A Fortunate Life (66 page)

Burns then asked me directly whether I would take the job. I said I would, on the basis that the US and UK Government agreed with the plan we had assembled, that the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, was happy, and that Karzai was too. I confirmed this formally in a letter to Condi Rice shortly afterwards.

Our Christmas was spent with our grandchildren skiing in the Savoie. It was overshadowed, but not spoilt, by the fact that I would be leaving for Afghanistan shortly afterwards, and we would not be seeing each other much for the next two years.

On 14 January 2008 I discreetly flew out to see the UN Secretary General in the margins of a conference he was attending in Madrid. We had an hour-long meeting in which we discussed the job and how I proposed to do it, at the end of which he confirmed that President Karzai was keen for me to do the job, and that he, too, hoped that I would accept it. I confirmed that, on this basis, I would. As I left I asked him to inform Karzai and get his final agreement, after which I would telephone him myself and arrange to meet him again as soon as possible, for we had much to discuss together.

On the way back from Madrid I got a call from Ban’s Chief of Staff, saying that the Secretary General had spoken to Karzai, and he was very happy and wanted to make progress as soon as possible. Would I now please speak to the Afghan President and arrange to meet him as soon as possible? I eventually managed to reach Karzai late on the evening of 15 January. We had a brief conversation during which he said he was delighted that I had accepted the job, and we orally shook hands on it. He suggested that we should meet again at the World Economic Forum at Davos, which he was attending the following week.

Almost immediately after this phone call, things started to go seriously wrong. First of all I started to get mysterious reports from Afghanistan that Karzai had been turned and was now opposed to my taking the job. Then deeply damaging anti-British reports started appearing in the Afghan
Press, including one in a Government-controlled newspaper comparing me to Sir William Macnaghten, the head of the British Mission in Kabul killed in the slaughter that ended the First Afghan war of 1842, and posed the question, ‘Who would be our Akbar Khan?’ (the man who killed him). They even dragged up my family history on the Northwest Frontier and the legend about my great grandmother escaping the 1842 ‘Massacre in the Snows’ by the skin of her teeth and suggesting I was coming to Afghanistan to avenge her. The Afghan Press was clearly being stirred up, especially the Government-controlled papers.

It was agreed that Condi Rice should see Karzai in Davos to sort things out. But before she could, Karzai, immediately he arrived at the Davos Conference, launched into an anti-British attack which especially criticised British soldiers fighting in Helmand.

I rang Ambassador Cowper-Coles to ask him his view. Was I being used as a stick to beat Britain? Or was Britain being used to get a message through to me that Karzai had changed his mind and did not want me to take the job? I thought the latter. The Ambassador confirmed that this was his view, too. I was the target, not the United Kingdom.

At the Condi Rice meeting President Karzai, sinuously avoided making a commitment one way or the other to the US proposal, now also backed by the UN Secretary General, that I should take up this post. But his Government at all other levels (including the Afghan Ambassador at the UN) made it publicly clear that they didn’t want me to.

By Friday (22 February) I had reached the conclusion that I would have to withdraw. One of the conditions necessary if I was to have any chance of success – that I could work constructively with the Afghan Government – was now plainly not in place. Moreover, I could not, allow my name to be used in a way which was damaging to British interests in Afghanistan.

So the following day I rang the head of the Foreign Office, Sir Peter Ricketts, and told him I would be ringing the US Secretary of State to tell her that, under the circumstances, I felt I should withdraw my name. He said he was very sorry, but, in the circumstances, thought this the right thing to do.

Next I put a call through to Burns, who said he would speak to Condi Rice about my decision. Later that day he got back to me saying that the Secretary had one question for me. If she forced Karzai to take me, could I turn the relationship round? I replied that I didn’t think so. Karzai was so mercurial that, though it might be possible to
turn things round for a day or two, no one could know what would happen after that. And anyway, even if she persuaded him, it would be a Pyrrhic victory, since I would clearly be going to Kabul against the wishes of the Afghan President and Government, and perhaps even, after what had happened, a large section of Afghanistan’s Pashtun population too. This would make what was already going to be a very, very difficult job simply impossible. I concluded that, under the circumstances, I was sure I had no alternative but to withdraw my name, which I would do publicly the following day. Shortly afterwards Condi Rice called, thanked me and expressed her concern about what had happened and the implications for Afghanistan.

Why did President Karzai change his mind so suddenly? Here I have to stray into the realms of speculation.

Some have told me that they believed they could detect the hand of Zalmay (‘Zal’) Khalilzad, the US Ambassador at the UN in New York behind this. Khalilzad, himself an Afghan by origin, is said to have designs on the Afghan Presidency and to be planning to put his name forward for the 2009 Presidential elections. According to this version of events, he strongly advised Karzai to say no to the US proposition that I should do this job, knowing that this would weaken Karzai in American eyes and thus give Khalilzad a clearer run at the Presidency, perhaps even with the support of Washington. Though this is certainly the kind of convoluted conspiracy theory that would be satisfyingly appealing to most in Afghanistan, where conspiracy theorising is the national sport, it has been firmly denied by Khalilzad himself.

In my view, the reasons for Karzai’s sudden U-turn are much more likely to be connected with the internal politics of Afghanistan and the forthcoming Presidential elections. Among President Karzai’s own people, the Pashtuns, a little bashing of the British, their ancient colonial enemy, always goes down well. More importantly, President Karzai, who has lost a lot of support amongst the other, non-Pashtun, elements in Afghanistan, has consequently become increasingly dependent on Pashtun votes for his re-election as President, and hence on those who can mobilise votes amongst the Pashtun tribes. To these elements of Afghan society the prospect of the international community speaking with a united voice, especially if that meant mounting a determined attack on corruption, as we had done in Bosnia, may not have been welcome.

Whatever the reasons for all this, my family were absolutely delighted.

Jane immediately declared Hamid Karzai her world number one favourite person after Nelson Mandela and gave his picture pride of place on the door of the kitchen fridge – to which she says a ritual thank you every morning. For my part I was glad and relieved too, but with reservations. At the start, I had really not wanted to do this, so now I was, overall, happy I could return to pretending to be retired. But, I confess, as we prepared our plans a bit of me had been drawn into the new enterprise ahead. At least initially, therefore, part of me was disappointed not to be back in the game, working on problems once again and working, once again, with people half my age. But all that is in the past now, and we have got back to the life we were so enjoying before that fateful October-night phone call in Australia.

I remain involved with a couple of commercial enterprises, which I love. I am able, when called upon, to help the Lib Dems and support their gifted new Leader, Nick Clegg. I can also see my family and my grandchildren more regularly than I used to. I am writing again and listening to music I haven’t been able to listen to for ages. And, of course, there is our glorious Somerset cottage garden and my friends in the little community of Norton Sub Hamdon, whose name I carry as my title in the House of Lords.

I have always considered that one of the key factors that determine one’s quality of life is the quality of your friends, and especially your neighbours. Here Jane and I have been extraordinarily lucky, too. For we have, living either side of us, two neighbours who have become close friends and the constant companions of nearly all the Somerset bit of our lives. Steph and John Bailey and Sally and Steve Radley made the long journey to see us in Bosnia (twice), have come on holiday with us in France, are regular companions in sampling the wares of the local Somerset hostelries and have been outstanding and generous neighbours, whose company I am now at last able to enjoy to the full.

As that NATO interrogator said, all those years ago in my SBS days, being idle is the worst of all punishments for me. So, once again, I am fortunate that, what with one thing and another, I find myself busy enough to keep out of both mischief and boredom. I still find myself working hours almost as long as they used to be and spending almost as much time on aircraft and in trains as I always did. But these days, Jane is mostly able to come with me.

And that, at our time of life, is just the way it should be.

L
OOKING BACK,
I see that I have led an exceptionally fortunate  and varied life – a life of the sort which is probably no longer available to younger generations in Britain. I have taken a lot of risks, some of them very foolish. But in the end they seemed to have worked out as well as, or better than, I had any right to expect.

And now I have all I need or could wish for, and am very content.

Except for one thing. I cannot work out where it all went, this feast that has been laid before me and which I have devoured with such voracious appetite.

I cannot somehow find the way to connect the eighteen-year-old of that sunny May morning in 1959, standing by the side of the Exe estuary on the little station halt at the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines, and the person I seem to have become now. In one sense or another, all lives are journeys. For me that scene of fifty years ago, which is still very fresh in my mind, marks the beginning of an odyssey which has led through many different adventures to the place in which I now find myself. But, looking back, I have almost no idea how I got from there to here. For mine has not been, in any sense, a planned life. It has been a haphazard one: its course may from time to time have been altered by my will, but its overall shape appears to me to owe more to providence than intention. I seem to have lived like one of those seventeenth-century merchant adventurers who sailed out of the great port of Bristol to search the seven seas for opportunity and adventure. And now, thanks to good fortune, favourable winds and excellent friends, I am returning with an ample store of treasure and a huge cargo of memories.

Our greatest treasure, of course, is our family. Perhaps things are changing now for modern politicians, and, if so, that is a very good thing – politics and family life have not easily mixed in the past, as the bleak record of breakdown, drug problems and worse amongst the children of politicians shows. But our children have ended up, not just as fine human beings to be proud of, but also as our greatest friends.
This is almost all down to their strengths and their mother’s skills. For I was not, I fear, a very good father in the conventional sense, at least until I realised that I could not control their lives or live them for them. And now my son, a much respected junior-school teacher who lives nearby, has a daughter, Annie Rose, whose regular visits to us are one of the most eagerly anticipated events of our life. We see our daughter, who also teaches (but in France), and her two children, Matthias and Lois, more rarely, which is painful. But this does not diminish the debt I feel I owe to fortune for them, or the joy of being with them when we can.

Ask me what was the pinnacle of it all, and I would not hesitate with the answer: 9 June 1983, the night we won Yeovil at the general election. For there is no privilege greater than representing the community you live in, and love, in Parliament. The only one that perhaps comes close, is to stand before your fellow citizens at election time as one amongst three Party Leaders who have the chance to put before our countrymen our visions for their future. And I have been fortunate enough to do that, too. But I also cannot now imagine my life without the little, beautiful country of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its remarkable people being a part of it

But how did it all happen? Where has it all gone?

Lao Tse said that a man’s life passes before him with the speed of a galloping horse. And, content though I am, so it sadly seems.