 |
| Lakhdar Brahimi |
I nominate former
Algerian foreign minister and ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi to succeed
Kofi Annan as troubleshooter for Syria.
Before giving my reasons
for making the nomination, I solemnly declare that I have no inside information
or tipoff from anybody and that no one asked for my opinion.
In fact, putting my
unsolicited nomination in print is at odds with what I was taught by my three
mass media mentors – namely, James Batal, an Amherst College graduate and a
Neiman Fellow in Journalism from Harvard University; Tom Masterson, Beirut
Bureau chief of The Associated Press; and Kamel Mroue, uncontested pioneer of the
modern-day Lebanese press.
In initiating the saga of my journalism
and publishing journey, all three used to focus on such classics as “dog bites
man versus man bites dog,” the Five Ws in newsgathering and – above all -- the
difference between objective news and personal opinion.
My excuse for putting
forward in print Lakhdar Brahimi’s name to succeed Kofi Annan is that I am
doing so as a blogger entitled to his personal opinion, and not as a
journalist.
Annan, after tendering
his resignation this week, would not speculate on who might replace him but
sought to counter suggestions that with his departure, the peace effort was
over.
“Let me say that the
world is full of crazy people like me, so don’t be surprised if someone else
decides to take it on,” Annan told reporters in Geneva.
Brahimi is not exactly
one of the world’s crazy people and I don’t even know if UN Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon and Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby will throw his name into the
hat.
What I know is that he
has all the credentials as a peacemaker to take over where Annan left.
He has served as UN and
Arab League diplomat, is a veteran conflict mediator and an expert in
post-conflict reconstruction, brokered Lebanon’s 1989 Taef Agreement that
involve Syria and is fluent in English, French and -- obviously but most
importantly -- Arabic.
Like Annan, he is one of
The Elders.
Chaired by Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, The Elders is an independent group of global leaders who work
together for peace and human rights. Nelson Mandela, who is not an active
member of the group but remains an Honorary Elder, brought the group together
in 2007.
The Elders are Martti
Ahtisaari, Ela Bhatt, Lakhdar Brahim, Gro Brundtland, Fernando H. Cardoso,
Jimmy Carter, Graça Machel, Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu and Kofi Annan.
The Burmese pro-democracy
leader Aung San Suu Kyi was also an Honorary Elder, until her election to the
Burmese parliament last April.
You can read biographies
for Lakhdar Brahimi on Wikipedia
and The
Fondation Chirac or the U.S./Middle
East Project, Inc. websites.
I chose this but from The
Fondation Chirac:
Born in Algeria in 1934, he studied law and political science in
Algeria and France. During the Algerian War of Independence (1956-1962), he was
a representative of the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) in Southeast Asia.
At twenty-two, he represented the Algerian revolution in Jakarta. At the time,
Indonesia’s President was Sukarno, one of the fathers of non-alignment and the
struggle against colonialism.
From 1963 to 1970, Lakhdar Brahimi was the Permanent
Representative to the League of Arab States in Cairo. Ambassador to the United
Kingdom from 1971 to 1979, he then became the Diplomatic Advisor to the
President of Algeria from 1982 to 1984 in Egypt and Sudan. Afterwards, he
became Assistant Secretary General of the Arab League between 1984 and 1991.
In 1989 as Special Envoy of the Tripartite Committee of the Arab
League in Lebanon, Brahimi successful negotiated the agreement that ended seventeen
years of civil war: the Taef Agreement.
Algeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1991 to 1993, he was
the UN Conference Rapporteur on Environment and Development in 1992 in Rio de
Janeiro.
In 1993, Lakhdar Brahimi embarked upon his second career in the
UN, following Boutros Boutros Ghali’s proposal to make him his “special
representative”. He was sent first to South Africa, where he led the United
Nations’ Observer Mission from 1993 until Nelson Mandela’s election to power in
1994. Then he was sent to Haiti from 1994 to 1996. The last year, he was sent
on UN missions for open or latent conflicts in Nigeria, Cameroon, Burundi, and
Sudan. Finally, he was sent to Afghanistan from 1997 to 1999 and again in 2001.
He led the panel that wrote the “Brahimi Report” on UN peacekeeping operations
in 2000.
He is one of “The Elders”, a group of international leaders
established in the early 21st century to promote the peaceful resolution of
conflicts around the world.
