Parting Shots

by Matthew Parris

  But perhaps, on leaving the neighbourhood of Palestine, I ought to end this one with some measured valedictory nostrum for solving the apparently insoluble. You will be relieved to know that I have none to offer. My only modest suggestion is that, in addressing itself to the Palestine problem, the world would do well to encourage greater precision in the use of language. Arabs are worse than most people at linguistic flatulence, at not bothering to define their terms. Ambiguity has of course its uses in this field of diplomacy as in others. But did the Arab/Israeli situation by now enjoy a more precise vocabulary – starting perhaps with an agreed definition of ‘the Palestinians’ whom it is all about – there might be more prospect of handling it productively. As things are – and the Hashemites are perhaps little more scrupulous than others in this respect – Lewis Carroll (that vade mecum for sojourners in the Middle East) hits the nail as usual on the head:–

  ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’

  ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things.’

  ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’

  I am sending copies of this despatch to Her Majesty’s Representatives at Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Tel Aviv, Baghdad, Jedda, Tehran and Jerusalem.

  I have the honour to be

  Sir,

  Your obedient Servant,

  H. G. Balfour-Paul

  Syria

  ‘Six or a dozen men rule Syria. They listen not, neither do they consult … I do not like them at all’

  SIR JAMES CRAIG, HM AMBASSADOR TO SYRIA, SEPTEMBER 1979

  James Craig wrote several valedictories in his long career. His reflections on leaving Dubai are on p. 325. Given the vigour with which Craig tackles the Syrian character here, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Foreign Office declined to release his final, 1984 Saudi valedictory in response to a Freedom of Information Request. The given reason was that ‘whilst in most governments senior Officials tend to serve an appointed term, many of the senior members of the Saudi Government have held the same governmental positions for many years. Trust is extremely important to these states and any potential release could have repercussions …’ In other words, Mr Craig has insulted senior Saudis who are still in office. A quarter of a century on, Craig’s valedictory from Jeddah remains not just classified, but also covered by a High Court injunction, taken out to stop its publication in the press after a leak (see the introduction to Chapter 5). This valedictory from Damascus concludes on a remarkable note, bold even for a Camel Corps Ultra. Many politicians in the West maintain that Syria’s most objectionable contribution to world affairs has been her sponsorship of Palestinian aggression against Israel. Sir James effectively suggests the opposite.

  BRITISH EMBASSY

  DAMASCUS

  18 September 1979

  The Rt Hon the Lord Carrington KCMG MC

  Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

  FCO

  My Lord,

  My predecessor, a more tolerant man than I, wrote in his valedictory despatch that he had given part of his heart to Syria – or some such Cymric extravagance. I am far from sentiments of that kind. I find Syria not particularly beautiful except in patches which are not likely to stay beautiful much longer. Its people are kindly, but the sophistication and stimulus of their society hardly approach the standards of ancient Athens. The distinction and originality of their once colourful culture are being submerged in a cosmopolitan blur of Pepsi Cola, crumpled suits and drab apartment blocks.

  Above all, they have been ruled for sixteen years by the Ba’th Party, which whether you look at its members or at its institutions, is a very unattractive affair. Its leaders have blinkered minds and an attachment to a sententious ideology in which few of them sincerely or comprehendingly believe. They speak in slogans which permit of private cynicism but never of public doubt. They know nothing of the outside world. Their experience of countries other than Syria is confined to official visits: special aircraft, Mercedes cars, government guesthouses, formal banquets. The odd Ba’thi who has really lived abroad is a different animal altogether. I know three. The rest are impervious to argument.

  Moreover, Ba’this are infuriatingly secretive. They prefer to say nothing unless the need to speak is plainly inevitable; and when they do speak, their words are bland or guarded or superficial. Six or a dozen men rule Syria. Presumably among themselves they debate and discuss. But they tell no-one of their arguments or of their options. They listen not, neither do they consult. They certainly do not trust: not their people, not their allies and not, above all, foreign ambassadors. Their assumption that any story – or no story – is good enough for their audience is contemptuous and foolish.

  Like all Arabs they say one thing and mean another. The influence of Arabic upon those who speak it is a long and subtle subject. Without a doubt it leads to cant, hypocrisy, bombast and self-deceit. Fine language allows Arabs to avoid their fears and their doubts and the imperatives of logic.

  Finally, like all parties which rule alone, the Ba’th despite its dogma books has no true faith in democracy. It practises, though it preaches the opposite, one law for the strong and another for the weak; and it therefore permits (like many other regimes, including its predecessors) patronage, corruption and nepotism. It denies freedom of speech; its newspapers are objects of derision.

  But governments, like men, are all paradoxical: just and tyrannical, competent and feckless, thoughtful and stupid. Even the Ba’this have their virtues which merit our praise, and their problems which attract our sympathy. And I am certainly sympathetic to the Ba’this in the dilemmas which they face and the misrepresentation of which they are victims.

  As you will have seen by now, I do not like them at all. But all that I have said against them could be said against a hundred other governments in this naughty world. And there is this, above all, that can be said for them: ever since they came to power, and long before, they have devoted a preponderant part of their energy to the cause of the Palestinians, to which they are called not only by self-interest but by the ties of kinship, neighbourliness and compassion. They could, long since, have settled their own relatively minor disputes with Israel, as Egypt has done. They could have saved their blood and used their treasure on their own country’s needs. They could have told the Palestinians that enough was enough, that the time had come to think about Syria’s GNP and inflation and balance of payments. However misguided their policies and their actions may be from time to time, it must be set to their credit that they have never been even tempted to renounce what they conceive to be their obligations. In present circumstances, they have no clear idea, and little hope, about what is to happen in the great conflict which occupies their hearts and minds; and yet they persist. Wrong-headed, inflexible and shortsighted as I take them to be, I yet find a faint but distinct spark of nobility in their obstinacy. And were I in their shoes (which Heaven forbid) I should find myself as perplexed as they.

  The Lebanon

  ‘ “Heady and oppressive” ’

  SIR DEREK RICHES, HM AMBASSADOR TO THE LEBANON, JUNE 1967

  After four years in the country, it is the vices of the Lebanon and the Lebanese, rather than the virtues, which more insistently obtrude into the consciousness: the weakness of the Government rather than the successful holding of the ring among a multitude of confessions and influences, the irresponsible antics of the Chamber of Deputies rather than the maintenance of democratic form and fact in a largely totalitarian area; the venality of the Press rather than the public expression in it of the whole range of opinions and policies; the economic ruthlessness of the rich and powerful rather than the (hitherto) annual rate of growth of over 10 per cent; the lack of generalised social conscience rather than the close ties between classes of the same confession or region; the disorder of Beirut rather
than the surpassing beauty of unchanged areas of the interior; in short, the corruption rather than the flowering.

  To some extent, these feelings may be nurtured by the atmosphere of Beirut, where, as Fedden1 says, the haze enveloping the town symbolises the miasmic Levant:

  Rich and uncertain, heady and oppressive, the air blurs shapes and principles, precludes clarity of action and thought, but it drives trade, it is the heavy fuel on which the Levantine works. Under this haze, enterprises spawn, and coin turns rapidly. The obscure deal and the close contract burgeons into fortune.

  But chiefly they arise, I think, from exasperation that a people so intelligent, diligent and charming, with ample human and adequate material resources at their disposal, should be so devoid of the will to make some personal sacrifice in the interests of national and truly co-operative action.

  1. Fedden: The author Robin Fedden (1908–77), best remembered for Chantemelse, about his childhood in France. His eclectic oeuvre includes works on suicide and skiing – and on the crusader castles of Syria and the Lebanon.

  Kuwait

  ‘The breathtaking self-centredness of the Kuwaiti population … mental attitudes every bit as disagreeable as those of Qadhafi’

  SIR JOHN WILTON, HM AMBASSADOR TO KUWAIT, APRIL 1974

  Kuwait cannot herself exercise a decisive influence on either the price or the volume of world oil production in the way that Saudi Arabia could if she chose to do so. But so long as Saudi Arabia does not choose either to swamp or to starve the world market Kuwait, as a country which can vary her production upwards or downwards by a million or more barrels a day without any serious practical or financial constraints, is in a position to exercise a very great influence on supplies and prices whenever she wishes. She has so far chosen to exert her pressures to increase the price and I expect her to continue to do so. She does not, I believe, thereby run the risk sometimes alleged, of being left eventually with oil in the ground that nobody wants. The cost of producing Kuwaiti crude is, because of the natural advantages of the now virtually fully-commissioned Kuwaiti fields, the lowest in the world. The necessary capital expenditure has been incurred. Little is now required but to open and close the taps. Even if the oil market should one day again become a buyers’ market Kuwait will always be able to sell.

  In these circumstances the weakness of the government, the bletherings of the Assembly, the acid tongue of the Finance and Oil Minister, the indecisions of the Defence Minister, the bland myopia of the civil service and the breathtaking self-centredness of the Kuwaiti population at large give rise to a disquieting sensation of insecurity among those who are in any measure dependent upon Kuwait. The position of a dependant is seldom agreeable. There is no shortage among the inhabitants of Kuwait of mental attitudes every bit as disagreeable as those of Qadhafi … and their views find free expression in the Assembly and the pages of the irresponsible press …

  The overpowering silliness of the Assembly continually frustrates such few sensible schemes as the government does put to it and infallibly fastens upon some selfish, trivial or backward-looking issue over which to bicker; but so long as it provides a vent for its particular brand of folly it can, perhaps, be argued that it is a kind of safety-valve against a political upheaval that would produce something worse. For unsatisfactory and feeble though the present regime may be there is little prospect of a better one replacing it … New elections are due in January 1975 and in theory, on statistical probabilities alone, it ought to be possible out of a population of some 400,000 native Kuwaitis, to produce a better, more competent, Assembly and Government than that which at present runs Kuwait. But when I look at the alternative talent available my faith in statistics evaporates …

  This is the central problem which faces the Government of Kuwait over the next decade. In almost every walk of life the plans, and the means, for a great expansion exist – except that the qualified men are not to be found. The University is to be enlarged to cope with the torrent of students now emerging from the secondary schools. There is to be a Medical School to train the doctors to staff the new hospitals. The Armed Forces are to be expanded and equipped with up-to-date tanks, aircraft, missiles and naval vessels … It would be difficult to see where all the necessary talent could come from even if the Kuwaitis were exceptionally gifted and exceptionally industrious. They are neither. They are about average in the matter of natural talents but their tradition inclines them strongly to commerce in preference to other professions or trades and their climate and recent prosperity have made them disinclined to work hard at anything. (The Naval Adviser remarked to me despondently that if there were a Kuwaiti with the qualifications necessary for a leading stoker he would expect to be at least an admiral.) There are exceptions but they more than prove the general rule. Any notion that Kuwait is, by virtue of its great wealth, likely to become the Switzerland (or even the Lebanon) of the Arab East can be discarded …

  The Kuwaitis will, I think, go on for some years yet very much as they have in the recent past; but they will have more money (the first air-conditioned hearse has just arrived here).

  Tunisia

  ‘Even the most educated are apt to be bewildered over the difference between left and right … which means hazards on the roads’

  SIR EDWARD WARNER, HM AMBASSADOR TO TUNISIA, MARCH 1970

  Warner’s tirade against rules and regulations came the year after the Duncan report, which looked at ways to run British embassies abroad more cheaply. The reforms that followed included centralizing procurement back in Whitehall, and linking accommodation allowances to those paid by private-sector firms retaining British staff overseas. Obviously furious about having to quit his post early, Sir Edward’s rage is directed more against Whitehall than Tunis.

  I leave this varied and attractive country, with its volatile and mixed population, with regret after only two years. It has been long enough to establish contacts and get one’s self known – a slow process at a ‘bricks without straw’ post – but not long enough to exploit the contacts made and the experience gained. Departing with a sense of wasted effort and lack of fulfilment, I hope that my successor will be left en poste long enough both to do my spade work all over again, and to draw benefit from it. The local population – basically Berber, cross fertilised by Phoenicians, ancient Greeks, Romans, Gauls, ancient Britons, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs (various sorts), Crusaders, Moors and Jews expelled from Spain, Turks, Spaniards, Circassian blood via imported female slaves, Italian and French, not to mention the various armies in World War II – is not easy to get to know. Nor is the devious mentality of the friendly and attractive people resulting from this mixture easy to understand. Even the most educated are apt to be bewildered over the difference between left and right, fact and fiction, which means hazards on the roads and much patience in getting at the facts. This all takes time and effort. If postings are not to become diplomatic musical chairs – a game particularly hard on wives – I would venture to suggest that the local facts of life need to be more seriously taken into account.

  I would also plead for a halt in the ghastly process of reducing everything to quasi military rules and regulations, applied regardless of local variations. The armed services have to have such rules and regulations but, in my humble estimation, the Diplomatic Service is something quite different. Its very essence is variety and variables; adaptability and improvisation. Rules cannot be applied without exception. Everything cannot be reduced to the precedent of somewhere else. Nor, in a place where the Head of Mission, for historical reasons, lives in a Moorish palace, surrounded by a small estate containing the cottages of the staff, granted free of all cost by a former Bey, can it be said that his domestic arrangements must be governed by the local good employer practices of the Manager of Shell, and Missions occupying small suburban villas with non-resident staff. Far too much time has to be spent fighting against rigid instructions based on uniform rules and regulations, and trying to get the most obvious tools for the trade
– such as adequate equipment for buffet dinners, the main medium of entertainment in a country where Ministers and officials dislike committing themselves to set dinner parties, but may well attend on more informal and less binding occasions. I hope that some flexibility can be re-introduced so that Heads of Mission can be given wide discretion in matters of local administration (such as I believe the Germans enjoy); and that equipment can be supplied to meet what an Ambassador regards as locally necessary, rather than on the basis of standardised world-wide issue. There need be no exaggerated fear of setting dangerous precedents. Conditions, mercifully, still vary from country to country, and the deadly world-wide uniformity, apparently beloved of Whitehall and its computers, has still to be achieved.