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.
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.
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