Speaking for Myself

by Cherie Blair

  One thing should be very clear. By their acts, these terrorists and those behind them have made themselves the enemies of the civilized world. The objective will be to bring to account those who have organized, aided, abetted and incited this act of infamy; and those that harbor or help them have a choice: either to cease their protection of our enemies; or be treated as an enemy themselves. . . . We do not yet know the exact origin of this evil. But, if, as appears likely, it is so-called Islamic fundamentalists, we know they do not speak or act for the vast majority of decent law-abiding Muslims throughout the world. I say to our Arab and Muslim friends: neither you nor Islam is responsible for this; on the contrary, we know you share our shock at this terrorism; and we ask you as friends to make common cause with us in defeating this barbarism that is totally foreign to the true spirit and teachings of Islam.

  Even before Tony was elected Prime Minister, he thought it important to learn about Islam. Britain has a sizable and important Muslim population, and as far back as January 1997, Khawar Qureshi — a lawyer friend of mine and now a Queen’s Counsel — took us to visit the Regent’s Park mosque. He knew that we were interested and that Tony wanted to meet and talk to other Muslims. During the summer of 2001, while we were on holiday, Tony had in fact been reading the Koran.

  The Washington Post was soon rating Tony alongside New York’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani as “the only other political figure who broke through the world’s stunned disbelief.” Among the victims were two hundred from the UK, a small percentage of the total toll of three thousand, but 9/11 remains the largest terrorist attack ever on British citizens. That Friday we attended a memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was a powerful occasion: not only were we all in a state of shock, but it was so moving to see the relatives of the victims — mostly wives and children, because so many of the missing and the dead were reasonably young. As Tony was anxious to have a face-to-face meeting with the still relatively new President, George W. Bush, the following week we flew to America. By then Tony had already had meetings with all the key European leaders. He believed that the response to the attacks should be international rather than America going it alone.

  On that long flight across the Atlantic, I remembered the conversation I’d had with President Bush, when he and Laura had stayed at Chequers the previous spring. We were all having dinner together, and the conversation had been extraordinarily open and frank, thanks in no small part to the presence of the children. George had been talking about the Star Wars missile defense system, initiated by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and how he saw that as the ultimate shield.

  But I had grown up under the shadow of IRA terrorism. “Surely,” I’d said, “the real danger is not from Russia or any other country sending bombs, but from individual people in a terrorist attack?”

  George had looked bemused at the suggestion. Americans had no sense that such a thing could ever happen to them, and that’s what made September 11 so shocking.

  On our arrival in New York, we went first to a processing center near the Hudson River. Everywhere we looked, people had put up pictures of their loved ones, with messages and contact phone numbers, in the hope that they would be found alive. It had been only nine days since the attack, and it was all very upsetting. Knots of people talked in hushed voices. A section of the center was being run by the British consulate, and we talked to those who were counseling the bereaved. The counselors themselves had barely slept in days. We wanted to go on to a fire station — New York firefighters, of course, having become the heroes of the tragedy — but with downtown Manhattan still in a state of paralysis, even with a police escort and motorcycle outriders, we were too short of time. So we went directly to St. Thomas’s Church for a memorial service for the British dead.

  We knew that Tony was expected to do a reading, but the question coming over on the plane had been, what? It would be very difficult to get the right tone. Magi Cleaver suggested an extract from a novel by the American writer Thornton Wilder called The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Magi had been shifted from the Foreign Office to manage the Civil Service side of the events and visits office. (The arcane regulations decreed that as a special adviser herself, Fiona could manage only other special advisers.) She was a tiny bossy-boots of a person, and everybody seemed petrified of her, but she was charming and lovely to us. She took me under her wing, and I loved her. Having started her Foreign Office career in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende, she was interested in all things South American, which was why she happened to have the book with her. The reading ended like this: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

  After the service I was able to talk to some of the victims’ families, including wives who were pregnant and with whom, I am happy to say, I have been able to keep in touch as they have rebuilt their lives. At the time they were still hopeful that their husbands would be found alive. Tony went straight to Washington for talks with the President, while Bill Clinton agreed to come to the fire station with me in Tony’s place. This particular fire station had been chosen because it had suffered such tremendous losses in the rescue operation, and in those kinds of circumstances, Bill is at his best. The men we met were just fantastic, brave and strong. One I talked to I recognized from one of the now iconic photographs taken that day. At the end they presented me with an American flag — for Tony — folded up in a triangle, with a plaque signaling their appreciation of his support, a thank-you from the firefighters of New York. For years it was on display in Downing Street, and now we have it at home. I was insistent that we take it when we left: a powerful memory of a very haunting visit.

  By the time we got back to London, a whole new security regime was being put in place. It had been decided that from now on, I would have permanent police protection. What this meant in practical terms was that I stopped going into chambers every day. Like Tony, I could no longer drive; wherever I went, I had to have a Number 10 driver and a close security officer. Once I got back to Number 10, I had to stay there: no picking the children up from friends’ houses, no dropping them off at sports activities, no popping out to the shops or going for a run in St. James’s Park. If I wanted to do any of those things, a detective had to come with me. Everything had to be planned in advance and marked on the appropriate schedule.

  The children were no longer permitted to travel by public transport. One of my main concerns in keeping their faces out of the newspapers was wanting them to lead as normal lives as possible, which meant subways and buses. In fact, we had managed surprisingly well. The nannies, too, were unknown, and could take the children for a hamburger without any fear of their being recognized.

  Euan was far from pleased. He had been taking the underground to school since 1996, and the idea of being driven by the police did not go down well. Nicholas wasn’t much happier. Kathryn, still only twelve, was less resistant, as she hadn’t experienced the same kind of freedom the boys had.

  Security at this level takes some adjusting to. If you have police protection, you have police protection; it is not some sort of optional perk. You cannot go anywhere without having somebody with you, and the police have to know where you are and what you are doing all the time. One evening that autumn, on the spur of the moment, Kathryn and I decided to go to the theater, to see Blood Brothers. The play was written by Willy Russell, whom I knew when he ran a folk club in Liverpool. It starred Barbara Dickson, who, long before she became famous, did a gig at the Trimdon folk club. We were about to set off when I suddenly remembered the security. The ’tecs had left for the day, and I hadn’t made any provision for late-night duties. Although I felt bad, I rang them up and said perhaps they could meet us at the theater. “I’ll just get a taxi there,” I said.

  “Sorry, Mrs. B. You can’t do that,” the officer said. “You’ll have to wait till I get there.”

  “But we’ll be late.”

  “Well, then, you’ll just have t
o be late.”

  Another issue was the nuclear bunker. When we’d first moved in, I had inspected it to see if it was suitable for children. It was totally underground and really spooky. There were army-style bunks, and I couldn’t see how I could ever take the kids down there. Downing Street staff members were divided into groups: Red, Blue, Green, and Orange. In the event of an emergency, the Red group had to come down with us, the Blues were to muster on the lawn, the Greens were to go home but be on call, the Orange group were free to go home and not be on call. Alastair was in the Red group, but Fiona was in the Green group, and I thought, No way is Alastair going to come in with us and leave Fiona and his kids at home if there’s a nuclear Armageddon. I’d told the powers that be as much and asked, “Just how realistic is this as a plan?” In response, they’d asked if I wanted to show the children the bunker, and I’d said no.

  Now I had to address the matter seriously, so Jackie and I went down, as instructed, taking clothes and games and books for the children. Apart from the hum of the air-conditioning, it was as quiet as a grave. Jackie agreed with me that if it ever came to it, this place would completely freak them out.

  In early December the Daily Mail ratcheted up its attacks on me. This time it was in relation to Leo. They demanded to know whether he had had the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine. “Come Clean, Cherie” was the headline. The great issue of the day was whether the MMR vaccine causes autism. A report — since wholly discredited — had said that it could. Then the Mirror joined in. I had innocently responded to a letter sent to me by the mother of an autistic child, saying that I was “keeping an eye on things.” It had seemed fairly innocuous at the time.

  A number of people around me, whose views I respected, were vociferously against all forms of vaccination. Over the years I had listened to their side of the argument, and it’s fair to say that I was of two minds. I did get Leo vaccinated, not least because it’s irresponsible not to — there’s absolutely no doubt that the incidence of a disease goes up if vaccinations go down — and he was given his MMR jab within the recommended time frame. I was adamant, however, that I would not give the press chapter and verse. I saw no reason to parade my family’s vaccination records in front of the public. It would set a bad precedent, and everyone — by which I mean Alastair and Fiona — agreed.

  Chapter 26

  Frontiers

  The invasion of Afghanistan began less than a month after 9/11. The destruction of the Twin Towers was generally acknowledged to have been the work of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization run by Osama bin Laden. Their training camps were known to be in Afghanistan, funded in part at least by the Taliban, which provided support and safe haven. In 1998 President Bill Clinton had launched cruise missile attacks on these camps in retaliation for the al-Qaeda attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa, but with little effect. On October 7, 2001, the aerial bombing of Afghanistan began, and Kabul fell a little over a month later.

  At the beginning of the new year, Tony and I set off on an official trip to Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. By now the Foreign Office had acknowledged my usefulness, and while Tony talked with various officials, I visited a number of projects related to women.

  Because of the color and vibrancy of the subcontinent, the poverty there always comes as a shock. Yet huge efforts were being made to harness the entrepreneurial skills of women. Near Dhaka I visited a microcredit program run by a nongovernmental organization (NGO) called BRAC, which had not only set up the cooperative where women learned to manage the microfinance loans they received but also delivered elementary health care and education to women. Some women would be trained in basic health-care principles and techniques and have access to things such as malaria tablets and contraception. Other women would be trained in women’s basic human rights under Islamic law, learning, for example, that husbands don’t own all their wives’ property and that a husband’s family can’t take away the wife’s property.

  The British High Commission continues to be very involved in dealing with forced marriages and related issues, and I was taken to a refuge for women whose husbands’ families had been in some way dissatisfied with them — perhaps because of their physical appearance or their dowries. To substantiate their claims that these women were substandard, the husbands’ families poured acid from car batteries over the women’s heads. According to Human Rights Watch, in Pakistan such attacks killed 280 women and injured 750 in 2002 alone. In Bangladesh there were 485 acid attacks that year. With the increasing availability of car batteries, these horrific incidents multiplied. The women’s injuries defied description. They had no faces left, or at least no distinguishing features. It was as if their flesh had melted. Hugging these women was, for me, a way of defying their aggressors. I know how much it means to have human contact, and luckily I have never felt any physical repugnance toward any human being, though I believe that is the purpose of these cruel and cowardly attacks.

  At that time in Bangladesh, both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition were women (though they hated each other with a passion). It seems extraordinary to me that in a country where being a woman is apparently no barrier to high office, individual women are treated as being of less value than animals.

  Wanting both to be comfortable and to show respect, I asked Babs Mahil to make my clothes for this trip. She also wanted to make something for Tony — a Nehru-style suit that he wore to the state banquet in India. I thought he looked very handsome, but the British press, true to form, had a real go at him. Sadly, he never wore the suit again. Although Alastair had claimed to approve, he was in fact generally of the opinion that Tony could wear anything as long as it was an ordinary suit, and he was to be the final arbiter of Tony’s attire.

  Thus, when we arrived in Bangladesh, Tony wasn’t even wearing his own suit. Alastair had deemed it too crumpled, and so Magi Cleaver had been dispatched to the terminal to find another one. Some bemused young man, who turned out to be from our Department of International Development, was persuaded to give up his suit for an hour so that the British Prime Minister would look sufficiently smart. For the rest of the trip, André was in charge, and it just went to show once again that when André wasn’t there, things fell apart.

  Our next destination, Kabul, was not on the official itinerary. Indeed, we were under a complete press embargo. “You don’t have to go,” Foreign Office officials had told me, but I was determined: “I’m going with Tony.” It had been nearly two months since Kabul had been taken, but it was still far from safe, which was why we flew in the middle of the night and would go no further than Bagram air base.

  Unsurprisingly, this was the first time I had traveled in an army plane. It was designed for carrying troops, and I’d been warned that it was lacking in even the most basic creature comforts. There were no regular seats, and the toilet was a bucket. Not that I saw it: I decided I would rather die than climb over the press — sworn to silence in exchange for being allowed in on the secret — to go to the bucket in the back.

  In fact, there weren’t that many of us, but Tony and I were lucky enough to be taken into the cockpit, and we were there from takeoff to landing. The crew members were special services people (elite SAS commandos) who had been flying in and out of Afghanistan on various missions since the war began, and they made it seem as easy as a school bus route. These were the kind of daredevil pilots beloved by writers, not faint of heart in any way.

  Tony and I sat in the back of the cockpit where the engineer would normally sit, and above us was a sort of see-through dome where the gunner would stand and direct the fire. As we took off, Tony asked if he could stand up and watch. So there he was, peering out into the night and asking them about this and that. One of the pilots took on the mantle of tour guide, pointing out different peaks and telling us when we were crossing the Khyber Pass — an area that is lawless to this day. As we flew into Afghan airspace over the mountains of northern Pakistan, all the lights went off. Even though we might not
be seen, the pilot helpfully explained, we could still be hit by a heat-seeking missile. An indication on the radar that we might have been spotted resulted in immediate avoidance tactics, and the plane began to swerve and sway, the idea being that any missile already deployed would be misled, aiming for where we had been rather than where we were now.

  So Tony was standing up there, watching all of this, while I was strapped in, thinking, Why did I come? I’ve got four children at home, one of whom is less than two years old. It was nutty of me to think this was a good idea. Believe it or not, as I was sitting there, my entire life really did flash before my eyes. All I could think about was that if I hadn’t come along, at least one of us would have been alive for the kids. Finally, at 1:30 a.m., we arrived at Bagram air base.

  It’s only when you land in a military plane that you realize that a commercial landing is basically done for the benefit of the passengers. There was no question that we had touched down — indeed, “touched” is much too mild a word for it.

  Make no mistake, Afghanistan in January is cold. I had my big heavy coat on, but it wasn’t enough.

  The red carpet was out; I hadn’t expected this kind of welcome. But I was soon disabused of its purpose. “Whatever you do,” the copilot said as we walked down the steps, “stay on the carpet.” Bagram had been mined by Taliban forces, and although some of the mines had been cleared, there was still a way to go. “We can guarantee that as long as you stay on the red carpet, you’ll be okay.” (Whenever I find myself walking on a red carpet, I remember that arrival at Bagram.)

  Even though it was the middle of the night, we were greeted with due ceremony by President Karzai and his Cabinet. I was so grateful to have landed safely I could have kissed them all.

  The SAS had played a very important part in the invasion, and I was totally enthralled by the stories of how they’d stormed Taliban hideouts, real tales of derring-do. It was impossible to imagine how close they’d been to death and how, against all odds, they’d managed to pull it off. Staff from our Department of International Development gave an impressive presentation on what we were going to do to help Afghanistan build itself up again. The Afghans said over and over how grateful they were and how fantastic our people were doing. If you want someone to help rebuild your country, they said, the British have the right stuff.