A Fortunate Life (63 page)
Authors: Paddy Ashdown
We made many, many good friends like Hasib in Bosnia.
But I made quite a lot of enemies, too. The Serbs mostly disliked me because they knew I was trying to build a state, and this meant reducing the powers of the state within a state which they had created in Republika Srpska. The Bosnian Muslims liked me for much the same reason, but they also disliked me because I refused to allow them to name Sarajevo International Airport, which represented all ethnicities in the country, after their wartime leader (and my friend) Alija Izetbegović. The Croats disliked me because they knew I would resist their attempts to create a breakaway mini-state in the south and because I removed their directly elected President when he was indicted for corruption. The crime kings and war-criminal-protection networks of Bosnia, of whatever ethnicity, all hated me because we mounted a determined attack on their structures and businesses.
Nevertheless, and despite many really frightening moments when I feared I had got it wrong, I am proud of the job we did in Bosnia. By and large, the Bosnian people showed incredible patience with my faults and unwavering generosity and hospitality to both Jane and I, and for this I am very grateful to them.
We also had some very good times and made many good friends. Here are some more of Jane’s emails home which give a flavour of our daily lives, our Bosnian friends and the rhythm of the Sarajevo seasons:
17 June 2002
Hi,
We really are now settled in. You can get everything here, except mango
chutney (even Marmite and Branston Pickle).
Our home is now complete with curtains scrounged again from the
Brits; they seem to have a cavern filled with things people may need.
Anyway I now have their curtains, lengthened, shortened pulled and per
suaded
to hang at the windows. The weather is hot & sticky, but pleas
ant. We have a family of magpies in our garden. I think they will be the
only ‘pets’ as yet. P is very well. Relaxed but working hard. I still have no
wheels, which is frustrating, and have blisters from walking to market!!
23 March 2003
I am sitting at Paddy’s desk, overlooking the bowl of the city of Sarajevo.
On the mountain opposite there is just a smidgin of snow lying. It has all
gone very quickly this year, probably due to the fantastic weather we have
been having in the last 2 weeks. The winter pallor seems to have left people’s faces, the tables & chairs have appeared on the streets, & people are
now strolling around enjoying the warmth, sitting out drinking coffee –
which is a really serious thing here, & can last for hours.
24 April 2003
Well,
the gentle rain falleth from the heavens, now all we need is for a lit
tle bit of sun & warmth & we will be O.K. I am slightly encouraged
today, as I found that some of the feverfew seeds I bought from home had
germinated. Now I shall have a garden full of them!! This w.e. we are
going to be able to plant the bottom bit of the garden at the house we have
just purchased on the shores of Lake Jablanica about an hour from
Sarajevo. I have decided to plant ground-covering roses & conifers. I’m
also going to try to find some grass seed with wild flowers which I am told
you can get, for the bottom of the garden, which is planted out with fruit
saplings. Plums for svlivović, of course.
3 June 2003
The countryside is looking absolutely fabulous. The blossom received a
kick in the teeth late in April, with a series of late frosts, which did no
good to the poor fruit-growers in Herzegovina. But since then things have
got greener, & what with the false acacia trees, of which there are many,
the gorse & the 40 shades of green the countryside looks fantastic. The
snows have melted on the mountains, & the lakes have all filled, nearly to
their summer levels, & the rivers have swollen a good deal, with all the
rain we’ve had.
21 September 2003
Life continues at a pace, Paddy is still herding Bosnian and international
cats with a vengeance. Sometimes he looks so tired I want to weep, but
nothing that a whisky & a good night’s sleep doesn’t put right.
Last evening we spent with friends in an orchard they own, overlooking
Sarajevo. It was really lovely. I got there about 5, & Suzanne & I picked
apples, of which they have 1,000’s. Then when Paddy arrived, about ½
hour later, we settled down to pre-barbeque gins & tonics, under the
trees. Mirza, who owns the land with his 2 uncles & a cousin, has a
workshop on the land, & the uncle lives in the small house. It’s quite a
spread, right down to the big cemetery on the edge of the city. The uncle
explained that the neighbours (the cemetery) were very good, quiet neigh
bours, & caused no problems!! Mirza was here through the war, caring
for his sick mother, who has since died. He said most of his friends now
live all over the world, as they left during the war, & he is rather warier
of making new ones, as all they do is leave. He sounded sad & a bit
lonely. His wife & child (daughter) went to UK & now still live in
Cambridge. but that’s the way of it here.
21 October 2003
Dear Sally,
We woke up to snow, on the ground & falling from the heavens on
Monday morning. I hate Mon. morn any way, but that made it worse. It
fell nearly all day, but today (Wed) it’s nearly all gone, & it’s really
lovely out, bit misty. The trees are something else. The colours are
absolutely breathtaking. I felt like a small child with its first Christmas
tree, with all the ohhs & ahhs!!
8 January 2004
We are back in Sarajevo, where we have heavy snow, & a temp. of minus
9!! All the cats are fluffed up, and determined to find a perch which gets
their feet off the cold ground. Looking out on the white city, it seems hard
to imagine the heat of summer. Bare trees with shivering birds in the tops
of them, white roofs, & general grey & white. My poor little garden looks
dead, but when you come I hope it will be full of roses! I’m off to Mostar
with P tomorrow for a bit of an adventure. Actually I’d better not use
that word to him, as I told him I’d had enough of adventures!!
Love from us both, Jane XX
29 January 2004
I will swop your sprinkle of snow for our large dump any day, though I
can’t say P. will agree. It’s feeeeeeet deep on everything. Balancing in
heaps like icing on trees, chimney pots, phone lines, & TV aerials. I do
not like it one bit, though I have to confess it looks quite pretty!!!!
XXXXXXXXXXXX
8 February 2005
Hiya! Cold bloody greetings from Sarajevo, where the temperature is hov
ering around a cool minus 20!! Minus 25 last week! After about 10
mins outside you begin to realise just how bloody cold it is, as the cold
intrudes between the seams of your clothes, & settles in the most unex
pected of places! Hard to believe we were sweltering in 43 in the shade not
6 months ago. We have been back but a few days to the snowbound
wastes (actually rather beautiful in the evening light, as long as you’re
inside!) of Sarajevo, after a lovely break at home.
Jane and I were the first members of an international organisation to invest in the country, buying a house on the edge of the very beautiful Lake Jablanica outside Sarajevo, where we spent many weekends and where our children, grandchildren and friends came to visit us each summer. My other summer passion was walking on Bosnia’s incomparable mountains. Together with friends and with the help of a Bosnian mountain guide, Fikret Kahrović, I climbed all Bosnia’s highest peaks, as well as Durmitor, the highest mountain in neighbouring Montenegro.
In the winter we skied. Winter sports in Bosnia, the home of the 1984 winter Olympics, are rather more rugged than most pampered Alpine skiers would be prepared to accept. But it was good fun and challenging in equal measure, especially when combined with a long Bosnian lunch and a hefty helping of
š
livovi
ć
. Her Majesty’s Government decided at the start of my tour that I should have full-time protection while in Bosnia, and this was provided by a team of (usually eight) Royal Military Police, who came out for six months at a time. They went everywhere with me and even lived in our house, where they became, for Jane, a rotating collection of sons and daughters who joined our family every half year. They were outstandingly professional, and I grew to rely on them utterly. When it came to the winter team, however, they had to be able to ski, or learn very quickly indeed. This they did with variable success and some casualties along the way. During the 2004 winter season no fewer than three of them broke bones while skiing with me, and I was abruptly instructed by their headquarters that they were running out of replacements, and please would I be more careful with their soldiers in future.
Nor was their job unnecessary, for there were, I was informed, three death threats against me which the teams took seriously. One was apparently a contract let out to the Chechens for two million Euros – which I thought insultingly cheap, all things considered. The upshot, though, was that, when we came to leave after nearly four years, I was strongly advised that we should sell our beloved house on the lake; there would be no means of protecting it after we left, and it would be
bound to be blown up or burnt. It broke our hearts to do this (and didn’t help the bank balance either, for we had to sell at a heavy loss) but there was no alternative.
Mostly, events in the outside world passed us by during my years in Bosnia. In part this was because my position as an international civil servant precluded me from getting involved in politics, but the main reason was that all my energies and all my focus were directed on my Bosnian mandate. There were two exceptions, though.
The first was the Iraq war, which placed me in a delicate situation in Sarajevo. My job was to hold together an international coalition upon which all the resources and all the support I needed to get things done in Bosnia depended. The problem was that this coalition (which included, of course, all the major European countries and the US) was deeply divided over the wisdom of launching an attack on Iraq. I decided that my duties to Bosnia had to come before my desire to make my views on the subject public, so I kept silent. But I did write a private letter to Tony Blair on the eve of the conflict, saying I thought he was right to go ahead. Supporting the Iraq war now looks like a major error of judgement on my part – and one not much diminished by the fact that, like most others, I believed what I had been told about weapons of mass destruction, nor by the excuse that the war phase of the Iraq intervention was actually a success. It was what happened afterwards which turned it all into a catastrophe.
With a few months to go before the end of my tour, the Liberal Democrats swam back into my life again, too. Jane and I had gone home to the UK for Christmas 2005, returning to Bosnia by car on the very day my son’s partner had our second granddaughter, Annie Rose, born on 30 December 2005.
While we were in the UK, there was much gossip and chatter about Charles Kennedy’s leadership. Back in Bosnia, on 5 January 2006 I was telephoned by my successor in Yeovil, David Laws, speaking, he said, on behalf of a number of MPs especially from the new intake after the 2001 elections. Things were becoming intolerable with Charles. If he did not stand down by the following Monday (i.e., in four days’ time), then David and twenty-two other key MPs would sign a public statement resigning from the front bench. They would then support Ming Campbell as the new Leader. Did I have any thoughts on this? I told David that I thought the timing was wrong – it would be mistaken by the Press and public as a panic reaction to the
recent successes of David Cameron (by then elected leader of the Tories). Better to wait till later in the year. Moreover, I was not at all sure that this would be right for the Party, or for Ming. His age would be a real problem. I was, as he knew, a great Ming fan and had hoped he would stand when I had stood down. But the Press would now have a field day with his age, which would make it very tough for him, and probably uncomfortable for the Party too. It would be better, I suggested, to skip a generation and go for Nick Clegg. David replied that, if Nick stood then a number of the other younger MPs would stand as well, and this would lead to an unholy mess. They needed something clean, and Ming would make an excellent bridge to the next generation of younger MPs with ambitions (of which David made it clear, he was not one), giving them time to sort themselves out. I thought, but did not say, that this appeared to me to be a classic example of the old political adage that young Cardinals always vote for old Popes. ‘Bridge’ leaders hardly ever worked, I commented, unless they used the position to make themselves permanent (like Mrs Thatcher), and Ming, for reasons of age, could not do this.