Robin Raphel

Robin Raphel began her career in the U.S. government as an analyst at the CIA after graduating with her master's degree.[9] After leaving Iran she joined the diplomatic corps and assisted USAID in Islamabad as an economics analyst. In 1978, Raphel returned to the United States and joined the State Department.[7] She would take on a range of assignments for the next decade, including posts in London, until she was appointed as Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa in 1988. In 1991, she took the assignment of Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India.[8]

In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Raphel as the first Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs within the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, a newly created position within the State Department focused on a growing array of problems in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, including democratic stability, nuclear proliferation, energy access, Islamist and Taliban extremism, poverty and women's rights issues.[2][10]

At the time, Pakistan had not tested its nuclear capabilities, opting for a policy of nuclear opacity.[11]^:137 India's nuclear program was at the time also under the same undeclared status, which ended in 1998 with the Pokhran-II tests.[12] Tensions between Pakistan and India over the unresolved dispute in Kashmir were threatening war between the two nations. Pakistan's armed forces and intelligence services were using Afghanistan's turmoil to create "strategic depth" by fostering alliances with the Taliban.[13] Meanwhile, democracy's experiment in Pakistan was witnessing a revolving door of army-induced change between the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.[14]^:43

At the State Department, Raphel tried to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan by engaging both countries in a negotiated solution to their Kashmir dispute..[15] Kashmir was raised on the agenda in Bhutto's first state visit to Washington in April 1995. It would remain a key topic of regional and bilateral discussions with both India and Pakistan throughout Clinton's two terms in office. She left the State Department's South Asia section in late June 1997.[2]

Robin Raphel delivers aid in Peshawar

During her tenure at the State Department, Raphel worked to support US government policy of engagement and collaboration with the Taliban.[15][16] She was one of the first senior American officials to meet personally with Taliban.[17]

One of the channels for U.S.-Taliban cooperation that she prioritized was through energy. U.S. energy policies in the mid-1990s sought to develop alternative supply routes to counter increasing tensions in the Middle East. The Clinton administration supported oil and gas pipelines to transport Turkmenistan's energy reserves through Afghanistan to an exit at Pakistan's Indian Ocean seaport of Gwadar.[18]^:165 Unocal, an American company that was one of the many international oil companies seeking the rights to build this pipeline, entered into negotiations with Taliban, to secure protection for the pipeline.[18]^:166[19]

Raphel spoke in favor of the pipeline project on trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan in April and August 1996. Her meeting with Taliban leaders in 1996 to advocate for a pipeline project earned her the sobriquet "Lady Taliban" in the Indian press.[20] After Raphel's successor Karl Inderfurth took over, the pipeline deal collapsed, however.[18]^:171–174

Raphel took part in the State Department's establishment of diplomatic relations with the Taliban shortly after its takeover of Kabul.[21]^:300[22]

Raphel entered her State Department assignment at a time when U.S.-Pakistan relations were strained. Sanctions imposed by George H. W. Bush over concerns about Pakistan's burgeoning nuclear program under the Pressler Amendment banned all military ties, supply of military hardware and jet fighters, and cut off political relations with Islamabad.[23] Bhutto sought rapprochement with the Clinton White House, visiting the United States in April 1995.[24] Bhutto, working with Pakistan's envoy to Washington at the time, Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, sought Congressional support for an exception to the Pressler Amendment that would allow Pakistan to take delivery of military equipment that it had already paid for.[25] This exception to Pressler (known as the Brown Amendment) was strongly supported by Raphel and by other Clinton administration officials. It was put into effect in November 1995, permitting the one-time transfer to Pakistan of $368M of equipment that had been blocked by the Pressler Amendment.[26]^:78

Raphel became unpopular with Indian media in 1993,[27] after publicly describing Kashmir as a "disputed territory." India's position is that Jammu and Kashmir, having been ceded to India in 1947 by their maharajah, are an integral part of India's territory. Raphel's advocacy for negotiation between India and Pakistan was perceived as an attack on India's territorial integrity.[27]

Also in the 1990s, Indian officials who had tapped Raphel's phone learned that she had favored a UN resolution condemning India's actions in Kashmir, but was overruled by 'higher-ups.'[28]

Raphel's decades of work with Pakistan led Indian media to consider her a "brazenly pro-Pakistan partisan in Washington."[29] According to Richard Leiby, writing about the 1993 incident in 2014 after the FBI investigation of Raphel becamse public knowledge:[30]

To the fury of India, she suggested Pakistan still had valid claims to the disputed territory of Kashmir, saying the U.S. did not believe Kashmir "is forever more an integral part of India." Even now, Indian media berate Raphel and delight in her current difficulties.

In November 1997, Robin Raphel was appointed as United States Ambassador to Tunisia.[2] Tunisia was a frequent partner for Mediterranean military exercises with U.S. naval squadrons and marine battalions, allowing more exercises in its waters than any other country in North Africa. When Raphel was ambassador, Stuart Eizenstat, the Undersecretary of State for Economics, Business and Agriculture, proposed a new initiative to liberalize trade further with Tunisia. The Eizenstat Initiative, as it came to be known informally, implemented lower tariffs on industrial and manufacturing sector goods to enable Tunisia to become a supplier for goods throughout Arab and African states.[31] President Zine El Abidine visited the Clinton White House in 1999.[31]

During her tenure, First Lady Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton visited the country to support Tunisia's improving record in women's rights. Raphel witnessed the rise in political power of Tunisia's opposition as Abidine's administration reserved 20 percent of Parliament's seats for opposition candidates for the first time since he came to power.[31] She served her full term and left in August 2000.[2] Raphel was Senior Vice President at the National Defense University in Washington from 2000 until 2003. Raphel retired from service in 2005.

In 2005, soon after her retirement, Raphel began working for Cassidy & Associates, a Washington-based lobbying firm, where she headed the global affairs and trade group.[32] Shortly after hiring Raphel as a senior vice president, Cassidy signed a $1.2 million contract to lobby for the government of Pakistan. Raphel was assigned to lead the contract.[33] One month later, however, Cassidy canceled the Pakistan lobbying contract after Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule.[34][32][35]

Raphel continued her role at Cassidy, lobbying for other international clients who included Bangladeshi politician Anwar Hossain Manju and the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, according The Hill.[34] On July 14, 2009, Cassidy signed a new one-year contract with the Pakistani Embassy, to "engage in efforts to improve Pakistan-U.S. relations and promote the development of U.S. policy beneficial to Pakistan and its interests."[34]

Robin Raphel (far left) with Richard Holbrooke, Hillary Clinton and Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani in Pakistan, 2009

In 2009, Robin Raphel joined the Afghanistan-Pakistan task force known as AfPak, joining the late Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for the region.[36] Her focus was to allocate U.S. resources committed under the proposed Kerry-Lugar Bill. That legislation was enacted in late 2009, tripling civilian U.S. aid to Pakistan to approximately $1.5 billion annually.[37]

Raphel's responsibilities included oversight of spending for law enforcement, improvements in Pakistan's judicial system and education programs to raise the country's literacy standards. She worked with USAID in a number of Pakistan's border areas in particular to distribute non-military assistance.[38][39]