When the conflict broke out, my first responsibility is to American diplomats. But we were also concerned about our partners and the Sudanese people, because none of them expected this to happen. It was in the middle of Ramadan. So what we did is I called both leaders, and we had regular conversations over the first few weeks to negotiate what we called sort of good enough ceasefires. In those discussions, a certain point I said, "This war will end, "and you're going to need to talk to one another, and you know that. "So you need to establish a framework for discussion." Welcome to the Mediator Studio, a podcast about peacemakers bringing new stories from behind the scenes. I'm your host, Adam Cooper. I'm at the Oslo Forum, which started out as a small gathering in 2003, and is now entering its third decade, bringing together some of the world's leading figures and peacemaking. Participants from around the world are here to discuss the major conflicts of our day, from Gaza, to Yemen, Sudan, to Afghanistan, and the war in Ukraine. My guest today is the United States' Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, who has also served as her country's ambassador to South Sudan. She was one of the key American negotiators for the Doha Agreement that would see American forces leave Afghanistan. And prior to all that, she was the Director for Iraq at the National Security Council in Washington. Mollifee, welcome to the Mediator Studio. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. It's great to be in Oslo, and great to be in this beautiful environment with so many interesting colleagues. I'd like to begin with your early years and explore what shaped your career into diplomacy. As you're leaving Tufts University, where you study diplomacy, the world is changing rapidly. Soviet Union's collapsed, the Berlin Wall came down. It was a unipolar moment with America unchallenged as the world's only superpower. As your diplomatic career began, was that something which gave you a sense of optimism? Absolutely. I do think, in the '90s, there was a sense of optimism. Of course, there were terrible events during that period, the genocide in Rwanda, the unrest in the Balkans. But generally, there seemed to be a wave of democratization. There seemed to be a wave of economic liberalization, and there was a hope that opportunities were opening up for peoples all around the world. As you noted, the United States was in a strong position at that time, and it seemed a great opportunity to get involved in public service and contribute to the advancement of American interests, but defining American interests as the advancement of global interests and the peoples of the globe. Let's talk about a more challenging phase in U.S. foreign policy in Iraq, specifically. From 2003 to 2004, you're the senior civilian representative of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, in the Southern Iraqi province of Maysan. The U.S. invasion in 2003 triggered a prolonged insurgency, bloody sectarian civil conflict. That was very pronounced where you were in Maysan province, where the Sutteris Shia movement were fighting against coalition forces. How did you deal with that? Well, let's explain a little bit where Maysan province is for those who don't know Iraq well. So it's a small province in the southeast, north of Basra, but south of Anajaf, and along the Iranian border, and it's where the famous Iraqi marshes are. And it's a very underdeveloped province. It was starved of resources during the Saddam period, and the name of the major town in the province, literally the name of it is the building. To give a sense of the underdevelopment, that was a place where there were buildings. When I first got there, there was not an active insurgency, but that developed over time as you've outlined. And I learned a few important lessons in that experience. Because there was no insurgency when I first arrived, we were very much focused on helping provide resources to people who had been starved of resources for a long time, helping them gather together in community level groups to make decisions about how to use development assistance. And as well to help them form governing councils to make decisions about the future. This was all very new. There was nothing like this, of course, under the Saddam era. And at one point, when British troops switched position, so one battalion went out and a second battalion came in, all of a sudden the Madi army began firing on the new battalion. And it became clear that the new battalion just looked at a map and saw it traveling from point A to point B, this was the most direct route, but that most direct route put them in direct contact with the area where the Madi army was. So they perceived that this new battalion was going to attack them. So I was able to call the Madi army leaders and to call community and religious leaders and explain the situation and end of those attacks. So that taught me a lot about the importance of trust because I had been on the ground then for about six months and I was well known and I think that they understood that if I spoke that I was speaking credibly. So that's a really key component in any negotiation. Then countrywide, the Madi army began its uprising in Baghdad, especially as well as in Najaf. And we were also experiencing it in our small area in Mason province where many of the immigrants from that province to bigger cities had come from the area in which I was residing. And it became clear to me that I could be more successful in negotiating with them. If I could use as a reference point what Americans were doing in Najaf and Baghdad. So if they were able to negotiate something in an agreement I could then bring it to those who I was dealing with in Mason and say your leaders agreed to this there. Let's agree to adhere. And that wasn't immediately evident. And of course all the Iraqis were communicating and we and the Americans were not communicating as well as we should have. So that was another important lesson for me early on in my career about how to link what's happening at a state or provincial level to what's happening at a national level. And for that work you did with and for the British you were awarded the British Empire OBE. But with the Iraqi public opinion turning quickly against the coalition authority CPA from where you sat, could you feel the goodwill of the Iraqi people ebbing away? What was it like to work on behalf of an occupying power that was increasingly unwelcome? It was uneven the reaction and the popular reaction. So as you've noted I was in a Shia area and of course Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Muslim and had oppressed the Shia as I had described. So initially there was a popular view of the United States and the coalition in the British as well who were the troops that were stationed where I was because we were perceived to have liberated them from this Sunni oppression. But then there was a fight obviously for political control and so then tensions began to rise. I think actually a more dominant feeling was confusion and I learned an important concept when I was in Mason. I used to consult regularly with a leading imam who was a prominent community leader. And at that time my Arabic was quite strong but he could still tell what vocabulary I knew and what I didn't know. So he taught me a word which I had to ultimately go look up and when you read it in the dictionary the definition is something like absorptability which makes it sound like a paper towel. But in fact what he was talking about was there was such a dramatic change as I've described from people who were oppressed and deprived. All of a sudden being put in positions of authority and decision making and having agency and it was such a dramatic shift from their experience. I think it took them some time to accommodate to that new role and then of course you would have as in any society the reassertion of different factions vying for power. So I think the experience of Iraqis was uneven. I would say the dominant view they had however was that we were in an incompetent occupying power. And I often heard you could put a man on the moon why can't you do better. Was there any truth in that? I do think there was some truth in that. I don't think there was an expectation of how long the occupation would take and I don't think there was an expectation of the dynamics that would unfold and how we would be prepared to respond to them. Let's talk about South Sudan. In July 2015 you become the U.S. ambassador to South Sudan which gained its independence in 2011. Civil War broke out in 2013 between President Salva Key and his Vice President Riek Mashal. In August 2015 after several rounds of negotiations an agreement signed by the two men. When you had your first meetings with them what impression did you have of their personalities? I first met Dr. Mashar and Addis Ababa because he had fled the country after the Civil War that began at the end of 2013. And when I arrived the agreement had not been signed. So that was the task I was given by Washington to convince Salva Keyer to sign the agreement. It had been negotiated largely in Addis and he was still reluctant to move forward. So we told him that there would be severe consequences for our relationship and our partnership with him if he didn't move forward with the agreement. And you'll recall that the United States was instrumental in the establishment of South Sudan so at that point our leverage was quite high. He wanted to preserve that relationship. What I learned in that process however is that there weren't very good notes that were conveyed particularly to me about those negotiations and that the parties had agreed to text. But not to sort of subsidiary sub-agreements if you will about how to implement the arrangements they had made in the core text. And so in every discussion we had about moving forward on implementation each side would say well no I said this in Addis or the other side said no we agreed to that in Addis. And I was handicapped so that affected the way I approached subsequent negotiations I think it's really important to have clear records and clear understandings of what sometimes in a macro agreement if you will the super structure the language is more general to foster the ability to reach an agreement. But these interpretations about how you would move forward in implementation are really critical for them to survive. So you do manage to persuade Prussia, Salvakia to sign the agreement it led to a temporary pause in the fighting but it didn't hold. Right. So tell me about the diplomatic approach that you took in response to that. The landscape changed dramatically because at one point of course Dr. Mashar and his retinue had come back to South Sudan. Other important players in South Sudanese politics had been back. Everyone was prepared to work towards implementation. The implementation was falling apart as you said and maybe I should tell you a little story about how the fighting started first. So it was clear to me as someone being a witness to the discussions about implementation that the tensions were very high. And you get a sense after a time if you know a country and the people well that things are not going badly. We had a meeting one day at the embassy and I said I don't feel good about the city. It feels uneasy and explosive to me and I think we should have a curfew. And I was the ambassador so I could have insisted but I had a consultative process and others said no we can have people home early in the evening but we shouldn't have a curfew about going out. So in fact a group of individuals at the embassy went out to dinner that night and that's when the fighting kicked off. So I called them at the restaurant and said you need to come back to the embassy compound immediately but under no circumstances drive by the president's compound because it will put you at risk. So although my instructions were quite clear and they were echoed by others for reasons I don't know the drivers took them along that route and they were fired upon by the president's security guards. I generally don't think they had any idea they were Americans. They were just afraid of any sort of fast moving unknown vehicle although they had an embassy plate it was dark at night. So fortunately we had armored vehicles and no one was hurt. So we arranged for them and for friendly countries like Britain, like Norway, other Europeans, the World Bank, the IMF to be taken out by US military aircraft. We remained however because we wanted to try and help the South Sudanese put together again a plan for making peace among one another ending the fighting and hopefully beginning economic development. South Sudan is such a rich country, natural resources it has water from the Nile, it has arable land and a lot of talented people and it's really a tragedy that they can't take advantage of those. Your next major role is from 2018 to 2021 where you serve as the US Deputy Special Representative for Afghan Reconciliation, American Senior Negotiator, paint a picture for us of what was happening in Afghanistan when you stepped into the job. Well unfortunately at that time every year the government of Afghanistan was losing territory to the Taliban and there seemed to be no clear way forward to finding resolution to the conflict and to helping the government achieve territorial control despite the significant western investment and the NATO investment. My American colleagues in the military and in the intelligence community along with partners in the international community made enormous gains and helping rid the country of Al Qaeda and that was a true achievement but the Taliban continued to gain access and continued to gain influence, continued to gain territory. So we had several goals and the Taliban had several goals. Our goal was to make sure that Afghanistan never again could become a base for terrorist activity. That was chief among our goals because that was the reason that we had gone into Afghanistan in the first place. They of course wanted a withdrawal of what they considered to be the infidel foreign army. We also had as an important goal that we wanted the Taliban to talk to the Afghan government and other Afghan political leaders and what we came to call Afghan negotiations because the story of contemporary Afghanistan is that if any given government excludes a faction of the very diverse Afghan society there's instability in the country. So that was an important goal and then finally of course we wanted to support a ceasefire. You noted that the Taliban were in the ascendancy militarily by the time you arrived. What do you recall from your first meetings with them? So the most significant meeting I think we had was in January 2019 in Doha where we discussed these four elements that I just described but there was also a very emotional exchange between the individuals who are serving as interpreters for us who represented the government because obviously they worked with us in Afghanistan and the Taliban about the terrible destruction that the country had experienced since obviously prior to 9/11 of the Taliban government was terrible, the Communist government was terrible, there had been so much fighting. But there was a real sense of we want to repair our country, we want to move forward and it was extremely moving and those hopes I think were genuine and of course they haven't been borne out. And by the time you arrived in Kabul you mentioned you've been already meeting with Taliban representatives and some meetings have taken place also without the Afghan government present which had upset President Ashraf Ghani. How did he express that to you and the envoy you were working with as Al-Mihalulzad and what was your response? Well I think it's important to understand that for years we had said that we would not speak to the Taliban without the presence of the Afghan government and the Taliban refused, they absolutely refused, so we were left with a choice, we could either enter into negotiations with Taliban or not. So that was not our choice, that was a Taliban choice. What we endeavored to do with the agreement again is get a Taliban commitment to enter into negotiations with the government as well as with other Afghan leaders. So that was part of the agreement that we negotiated to address that very fact. Then in January 2019 open formal talks begin in Doha. What was the atmosphere in the process and what was your approach because the Taliban were in the ascendancy and the government was on the back foot? So again the approach was very much find a way to address our core concern about terrorism, to manage their concern about withdrawal, to insist on negotiations with the Afghan government and to reach a ceasefire that ended this devastating war. So those four themes were consistent throughout our discussion. I told you about the very moving discussion where we identified those four goals and agreed to them, which enabled us to believe we had a basis for having discussions. But I would say the formal talks when they started were a bit stilted at first. Several members of the Taliban team you may recall had been held at Gitmo and then had been released earlier and then had joined the Taliban's political office in Doha. So the father Amir had established that political office anticipating that at some point talks would be needed. So you might imagine that those who had been at Guantanamo were a bit apprehensive about dealing with Americans. So it took us some time I think to establish working relationships over the text discussions. And in terms of your ability to achieve those four goals, how did the decision to withdraw US forces, which understand President Trump took in quite a secretive manner impacted on your ability to achieve those goals? And also how did it affect your relationships with Afghan parties, particularly the government? I'm not sure that I would endorse your characterization of a secretive approach by President Trump. He made very clear that he wanted to end US involvement in Afghanistan and he was very public about that. I mean that said you and other colleagues who testified to House committees and some of that has come out in the public domain since then. The timing of those decisions and the lack of conditionality attached those which are all I think it's well understood did take many officials, including those who are working on the front lines of it in Afghanistan by surprise. Yeah, and myself as well. I mean we were not participants in those discussions. We negotiated a conditions based agreement which meant that after the first initial withdrawal, which the Taliban needed to take certain steps to implement that initial withdrawal, that we would tie subsequent withdrawals to Taliban compliance with some of the elements I've described. And yes, the Trump administration, President Trump chose to continue to withdraw troops without ensuring Taliban compliance. So what was it then like to have to negotiate on behalf of the US government with that strategic decision having been taken which severely reduced the leverage that you had to achieve your goals? I mean just at a personal level. It was very difficult and there were many Afghans who had formed very deep relationships with many American officials over the 20 years of our engagement. And many of them hoped those decisions could be reversed. And did you and others try to reverse it and make your concerns clear? I think our concerns were made clear and I think it's clear how decision making was taken by the previous administration. But I think what's important is what we tried to do given the environment in which we were operating is to engage the Taliban again on this very real historical fact, which is if a government is attempting to run Afghanistan that is exclusive and exclusionary. It will not be stable. It will not be durable so that they should learn from their own experience and it should be in their self interest to try and have these negotiations and create a government that way. It's fair to say that lesson hasn't been heeded yet. What are the broader lessons you take away from your two and a half year exposure to peacemaking in Afghanistan? I think timing of negotiations makes a bit of a difference during the Obama presidency when we had more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan with our partners and when the fight was more intense, that might have been a more appropriate time to seek a solution. So waiting until 2018 and effectively 2019 was if perhaps not the most optimal timing to achieving our results. When I speak to more junior American diplomat to ask me about the experience, I tell them how important it is to speak honestly about what they're seeing in any environment and report that back. Although there are many examples of people reporting out of Afghanistan, there are concerns about the situation, but I think it's important in your role as a diplomat to be. I'm trying to think of another word besides honest. Honest is the most important word to give your best assessment of the reality because people want to make things better. So you tend to look for openings and opportunities and maybe it's hard to see how many downsides there are and how many negative factors could be affecting the situation. When your job is to be optimistic and find a way forward, it's hard to sometimes recognize as well the negative factors that are affecting what you're trying to do. Moving ahead in September 2021, you become the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, the post you're now in, dealing with a range of issues across the continent, including many conflicts. Let's start by talking about Ethiopia, where the African Union was facilitating a process between the government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front, TPLF. The US judged at certain points that it needed to play a more active role. How would you characterize the US role in that process? Well, historically we've had a very strong partnership with Ethiopia. We had a very strong partnership with the TPLF dominated EPRDF, which was the predecessor government. And when I assumed this position, there was a horrific war being waged in Tigray. And just for awareness of our audience, the TPLF had been the dominant political security and economic force in Ethiopia prior to Prime Minister Abhi assuming the position of Prime Minister. And so there was a lot of latent resentment among different communities in Ethiopia about how they had conducted themselves during their decades in power. So first and foremost, in terms of the humanitarian consequences, we wanted to do what we could to stop the war. And secondly, obviously, Ethiopia is a critical country in a critical part of the world. And we would prefer to be able to have a positive partnership with them, but we wouldn't be able to, as long as this terrible war was underway. So first, we unilaterally and in collaboration with important partners like the European Union put enormous economic pressure on the government and actually suspended all donor assistance as well as international financial assistance. Because we had these previous partnerships that I've described, we approached both sides and recommended some small talks, which we started first in the Seychelles and then secondly in Djibouti. That effort resulted in an initial ceasefire, which then broke down again, and Eritrean retrups returned. So we got back together with both parties. And once it seemed like they were serious about trying to find a way forward, we asked the African Union to take the lead, and we worked with President Yuhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, and also former President Obasanjo, as well as the African Union structure, and South Africa hosted the talks. So by having all key regional, key continental partners involved, they were able to help reach a conclusion to the war. I also understand that you've tried to be quite creative in your approach to certain conflicts, including by drawing upon the intelligence community, taught me through that. We were looking last year at the tensions between Rwanda for their involvement in Eastern DRC, and their concerns about former Geno Sidiers in DRC that they perceived to threaten them. And the DRC was entering into important presidential elections at the end of December, and we were afraid that unrest in Eastern DRC would contribute to unrest in the national election. So President Biden asked the Director of National Intelligence of Real Hanes to travel to Kinshasa Akigali, and I accompanied her as well as a few other colleagues in those meetings, and we proposed that we would agree to a de-escalation plan and use U.S. intelligence resources to hold each side accountable. Because often what you find in these situations, a little bit like I said about South Sudan, it's a he said she said. So using the neutrality and impartiality of our position to call to account. So I think we were successful. The elections took place largely without violence. It's a difficult country to have successful elections, but they worked very hard on that. And now we're back at it again, and I want to make clear that our effort is transitional. We are trying to help the parties get through this spike in tensions so that the existing regional diplomatic processes, one known as the Luanda Process led by Angola, one known as the Nairobi Process led by Kenya. One is it more external, one is more internal, can be rejuvenated by a cessation of hostilities. I'd like to move on to Sudan, which in April 2023 erupted in civil war between two rival military factions, the Sudanese armed forces, the SAF and the rapid support forces, the RSF. When the war broke out, what phone calls did you start putting in and talk me through the talks that have taken place in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia? First, I think it's important for everybody to remember that Omar al-Bashir, who was the totalitarian leader for many years in Sudan, had established this paramilitary force, the rapid support forces, as a competitor to the Sudanese armed forces, and those two bodies, as well as the intelligence services, he kept them off balance to prevent a coup against his leadership and his role. So the seeds of that competition were sown about a decade ago when he established the RSF. In fact, he used the RSF to conduct sort of terrible paramilitary operations, which you saw, for example, in Darfur. So that was likely a situation that was going to have to be resolved either peacefully, which we were trying to foster, or violently. When the conflict broke out, again, my first responsibility is to American diplomats, but we were also concerned about our partners and the Sudanese people, because none of them expected this to happen. It was in the middle of Ramadan. You may know people were separated from their families because it was the fighting took place before Iftar. They didn't have food. So what we did is I called both leaders. I asked them to assign someone to be a point of contact, and we had regular conversations over the first few weeks to negotiate what we called sort of good enough ceasefires, where there were periods of time where the fighting subsided so that people could move to safety and that we could evacuate our diplomats. In those discussions, a certain point I said, this war will end, and you're going to need to talk to one another, and you know that. So you need to establish a framework for discussions. So we discussed where it would be possible for them to move, because the fighting was still very intense, and the Saudis agreed to send a plane into the fighting to pick the two parties up and bring them to JITA to have discussions on whether or not it would be possible to achieve a ceasefire and to improve access to humanitarian assistance. I think it's important for you to know how difficult it was. We needed to work with the ICRC, who is as always because of its position of neutrality is trusted by so many. The ICRC negotiated safe passage of the RSF through staff health territories in Khartoum to a nearby military base, where the Saudi ambassador flew in with that plane in the middle of the conflict and flew the parties out to JITA. So that's how it started. It was emergency diplomacy designed to try and convince the parties to A) reduce the fighting and B) to allow in humanitarian access. Our humanitarian partners were quite alarmed at the treatment that they were suffering at the hands of the belligerents, and they asked us to try and reinforce those messages. Since then, there have been a number of diplomatic initiatives to try and de-escalate the situation in Sudan, and there are concerns from some that focusing on the two belligerents, the RSF and the SAF could be to the exclusion of civilian stakeholders. I'm sure you're very aware of that concern, or taking steps to address it. But how have you used your personal relationships with the parties to ensure number one that actually is some de-escalation on the ground? And number two, that we're not repeating the mistakes of the past and entrenching elite deals that don't allow for some kind of transition in the future. I think those are really good questions. First of all, I'm fairly confident that the people of Sudan know that the American people are behind them. We have always been against autocratic extremist Islamist governance, and we've always supported the people against the depredations of their leaders, usually military leaders. Unfortunately, they right now maintain control because they have arms. So that's why we talk to them, not because they're our preferred partner, but because if we want to affect the situation, try and reach a ceasefire, and try and help the Sudanese get back on track on their own political transition. You'll recall in 2019 the heroic efforts of the Sudanese people to basically throw out Bashir and push forward on a democracy. So our effort since from that time and through now is to help them achieve that state of goal. So to that end, we are talking regularly with all Sudanese civilian leaders to the extent we can reach them because of course the geography of the war has made engagement really difficult, but we are in constant dialogue with them in support of them developing a framework so that they can, as soon as the fighting stops, move forward again on that democratic transition. Let's talk about the Sahel, where there's been a wave of coups over the past two years which have proved very challenging from a Western policy perspective, particularly in light of the heightened geopolitical competition with Russia and Africa. Some say the US has taken an ultra-realist approach towards these military governments. What are the equities at stake when you weigh up your strategy in the region? I want to go back a little bit to Iraq and Afghanistan and to the 20-year war against terrorism that the United States waged, and one great thing about the United States is we're a learning society and we're self-reflective and we're critical of what we've done. So we looked as a government and as a society at that war, and what we found is that, of course, we're very effective at removing bad guys from the battlefield. But what was more difficult, which is honestly more difficult because it's a complex human endeavor, is helping achieve inclusive governance because, again, as we've talked about, if any one ethnic, communal, political, or other faction is excluded from a governing structure, it's unstable and helping with economic development, and I think a more recent phenomenon is dealing with the impact of climate change. So in our view, it's not about moralizing. Of course, we do believe democracy is a better system of government offering more opportunities for more people, but it's how do you get to stability? So security assistance without an inclusive governance package is not going to be sustainable or durable, and so that's what's driving US policy. Who use the phrase "learning society"? I'd like to close this interview by asking for a few reflections on the lessons you've taken from Afghanistan, from your career, peacemaking in Africa as well. And about the need to engage at an appropriate time with non-state groups, particularly when there's a risk for them gaining power and relevance and legitimacy. Do you think that there are broader lessons for US policy towards non-state armed groups that we've actually learned sufficiently the lessons from Afghanistan and elsewhere? I mean, I'm a diplomat, and we do believe in the principle of talking to different individuals, different leaders, to try and find a nonviolent way forward. That's important, and I remain committed to that principle, and I work for a Secretary of State who's committed to that principle. But there are, of course, sharp limitations that sometimes Hamas, for example, or other prescribed groups which limit one's ability to do that in practice. In certain circumstances, or also there might be safety concerns, right? We may have lived at one point in a unipolar world, but I think what you can find is we have good partnerships with governments, with individuals, with influential religious figures, with influential community figures, a range of partners who can help engage in those conversations, help build bridges, so they do their own diplomacy, maybe not as formal as I with this title. What's important most of all, I think, is to listen. It's very important that we listen a bit more. That's a lesson that I think everyone can learn every day. Certainly my government can learn that as well. But to engage with a large group of actors, get different perspectives, and help collectively to find a way forward. On that forward-looking note, there we must close. Molly Fee, thank you so much for being my guest in the mediators today. Thank you very much for this interesting discussion. And there we end this edition of the mediators studio. To get more episodes as soon as they come out, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We always love to hear from you, so if Molly's career in war zones and in the seat of power in Washington has inspired any thoughts or questions, please get in touch via the listener survey in the show notes on our website. Or do drop me a message on Twitter @AdamTalksPeace. The mediator studio is an Oslo Forum podcast brought to you by the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I'm managing editor as Christina Buchhold and the producer as Chris Gunness. Research for this episode was by Oscar Eshamprena and Muriel Magdier. Big thanks also to Giles Pitts and Lee Boydong for their support. Hope you will join me for the next edition. Until then, from lost begods in Norway, this is Adam Cooper saying goodbye and thanks for listening. [Music]
