The War of Arabic Words Is Former U.S. Diplomat’s Arena

Two months ago, Christopher Ross was languishing in diplomatic exile, his 30-year career as a foreign service officer topped out with two ambassadorships and the proverbial gold watch. Following the catastrophe he saw that awful Tuesday on television in his Capitol Hill townhouse, he wondered, like most Americans, what he could do.

But unlike most Americans, Ross had a skill that could help the U.S. government but was dismissed when he was nudged into retirement two years ago at age 55: He is reputed to be the most fluent nonnative Arab speaker in the diplomatic corps, an American conversant in many dialects of a complex tongue, a man said to speak Arabic better than some Arabs do.

It wasn’t long before former colleagues at the State Department were floating his name. The U.S. was losing the public relations war with Osama bin Laden, whose videotaped diatribes were making a splash in the Muslim world with no one to deliver the American counterpoint.

Now Ross is back as chief interlocutor, giving voice to America’s policy in a region where many detest the world’s only remaining superpower. Before he had time to move into his new office, he was on the Arab television station Al Jazeera, responding to Bin Laden’s latest exhortations in flawless Arabic for 35 million viewers.

“He is very well positioned to lead the effort to tell our story in the Arab world,” said Robin L. Raphel, senior vice president of the National Defense University in Washington. “He is already familiar with the culture and language. He’s ideal, really, for this kind of work.”

Ross’ rise from bureaucratic castoff to diplomatic hot property illustrates a public relations turnabout where America’s muddied name has gone largely undefended.

“It says we should have been doing this all along,” Edward S. Walker, president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, said of the renewed appreciation for Ross’ talent. “We should have sensitivity to what people are saying and thinking in the region. We haven’t listened.”

Now the Bush administration is scurrying to reclaim lost ground, bringing on advertising whiz Charlotte Beers, who launched her career marketing Uncle Ben’s rice, to lead the public diplomacy charge. But this isn’t a side dish they are selling, it is unpopular American foreign policy in a language in which one poorly chosen word or image can deliver devastating consequences.

Which is where Ross comes in, hired by Beers not only to translate American posture into Arabic prose but also to explain the Arab and Muslim mind-set to an administration trying to improve America’s image. It is a job experts say will require more than flawless language skills, as evidenced by some harsh reviews after his maiden Al Jazeera appearance.

“His performance was terrible. He was repeating himself, sticking to the talking points. He was like a robot who speaks Arab,” said Moua Fac Harb, Washington bureau chief of Al Harat, a London-based Arab newspaper. “He has great communication skills, people like him and he’s a wonderful guy. But sending someone who speaks the language is not enough to win the media war.”

Ross too was less than pleased with his television debut, which consisted of reading a script drafted at the highest levels with no room for deviation.

“It wasn’t possible for Al Jazeera to arrange a TelePrompTer, so I ended up having to read it, which gives a very stiff appearance,” Ross said. “That is one lesson learned.”

Still, even a stilted performance was better than the vacuum that existed a month ago, he said. Now Bin Laden is no longer dominating the communication war, he said.

“It took a while for us to get up to speed, but . . . I think he is beginning to lose his edge,” Ross said, referring to the accused terror mastermind’s second video appearance, which drew far less global attention than his first. “He looked very distracted, very ill at ease, and I think the fact that I was there to counter that statement almost point by point helped defuse it. . . . I think we’re easily his match at this point in the war of words.”

Seen by Some Arabs as a State Dept. ‘Stooge’

Yet despite his proficiency in Arabic, Ross is still an agent of the State Department, perceived as a “stooge” by Arab and Muslim populations that trust neither government nor the media, experts said. Moreover, he is not a Muslim.

“In this case, the messengers are as important as the message,” said Sandra Charles of C&O; Resources Inc., an international consulting firm specializing in the Middle East. “It can’t just be Chris and it can’t just be Americans. We need to find people in the Muslim world as well.”

But experts agree Ross serves an invaluable purpose as a direct channel from the Bush administration to the Muslim world, unfiltered by overseas translation and spin. It is a job he seemed destined for since childhood.

Born in Ecuador, he learned Spanish first, refused to try English until he was 3, then emerged one day speaking it in full sentences. “He had been off practicing in his room,” said his father, Claude G. Ross, retired ambassador to Tanzania.

By age 8, he was trilingual in English, French and Greek, which his mother spoke. (He lost his Spanish after the family left South America.) The few months he spent in the United States were mostly in California--his parents met at USC--but his father’s itinerant foreign service career took him more often to Beirut and Cairo. He heard Arabic as a child but did not study it until he attended Princeton University, landing a fellowship at a rigorous language school in a mountain village in Lebanon.

Soon he was spending summers teaching the language at Princeton and Columbia universities. When he was named ambassador to Algeria more than 20 years later, Ross went with other newly sworn diplomats to meet the Arab press and fielded every question in Arabic, stealing the show and “putting the French ambassador’s nose out of joint,” his father recalled.

His rise in the foreign service was meteoric--from lowly U.S. Information Agency public affairs trainee to ambassador. His posts were rarely soft. He was deputy chief of mission in Algiers when it served as a go-between in the 1981 Iran hostage crisis. He spent seven years as ambassador to Syria, where relations with America were not particularly warm. His retirement was typical of the career arc of many diplomats, who often are forced out after reaching senior levels.

As diplomats go, Ross is directly out of central casting--with an engaging smile, a resonant voice and a demeanor best described as suave. He likes fine wine, late-night games of hearts and a good joke, which he has been known to tell in an Arab dialect so spot-on, some liken it to an Arab telling an American yarn in a perfect Brooklyn accent.

His suits are handmade in Damascus. He has a way of posing for photographs with people of higher stature and exuding the most commanding presence.

The goodwill he encountered over three decades in the volatile region is what he intends to build on now, believing it is American foreign policy Arabs disdain, not Americans.

“This may come as a surprise, but as a general proposition, Arabs like Americans,” he said from the seventh-floor State Department offices where the image battle is plotted. “Close friendships are often formed. Where many Arabs part company with us is on our policies.”

And that gap is wide. The U.S. has failed to balance political interests with the human problems of great concern to Arabs--such as the poor and suppressed in Iraq, the deaths of innocent Palestinians and the safety of Afghan civilians, several experts said. Ross’ challenge is to address those issues in language that not only resonates abroad but passes strict government muster at home.

“And that’s a handicap,” Walker said. “Frankly, it’s very hard to have a free hand in expressing the substance of U.S. policy . . . and if they second-guess him excessively, then the message is no different from a spokesman’s, except it’s in Arabic.”

Sensitivity to Muslim, Arab Concerns Is Key

The key, many believe, is to use new and creative vehicles to show America’s best face, addressing the concerns of Arabs and Muslims, rather than Washington’s.

On Ross’ desk one recent afternoon was the prototype for a three-frame cartoon advertising the U.S. reward program for turning in suspected terrorists: A man spots another man concealing a bomb; he makes a telephone call; a bag of U.S. money is exchanged.

“Too blatant,” Ross printed on a yellow Post-it, noting such imagery portrays the informant as an agent or traitor.

“That is completely inappropriate,” he explained, suggesting a more human approach. “Here you might have a father calling authorities, with his arm around his children. And down here, you have the bad guy in handcuffs.”

Awareness of such potential pitfalls is all the more vital now, experts say. The U.S. must crawl out of a public relations hole and earn the region’s trust as it tries to help cobble a coalition Afghan government from once-warring tribes.

“It’s not a cakewalk, I can tell you that,” said a former ambassador who knows Ross. “But Americans do have a story. It’s just that we haven’t been working very hard at figuring out what it is. . . . He knows what the traps are. He’s good at that.”