for work on roads and irrigation ditches.

Among the other elements of the request are an additional $521 million for stabilization efforts in conflict zones; $450 million in economic assistance funneled through the United Nations in Afghanistan; $190 million for roads, schools and civil aviation; $194 million for local government development; and $106 million in economic grants.

Lew said the State Department is working closely with the embassy to parse the request. "Frankly, at the level at which a request is made," he said, "we often go through this back-and-forth, adjusting to realities, the timing . . . in terms of absorptive capacity and all the issues around getting money out and used. Congress has to approve it.

"If the question is, did [the embassy] do a lot of good, thoughtful work, the answer is yes," Lew said. "Do we at this point have a definitive view of what their needs are? We're still working on it."