Mohamed Sahnoun, the greatness of man

 

Mohamed Sahnoun

1931-2018

An extraordinary diplomat

 

“Born in Algeria in 1931, the son of an imam, educated at the Sorbonne and later at New York University, he returned from Paris to serve in Algeria’s National Liberation Front in the days of its fight against French colonialism, where he was arrested and tortured, as recounted in his autobiographical novel Mémoire Blessée (“Wounded Memory”). When independence was won, he became diplomatic adviser to the country’s provisional government, and subsequently devoted his whole life to diplomacy and the pursuit of peace, with his career postings and titles enough to fill multiple lives.

“His first major postings, from the mid-60s to mid-70s, were as deputy secretary general of the Organization for African Unity at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, then of the Arab League. He went on to be Algeria’s ambassador to Germany, “France, the United Nations, the United States and Morocco. And from the early 1990s he represented the UN in a series of senior capacities, first winning huge international respect (though unhappily not the continuing support of Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali) for the mediation skills he showed as special representative to Somalia in 1992, and then playing multiple roles in the Great Lakes, the Congo, Sudan and Namibia and elsewhere as Special Advisor to Kofi Annan – at one point in the 1990s dealing with five conflicts at once in Africa on the UN’s behalf, and for six months sleeping almost entirely on aeroplanes.

Professor the Hon. Gareth Evans

Former Foreign Minister of Australia

 

As Gareth Evans wrote in his tribute to MS, this was an exceptional man with great reserves of patience, volumes of quiet diplomacy and the enduring ability to never lose his cool, even when all around him were spitting fire and brimstone.

 

I first met Mohamed in the mid-1960s when he was deputy secretary general of the Organisation of African Unity based in Addis Ababa. We met and discussed various political issues every day I was in Addis Ababa. I was also his sounding board for many of the political fires that were burning in Africa. While I considered him a sort of a friend (in the slightest way possible), or a political contact, or anything else, he never crossed the line. He came close to though on several occasions when he tried to twist my arm and tried to lasso me for a job at the OAU HQ. More often than not the OAU was a raging hotbed of African issues. Secretary-General Diallo Telli was a firebrand of a politician, and he relied on MS to regularly pull him out of raging political fires that were commonplace at the OAU.

 

Perhaps his greatest weapon was his enduring smile. It did not matter how hot it was, and even if discussions or not had reached moments from an explosion, MS always kept his cool. He stood his ground, sometimes stubbornly so, at least that is what the rest of us thought about his entrenched stand on a given issue. As usual, when the poetic sun shone an hour or two late and MS had his way, it became clear to all of us mere humans.

 

BY ROBIN WRIGHT

In the LA Times

Soft-spoken but stubborn, skilled at both gentle persuasion and diplomatic pressure, Sahnoun has been asked by both the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to oversee peace talks between Zaire’s government and the rebel faction led by Laurent Kabila, due to begin in South Africa this week. “We’ve made some progress in getting the two sides to meet for the first time in Lome [Togo] last month. They shook hands and agreed to talk,” he says. “Now the hard work begins.”

After new U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Sahnoun is one of Africa’s best-known and widely respected diplomats. He served on a host of U.N. political, cultural and environmental commissions and as deputy secretary-general of the OAU and the Arab League. A graduate of both the Sorbonne and New York University, he served as Algeria’s ambassador to the United Nations, United States, Germany and France. In Washington, the parties he hosted at The Elms, Perle Mesta’s former home, were legendary for the array of prominent names who turned up--most unusual for an African diplomatic function. After retiring from the diplomatic service, Sahnoun was also a senior fellow at the U.S. Peace Institute, the congressional think tank in Washington, and then its Canadian equivalent.”

The job wore him down, sometimes the battles were unwinnable. He was fired from the UN but promptly restored to his job when Kofi Anan became Secretary General.

However, for those who were part of his inner circle, he was something of a political prophet. In the few years I had known him, I learnt heaps. MS is one man I remember with a tear in my eye. We lost track of each after Addis Ababa and never connected again.