Alissa Rubin
A conversation with Alissa Rubin
Charlie Rose (PBS)
http://www.charlierose.com/guests/alissa-rubin
Alissa Johannesen-Rubin is an American journalist who began covering the Middle East for The New York Times in 2007. Previously, she had been a correspondent for The Los Angeles Times.
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The Charlie Rose Show
January 9, 2008 Wednesday
SHOW: THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW 11:00 PM EST
A Discussion With Alissa Rubin, the `New York Times` Deputy Bureau Chief in Baghdad; A Conversation With Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
BYLINE: Charlie Rose
GUESTS: Alissa Rubin, Madeleine Albright, Saad Mohseni
SECTION: NEWS; International
LENGTH: 8916 words
HIGHLIGHT: A discussion with Alissa Rubin, the "New York Times" deputy bureau chief in Baghdad. A conversation with former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright.
CHARLIE ROSE,
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HOST: Welcome to the broadcast. Tonight, Alissa Rubin. She is a "New York Times" deputy bureau chief in Baghdad.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALISSA RUBIN, NEW YORK TIMES: So there`s this feeling that people are still waiting and still sort of, whether it`s Muqtada al-Sadr or the former Ba`athists, there`s a sense of people biding their time until it seems right to grab for more land, more property, more power.
And the essential power-sharing has not been come to terms with. And until someone wins and the loser is also reconciled to his position as a loser but gotten some guarantees, it`s very hard to go forward.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Also tonight, former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: I think the thing that has happened is we are only looking at ourselves from our own perspective. And we think that everybody either fears us or respects us.
And the truth is that our reputation at the moment has been greatly damaged. Code word for that is Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and just generally the way we have behaved. And that we are only interested in ourselves and that we don`t understand that other countries have national interests also, and that we have made no effort to understand the history, culture, religions of other countries.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE
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: We conclude with a conversation about Afghanistan with Saad Mohseni. He is an Afghanistan media entrepreneur working in Kabul.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SAAD MOHSENI, AFGHAN ENTREPRENEUR: There is no cohesive vision for Afghanistan. If you speak to the Europeans, they will say one thing. If you speak to the Americans, they may say another thing. The question should be asked, what is your vision for Afghanistan? And not like we want a democratic state in the heart of Asia. What is your true vision for Afghanistan? How do you see Afghanistan evolving as a nation, economically, culturally, politically?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Rubin, Albright, Mohseni, next.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Alissa Rubin is here. She is the "New York Times" deputy bureau chief in Baghdad. She was formerly with the "Los Angeles Times," serving as that paper`s bureau chief in Paris and Vienna.
As the nation is transfixed by the 2008 presidential campaign, Iraq has somewhat faded from the news, but the U.S. project in Iraq goes on. I`m pleased to have her here to talk about how she sees it and the factors that are at play in Baghdad and in Iraq in general.
Welcome. So great to have you here.
ALISSA RUBIN: Thanks.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Tell me, everybody -- and you know, you`ve been watching the presidential campaign too. It doesn`t have the same place in the debate it did at the beginning of this political campaign.
ALISSA RUBIN: It absolutely doesn`t. And I`ve been struck the last few days looking at the coverage that it sort of almost feels like it`s yesterday`s war.
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: Yes.
ALISSA RUBIN: And if there`s a present day area of tension, it`s Pakistan and Afghanistan.
But I think in the long term, all of these candidates, Republican and Democrat, are going to have to deal with it. It`s not going to go away. Right now, there are about 160,000-plus troops there. And while they`re going to be reduced somewhat by the end of the year, there are still going to be well over 100,000. And it`s a huge amount of money. So everybody has plans for tax cuts or a health care coverage or whatever, but they`re going to need to get that money from somewhere. And right now, a great deal is being spent -- about -- I think it`s about $9 billion a month is being spent. I think that`s the number from the Congressional Research Service on the war. And that`s a lot. So they`ll have to think about that.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Why has the surge succeeded in the judgment of almost everybody? And what do we mean by success?
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, I think it succeeded because a lot fewer people are dying. And that`s Iraqi civilians. It`s American soldiers. Certainly fewer than were dying some months ago. It`s the number of casualties. Even the number of attempted attacks, which often leaves a lot of injured. But there are a lot fewer of those now.
And also, most importantly to me, is that many of the attacks are less lethal than they used to be. We used to have those headlines where it would say "80 dead, 120 wounded, 40 dead." Now, it`s nine. It`s 11. Occasionally we had a big bomb the other week or the other day that was about 30. But it`s lower numbers. And that means there`s a lot less impact and reverberation through the population. So that`s a big difference, I think.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Is it sustainable?
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, that`s the $64 million question. Is it sustainable -- under what circumstances? If the Americans reduced their numbers at a dramatic rate, I think most people think it`s not yet sustainable, because, as you can see, there`s been sort of an uptick in violence the last couple of weeks. We`ve seen somewhat more bombings, more attacks, particularly attacks on these Sunni awakening leaders.
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: And why is that?
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, I think there are a couple of different things. One thing is that neither side is quite satisfied with where they are. The Shiites really still worry that the Sunnis are going to come back and take over, and the Sunnis still think that they could, many of them -- not all of them -- think they could govern better. And so no one is reconciled or comfortable yet with his position in the new and sort of what people call the new Iraq, in the post-Saddam Iraq.
And while there`s that uncertainty, no one wants to give ground. No one wants to compromise. And so you have a continuing sort of unease and an unwillingness to make deals.
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: How do you explain what Muqtada al-Sadr is doing in terms of simply calling his militias down? And how do you explain what the Iranians seem to be doing, which is, according to some sources, sending less and playing less of a role as a troublemaker?
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, I think there`s probably nothing more interesting than the role of Sadr in the whole Iraqi political picture. He`s an outsider. He is not -- you know, he isn`t a politician himself. But he has been a king-maker several times over, and still has the capacity to raise the street the way no one else does.
And so this decision, it`s very hard to know who or how many people encouraged him to do it. But a number of people must have told him it was in his interest not to be a target.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Who are those people? Sistani would be one?
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, Sistani would be one. The Iranians would be another.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Saying cool it?
ALISSA RUBIN: Yes. Because you have time. They have all the time in the world. If they want to complete the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad, which is what many of the Sadr-connected groups were doing, they can do that later.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: This is the Shiite militia especially coming out of Sadr City.
ALISSA RUBIN: Right, coming out of Sadr City and out of some of the other big, big Shiite neighborhoods. They can do that. And they can do it when there are fewer Americans around, and then they won`t become targets.
If they were to keep acting now when there`s a surge going on, there are a lot of American troops on the ground, a lot of focus on it, they would be at risk of losing men, losing credibility. And they don`t want that.
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: Are there things going on with Petraeus because he understands counterinsurgency more than most that we don`t even know about? Has he been able to work some kind of magic because he knows how to get certain messages to certain people and he`s able to explain the dynamics in a way that no one else has been able to do?
ALISSA RUBIN: If so, I would say that most of us don`t know about that part of it. But what he has done, it seems very successfully, is get his soldiers out on the ground and make them into a real presence, day to day, in a way that just was not true before. And that can`t be underestimated.
I think, you know, even as a reporter there for some time, I didn`t believe that the surge would have as much effect in Baghdad. But you know, when you really see American soldiers and vehicles and humvees and every other thing that they have out there and patrolling on foot, it has an enormous impact. Now, it also causes resentment, because...
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: Because it`s proof of occupation.
ALISSA RUBIN: It`s a proof of occupation and it`s a constant reminder and it`s a thorn in people`s side, and I think that resentment has risen lately. But it can`t be overlooked that that presence also is somewhat prophylactic and stops people from doing things they might otherwise do.
So that`s why this year actually, and the election is really going to be very interesting -- the American election -- and how candidates respond to it, because they`re going to start pulling out people. So you`re going to begin...
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: When does that start? April? May?
ALISSA RUBIN: It already started, it already started, actually, but only about 5,000 came out by the end of the year. I think you`ll start to see more of it around April, May.
Now, the thing is...
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: So it will go from 155, 160 to what?
ALISSA RUBIN: It will go to...
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: 130?
ALISSA RUBIN: 130, right. But you won`t see it in Baghdad, because in Baghdad, they`re going to pretty much keep it pretty high numbers because it`s such a center. Because whoever controls Baghdad controls the country. So it`s the prize, without a doubt. And so what we`ll be looking for is what`s happening in Diyala and Salah ad Din...
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: The other provinces?
ALISSA RUBIN: And the provinces outside of Baghdad. And I think that`s where we`ll get a sense of what would happen if you kept on drawing down, because you won`t get that just from watching Baghdad.
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: And we will see, when they draw down Americans from those areas, you`ll see if the violence ratchets up again.
ALISSA RUBIN: You`ll see how much violence ratchets up, whether the Iraqi security forces can control it.
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: How deep and how pervasive is this thing they call the awakening, which former Ba`athists or former insurgents or former and always Sunnis have decided that al Qaeda is not their friend but their enemy?
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, first of all, there are some Shiites. And the numbers are (inaudible). They have really tried to bring Shiites in, in part to control those elements who call themselves Sadrists, who are still laying IEDs and everything else.
How pervasive is it? It`s -- I think it`s quite pervasive. It`s -- particularly in the Baghdad area, where there`s been a big concentration in the area south of Baghdad and the area just north of Baghdad. It`s very entrenched.
They`ve tried to spawn it and -- and of course in Anbar, where it began. It`s completely integral to the security system.
What`s difficult to know is whether now that these extremists, Sunni extremists, are going after the awakening leaders, will that undermine support for it in the Sunni community? No one wants to be an incidental target of a bombing if they can avoid it.
And so far the awakening, many of the awakening members have rallied and stayed with it. But it`s not clear, and an enormous amount is dependent on whether they are integrated into the Iraqi security forces.
As you said, these are former Ba`athists. Many of them are former members of the army, former members of the Special Republican Guards. They want to be back in the government. They want that mantle of respectability. And if they don`t get that from the government, from the Maliki, the government of Prime Minister Maliki, then it`s not clear they`ll hang in there. And also right now they`re being paid...
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: By the Americans.
ALISSA RUBIN: By the Americans. And supervised by the Americans. The question is, how long can that go on for? As the Americans draw down units, they`re going to have fewer people there to run and to work with these awakening members.
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: There are reports that the Maliki government is sending some money into these provinces like Anbar. Some, even though...
ALISSA RUBIN: They are.
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: ... they`re not sharing the oil wealth, but they`re at least budgeting money for them.
ALISSA RUBIN: What they haven`t done, except in Anbar, is hire awakening members so they become members of the police and members of the army.
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: Because they fear that they may be infiltrators.
ALISSA RUBIN: Because they fear that they`re infiltrated by either extremists, you know, al Qaeda in Iraq type groups, or just -- they`re just Ba`athists who want to stage a coup at some point. And they don`t want them in their security forces.
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: Is it your impression that the United States is totally supportive of Maliki? Because they have ...
ALISSA RUBIN: I don`t know if they`re totally supportive or not supportive. They recognize that changing it would be a very difficult task, and there is no clear successor.
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: Mahdi was there for a while, wasn`t he?
ALISSA RUBIN: Yes, he was. But I think if you count -- if you sit down and count the votes, it`s really hard to come up with anyone who would win. And so, the United States is left with -- a little bit with the person that they know, the devil you know. And they know his weaknesses and his -- some of his strengths.
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: What are they?
ALISSA RUBIN: They`re living with it.
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: What are they?
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, I think that he has -- he has not -- he has reluctantly come along with many of the things the U.S. has pushed for. He hasn`t said no to the awakening and integrating the into the security forces. He hasn`t said yes. Left it at least a gray area. There`s room for maneuver, room for making a case.
People who have met him, and I`ve talked quite a bit to people recently, Sunni leaders who have met with him, say that they feel he`s not the problem. That he`s quite personally supportive, but that some of the people around him are more sectarian and a little more difficult.
But there`s no question that he really has not managed to deliver services to Iraqis. And that is a huge area that`s very hard to convey properly in a newspaper article, and I don`t think we`ve done a good job -- any of us -- of conveying how awful it is never to have electricity, you know, that you can rely on, to have water that isn`t drinkable much of the time, to, you know, streets that are a mess. It`s -- there`s an endless litany of problems that people face. And that makes them quite angry at the government.
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: This is an easy question and a difficult answer. But among all the people you know, Iraqis, would you say more than 50 percent wish we had never come there because of the interruption and death that took place, or is it a very different view, which is, notwithstanding, to overthrow Saddam is worth whatever we have to go through to get to the other side?
ALISSA RUBIN: It`s very hard to put a percentage on it. Because I think people...
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: Fair enough, but are they both two strong sentiments?
ALISSA RUBIN: Yes, they are two strong sentiments. And you would find people on the one hand, particularly if you talk to Shiites, many Shiites lived in fear under the regime of Saddam Hussein. They felt they had very few possibilities unless they were willing to join the Ba`ath Party. They couldn`t leave the country easily to go to conferences if they were professors, to travel to see relatives, anything like that. So -- and worship was difficult as well for them. It was making the pilgrimage to Najaf and Karbala.
But at the same time, do they long for the orderliness, for having some things you can rely on, for being able to send their children to school without worrying that they`ll be killed on the road...
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Or to go to a restaurant and have dinner.
ALISSA RUBIN: Being able to go to a restaurant and have dinner, of course. And so I think there`s an enormous amount of conflict within people. And if you were to ask them in a poll, they`d have trouble saying it was one or the other.
Now, for Sunnis -- not uniformly -- but for many Sunnis, it was obviously better under Saddam Hussein. But for some of them, too, they were intellectuals. They were people who were part of the opposition. And they really are doing better now. Still, they too would long for A, security and, B, some efficiency in day-to-day life.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Is this some kind of defining struggle?
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, yes, I think it is, because in two ways -- this is a huge, a huge struggle. One of them is between sort of how the West is going to be portrayed in a large swath of the Middle East for years and years to come, but -- and particularly the United States -- and so far we are not looking very good by any means.
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: Explore that deeper in terms of the people. You`re reflecting what you -- how, if this is a failure in the end, America will have lost enormous prestige and will appear to be someone that you can`t...
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, that you can`t rely on, that is unable to make judgments, that doesn`t stick with its promises. I mean, regardless of what promises were actually made by politicians, President Bush, anyone else, people had expectations, enormous expectations for what the U.S. was going to deliver.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Because of who we were and what we stood for and the power we had...
ALISSA RUBIN: Because of who we were and what we stood for. And the things, you know, we seem to have ended or been very instrumental in the war in Bosnia. We have been -- have all this money. People seem to live well here. Democracy has been held up as a kind of ideal. Almost America is a utopian vision.
But now, if we haven`t delivered really even electricity...
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: Basic services.
ALISSA RUBIN: Now, of course, it`s more complicated than that. There were lots of good and practical reasons some of those things weren`t possible and weren`t possible on the schedule that people wanted them. But nonetheless, there`s enormous disappointment. And I think that disappointment and distrust will reverberate for a very long time.
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: Unless?
ALISSA RUBIN: Unless in some way we`re able to figure out a way to regain credibility, which would probably mean spending more money and more time there.
Now, on what terms? Whether it would have to be military, whether it could be a more civilian capacity, you know, that`s the great debate.
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: This is the debate I don`t quite understand, which is the notion of how long we`d be there and what that means and how the Iraqis feel about that. And just the whole idea that it`s part of the political debate in part. Democrats sometimes talk about it. John McCain will say we will be there forever if it`s necessary, because we were forever in South Korea and we were forever in Europe and forever in different kinds of places.
Do the Iraqis want us there, even not occupying but having...
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, again, it depends which Iraqis you ask.
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Shiites say no, Sunnis say yes, or...
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, right, I think -- to some extent. But I think also the question is what kind of presence.
Right now, the American presence is an intrusive one and on purpose. They`re trying to stop people from killing, you know, Iraqis from killing other Iraqis and outsiders from killing Iraqis.
But in the process, they`ve been very intrusive. There is not only disruption of daily life; there are mistakes. Sometimes people are killed who are actually friends of the Americans, or even working with them to some extent.
So it`s been a very fraught relationship. So there`s a question of how intrusive an American relationship would be.
But the catch-22 is if it`s not obtrusive, if they`re not intervening, then they`re going to be seen as sitting by while...
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Terrible things are happening.
ALISSA RUBIN: ... terrible things happen. And bombs are going off. And ethnic and sectarian cleansing are going on. So it`s very difficult.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Has the question of a civil war, Sunni-Shia being the most easy...
ALISSA RUBIN: Right, sure.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: ... with the Kurds doing something, has that issue simply been postponed?
ALISSA RUBIN: I think you could certainly argue that, because you haven`t had a winner yet. And I mean...
CHARLIE ROSE
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: And no reconciliation.
ALISSA RUBIN: And no reconciliation. So there`s this feeling that people are still waiting, and still sort of -- whether it`s Muqtada al-Sadr or the former Ba`athists, there`s a sense of people biding their time until it seems right to grab for more land, more property, more power. And the essential power sharing has not been come to terms with. And until someone wins and the loser is also reconciled to his position as a loser but gotten some guarantees, it`s very hard to go forward.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Refugees. Are they coming back?
ALISSA RUBIN: In small numbers. Not in the large numbers that at first it looked like they might. I think we`ll see over the coming months what happens. I think one of the questions from many refugees, people I`ve talked to in Syria and Jordan in particular, is really, how safe is it? Really how, you know, are they really going to be able to find housing? Are they going to be able to find jobs?
At the moment, you would want roughly the same percentage of Sunnis and Shias who fled to return. But I think there`s still great uncertainty for Sunnis about whether they`ll be able to find a way to make their livelihood. And for Shias, there are still questions -- there are still quite a few bombs, and they`re very nervous about it. So that`s not at all done.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: How much of -- beyond the awakening -- is al Qaeda simply a separate force?
ALISSA RUBIN: You know, it`s -- I think that`s really hard to say. I think in general, al Qaeda is very -- or al Qaeda in Iraq, which is this home-grown group...
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Or Mesopotamia or whatever.
ALISSA RUBIN: Mesopotamia -- is inter-laced with the more extreme of the insurgents groups that don`t necessarily have links to al Qaeda. There are constant marriages and divorces of convenience.
I read the jihadi Web site translations quite a lot, and they`re constantly putting up notices now, "We are no longer working -- you know, this Islamic army is no longer working with the jihadis whatever." And it`s back and forth.
So I think trying to separate that almost is pointless. If people are setting bombs that kill people, you probably don`t want them in your neighborhood.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: How long will you be there?
ALISSA RUBIN: Well, I`ll certainly be here -- there through the spring and summer. And I don`t know exactly what the "New York Times" has in mind.
(CROSSTALK)
ALISSA RUBIN: I`ll find out what the powers that be have in mind. I think it will be a very interesting year, because we`re going to see the beginnings of what it will look like with fewer Americans there.
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: That`s really the next big thing.
ALISSA RUBIN: That`s really the next big thing, and I think we`ll start to see that late spring, early summer. And we`ll see how the candidates here start to talk about it, because it is not simple and it gets more complicated every year.
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: And it`s consequential about the future of the United States in terms of how it exercises its power and its credibility to achieve other things in the region.
ALISSA RUBIN: In the region, and really in the Muslim world, which is considerably beyond the region.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: We certainly have learned some of our failures in terms of understanding the nature of the culture and the way the rest of the world works. It certainly has been one of the lessons, has it not?
ALISSA RUBIN: I think that`s the case. And I think also, we`ve come to understand how large the tensions are within the Muslim world, that if we`re going to enter, we have to be sensitive to. The Sunni-Shiite tensions are really enormous. And Iraq was filled with fault lines that I think we didn`t understand very fully when we arrived.
And I think we saw it a little bit too much as Saddam Hussein was a terrible dictator, and...
CHARLIE ROSE
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: If we got rid of him, everything would be good.
ALISSA RUBIN: If we got rid of him, people would rally and democracy was next. But really, there was a big battle for power that`s a very old one in that part of the world. You know, if you look at old maps of that area, at one time it was part of the Persian Empire; at another time part of the Turkish Empire. Very different power structures have dominated it, and it has not really been resolved.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: I hope you`ll come back here any time you`re in New York.
ALISSA RUBIN: Thank you very much.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Thank you very much. It`s a pleasure to meet you...
ALISSA RUBIN: Thank you.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: ... and to have you on the program.
ALISSA RUBIN: A pleasure to be here.
CHARLIE ROSE
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: Alissa Rubin, deputy Baghdad bureau chief in Baghdad.
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