The peaceful future of Afghanistan depends on the UN, and particularly on one man: the UN special representative for Afghanistan, the Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi.
No one could be better qualified than Brahimi to understand the complexities of that country and to attract the trust of both Westerners and Muslims. He is widely respected by diplomats as a master of their art: sophisticated, highly informed and sceptical, without the cynicism that is their professional disease. His good manners and elegant clothes suggest the diplomacy of salons and chandeliers, yet he has been through some of the most gruelling ordeals.
His harsh schooling was in Algeria when he took part in the liberation movement against the French. He looks back with a sense of tragedy on the destruction of that conflict, convinced the bloodshed could have been avoided if the two sides had understood each other.
As a young diplomat he represented the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Indonesia, and later became ambassador to Cairo. With his revolutionary past and his polished French education, he had ideal credentials, which were enhanced by his marriage to Melica, the daughter of a Yugoslav sea captain based in Egypt who had shipped arms to the FLN.
For most of the 1970s he was ambassador to London, where he stood out among his colleagues with his combination of charm and seriousness. At a time when the oil boom was enriching Islamic countries, he was one of an international network of cultured Arab intellectuals, including his friends Mohamed Heikal and Edward Said, who could provide a bridge for the Arab states to the West.
But his relations with his own country, Algeria, became trickier as it became radicalized. In 1992 he was a member of the High Security Council which took power in Algiers after cancelling the elections which would have brought militant fundamentalists into power. He became foreign minister, but resigned in 1993, frustrated by the interventions of the then prime minister, Belaid Abdessalam.
He was soon recruited to the UN as its troubleshooter in a succession of dangerous countries. In Zaire he helped to persuade Mobutu to leave before he plunged the country further into chaos. In Iraq he tried to persuade Saddam Hussein to admit weapons inspectors.
In South Africa he supervised the elections that led to the victory of Nelson Mandela -- for whom he has great admiration. Back in New York he was seen as a serious candidate to be UN secretary-general before Kofi Annan was chosen.
His toughest and most thankless assignment was to bring peace to Afghanistan, as UN special envoy from 1997. "I take on such cases because I'm foolish enough to accept them," he explained, "No one else will." And it was at a horrible time, as he said later. The Taliban had captured Kabul the year before, murdered the former President Najibullah and imposed a brutal regime. "We are dealing here with a failed state," Brahimi explained later. "It looks like an infected wound."
He made some breakthroughs: in October 1998 he was the first UN official to meet the secretive and dangerous Taliban leader Mullah Mohamed Omar; and in July 1999 he brokered a meeting between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. But the Taliban were still extending their influence and control, and after two years of frustration Brahimi resigned: "I have tried everything I know."
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