A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants: Memoirs of a Prairie Diplomat 9781442670495

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
1. A Prairie Puritan from Saskatchewan
2. A Neophyte at External: Ottawa, 1955 and 1959-1961
3. Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan, 1956-1958
4. A Dancing Leader: Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Pakistan
5. Confrontation and Partisanship: Malaysia, 1961-1964
6. An Avuncular Leader: Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia
7. International Development: Ottawa, 1965-1968 and 1972-1975
8. The Temptations of Paris: The OECD, 1968-1972
9. The Mighty World Bank: Washington, 1975-1982
10. A Controversial Leader: McNamara of the World Bank
11. The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia, 1982-1983
12. An Iconoclast in China: Beijing, 1987-1989
13. Tiananmen Crisis: China, 1989-1990
14. An Unloved Leader: Premier Li Peng of China
Epilogue
Notes
Index

Citation preview

A S T U B B L E - J U M P E R IN S T R I P E D P A N T S : MEMOIRS

OF A P R A I R I E

DIPLOMAT

With Governor General Sauve at Rideau Hall when a new ambassador to Canada was presenting his credentials. This is one of the few occasions when Canadian diplomats actually wear striped pants. Source: author's collection, courtesy of Andor Andre Sima, Ottawa.

EARL G. DRAKE

A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants: Memoirs of a

Prairie Diplomat

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1999 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-4464-6

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Drake, Earl A stubble-jumper in striped pants : memoirs of a prairie diplomat Includes bibliographical references and index.. ISBN 0-8020-4464-6 1. Drake, Earl. 2. Canada - Foreign relations - 1945- . 3. Diplomats - Canada - Bibliography. I. Title. Fc6o1.D72S3 1999 F1034-3.D72A3 1999

327.71'oo92

C99-93O299-X

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Canada

To Monica

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

Prologue xiii 1 A Prairie Puritan from Saskatchewan 3 2 A Neophyte at External: Ottawa, 1955 and 1959-1961 15 3 Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan, 1956-1958 25 4 A Dancing Leader: Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Pakistan 48 5 Confrontation and Partisanship: Malaysia, 1961-1964 62 6 An Avuncular Leader: Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia 77 7 International Development: Ottawa, 1965-1968 and 1972-1975 92 8 The Temptations of Paris: The OECD, 1968-1972 113 9 The Mighty World Bank: Washington, 1975-1982 131 10 A Controversial Leader: McNamara of the World Bank 150 11 The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia, 1982-1983 164 12 An Iconoclast in China: Beijing, 1987-1989 181 13 Tiananmen Crisis: China, 1989-1990 199 14 An Unloved Leader: Premier Li Peng of China 215 Epilogue 229 NOTES

239

INDEX 243

Illustrations follow page 112

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments

This book was written largely from memory between 1992 and 1996, long after most of the events transpired. Whenever possible, the facts were checked against written records; but I kept no diaries, so the text is based mainly on my subjective, and no doubt imperfect, recollections of what it was like to live and work in distant places during a bygone era. In several cases, this meant revealing that I had been naive or politically incorrect by current standards. Perhaps the clearest illustration of this point is my rather sympathetic treatment of President Suharto. In the light of recent revelations about his corrupt and ruthless rule, I was briefly tempted to rewrite the Indonesia chapter to make myself look wise by hindsight. Of course, I could not do that. In truth, I had shared the prevalent Western view in 1982-3 that, despite his authoritarian ways, Suharto was a skilful (and even personally likeable) leader of his important country. But so be it; I clearly made mistakes and I never pretended to be prescient. My aim has been to report accurately on how I felt and acted there and then. While there is no one but myself to blame for any errors in this text, there are a few people who deserve to share the credit for any merits it may have. They fall largely into three groups: those who encouraged me to write and publish my story against my own inclination to privacy; those who helped me through the typing, editorial, and production phases; and those who found the financial support needed to publish. Foremost among those who, when I was discouraged, encouraged me to continue the project, was my wife Monica (to whom this book is dedicated), together with my children Catherine (and her husband Lawrence Jenkens) and David, and a friend from my Saskatchewan

x

Acknowledgments

days, Jean Dell. They not only gave me general moral support but cheerfully slogged through early drafts, corrected mistakes, and tactfully noted dubious syntax and better ways to make a point - but always urged me to keep on with the book. As for the production phase, I am indebted to my colleague Yichun Dai who, in addition to her normal busy schedule at Simon Fraser University, graciously devoted care and time to retyping the entire text and many amendments, helping select and format pictures, and verifying several points about China. I am grateful to two former colleagues from the Canadian embassy in Beijing, John Morrison and Hau Sing Tse, for providing unique personal photographs to illustrate the text. I also wish to record my thanks to all the people at the University of Toronto Press who assisted me, especially Gerald Hallowell, Emily Andrew, Jill McConkey, Diane Mew, and Frances Mundy. As one might expect from such a distinguished publishing house, all these people proved to be highly competent professionals who provided expert guidance and assistance at every step of the process. What I had not anticipated was that they would turn out to be such pleasant and interesting individuals. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I had retained old mutterings by friends about 'tyrannical editors.' Imagine my surprise when my editors turned out to be not only able but very agreeable as well. Lastly, there was the problem of money. No Canadian publisher is having an easy time of it these days. Except for cookbooks and the works of a few literary superstars, there are no secure financial ventures for a contemporary publisher. When I first approached a respected commercial publisher, he responded that my reminiscence had 'some real merit... but I could not see selling more than a few hundred copies ... That is a scale at which we can no longer operate/ He went on to suggest that I try a university press devoted more to scholarship than profit. I appreciate that the University of Toronto Press was willing to take a chance on these memoirs, but even it needed to have a small subsidy before going ahead with the heavy cost involved. I am grateful to Professor Jan Walls and Alison Winters at Simon Fraser University for helping me find the required subsidy. I wish it were possible to acknowledge my benefactor publicly but that foundation wishes to remain anonymous and so I have only been able to express my thanks privately. Some memoirs mention many friends and acquaintances met along the way. I began to write in that fashion but soon decided that the long

Acknowledgments xi lists of names cluttered up the flow of the narrative. My aim was to tell a readable story of one career in the Canadian Foreign Service. My method was to highlight selected events and people which might interest a broad readership, not to catalogue all my acquaintances and activities. This does not mean that I have forgotten valued old friends or professional colleagues. If their names are omitted, it simply means that they did not fit naturally into the telling of this set of recollections. If the book had focused more on personal relationships than on diplomatic tales, a rather different set of names would have been stressed.

This page intentionally left blank

Prologue

It was June 1989 in Beijing.1 For six weeks, China's capital had been the centre of world attention as the international media sent hourly reports on the occupation of Tiananmen Square by students demanding reform and on their subsequent, bloody expulsion from it by the Chinese army. Emotions and hopes had swung wildly from euphoria to despair. At first, the student demonstrators had been supported by intellectuals, workers, ordinary citizens, the local media, and overseas Chinese in the millions. The Chinese government seemed split on how to react and paralysed by indecision. The watching world had been caught up in the drama and swept along by the hope that some elements of a free society were finally coming to the world's oldest and largest autocracy. Then the army shot its way into the heart of the city, massacring and wounding thousands of civilians and arresting thousands more. The outside world watched their television screens with shock and disbelief, but those of us on the spot were viscerally affected. We were consumed first by horror, then by grief and anger, at the wanton brutality of the army's action and the utter rejection of even the mildest student requests for reform. We had always felt that the students had little chance of winning dramatic change, but no one had expected such a bloody reimposition of totalitarianism. Now, on the morning of 4 June, the euphoria was gone. We watched helplessly as some of the dead and wounded were brought to the hospital next door. We also tried to cope with frantic telephone calls from Canada asking us to save their loved ones who were visiting China. In Beijing as Canada's ambassador to China, I had just experienced the most dramatic events of my life. As a professional diplomat representing a country with important stakes in China, I had striven to be a

xiv

Prologue

cool and detached observer of the situation. Carefully, my embassy team and I tried to make objective assessments of the dramatic events. During the early weeks of the student demonstrations, we had warned Ottawa not to be swept away by media hype that we were witnessing another triumph of 'people power/ as had recently occurred in Manila. We cautioned that the Chinese scene was very different from the Philippines and much closer to Burma, where student demonstrations had been repressed with tragic violence. Still, we too shared some of the prevalent emotions as we talked daily to Chinese citizens from all walks of life. We sympathized with their hopes for a better life and shared their admiration for the brave young hunger-strikers risking their lives to advocate peaceful reform. After the crackdown, I was under the greatest pressure to find and evacuate more than five hundred Canadians, scattered all over China, as quickly as possible. The capital was under martial law, all normal services were suspended, food and gasoline supplies were scarce, and everyone was gripped by fear. After a few days of hectic activity, we managed to arrange four successful evacuation flights and to remove safely all those Canadians who responded to the Canadian government's warning to leave China. The only ones not allowed to leave were myself and eighteen others whom I designated as essential staff. Our job was to keep the embassy open in a wounded, desperate, alien city so that we could protect Canadian interests. One other person also stayed with us, not because she had to do so, but because she gallantly volunteered to help the team - my wife, Monica. I was told by Ottawa that there would be no more evacuation flights. As essential staff, we were on our own and 'good luck.' Then I was secretly briefed by our allies that the latest intelligence indicated two Chinese army units were likely to start fighting each other in the city streets. We should prepare ourselves for bloody civil war and take shelter wherever we thought best. Of course, in the event, those dire predictions did not come to pass, but the threat seemed very real at the time. We took seriously the advice to write our wills and be ready to burn our confidential files. It was on the night of that briefing that I began to reflect on my career in the Canadian Foreign Service and to wonder how I, a nice, normal, prairie boy, had ended up in a job like this. I decided that if I survived that adventure in China, I should record some memories of my arcane career. I was motivated primarily by a simple desire to tell the story of the unusual work I had done in some exotic places, and of some ex-

Prologue xv traordinary people I had met. I also thought these recollections might help to inform the public about the human face of postwar Canadian diplomacy in an era when the world community was changing and impinging on their lives as never before. Lastly, I hoped these memoirs might be available to a few young people who needed encouragement to believe that, despite their geographic isolation and humble origins, they can aspire to do anything they set their minds to, anywhere in the world.

This page intentionally left blank

A S T U B B L E - J U M P E RI N S T R I P E D P A N T S : M E M O I R S OF A P R A I R I E D I P L O M A T

This page intentionally left blank

1

A Prairie Puritan from Saskatchewan

Do you really think you could fit into the Foreign Service? Your life has been spent in isolated Saskatchewan - so distant from the mainstream that it even has a socialist government. You have a bookish knowledge of foreign affairs but how would a 'stubble-jumper' like you cope with sophisticated international politics? How comfortable would you be in striped pants?

I felt my cheeks flush at these taunting words from the examiners who had come from Ottawa for my oral examination for entry into the Canadian Foreign Service. It was 1953,1 was twenty-five years old, and had never lived outside Saskatchewan except for one year at the University of Toronto. I had completed my MA in history at the University of Saskatchewan, won a scholarship to Toronto, and was now back home working as an archivist cataloguing the personal papers of early provincial premiers. I planned to save enough money and find enough pertinent documents to complete my doctoral thesis, and then to become a university lecturer. After the usual youthful fantasies about a career - basso pro/undo at the opera, clergyman, and lawyer - I had finally decided to become a history professor, specializing in Western Canadian history. This suited my blend of idealism and pragmatism. Teaching was a worthy pursuit and history was an important subject, especially in a young and heterogeneous society such as Saskatchewan. As one of my professors had responded to a doubter, 'A country without a history is like a person without a memory/ A good history teacher could instil a sense of pride in the contributions of the various ethnic groups that now lived together in the new land. Moreover, an historian had a professional duty to present his findings objectively, unswayed by his emotions or by

4 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants vested interests.1 Perverse and twisted propaganda by fascist and communist pseudo-historians was so recent that I was acutely aware of this danger. Even at the height of my historical zeal, however, I retained a balancing streak of pragmatic common sense. History was not only a high calling, it was also enjoyable, challenging, and provided a reasonable standard of living. So why was I subjecting myself to this testy interview for the Foreign Service? The reason was that I had come under the sway of a great mind at the University of Toronto. Professor Frank Underhill was my thesis adviser and guru. He was widely revered both as an historian and as one of Canada's most incisive commentators on current political and economic issues. He was the principal author of the Regina Manifesto, the founding document of organized socialism in Canada, and was a frequent contributor to Canadian Forum, the leading left-wing intellectual journal of current affairs. He was my hero: a man of high ideals, a brilliant scholar, a fearless critic of hypocrisy and sloppy thinking, and a forceful, witty writer. Also, he had begun his career teaching history at the University of Saskatchewan. I worshipped at his feet. His advice to me was as follows: 'You are a good history student. Before you can be a good history teacher, however, you need to experience more of life. Get your nose out of books for a while, get involved in the raw reality of what motivates other people and see how decisions are made. Go and be a reporter for a good newspaper, for example. Then come back and finish your thesis. You will be a better historian for it/ I was stunned but I saw his point. I tried unsuccessfully to gain employment as a reporter. So I worked as an historian and archivist under the auspices of the Saskatchewan Archives Board. Among other things, I wrote what was, at the time, the definitive history of Regina. My book, entitled Regina, The Queen City, was published by McClelland and Stewart in 1955 and attained a modest critical and sales success. I also taught history part-time at the University of Saskatchewan. However, I remained on the lookout for an opportunity to follow my mentor's advice. I chanced upon a notice for the annual Foreign Service examination. I was dimly aware that this was rather competitive but had no idea how fiercely contested it was, with many hundreds of applicants trying annually for a few positions. I knew no one who had ever tried the examination. I could not imagine what would be asked or expected by the Department of External Affairs. Perhaps this was fortunate, because I sat for the exam without any

A Prairie Puritan 5 trepidation or, indeed, concern for my success. After all, it was just one possible approach to the ultimate goal of becoming an historian. I was therefore surprised and pleased that I did well enough on the written test that I was called to the oral examination. I was ready for questions on international affairs; I was not expecting queries as to whether my personal background equipped me for an alien world. My examiners had some doubts about this puritanical prairie academic, so they deliberately provoked me to see how I would react to being called a 'stubble-jumper/ a slang term for a country bumpkin. I do not remember the interview in any detail except my response to the opening unfriendly questions. Implicit in those questions was a whole set of attitudes and misunderstandings about prairie socialism, puritan behaviour, and the character of Saskatchewan. I did not expand on all these matters at my interview but I thought they deserved to be better understood then - and I do now. Prairie Socialism My examiners made one mistake which allowed me to put them on the defensive. One of them said point blank: 'Are you a socialist? If so, how could we be sure of your sympathy for Canada rather than for some left-wing ideology?' I leapt on this with righteous indignation: 'You have no right to ask my political affiliation or cast aspersions on my loyalty - and you know it. As a matter of fact, I belong to no political party but I am attracted to democratic socialists because they care about social justice. They are patriotic Canadians who despise communism because it is an economic and political failure. If you are confusing Canadian socialism and Soviet communism, then you have a problem, not me.' Oh, to be young, idealistic, and self-righteous! Now that I have become more worldweary and cynical, I fear I could never again become quite so indignant about anything. But I still relish the memory of pricking the balloon of Eastern smugness and feeling morally superior, all in one youthful declamation. Saskatchewan was sometimes misunderstood to be the home of political extremists. Certainly our vigorous politics have spawned some of Canada's most rousing and colourful orators, such as Tommy Douglas and John Diefenbaker. Considering the appalling socio-economic impact of the decade of drought and depression in the 19305, however, the province's political reaction was remarkably restrained. Many people

6 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants did become bitter towards ineffectual government in Regina and Ottawa; so they elected North America's first democratic socialist administration in 1944. In reality, that was a moderate and responsible government. It was the most innovative group of cabinet ministers and senior advisers Saskatchewan ever had, but it was not the horde of wild radicals some Easterners believed it to be. An Anglo-Saxon Puritan I was an unrepentant Anglo-Saxon Protestant. My ancestors were of middle-class English Methodist and Scottish Presbyterian stock. The Drake family has been in Canada since 1826, and some of my mother's ancestors, the McMartins and MacGregors, arrived in Canada even earlier as United Empire Loyalists. Thus my family had no British accent or class consciousness, but had retained all the British Protestant values and attitudes. We were vaguely proud of our British heritage: the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, great literature, science, business acumen, and a sense of fair play. In the interests of objectivity, I will confess that we were guilty of one outright prejudice for which there was little justification - we thought British cooking was the best cuisine! But we did not go around boasting about our British heritage. In Saskatchewan we were part of a polyglot society of recent immigrants still retaining much of the culture of our homelands. Most of us had come from northern Europe, because only those peoples were hardy or foolish enough to try farming in a harsh, lonely environment. There was also a smattering of people from the Mediterranean and the Orient. I do not remember hearing derogatory comments about our non-British neighbours, except about Native Canadians. Perhaps this was because we British were also a minority, or perhaps it was because various groups had already begun to intermarry; but I think it was because most of us were recent arrivals, still struggling to overcome the hardships of drought and depression. In a new land where you are the first settlers, you have to pull together to create a basic infrastructure. Neighbours must pool resources to construct houses and barns and then a school, church, and town hall. You need to assemble all the workers of the area to form a threshing crew. Time is short to harvest the crops before snowfall. Only one huge threshing machine is available because it is expensive. So the great machine is hauled from farm to farm with all the men feeding grain into it and all the women feeding them. There is little room for ethnic prejudice in such an atmosphere.

A Prairie Puritan 7 I grew up in the small cities of Regina and Saskatoon, but all of us, city and country dwellers alike, knew that our fortunes were totally dependent on agriculture. Moreover, having spent every summer of my youth on farms with my grandfather and other relatives, I learned respect for their hard way of earning a living. My family and friends were deeply imbued with egalitarian and utilitarian rural ethics. The test was: are they good neighbours? If so, no one cared if their name was Hasselback, Hansen, or Hnatyshyn. We had no 'Polish jokes/ Surprisingly, the disparaging stories were about English city gentlemen because they did not conform to the rural, immigrant code of hard work and adaptability. I was not only an Anglo-Saxon Protestant but a puritan as well. The latter has been defined as 'one who lives in accordance with stern Protestant precepts, especially one who regards luxury or pleasure as sinful.' If this is an accurate definition, we were diluted puritans. Certainly we were Protestants to the core. For a Saskatchewan schoolboy, that was a critical distinction. Catholics went to separate schools while Protestants and others (ranging from Orthodox Christians to a few Jews, Muslims, and atheists) attended public schools. Students of the two school systems rarely met. When we did, we hurled epithets at each other. 'Catlicker' and 'potlicker' were the favourites and considered devastatingly scurrilous. Most of us were born into our religious persuasion and carried on without thinking much about alternatives. But I had the bad luck to fall in love with a Catholic girl and this forced me to examine my beliefs. This was my first love affair. It was an allconsuming emotional experience for five years. Her name was Maureen Kelly, the only child of first-generation Irish immigrants. She lived a few blocks from me on the same street. We had not met in primary school because she went to a separate school. At the secondary level, however, she shifted to the public school because her parents could not afford to send her to an expensive Catholic high school. There we met. She was considered to be one of the most beautiful girls, with her long, shining black hair, perfect skin and teeth, trim figure, and luminescent eyes. She was also regarded as aloof, studious, and proud. Certainly not the sort of girl for a casual fling. That was fine with me; I was not the casual type either. I fell hopelessly in love with her. The way she smiled and walked and squeezed my hand and kissed me in secret and wrote love letters and mixed seriousness with fun: it was all magic! I was one year ahead of her in school - thank goodness, for our studies could not have withstood the distractions of proximity had we been in the same classroom.

8 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants We walked to and from school together. Our parents had nearby cottages at Regina Beach, where we spent every temperate weekend together. When we were apart, we talked endlessly on the telephone. We were totally devoted and loyal to each other, never dating anyone else, even during my long absences at university. Many people thought that we would marry. Our parents feared that we would because religious differences hung over us; she was forbidden fruit. Occasionally we went to each other's church together, where we both felt uncomfortable. She insisted that, if we were to marry, I must convert and promise that all children be brought up in her faith. I considered very deeply whether I could convert because I wanted her so much. I finally decided that I could not do it. It was the most painful decision I had ever made up to that time. The sense of hurt and loss lasted a long time. I could not be untrue to my convictions, however, even for the girl I loved and thought, with mistaken youthful ardour, could never be replaced. The involvement with Maureen demonstrated to me that I had a Protestant soul. It was not, however, a joyless one. In my view, the essence of Protestantism is the belief in direct communion between man and God without the intercession of priest or sacrament. Church doctrine, fellowship, clergy, ceremonies, music, art, and architecture can assist in that communion and be comforting for rites of passage, but they are not essential to a Protestant. He believes that only through faith, good works, and study of Holy Writ can he find salvation. That is a powerful, self-motivating, and democratic doctrine but it also puts a terribly heavy burden on each individual. It is hardly surprising that Protestants, who believe that they alone are responsible for their own well-being in this world and the next, have to ration the time they can indulge in pleasure. Precepts like duty, moral responsibility, self-control, self-sacrifice, moderation in all things, and avoidance of waste and frivolity come naturally to a Protestant. Even if one lapses from the religious faith, the old precepts still seem sound for someone wanting to be a good family man and citizen. Church services, and especially the sermon, seemed endless to a boy. I enjoyed two aspects of Sunday, however. I loved to participate in the congregational hymn singing. I was always moved by the exhortation, 'Let us make a joyful noise unto the Lord' and sang the old gospel hymns with much gusto. It came as a great shock to me later when outsiders told me that I could not carry a tune. In deference to these

A Prairie Puritan 9 self-styled music critics, I have with great reluctance stopped singing in public, I still carry a deep-seated conviction, however, that God appreciates an enthusiastic hymn singer. In that respect at least, we puritans had all the fun in singing at the top of our voices, regardless of talent. My other great pleasure on Sunday was the boys' club. It was held in the church hall after the Sunday morning service. As president for several years, I enjoyed devising our own programs and projects, which were almost totally secular. I also liked being president, enjoying the political process and the sense of accomplishment in extracting a consensus from a boisterous rabble. It was a wonderful club. The boys liked it because we could do our own thing on Sunday when everything else in town was closed. Our parents were reassured because we were in church, where they mistakenly believed we could not get into mischief. The church was pleased because we not only contributed a little money to it but conducted an annual church service, creating the illusion that we were serious Christians. Even the girls approved because we sponsored dances, cookouts, and other functions which their parents would allow them to attend. We quickly learned that a church affiliation was a wonderful way to fool everyone into thinking a group of young devils were angels. In fact, we seldom betrayed the church's trust, but we did do unorthodox things. On one occasion we persuaded the local butcher to donate a turkey and the police to permit us to sell raffle tickets (by presenting ourselves as a church club). When we were subsequently informed that this was contrary to church doctrine, we simply scratched the church's name from each ticket and went ahead with the raffle. The greatest scandal was yet to come: the raffle was won by my Catholic girlfriend's mother! My favourite project was the hayride. Now, a basic hayride is the most innocent of rural pleasures. You sit on a rack filled with soft, sweet, new-mown hay while a horse slowly and silently pulls you through the countryside, allowing you to commune with nature. Our club mixed in two ingredients which added a bit of spice. We held the hayride in the evening and we invited girls. By doing this in the church's name we assuaged parental concerns about the real purpose of this dubious outing. The boys were in no doubt as to its objective. If you ride a hayrack on a prairie evening, gallantry, if nothing else, impels you to put your arms around your girl to protect her from the cool breeze and from imaginary crawling things which might lurk in the

io A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants hay. Then, there is nothing else for it but to snuggle back and let two hearts beat together in awe of the splendour of the sunset and the harvest moon sailing across the vast, star-studded, prairie sky. What pleased me most was the thought that we had convinced the church and our parents that this was a guileless nature expedition, had brought Protestants and Catholics literally into each other's arms, and had turned a neat profit through the sale of tickets. I suppose outsiders considered us repressed and stern but we did not feel that way. We were quietly happy, in tune with our society and selfconfident because of our sense of values and our moderation. In my case, any tendency to stern judgment was simply swept out the door by my remarkable mother. She was convinced there was a lot of goodness in everyone. If you believed in others, they would not let you down. Usually she turned out to be correct. When she was not, she had a simple expedient: she refused to listen to any evidence to the contrary! As puritans we shunned indulgence. We were sober, industrious churchgoers. But we were not pious introverts, mortifying the flesh. Quite the contrary. The church was well and good on Sundays and for weddings and funerals but it did not dominate our lives. No clergyman cowed us. We made up our own minds on all issues. We were selfconfident individuals who found pleasure in most things and laughed frequently at our politicians, our clergymen, our neighbours, and ourselves. We thought it unseemly to discuss sex or money but enjoyed them both - in moderation, of course. We also enjoyed sports, travel, and the arts. Not surprisingly, given our long and fierce winters, we were particularly addicted to all athletic activities connected to ice, such as hockey, figure-skating, and curling. You either adapted to the long winter and found something to enjoy in it or you went under; there was no other choice. Everyone was knowledgeable about and took pride in local hockey teams and the many local hockey players who starred in the National Hockey League. My favourite was Gordie Howe, who was born a few weeks before me and a few miles away on the outskirts of Saskatoon. He overcame abject poverty and hand-me-down equipment during the depression to go on to become, arguably, one of the greatest hockey players of all time. But for most of us, serious hockey was a spectator sport. For others, particularly girls such as my sister Joan, figure-skating became a major activity in which they spent countless hours training, staging ice shows, and competing. Joan was inspired to redouble her efforts when Barbara Ann Scott, a distant cousin in Ontario, won the world figure-skating

A Prairie Puritan

11

championship. But alas, a serious injury in which her partner dropped her during a spin forced my sister to abandon her hopes for a figureskating career. I was not as athletic or gifted as my sister and concentrated on the less demanding sport of curling. And I aspired to emulate more accessible heroes, the perennial curling champions of Saskatchewan, the Campbell brothers from the small town of Avonlea. I was in such awe of these four sturdy wheat farmers that I even volunteered to shovel wheat for them one harvest weekend in the vain hope that they might invite me to throw a few curling rocks for them, or even carry their curling brooms. Now shovelling wheat is a back-breaking task even for a strong farmer who has done it all his life, but for a scholarly city boy, it is sheer agony. I had never shovelled wheat before and disregarded a warning from my father (who had often done it in his youth) that I was not in good enough shape for it. That only made me more determined. It was also a measure of how difficult it was to get anyone to shovel wheat in the postwar period that the Campbells agreed to try me out in sheer desperation. After one day of blistered hands, a near-broken back, and sheer exhaustion, I had shovelled approximately the amount any one of the sturdy Campbells could do in half the time. They were polite about my efforts: 'not bad for a city kid.' But they never invited me back to shovel again, much less to curl for them, because as they pointed out in their taciturn way, curling is not easy like shovelling wheat; curling takes practice, concentration, and real effort. So I gave up on my dream of curling with champions, but I continued to curl just for the love of the game, like most men, women, and children in Saskatchewan. A more loquacious Campbell, a reporter named Murray, has captured well the Saskatchewan addiction to curling: There are a few eternal verities in Saskatchewan. Things will always be better next year' is one of them. Another deals with curling ... Sure, curling was invented by the Scots. But what do rain-soaked Scots know about weather so harsh that tires freeze into squares? No, the home of curling is in Canada and its warm hearth is on the Prairies. There are as many curlers in Saskatchewan as there are in Ontario - making it the highest per capita concentration in the country. If there's a sound that defines winter nights in the province's small, isolated hamlets, it's the rhythmic slap of corn brooms, the clack of the granite rocks against each other and the urgent, unintelligible commands of the team

12 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants skip ... At its best, it's got a bit of chess to it. But at its most fundamental, it's a brutal succession of knockout blows. In that way, it is ideally suited to the obstructive Canadian character. If you can't put a rock in the centre of the circle, it's just as good to block everyone else or knock them out of the house.2

Much as we loved our home province, we were always curious to see something of the outside world. One summer, when I was sixteen and my sister was eleven, our parents drove us through the mountains to Vancouver. The effect on us both was electrifying. Two prairie kids were captivated by the beauty and grandeur of the mountains and the ocean, the lushness of the gardens and fruit orchards, the smell of the forests, the balminess of the climate, and the relaxed lifestyle. We had discovered the Elysian fields! I suspect that Joan decided then and there to move to British Columbia at the- first opportunity, and she subsequently did so. Being more deliberate in all things, I concluded that these discoveries warranted a serious study of the rest of the world before I decided on anything. My other inspiration was the movie The Red Shoes, featuring the ballet dancing of Moira Shearer. It was my friend and college room-mate, Dick Hasselback, who suggested we go. He was then, and remains now, one of those rare medical students with wide-ranging interests far beyond his own field of study. I had never before seen a ballet. I was transported to another sphere by the fusion of interpretative dance, lyrical music, ethereal costumes, and the compelling story of the red shoes. I realized more vividly than ever before that there must be a whole panoply of art out there waiting for me to discover and enjoy. So I decided to stop moping about Maureen and to find another girl. A few years later, in 1953, I married Joyce Slater, a lively and pretty Saskatchewan Protestant. She had a fine singing voice, an empathy for all the arts, and a special avocation for ballet dancing. Romantically, I hoped she would be my Moira Shearer. Saskatchewan The last of the Eastern Canadian myths concerned not just puritans but my whole province and its people. They sometimes called us isolationists, rednecks, and denizens of a bleak wasteland. The truth is the people of Saskatchewan are highly global in their outlook because they have so recently come from elsewhere and because they know that their exports are subject to external decisions on

A Prairie Puritan 13 markets, prices, and freight rates. They also realize all too well that world events could involve their sons and daughters in foreign wars. In my day, we read a lot about international affairs. The sense of being in touch with the world was especially vivid for me, because my father (a farm-implement company executive by vocation) was a pioneer amateur radio operator in his spare time. Through equipment which he assembled and operated himself, he was in frequent voice contact with people all over the world. My dad, with his legendary reputation as an electrical and mechanical wizard, was widely admired, and as a boy I basked in his reflected glory. This experience gave me a deep respect for what people could do with their hands (even though I was much better with a book and pen). Mostly, however, it fascinated me with the prospect of learning more about the outside world. The insinuation of Saskatchewan anti-intellectualism by my Foreign Service examiners was the basest of all the canards. The use of reason and the pursuit of knowledge and higher education had always had a very high priority in my province. Montreal had been settled for two centuries before it had a university but our province had established the University of Saskatchewan within five years of its founding. Though frugal in most things, Saskatchewan did not stint on its university. Led by its first president, Walter Murray, and by its dean of agriculture, my great-uncle Will Rutherford, it stressed academic excellence and relevance to the community. Within forty-five years the American Association for the Advancement of Science ranked our university eighth among all the institutions of North America in the production of distinguished scientists. Eastern critics could call us cantankerous and antiestablishment but not ignorant rednecks. The casual visitor to Saskatchewan notices only that the stubbled prairies are vast, bleak, and lonely, the climate harsh and extreme, the settlement pattern new and sparse, and the people intolerant of nonsense, pretence, and indolence. If visitors stay and look longer, they discover that there is an obverse side of the coin. The prairies are not only stark but beautiful and have fashioned a people who have a unique closeness to nature and a special inner resilience and adaptability. Because modesty and reticence are also local traits, Saskatchewan qualities have been best described by outsiders. Let me quote from two quite different ones. The ready adaptation of local lads to seafaring ways was once summed up by Vice-Admiral Mainguy, the chief of the naval staff, as follows: "There is a quality which is to be found in great abundance on the

14 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants prairies, that of being able to do the best that you can with what you have, no matter what the circumstances are, and maintaining good humour whilst you are doing it. This quality is essential to successful existence at sea, and in the wide spaces of the prairies/3 The distinguished novelist and essayist Hugh MacLennan once wrote: How can they want to live in a country like this? On winter days when fortymile-an-hour gales tear across the prairie snows, this writer from gentle Nova Scotia has had the same thought. There is no use in pretending that the Saskatchewan River country is a kind one to its people even now; half a century ago it was as cruel as the Pole. This is one of the sternest terrains I know inhabited by people living normal civilized lives ... The Saskatchewan country can be so bleakly stern it shrivels the soul; it can also intoxicate with a deluge of prolific loveliness that makes an English June seem insipid by comparison. In the spring the voice of the turtle is not heard much in this land, but the voices and movements of a myriad of other birds, many of them waterfowl, make hundreds of miles of clear atmosphere quiver with sound and flash with colour and the very sky thrill with the larks. The sloughs teem, the land deprived by the long winter goes mad with the lust of re-creating the life the frost has killed. Moses would have understood this land. Had civilized men lived along the Saskatchewan three millenniums ago, the prairie country would have burgeoned with psalmists and prophets.4 Thus, I felt seasoned by the rigours of Saskatchewan, as I headed east in 1955 to start my new career. I also had some of the zeal of a prophet to show the heathen what a stubble-jumping puritan could do.

2

A Neophyte at External: Ottawa, 1955 and 1959-1961

To be near the operation of power, to live under the tensions of recurrent crises, to participate, in however small a way, in the great game of world politics, all this was immensely stimulating. It also drained one's other interests, leaving behind it a sediment of dissatisfaction. Charles Ritchie, Diplomatic Passport, 43-4

During my first years in Ottawa I had two major cultural adjustments to make: to French Canadians, and to the Department of External Affairs. I assumed that the first would be difficult and the second easy. I was wrong on both counts. Adjusting to French Canadians Because my knowledge of Quebec was limited to reading about 'the two solitudes' and because Protestant-Catholic differences had caused me such pain during my first romance, I was apprehensive about my ability to get on with these distant compatriots of a different culture and religion. I did not, however, approach the problem with a redneck, anti-Quebec attitude. I came to live among these francophones with some trepidation but with a disposition to be positive, because of my grandfather's admiration for the old Liberal leader, Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Although at the time I went to Ottawa I was in a phase of youthful socialist idealism, the Drake family had been staunch Liberals for generations. In Prince Edward Island, where the Drakes originally settled, all small farmers' families were indoctrinated from infancy into the

16 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants Liberal faith as the only shield against big landlords and their political arm, the Tory party. This Liberal conviction had been reinforced when my branch of the family moved to Saskatchewan in 1904 under the aegis of a Liberal government which had a vigorous policy to encourage the rapid settlement of the prairies. Sir Wilfrid Laurier had been the great leader of the Liberal party and government in the expansionist and prosperous decade before the First World War. In my family's eyes, he had done other commendable things. He had encouraged the formation of the new provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta and the expansion of railways in the West. He had healed some of Canada's linguistic and religious divisions. He had presided over government with grace, style, and eloquence in two languages. And he frequently visited the West and identified himself with its progress and aspirations as no other national leader ever has (except John Diefenbaker, much later). In a public meeting in Regina, Laurier once declaimed: 'I have imbibed the air, spirit and enthusiasm of the West; I am a true Westerner henceforth/ His audience believed him and loved him for it. As a brash youngster, I once tried to argue with my grandfather about Canadian politics. I was rebuked sternly. "There is no Quebec problem as such/ he said. 'If we wish to achieve a fair and sensible resolution of economic and political issues, Western Canadians should recognize that Quebeckers are our natural allies and can provide excellent national leaders. Laurier was the greatest prime minister we have ever had. He understood us, he helped us and he inspired us. Don't ever forget that, young man/ So I went to Eastern Canada with mixed emotions about Quebec. The current prime minister, Louis St Laurent, was solid and respected, if less inspiring than Laurier. On the other hand, francophone Catholics were very different than prairie puritans. How would I get on with my new colleagues? As luck would have it, my first office-mate and stenographer were both francophone women, Georgette and Lise. I found them both utterly charming. They were quick-witted, lively, intellectually curious, and articulate in both official languages. What impressed me most was how interested they were in exchanging ideas on politics, economics, morality, and religion. In contrast to my Irish-Catholic friends in Saskatchewan, these Quebeckers were refreshingly open-minded and even a touch irreverent in discussing any aspect of religion. I was also struck by their warmth, spontaneity, and self-confidence in expressing

A Neophyte at External 17 their emotions. Lastly, I was taken by the flair with which they dressed and used colours. Neither of these women was a classic beauty but they made the most of their physical attributes with a boldness and elan to which I was not accustomed. My knowledge of written French was passable; my conversational French was nil. My francophone colleagues were generous in tolerating my linguistic inadequacies and in encouraging my attempts to overcome them. In those days there were no government-financed language lessons, so I went to a night school in Hull. At the school, they tried to teach anglophones to speak French in one room and next door they coached francophones in English. At the end of each lesson the teachers would put us together in pairs to see if we could communicate. My partner was a very pretty young woman who was as hopeless at languages as I was. We struggled ineffectively for a couple of weeks. Then I asked my office colleague, Georgette Boudreault, if she could suggest some colloquial phrases to break the ice and get a friendly conversation going at school. She responded with a few stock phrases and then added, 'if the conversation gets very amicable, try calling her "mon petit lapin'Y She made the latter comment with a distinct twinkle in her eye. I should have heeded that twinkle but I did not. The next night, the bilingual conversation at school went well for the first time. Emboldened by the warm ambience and inspired by Georgette's coaching, I leaned close to my partner and murmured 'mon petit lapin.' She blushed, slapped my face, and left the room! When I recounted this story in bewilderment the next day, Georgette laughed until the tears flowed and always addressed me thereafter as 'mon petit lapin.' My relations with my first boss in External Affairs were the complete opposite of those with Georgette. He was an Ontario anglophone, stern, pedantic, bitter, and without a discernible spark of humour or humanity. He seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in criticizing everything I wrote and in rejecting every idea I put forward. I was terribly discouraged and ready to resign after the first six months. Then he was replaced by Marcel Cadieux, a dynamic French Canadian with a razorsharp mind and restless energy that would later carry him to the top positions in the department. He wanted ideas and action. He would not tolerate sloppy thinking or writing but he was too impatient to worry over endless redrafts for the sake of stylistic niceties. He was economical with words and with time. He encouraged new ideas and fresh approaches if they were likely to be effective. Yet he also looked for a

i8 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants moral and philosophical underpinning to both the means and the end of whatever was proposed. Working for him was stimulating and persuaded me not to consider resigning until I had spent longer in my new department. It also hastened my pleasant discovery that there could be much affinity between a prairie puritan and Quebeckers. Adapting to External Affairs So, the first major adaptation was easier than I had anticipated. But the second one, adaptation to the Department of External Affairs, was to prove slower. Working for Marcel Cadieux was very satisfying but I feared that he was an exception, not the norm. To my surprise, the appurtenances of governmental power did not seem as intimidating as I had expected. I worked in the East Block, the same building as Prime Minister St Laurent. I saw him several times and some mornings he actually took my streetcar to work. He appeared to be a dignified but kindly elderly gentleman. There was certainly no folksy hail-fellow-well-met air about him and everyone treated him with great respect. He did not surround himself with uniformed police, a claque of fawning staff, or pomp and circumstance. All that was to come later with a less secure prime minister and a more troubled era. In 1955 one felt that one could approach the prime minister if one had something serious to say. You also felt that he would understand your problems. After all, he rode our streetcar. More generally, there was a comfortable feeling about the relations between civil servants at all levels and cabinet ministers. The key players were small in number and there was an easy informal access from junior civil servants to senior ones to ministers. The Liberals had been in power since 1935 and were self-confident and complacent. The country was peaceful and prosperous and there were no major divisive political or constitutional issues. The politicians and senior bureaucrats had a common interest in a low-key, non-confrontational style of quiet consultation in order to go on presiding over a nation content with peace and prosperity. In a small town like Ottawa, this partnership was reinforced since all the power-brokers lived as neighbours in the same favoured residential districts, belonging to the same clubs and sending their children to the same schools. In those days, parliamentary debates were less rancorous than now (perhaps because they were not televised), and the media were less negative and hostile (perhaps because they were not under pressure to produce daily, thirty-second soundbites).

A Neophyte at External 19 Ottawa was congenial for a civil servant who aspired to exercise authority in order to enhance the public good, but who disliked the rough and tumble of politics. On the other hand, I had to admit that there was something unhealthy about its incestuousness and singleminded devotion to power (without the distractions that one would have living in a major capital, such as London or Tokyo, that had many employers and cultural pursuits). Charles Ritchie, my urbane senior colleague in the department, said it best: You spend the day working with this group of politicians, officials and diplomats, then you dine with them and their wives, gossip with them and drink with them. The dominant theme - the only point in this place - is the pursuit of power. It obsesses the men and infects the women. Other societies may be dominated by money, snobbery, or the search for pleasure. Here the game of political power is the only one that really counts. It creates an atmosphere very uncongenial to love, very unflattering to women - almost any man in official Ottawa would rather talk to a Cabinet Minister than to the most beautiful woman in the room.1

As to my contemporaries in the department, my first reaction was mixed. My class numbered just over twenty. We were mostly men, of course, but my six female colleagues represented the highest intake to date into this male bastion. Later a much larger regular intake of women became the norm, but in 1955 the department viewed the recruitment of six women as a daring experiment. We had all entered the service through a rigorous competition designed to select the 'brightest and the best.' We were set apart from other bureaucrats, with unique rules, training, grades, and system of promotion. We were told that we were a small elite group modelled on the old Indian Civil Service. In the days of the raj, the ICS had been considered the epitome of a select, versatile group, with the highest intellectual and ethical standards, entrusted with maximum responsibility and dedicated to protecting the national interest. I doubt that many of us took this example too seriously but it helped instil an esprit de corps. Moreover, this was the era when Canadian diplomacy suddenly blossomed. This was partly because Canada had emerged self-confident and strong from the Second World War (while most other nations had not yet recovered from it) and partly because of the brilliant leadership of L.B. Pearson as minister of external affairs (and subsequently as prime minister) and the gifted group of diplomats he assembled around him. As Pearson himself wrote:

20 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants The early breakdown between the Big Powers in the United Nations, on whose co-operation so much of the Charter was based, made the position of Middle Powers such as Canada more important than it would otherwise have been, especially in situations where the Security Council could not function. Middle Powers were likely to have the sense of responsibility that comes from the knowledge that they were strong enough to carry out decisions made, but were without the world-wide interests and responsibilities that could affect and confuse these decisions. They stood between the increasing number of small states which had little power and the great states which had too much. Canada was one of the most active of these Middle powers.2

It was heady stuff to be a member of Mike Pearson's team, even at a very junior level. Yet I had some misgivings. My colleagues were bright and articulate but some were also snobs and fops. 'No shirt too young to be stuffed/ commented a senior journalist on observing the young External dandies. One of our colleagues was so insufferable that we began secretly inserting one small sheet of paper per day inside the hatband of the bowler hat he affected to wear. As the hat opening constricted, the bowler rode higher and higher on his head. We hoped that he might reflect on whether his head was becoming swelled with his own self-importance. But alas, he never got the point despite our direct allusions to it. The esprit de corps could also be taken to extremes. One Friday evening, after all non-External civil servants had sensibly gone home, I received a telephone call from John Holmes, a much respected senior officer. I was flattered that he would call me directly. 'Earl, the department would like you to pop down to the United Nations General Assembly in New York and help us out for a spell. Be there Monday morning.' I mentally saluted but was flabbergasted. 'Yes sir, but what about my work here, what subject will I cover in New York, and what shall I tell my wife as to how long I'll be away?' He assured me that someone would cover my work in Ottawa, I would be adviser to our delegation on the Palestine question, and would stay for an indefinite period ranging from a week to several months. I could not imagine why I had been selected on such short notice to handle an issue about which I knew nothing. My puzzlement increased after my arrival in New York. I learned that a veteran officer in the department had been handling Palestine at the UN but had mysteriously disappeared without leaving any notes for me or any information on where he could be contacted. I had to

A Neophyte at External 21 bone up very quickly on a complex and emotional issue and on how the UN worked in practice. After ten days of bewilderment, I was taken aside by an older colleague and told that the man whom I was replacing had a record of disappearing on long drunks and the department was quietly covering for him until he resurfaced. As a junior officer I was expected not to protest the short notice, vague orders, and a twomonth absence from home. In fact, I enjoyed the UN test of my adaptability but was annoyed that the department had not been candid with me about the problem from the beginning. I also thought that it was carrying camaraderie too far in thus protecting a sick colleague for so long without trying to cure him. Working at Headquarters The most worrying aspect of the department, however, was the substance of my work. The constantly changing interplay of Canada's political and economic relations with the rest of the world was a fascinating topic. The problem was that a junior officer spent all his time reading about these events and occasionally analysing them for his superiors, but was hardly ever able to do anything substantial to influence events. My first two years in Ottawa were spent mainly on UN activities. I shared the department's conviction that, as a middle power with a major stake in preserving world order, Canada should give priority to making the UN work. Moreover, Canadians have a natural aptitude for multilateral negotiations. Our history and multicultural population have taught us how to compromise on non-essentials and how to relate to different peoples without threatening them. So I began UN work with great enthusiasm but found most of it unsatisfying in practice. I spent most of my time preparing speeches for my political masters to deliver, drafting resolutions for them to present, and amending the resolutions of other countries. At first the game is exhilarating: gathering support for your resolution, detecting who your opponents are and how they can be countered, and wooing the undecided by subtle textual changes calculated to flatter their sensibilities without surrendering your key objectives. Next, you make a frantic effort to get your supporters out of the bar, where other delegates are soliciting their support, in time to register an affirmative vote. Finally, there is a flush of triumph after a close win. Then alas, you stand back

22 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants and realize that your original resolution has been so watered down that it is almost totally ineffective in changing any policies out in the real world. In my early years in Ottawa I felt that, despite devoting inordinately long hours to my job, I could only claim two real accomplishments: helping to bring new members into the UN; and helping to force South Africa out of the Commonwealth over apartheid. The first event was cited by L.B. Pearson in his memoirs as an example of Canada's positive contributions to strengthening the UN during its early years: In 1955 we succeeded, largely through the work of Paul Martin as chairman of our delegation to the General Assembly that year, in leading the efforts which resulted in the admission to the United Nations of the first new members in five years. This was the so-called 'package deal/ which broke a deadlock caused by the general hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union and brought sixteen countries, pro-Western, communist, and neutral into the UN.3

Of course, External Affairs Minister Paul Martin and his senior officials had carried out the main negotiations in New York but I had written the position paper and prepared the first draft of the minister's speech. I felt part of the team that had made this historic breakthrough to start the transformation of the United Nations from a select club of states to a truly universal organization. Later, when John Diefenbaker was prime minister, I became the desk officer for South Africa in the Commonwealth Division. I had to prepare a departmental paper for the prime minister on the eve of his departure for London to attend a critical Commonwealth meeting at which would be debated the issue of whether South Africa could remain in the multi-racial Commonwealth if it pursued its policy of apartheid. The departmental position was typically cautious; we should warn South Africa that there might be serious consequences if they persisted, but Canada should not take any extreme or precipitate action. Once again it was Friday evening when my telephone rang. This time it was Basil Robinson, a senior departmental officer on secondment to the Prime Minister's Office. His message was as follows: Earl, I have received your paper presenting the orthodox gospel according to External Affairs. I am worried however, that the prime minister, who feels strongly on this issue, will want to consider an alternative position with more fire in it. Can you work late and give me a much tougher approach demanding that South Africa shape up or get out. Then, the PM can compare the two

A Neophyte at External 23 alternatives and make his own choice. Oh yes, and send your new paper direct to me. Don't go through departmental channels.

I did as I was asked and, with great relish, prepared a rousing denunciation of the moral evils of apartheid and its incompatibility with the high ideals of the postwar Commonwealth. As a fellow Saskatchewan Protestant, I tried to use some of the pulpit oratory style that I knew the prime minister was familiar with and might find appropriate for such an occasion. After a tiring weekend of work on the new speech, I arrived late at the office on Monday. The place was in an uproar. My boss, having just learned that the prime minister had ignored External's advice and taken a strong position in London, had asked my secretary to find me and inform me at once. 'Oh, there is no need to tell Mr Drake/ she replied helpfully. 'He dictated the speech to me on the weekend and sent it straight to Mr Diefenbaker/ My career almost ended there and then before I could explain what had happened. One other task proved to be exciting: assisting with the state visit to Canada of President and Mrs John F. Kennedy. The American president was the most important and charismatic man in the world and his wife the most glamorous. They were invited to Ottawa for ceremonial reasons as Canada's major friend and ally and for substantive discussions over serious differences on continental defence. Diefenbaker distrusted Kennedy's willingness to threaten the deployment of nuclear missiles over Canada in showdowns with the Soviets and the president heartily disliked our prime minister's mannerisms and policies. Nevertheless, both wanted this visit to go well. I was flattered to be asked to serve as deputy to the officer responsible for all administrative and ceremonial aspects of the visit. Two impressions of that experience stood out: differences over protecting the president; and the contrasting personalities of the two visitors. We had endless meetings with the Americans on protecting the president. We were surprised by the American preoccupation with preventing an assassination attempt. I remember saying, in my naivete, 'Of course we will take all prudent precautions but why are you so worried? President Kennedy is the most popular man in the world and this is the most peaceful and law-abiding of all countries.' (Much later, I learned that the future assassin of Martin Luther King was in the crowd that watched Kennedy lay a wreath at the Ottawa war memorial.) Essentially, we thought they were exaggerating the threat and insensitive to our position that the RCMP would provide all the protection required without any need for the secret service to brandish weapons. At

24 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants one point discussions became so heated that they threatened to ignore our limit on how many American secret servicemen could carry arms near the president and we threatened to arrest any who did. Eventually, a compromise was worked out and we achieved effective cooperation. In the event, the only real harm to befall the president came from his own excessive zeal in planting a ceremonial tree and thereby aggravating his already-weak back. The vigour with which JFK planted his tree typified the man for me in my brief encounters with him. Wherever he went, he radiated dynamic energy, and whatever he did, he gave it his undivided attention. Even when a very junior official like me spoke to him, he looked directly at me, listened attentively, responded decisively, and usually flashed that warm smile. He also demonstrated that he could use that fabled charm negatively. On the president's arrival at Ottawa airport, Mr Diefenbaker had read an official welcoming speech in English and added a few sentences in badly accented French. Kennedy saw his chance to tweak Dief. With a broad grin, he ad-libbed: 'I was quite apprehensive when first told that I should try to say a few words in French because I feared that I would mangle them badly in a country where everyone speaks French well. I had planned to duck out and leave French speeches to my wife. Now that I have heard your prime minister speak French, I am encouraged to go ahead.' Everyone laughed except Diefenbaker. By contrast, Jacqueline Kennedy was a disappointment. Although beautiful to behold, I was put off by her little-girl voice and her whining, uninspiring, listless manner. We had gone to considerable trouble to tailor a special series of events to meet her wishes. She was late for them all, wandered around aimlessly most of the time, and engaged neither Americans nor Canadians in spirited conversation. She came alive only when the Mounties staged a special Musical Ride in her honour. It was a special thrill for me to accompany her because this event was staged at the RCMP barracks, a few blocks from my home. All the neighbours attended and brought my four-year-old son along. At a quiet point in the proceedings, we all heard his piercing little voice say: 'There is my Daddy. Why isn't he at work?' Everyone roared and even Mrs Kennedy managed a wan smile. Despite those few stimulating events, my first years in Ottawa left me very much of two minds as to whether I wanted to spend many years with External Affairs. The real test would be how well I liked serving abroad on foreign postings.

3

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan, 1956-1958

Pakistan is the child of encounter and strife, and the rest of the contemporary world has been moulded by the same forces. Arnold J. Toynbee, 'Pakistan as an Historian Sees Her'

It was 1956, a year of international high drama. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev denounced the crimes of the late Joseph Stalin. An antiRussian uprising in Hungary was crushed by Soviet tanks. World opinion split after Colonel Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, and Israeli, British, and French forces subsequently occupied it. All Muslim and many Third World nations were outraged at the high-handed AngloFrench intervention, and even the United States was upset by it. Canada's foreign minister, Lester B. Pearson, was the key figure in resolving the Suez crisis through a United Nations resolution calling for the withdrawal of intruders from the Canal Zone and the dispatch of UN emergency forces to enforce a cease-fire. In this atmosphere, I was sent on my first posting to Karachi, the capital of Pakistan. The country was the large Muslim nation that had gained independence in 1947 when British India had been partitioned and given freedom. Pakistan was still adjusting to the trauma of the bloody communal riots and the massive influx of refugees which had accompanied partition. It was also still seeking an appropriate form of government and a viable economy. It was an artificial country stapled together on the basis of religious affiliation, rather than ethnic, geographic, or economic compatibility. Its past had been turbulent, its future was uncertain.

26 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants Karachi was tragically poor, overcrowded, disease-infested, crimeridden, politically turbulent, and uncomfortably noisy, hot, and smelly. For most Canadians it would be a place to avoid. Why then was I pleased to be going there on my first foreign posting? I would be exposing my wife and baby son, David, to this unhealthy place. Several times during the ensuing two years of the posting I asked myself, 'Why do I stay here, instead of returning to prosperous, healthy, uncrowded, and cool Canada?' Still, most days the answer was clear: Pakistan was an ideal place in which to broaden my limited prairie horizons and to test whether I had the right stuff for the Foreign Service. In addition, nurtured on puritanism and Kipling, I felt a strong urge to go and help the 'heathen' in exotic places. My motive was not to save souls for the next world but to minister to my fellow man's bodily needs in this one. I had no idea, however, whether I could find a way to combine that impulse with my job. I was not looking for a cozy assignment: I wanted a place where I could test my job aptitude, salve my puritan conscience, and have an adventure. Adventures My adventures began with our departure on the Italian liner Cristoforo Colombo. We were scheduled to sail from New York and then take another ship from Genoa through the Suez Canal to Karachi. Just before we sailed, the Cristoforo Colombo's sister ship, the Andrea Doria, had sunk in a collision in the Atlantic with an extensive loss of life. We were, therefore, apprehensive about our first sea voyage. We had read that the Italian sailors had been the first to desert the Andrea Doria, leaving passengers on board to be rescued by passing ships. Nor did the scene of our departure from the New York dock inspire confidence. Passengers were seen off by demonstrative Italian relatives weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth in a manner which led us restrained prairie puritans to conclude that they feared impending disaster. Our apprehension was soon relieved by the gaiety of the ship's band and crew and by free-flowing wine and wonderful, heaping Italian food. We never had a life-boat drill but the band played every night and our courage was restored by vino and the exuberance of our fellow passengers. We also learned that the weeping Italian relatives had not been particularly worried about a disaster at sea - this was just the usual emotional farewell that was displayed for any trip.

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan 27 When we reached Rome some eight days later, an unpleasant surprise awaited us. We learned that, instead of continuing on another ship through the Suez Canal, we would have to go by air on a British airliner through the Middle East, which was in a very anti-British mood just then, what with the British, French, and Israeli forces having just attacked the Suez'Canal. The whole Muslim world was in an uproar. We took the first British plane through this troubled area. No one could tell us the route or our arrival time because the pilots were not sure where the plane would be able to land in the Middle East. We should simply buckle up our seat belts and hope for the best. So, with the innocence of a twenty-eight-year-old first-time traveller, accompanied by a young wife and a six-week-old baby, we took off for the unknown. Our first landing was Istanbul, to which we descended at ear-aching speed because the pilot had never landed there before. We were discharged at the end of the runway and kept in a shed so the crowds would not see us. Then we took off for Baghdad, where we had much the same experience. On departure from that city, we were told we would make an unscheduled landing at Basra, where a group of British workers had been stranded for several days. The pilot cheerfully announced that, as it was the Muslim holy day, he wanted to take a chance on flying the besieged people out and was sure none of the passengers would object. When we landed the pilot pulled up as closely as possible to the airport building. British tommies with machine-guns then faced out towards the bystanders and formed two lines for us to run between. As soon as the plane had refuelled, we transit passengers plus our newly rescued British colleagues were told to run between the soldiers and get back on the plane as soon as possible because the crowd was growing restless. We did so and the plane took off safely. At long last, we arrived in Karachi and thought our trials were over. No such luck. The Muslims of Karachi were as hostile as those in the Middle Eastern cities. To make matters worse, the clever British had recently sold to the Canadians the British high commissioner's1 residence in downtown Karachi. It was a well-known landmark, close to the wonderfully titled Sind Club on Scandal Point Road, and had been identified as a seat of British power for many years. The unsuspecting Canadians did not realize that they had ended up with what the crowds would choose as the focal point for their anti-British anger. Our elderly high commissioner, Morley Scott, decided that discretion was the better part of valour. He wisely stayed in his hotel room and decided that I, his new third secretary, was expendable. I was to go in and look after

28 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants the residence until the crowd melted away. So, fresh off the plane, I went to be caretaker of a residence which was stoned daily by the crowds. It didn't help that the Canadian flag at that time was the old red ensign with the Union Jack in the corner. At first I tried going out to explain that we were Canadians and were on the side of the angels in the Suez crisis, as in all other things. The crowds did not listen, but hissed me and began to pick up stones. I beat a hasty retreat. It was a rousing introduction to my new assignment. The crowds came only by day. At night the beautiful grounds of Fairfield, as the residence was called, seemed a haven of peace, so I took to strolling in them. But that was short-lived as well. Servants came in great excitement to tell me that exactly where I had been strolling a cobra had been discovered. I ordered the creature to be dispatched forthwith but I quickly learned that no such thing would happen. Instead, the snake charmer was called in due course and eventually charmed the beast into his basket and took it away. I never did know how many of its relatives remained behind. Soon after my arrival at the Canadian High Commission office, I received an alarmed telephone call. It was from the manager of the Warsak Dam, a Canadian Development Assistance project in the northern part of the country. This major hydroelectric dam was being undertaken in tribal territory using fierce Pathans as labour for the first time. The Canadian manager spoke to me because no other officer was available at the moment and he needed an urgent response. "One of the tribal chiefs has just ridden into camp with his warriors and stopped all work at gun point. What do I do now?' I had to say that I hadn't the faintest idea but I would get back to him and to please stay calm. I quickly learned the answer: we would turn to the Pakistani government political agent for the tribal area and he would sort out the quarrel. I was beginning to learn that there were some things we outsiders should leave to the locals. Even walking down the main street could be an adventure. Soon after my arrival I walked the short stretch from the residence to the Canadian office happily minding my own affairs. Suddenly I was hit on the head from behind. I turned around and saw a stark naked man beating me and babbling incoherently. As a good bureaucrat, I was naturally clutching my briefcase which never left my side. I used it first to protect myself and then to beat off the man. The briefcase did the trick and he ran off down the street.

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan 29 I was puzzled and infuriated by this mindless attack. I approached the first traffic policeman I saw, explained what had happened, and demanded that he arrest this man who was still loitering nearby. The policeman responded with unconcern. 'That is only poor old Abdul. He is crazy, you know.' 'But you must .do something/ I said. 'You can't allow him to run around attacking innocent people.' 'Don't worry/ the policeman replied. 'His wife will come and fetch him.' Sure enough, she did appear. The incongruity of the whole thing was for ever etched in my mind when I saw this naked madman being led away by a wife who was in purdah, covered from head to foot. The next series of adventures came when I flew off to East Pakistan. At that time, the country consisted of two distinct wings, West Pakistan, which we know today as the country of Pakistan, and East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh, a Bengali-speaking Muslim area a thousand miles to the east. It was federated with West Pakistan purely on the grounds of religious affinity. I happily flew off to discover this new part of my territory. It was very different: whereas the West was dry, thinly populated, and austere, the East was tropical, overcrowded, the people excited and articulate. It was also terribly unhealthy and lacking in infrastructure. On advice, I lived largely on bananas and tea to try to avoid the endemic diarrhoea and dysentery. One of my first stops was Chittagong, the major port of the country. Nearby was the Karnaphuli River, where I visited a Canadian development project. As I stood by the side of my first tropical river, an elephant came out of the jungle towards me. Excited, I whirled and snapped a picture of this great beast. Within minutes, down the river came what is still one of the most exotic sights I have ever seen. It was a large river craft being rowed by banks of oarsmen and on which a richly-gowned chief sat on a type of throne, while in front of him a drummer beat time and a dancing girl performed. It was a scene from the Arabian Nights. Unbelieving, I snapped another picture to record this for posterity. I couldn't wait to develop these pictures and show them. Alas, cameras at that time did not have a device to prevent double exposure. My photographic record shows an elephant superimposed on a boat with the outline of a dancing girl near the elephant's trunk. In Chittagong there were two remarkable groups of Canadians: French-Canadian missionaries, whose order had been there for a hun-

30 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants dred years, and two nurses who worked for the World Health Organization (WHO). With Herb Moran, who had recently replaced Morley Scott as high commissioner, we visited the high school run by the missionaries. It had the highest educational standards in town and most children of the local elite attended it. I shall never forget being brought out on the stage and introduced to all the pupils. They were then told to honour this great occasion by standing at attention and singing the national anthem. They sang 'O Canada' in French. That evening when the most senior Pakistani official in Chittagong entertained us, we asked that the missionaries be invited as well. The Pakistanis seemed uncomfortable at our request but, as good hosts, obliged. The dinner was deadly dull. The conversation was perfunctory, the food grim, and our hosts seemed anxious to leave as soon as possible. But for the missionaries this was a rare event. As soon as the meal was over they pulled out their musical instruments, led by Bishop LaRose playing the ukulele. We joined them in singing rousing Quebec folk songs on into the night, while our hosts glared. We felt we had done a good deed by bringing the first night life to Chittagong since independence. On the second night we were confined to the state guesthouse with no entertainment and surrounded by a military guard sent to protect the high commissioner or perhaps to keep him out of trouble. Herb Moran said to me, 'Drake, find something to do/ Luckily, I had arrived before him, had met the two Canadian nurses stationed in town, and knew their telephone number. I suggested that we sneak out and meet the ladies. They arranged to come in their jeep and pick us up at the back door and take us to their flat. We were having a wonderfully relaxed time in their quiet flat on the edge of town enjoying a few drinks and a lot of laughs together when suddenly all hell broke loose. The military guards assigned to protect us had discovered that the high commissioner had disappeared; their jobs were on the line. Somebody put two and two together and they tracked us down to the nurses' flat. The place was surrounded, search lights were turned on, and armed police broke in to rescue us from the clutches of these designing females. It was all grand fun and I went up several notches in the eyes of my boss for my enterprise that night. I had another memorable escapade in East Pakistan. I had to go by river steamer from Khulna back to the capital of Dacca. At Khulna I inspected a Canadian project to teach Pakistanis how to use local woods

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan 31 and incorporate them with some Canadian fibre to make high quality paper - a good project. But it was the river life observed from the steamer that fascinated me. On this two-day voyage, the steamer stopped for several hours at a river town. The captain announced that we would be there for some time loading cargo, so I decided to wander ashore and see what was going on in the town. An agricultural fair was under way. I looked through the displays and saw that there was a cultural show on in connection with the fair. I took my seat quietly and settled back to enjoy the performance, thinking that no one had paid much attention to my arrival. A short time later the performance was interrupted by the police chief and several constables striding in saying, 'Stop the show. Where is the foreigner who got off the boat without permission?' How could I know I needed permission and how would I explain, in this backwater, that I was simply absorbing local culture? The chief approached me with some hostility and began a series of questions: Where had I come from, what was my nationality? As soon as I said I was a Canadian his mood softened. 'Where are you from in Canada?' I informed him that I was based in Ottawa. 'Yes, but what is your home town?' I responded that I had grown up in Regina, thinking that he would not have the faintest idea where that was. His face lit up as he exclaimed: 'Regina! How are the Roughriders doing?' He then clasped me in his arms and, of course, dropped all charges against me. He explained that he had trained with the RCMP in Regina for a year and those were his happiest memories. The best adventure of all was in Kashmir. In British India, Kashmir had been a princely state with a predominantly Muslim population and a Hindu maharaja. When India became independent and the major Muslim areas were partitioned off to form Pakistan, most people assumed that Kashmir would join adjacent Pakistan, with which it had religious and transportation links. They reckoned without a maharaja who opted for India. A localized war ensued and was terminated through the intervention of the UN, which in 1949 established a cease-fire line leaving most of Kashmir under Indian control. During my posting in the area (and ever since), Kashmir remained the major dispute between India and Pakistan. Moreover, Canada was caught in the middle because we were friendly towards both of these Commonwealth countries and because Canadian troops were key figures in the UN observer group which patrolled the cease-fire line. My wife and I decided to visit

32 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants Kashmir on our first holiday, partly out of political interest and partly out of touristic desire to see the fabled Vale of Kashmir, with its lakes and gardens framed by mighty peaks. Kashmir surpassed our expectations. The setting was superb, the air cool and clean, the people attractive, industrious, and skilled at handicrafts. Our accommodation was idyllic. In those days, you stayed on a large well-appointed houseboat moored in the lake. You had complete privacy because your cooking and cleaning servants lived on an adjacent houseboat. Merchants paddled by in their boats displaying their flowers, clothes, handicrafts, and their services as barbers, massagers, and so on, but they came aboard only with your permission. Trips were arranged in small water-taxis propelled by paddles rather than loud motors. After the noisy traffic and mass humanity of Karachi, what bliss it was to be in Kashmir! It was politically fascinating as well. My houseboat owner loved to discuss Kashmiri and Pakistani politics with me. As a Muslim, he supported Sheikh Abdullah, the ex-prime minister who had been jailed for opposing the maharaja's decision to join India. He told me that the majority of Kashmiris would prefer independence but, if that were not possible, union with Pakistan would be a popular second choice. The present union with distant Hindu India was unpopular. Each evening, the political discussions became more intense and occasionally we were joined by some of his friends. I also noticed that, on our trips by watertaxi, my host would surreptitiously pass messages to colleagues in other passing taxis. He told me that he and I were being watched because I was from Pakistan and he was a supporter of Sheikh Abdullah. I scoffed at all this. His imagination was over-active and nothing sinister could happen in a place so relaxed and idyllic. He asked if he could take me to meet some of his friends. I agreed reluctantly on the condition that they did not try to sell us anything: we were all shopped out. On the last day we went to meet his friends. We were ushered into a shop where we were the only visitors. I said, 'You promised no buying expedition.' He said, 'Please wait, this will not be one/ At this point the shopkeeper signalled to his assistant, who closed and locked all the doors and windows, while we all sat on the floor in front of a large pile of rugs. His assistants then lifted the pile of rugs and took out the piece of cloth that lay under them. They threw it out on the floor so that it opened dramatically: it was the flag of Pakistan. 'We are the underground dedicated to re-union with Pakistan/ announced the shopkeeper and my landlord. 'We want to take you to meet Sheikh Abdullah/

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan 33 I protested, 'Sheikh Abdullah is in jail. Everyone knows that.' 'No problem/ said they. 'We will smuggle you in. We have Kashmiri clothes for you and we will darken your face.' 'Impossible/ I said. 'I am a Canadian diplomat. I may be personally sympathetic to your cause but officially I can have nothing to do with it/ There was great disappointment at my response, but they then asked if I would take a message back to their Pakistani friends who were supporting the underground. After a pause I said that I could do nothing officially but in my personal capacity, I would take oral messages back. This answer placated them but left them disappointed. My own feelings were mixed. One part of me felt that I had passed a major test as a Canadian diplomat. Another part of me felt a little wistful, however, that I had given up my chance to play James Bond. Jack-of-All-Trades A diplomat these days is nothing but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally. Peter Ustinov, Romanoff and Juliet, act i

Such adventures were great fun but did not, of course, consume much of my time. What then, did I do at the embassy? Did diplomatic life consist mainly of attending a series of parties dressed up in formal clothes, as Peter Ustinov and most of the general public imagine? As a third secretary on my first posting, I was at the bottom of the diplomatic ladder. I was, therefore, assigned all the low-priority, unglamorous jobs that no one else wanted: reporting on dull subjects, public relations, consular matters, immigration, and arranging visits. And virtually all this work was done in shirt sleeves. It was difficult to assign priorities to such heterogeneous tasks or to organize one's work in advance. My superiors attached the most importance to preparing reports explaining to Ottawa the significance of Pakistani political, economic, and foreign policy events and issues. But what could the least experienced officer with the fewest local contacts contribute? My only hope was to think of some unusual topics, contacts, or insights. The reporting, public relations, and consular tasks were completely unpredictable because they depended entirely on external events. When the tasks did arise, they had to be dealt with quickly because they

34 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants involved impatient individuals: citizens who needed help because they were sick, indigent, or in trouble with the law, official visitors who wanted a program arranged, or foreigners applying for a visa to Canada. For a junior officer in a developing country, Murphy's Law becomes an infallible rule: anything that can possibly go wrong will certainly do so. As soon as an interesting report was assigned to me, that would be the week that one Canadian would be thrown in jail, two would lose their passports, and a Canadian cabinet minister would decide to pay a visit. The task that was to me the most intriguing had the lowest priority: improving public information about Canada. It was a Canadian foible that we deemed it unseemly to toot our national horn too loudly, unless you were a crass trade commissioner. However, a little genteel publicity work was acceptable if it did not take up too much time. Thus, setting priorities and organizing my time were constant problems. This was not a normal forty-hour-a-week assignment with a precise job description. You took each day as it came, put out any fires that seemed threatening, and tried to adjust your work priorities to whatever time was left. Frequently they were very long days indeed, with no time or energy at the end for personal recreation. A further complication was that virtually nothing worked as it would at home. Cars broke down unexpectedly because the mechanic was untrained, the fuel was dirty, or a part had been stolen. Telephones were antiquated and erratic. People did not appear for appointments because their astrologer advised against travelling that day. Religious events, poetry readings, and strikes upset schedules without warning. Most of our office supplies and equipment came from Canada and Europe by sea. That required long lead times for ordering and shipment. Even then, you were not sure what would be delivered because suppliers made mistakes, shippers smashed things, and Karachi dock hands stole them. One of the things we missed most was the opportunity to pop down to Canadian Tire and buy whatever we needed then and there. Our offices were grubby makeshift rented hotel rooms, shared by twelve Canadians and eight local staff. We were situated on the second floor, which was fortunate because the elevator seldom worked. The hotel dining-room should have been a convenience for us at lunch hour but we shunned it because the food and water were reputed to breed dysentery. The hotel staff tried to reassure us by placing the following message at every table: 'Customers may drink the water with complete assurance, it has all been personally passed by the manager.' Of course

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan 35 we laughed at this notice because it could be read in two ways. Moreover, it illustrated the deep cultural gap between Pakistanis and Canadians. No matter how you read it, the message would not persuade us to eat there. We would only be convinced by a Western expert stating that there was scientific evidence the food was safe. The Pakistani manager, on the other hand, believed that fate would decide whether we became sick or well and what we really needed was a personal gesture of his concern. So my work was varied, unpredictable, and frequently frustrating, but it was also a tremendous learning experience. Perhaps the best way to recall the flavour of my work is to record a few of my experiences performing each of the main tasks. They illustrate how, in a small embassy, a new diplomat has to jump in at the deep end and learn by trial and error how to swim in a new environment. In the 19505, diplomatic careers were made largely on the basis of the relevance, timeliness, and readability of your reporting on internal political and foreign policy questions. Our High Commission had to interpret the rapid and turbulent changes in Pakistani politics, as Western versus Eastern regions, leftist versus rightist policies, and parliamentary democracy versus army rule struggled for supremacy. As a prairie idealist, my sympathies were all with the Eastern-based Awami League which espoused social democratic ideas and shakily controlled an unstable majority in Parliament. On the other hand, my experienced and tough-minded high commissioner, Herb Moran, had excellent contacts with the military and reported they were fed up with a vacillating government and would soon take over in a bloodless coup. I was aghast, but he was proven right. Thus I learned that my ideals should not colour my reporting. Ottawa wanted accurate assessments, not personal preferences. In 1956, public relations work was virtually unknown for Canadian embassies, which tended to be self-effacing abroad. The United States and United Kingdom had large, effective information agencies everywhere, and received lots of publicity, so why not Canada? I called on several editors to discuss the problem. They replied that they needed two things if they were to carry any news on such a little-known country as Canada. They required background information on any significant stories likely to come up, and a picture or two to illustrate them. 'Easy/ said I, with all the brashness of a novice. "The big story in the offing is the Canadian federal election. The Liberals always win so here are pictures of the prime minister and the foreign minister. Print them

36 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants as soon as the election is reported on your wire service/ Two weeks later, I had some difficulty in explaining to my high commissioner why all the local papers carried only the pictures I had supplied and none of Mr Diefenbaker who had just won the election. One paper even quoted me as forecasting a Liberal victory. Fortunately my superior had a sense of humour and no one in Ottawa read the Urdu language anyway. As the closest immigration officer was in New Delhi, I had to do work for which I had no training or aptitude. It seemed easy. In summary, I was to give visas only to immediate family members of Canadian citizens and turn down everyone else. It was not so simple in practice. My first dilemma arose when a Canadian male of Pakistani origin asked for a visa for his bride, whom he had recently married in Pakistan and who was still wearing a veil. The instructions did not cover this contingency. 'Are you going to treat this woman as a free Canadian citizen? Then take off her veil or no visa/ said I. 'No/ said he. 'Her parents would be shocked because it is contrary to their practice in Pakistan.' I stood firm and so did he for a week. Then he returned, desperate to go back to Canada with his new wife and resume his job. I asked to see husband and wife alone. Tn this office you are in Canada and I am a Canadian. There are no parents or other Pakistanis present. Take off the veil in front of me to show how you will behave in Canada and you get the visa. After that you can do as you wish.' They agreed. By this time I was anxious to see what beauty lay hidden behind that piece of silk. She then revealed the least comely face I had ever seen. 'You can put the veil back on in Pakistan if it makes you feel more comfortable/ I said limply, as I wished them good-bye and good luck. Consular work is an innocuous term which covers doing the best you can to help every damn fool Canadian who gets in trouble abroad. Lost passports and money, sickness, and trouble with the police are the staple fare of consular officers. Fortunately, there were few Canadian visitors in those days and Pakistan seemed remote and unattractive. But nevertheless we had some strange cases. One stands out in my memory. A young man came to my office and recited the following story. Although he was a Caucasian male who had grown up in Thunder Bay, he had decided to become a Muslim and fight for his coreligionists in various parts of the world. Algeria had proven a disappointment to him and now he had come to fight for the recovery of Kashmir. 'Go right ahead/ I said, 'but how does that concern the government of Canada?'

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan 37 He responded: 'The problem is that I am a bit short of cash. I was hoping you could give me a retainer to spy for you while I fight for Kashmir.' Thinking that he could not be serious, I decided to respond lightheartedly. 'Well, I am afraid you are out of luck. We are not in the spy business and we are short on spare cash. Why don't you go and see the Americans? I read in novels that they are always looking for spies.' He left shortly after and I thought I would never see him again. But about a year later he returned. I resumed the conversation in what I thought he would take as the same jocular bantering manner. 'How is the spy business?' I asked him. 'Great,' he said, 'in fact I have come to thank you for the tip you gave me. I have had a wonderful time roaming all over northwest Pakistan on my American subsidy. It is true that I didn't liberate Kashmir but I am now rethinking my allegiance to Islam anyway and may give Buddhism a go.' I responded in utter disbelief. 'You are putting me on. I meant it as a joke when I said to go and see the Americans. They don't hire people like you to spy for them.' He reacted with indignation, 'You don't believe me, do you? Well, I will tell you something that will prove that I am telling the truth. The Americans have a secret airfield in northwest Pakistan. They have a special aircraft that takes off from there and can fly incredibly high and bring back reports about activities in the Soviet Union.' I dismissed him, saying that he had been reading too many spy thrillers and no one would believe a tale like that. A year later we all learned about Gary Powers and the U-2 aircraft that flew over the Soviet Union from a secret base in northwest Pakistan. Arranging visits for politicians was a mixed blessing. I played a minor role in preparing Prime Minister Diefenbaker's official visit to Pakistan. This was his first visit to Asia and he was the first foreign leader to call on Pakistan's new president, General Ayub Khan. Both men used the occasion constructively to improve their knowledge of and sympathy for each other's positions and this served to strengthen cooperation and understanding between the two countries for several years to come. For this reason, and because Diefenbaker was from my own province of Saskatchewan, I took special satisfaction from this visit. But I quickly learned that this was the exception to the rule. Some visits may teach the Foreign Service officer more about Canadian politics than about host country affairs. Such was the Pakistani visit of Paul Martin Sr, then Canada's minister of health. I was his

38 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants designated tour arranger. Foolishly, I assumed he would want to learn as much as possible about Pakistan's health problems and how Canada might collaborate in alleviating them. I arranged a tour accordingly and was immediately told to drop all but one of the hospital tours and to substitute a visit to an automobile assembly plant and to organize some press coverage. I dutifully arranged a call at the local General Motors plant because it was the largest and most modern. Martin took one look at the agenda and snapped: 'Don't you know that I represent Windsor constituency in Parliament? Windsor has a Ford plant, not a GM plant. Drop the GM visit; substitute a Ford visit.' I protested: 'But sir, the Pakistanis will be very upset. They have gone to a lot of trouble to arrange your visit to the GM plant and the local minister will be there.' Mr Martin retorted: 'Drake, you make whatever excuses you have to but move the visit. I get elected by workers at the Ford plant back home.' Later, as we toured a dilapidated local hospital, Mr Martin quickly became impatient with the lack of important people accompanying him and the absence of photo opportunities. He asked me to terminate the visit as soon as possible. 'There seem to be no senior Pakistanis to offend,' he said. 'Who is that scruffy fellow over there?' When I replied that he was1 a reporter for Reuters News Agency, Martin's mood changed immediately. 'Well, don't cancel the visit yet. Ask all these young hospital workers and especially the journalist to gather round because I have an important statement to make.' He then delivered an impromptu peroration on the potential for mutually beneficial exchanges between Canada and Pakistan which he was fostering to the benefit of the workers and voters of both countries. He paused several times to be sure the reporter got every word. His audience seemed totally baffled, as well they might, for not one of those young hospital trainees understood a single word of English and no one translated his speech. But Martin got his story printed back in Canada, which was what mattered! The visits of politicians are frequently the bane of the Foreign Service. Politicians are by nature extroverts, but at home their egos are kept in check by the need to keep a good press image and ultimately get reelected. Abroad there are few checks on their conduct and sheer vanity often takes over. Too many municipal, provincial, and federal politicians from Canada demand that the local embassy push their hosts to extend the full red-carpet treatment, arrange the maximum time for tourism, and ensure ample favourable publicity back home. In Karachi I soon learned the maxim: if a visit goes well, it is a tribute to the

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan 39 politician's magnetic personality; if anything goes wrong, it is the fault of the embassy. Hence, objectivity goes out the window and all visits are reported as successful, about half of them through gritted teeth. On the other hand, trade promotion and development assistance work seemed to me both tangible and satisfying. In Karachi these jobs were done by colleagues from other branches of government but occasionally I filled in for them during their absences. It was enough to whet my enthusiasm to do more of that work in future. Trade promotion was the most visible and tangible job at our mission. It attracted colleagues who were usually quite congenial to my taste. Some of my fellow External Affairs' officers looked down their patrician noses at the 'crass and pushy' trade commissioners with whom they shared offices abroad. However, I warmed to most trade commissioners and found them energetic, pragmatic, and effective civil servants. They did not put on airs about their erudition and genteel tastes; they got their work done with gusto. Boosting exports was work that the Canadian public could understand and appreciate. So could our political masters. In case we had any doubt about government priorities, this was settled conclusively when we were wakened in the middle of the night by a message from headquarters. In those early days we did not yet have a very sophisticated communications system which enabled an isolated post such as Karachi to receive coded messages twenty-four hours a day by machines. Messages were sent and received via the commercial telegraph company in a way which needed slow, manual decoding at our end. To facilitate sorting out priorities, the message was preceded by an indication of the importance given it by the sender. 'Emergency' meant that we should be wakened at any hour of the night to fetch and decode it, but it was understood that this procedure would only be used in cases where the future of Canada was at stake. At 3 a.m. one night, we were unexpectedly summoned to receive the post's only emergency message during my stay in Pakistan. With much trepidation, we laboriously decoded it and read a message along the following lines: 'You are instructed to press local leaders to buy Canadian wheat in order to feed their people. Use all arguments, including how a failure to buy from Canada might negatively affect our future development assistance to Pakistan. This is a matter of the highest importance to me and to prairie farmers. John G. Diefenbaker, Prime Minister.' Development assistance programs in particular attracted me. At the Warsak Dam, for example, we were not only building a valuable physi-

40 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants cal resource but also training people in new technical skills and in working together instead of perpetuating their ancient tribal feuds. The work appealed to my conscience because I could promote a humanitarian dimension of Canadian foreign policy. It also appealed to me as an historian. Even the great British historian Arnold Toynbee observed that the Canadians were changing the life of the tribal people more profoundly than any foreigner since Alexander the Great marched through the region in 327 B.C. As Toynbee wrote in The Observer in 1957: The Warsak Dam is Canada's gift to Pakistan under the Colombo Plan and the project is admirably designed for solving the problem of the frontier that the Pakistanis inherited from the British, and the British, a hundred years back, from the Sikhs. The mountains are bare and barren; the patches of cultivable ground in the torrent-beds are small and rare; the highlanders are numerous and hungry. They must either starve or make their living off the eastern plains into which their valleys open. They will not starve without fighting; so, for the rulers of the plains, the alternative to being at war with the highlanders is to provide them with some alternative occupation. During the British century of the frontier's history a state of war had been the rule. There had been a vicious circle of raids, punitive expeditions, reprisals, and then more punitive expeditions on a larger scale. Those well-housed Afridi and Mohamand workers on the Warsak dam will not go back to their hovels in the hills. When the Warsak project is completed, they will take up holdings on the hitherto barren tracts of plain that the Warsak reservoir is to irrigate. And the power the reservoir will generate will give them electricity in the home .... In falling for electric light and hospitals and schools, the tribesman is indeed placing himself at civilisation's mercy. Soon those [footdriven] lathes will operate by electric power and the craftsmen will be turning out bicycles and buses instead of rifles and battle-axes.

It was impressive to stimulate such profound change. I was not, however, convinced that we always chose the right people to do it, or that we fully understood the significance of what we were doing. I was not worried about the Canadian engineers' ability to transfer technology. They don't stay in their offices and spout theory; they roll up their sleeves at the work site and pitch in beside their local counterparts to obtain pragmatic results. They are normally friendly, open, honest, hardworking, unassuming men who take pride in their work. Because they come from a polyglot country of recent immigrants, they are more pre-

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan 41 pared than most to judge men on the basis of their skills and knowledge rather than on their race or different accent. Thus I was happy about the engineers' performance, and their genius for transferring technical skills to strangers. The question was, is it enough to transfer technology? Do we not also need sociologists, cultural anthropologists, political scientists, economists, linguists, and communication experts to analyse and advise us on the myriad non-technical ways in which we are profoundly changing the lives of these tribal people? Until we Canadians came along with our naive idea that we could simply build a dam and leave without any side effects, these people had been deeply rooted in a nomadic fourteenth-century culture. Didn't we have a responsibility to learn more about the development process and to apply it more thoughtfully? It is a question that has concerned me ever since. My interest in economic development also raised some questions about myself. Part of my motivation was the puritan instinct to be a Good Samaritan and help the less fortunate. That was familiar and seemed laudable. But to my surprise and chagrin, I caught myself indulging in arrogant thinking along the following lines: First, the reason that most Pakistanis were poor, undernourished, under-housed, and unproductive is that they did not think and act like us. Secondly, they were better off under the colonial system when young British district officers had the right ideas and the authority to implement them for the betterment of the poor. Thirdly, I wish I had been born in another age so that I could have been a colonial district officer with the power to do good instead of a diplomat with no power. I kept telling myself that these ideas were racist, undemocratic, and unworthy. But they did not entirely subside in me until many years later when experience taught me that the problems of economic and social development are complex and have very little to do with the amount of power given to foreign administrators. But at the time, these underlying thoughts would not go away. Part of the reason was sheer frustration. I have always liked to see some tangible results of my work. It gives me great satisfaction to accomplish something, however modest, that improves people's lives here and now. I am a pragmatist. It was therefore not satisfying to spend so much time analysing and reporting on the problems of Pakistan but seldom overcoming any of them. So I envied the British officers who had been sent here a generation or two before, at my age and with approximately my level of education but with the authority and resources to accomplish something tangible.

42 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants I also envied them their easy consciences, for they had no doubts that they were right in using their power to extend British civilization to those whom Kipling had termed 'lesser breeds without the law/ In my day, however, we had just defeated fascism and were still very conscious that Mussolini had justified his rise to imperial power by using similar arguments to the ones I was toying with. I knew there was no danger of my becoming a fascist. Nevertheless, I was somewhat troubled by the question of which element of my personality would eventually win out: the anglophile historian longing for the past days of imperial glory or the prairie egalitarian. Everyday Life in Karachi What of daily living conditions in this exotic post? How did I react to coping with such a different social, cultural, and climatic environment with its attendant health challenge? The searing heat and personal illness were uncomfortable but manageable. However, some aspects of the cultural milieu were disturbing, in particular the bureaucratic indifference to suffering, the poverty, and the relationship with servants. Poverty was much more difficult for me to deal with than the heat; it faced us everywhere. Even in our affluent part of town, we could not help but step over homeless people sleeping on our doorsteps, be assaulted by beggars, and see vultures circling, waiting to feed on the dead. In contrast to the destitution were the mansions and jewellery of the conspicuously affluent Pakistanis, who seemed immune to the suffering all around them. A visiting Canadian doctor was so appalled that he told me: 'I must terminate my visit immediately. If I have to look at this suffering another day, I shall have to settle here and devote my life to alleviating it.' I shared his concern but thought he was being melodramatic. Nevertheless, his declaration made me reflect on how quickly I was becoming indifferent to the misery around me. I finally came to terms with local poverty by reasoning that it is ineffective to hand out money to the poor on the street because many of them belong to the begging group which maims some of its members to make them more effective at enticing donations. Our coins will only encourage this cruel and exploitative system. It is far better to support organized programs to teach the poor to acquire marketable skills, which we did by contributing to local Christian charities. Gradually I came to learn of and admire similar native programs which were engaged in putting the poor on

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan 43 their feet. These were run by indigenous religious groups, notably the Parsis, Ismailis, and Jains. The drawback was that these group programs were small and concentrated on their own co-religionists. What was needed was a secular, national plan to overcome poverty sponsored by the Pakistan government and supported by domestic and foreign organizations. I gradually discovered that there were thoughtful and concerned Pakistanis who shared this vision and were anxious to work with outsiders to improve the lives of the poor. One who impressed me was Mahbub ul Haq, an articulate and energetic young development economist. Little did I know then that we would meet again much later in our careers and work together in the fight against poverty at the World Bank. Sickness was rampant, affecting Pakistanis and Canadians alike. Many of the gastro-intestinal problems were preventable through improved public hygiene and the provision of clean water, and many of the communicable diseases could be stopped through immunization. When I arrived, little had yet been done on either front. Life expectancy at birth was twenty-six years. While I was in Pakistan, I suffered from repeated attacks of bacillary and amoebic dysentery and my weight, normally 145 pounds, dropped to 119 pounds. When I left Karachi, I was under doctors' orders to go directly to the Tropical Diseases Hospital in Montreal, to be checked and cured. I was confident, however, that western medicine would restore my health. What infuriated me was the official Pakistani indifference to the health of their own people. When the great Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield visited Pakistan, he discovered that one of his pupils was unable to use his surgical skills because the equipment he needed was kept under lock and key by a rival unit. Dr Penfield used all of his international prestige to try to unite the surgeon and the machine, but to no avail. Petty rivalries and bureaucratic inertia were more important that human lives. On another occasion, a Canadian aircraft flew halfway around the world with vaccine in an effort to stem a deadly epidemic. All the Pakistanis had to do was keep the vaccine refrigerated and to distribute it. Despite my pleadings, they let it all spoil. When I remonstrated with them, I was told to be philosophical. 'After all, there will be another epidemic next year.' I had come to Pakistan prepared to learn wisdom from this ancient civilization but I left convinced that, in the field of medicine at least, they had a lot to learn from us. As Canadian egalitarians, my wife and I had great difficulty adjusting to servants in my house. We were told that our modest household

44 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants required a complement of seven servants: a cook, a butler, a sweepercleaner, a baby nurse, a laundryman, a gardener, and a watchman. We thought this number excessive, and the whole relationship seemed feudal, with the servants' entire families living in our compound, calling me 'Master/ and looking to me for wages, shelter, medical care, and the settling of their quarrels. The master complex even extended to my baby son. One day we returned home to find all the servants sitting in a circle, playing with David, aged one year. 'Why aren't you doing your work?' I demanded. 'Because the little master told us to sit,' was the reply. We tried to break the system. We found an enterprising young man who was prepared to cook, serve food, clean house, and live outside the compound. He came for an interview, impressed us with his attitude, and said he was ready to start work. Our other servants, including the baby's nurse of whom we had become very fond, immediately came to us as a group and presented an ultimatum. 'If you hire him, we will all leave and no other servants will come. He is from the sweeper class and he will therefore make the kitchen and the whole house dirty.' 'But you are wrong,' I retorted. 'He told me he was a Christian. We saw that his body and clothes are scrubbed clean. What's more, you are Muslims. You do not believe in the wretched caste system of the Hindus, which condemns people to be regarded as unclean from birth.' 'Ah, Sahib, how little you know about this country,' they replied. 'He says that he is a Christian because that is a better caste. And, yes, Allah be praised, we are Muslims and don't believe in the heathenish ideas of the Hindus. But the fact is, we can tell by sight that man was born a sweeper and all the washing in the world will never make him clean.' We agonized over that dilemma but eventually accepted the advice of experienced westerners that we could not beat the system. We wondered how we would ever break the news to the enterprising young sweeper-cook but he only shrugged in resignation. He had been rejected often for the same perverse reason. In my heart, I never did accept the caste system but I gradually learned to appreciate that a feudal relationship could also be taken more positively as a sort of extended family, enabling foreigners to get to know all its members better. A Canadian colleague, Dave Judd, encountered a different type of servant problem. On his arrival in Karachi, he could not win the respect of his principal servant, Yakub, because he was a young pink-cheeked bachelor replacing Bill Mills, an older married man who was a war

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan 45 veteran. Dave knew from Bill that Yakub was an excellent servant when motivated, but Dave had almost despaired of finding the key when we decided to have a formal Christmas dinner. As we were all far from home at the festive season, we thought it might cheer everyone to get all dressed up and celebrate together. Dave decided to wear his dress uniform as a reserve officer in a Canadian Highland Regiment. He had begun the painstaking task of ironing the pleats in his kilt, when Yakub entered the room. His eyes lit up as he took the kilt reverently and addressed his master: 'Sahib, permit me to do this. I was a bearer to a Highland Regiment Officer. My father was a bearer to a Highland Regiment Officer. My grandfather was a bearer to a Highland Regiment Officer/ Then he drew himself to attention and saluted: 'Sahib, it is good to have a man in the house again/ One of the most rewarding aspects of life in Karachi was companionship with new-found friends. This had been sadly lacking in our early days in Ottawa where we felt very lonely. In both Ottawa and Karachi we were cut off from family and old school friends. But whereas at headquarters neither the workaholic nature of the job nor the social life drew me close to my colleagues, in Pakistan shared hardship and excitement brought us together. The firmest friendships are often forged in common adversity. The only way to survive Karachi was for us dozen or so Canadians to pull together, pool our limited resources, make our own entertainment, and nurture our collective sense of humour. We had expected that we would be welcomed by our continental neighbours, the Americans, but this was not the case; they were such a large and well-organized group that they probably felt self-sufficient and tended to look inward rather than outward to other diplomats. Our best diplomatic friends were the Australians, the British, and the Dutch, a pattern that was to be repeated in other posts. Some of the most rewarding friendships were with Pakistani colleagues. A common language and similar concepts of law and government were great facilitators in developing these relationships. Both parties started by assuming that a meaningful conversation would be difficult when you come from such different cultures and were delighted to find how many attitudes and interests we had in common. My most treasured friendship was with the Katrak family. We knew best Sohrab, head of the family, owner of the family business, and exmayor of Karachi, Perin, his formidable daughter, and Jamshed, his ebullient younger son. In their rambling old home filled with an eclectic

46 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants mixture of sub-continental and Victorian bric-a-brac, they were warmly hospitable. Each family member was an outgoing personality. They had an air of exotica, for they were Parsis, members of the tiny, ancient Zoroastrian sect which was so modern and progressive in most ways, yet worshipped at fire temples and exposed its dead out of sight on the top of the sombre Towers of Silence. We lived near one of the towers and used to see the circling vultures which landed there to feed on the corpses. Intellectually, we understood the Zoroastrian explanation that this was an efficient way to return decayed flesh to nature and did not pollute the earth but, emotionally, we had some difficulty in adjusting to those vultures. I loved to discuss religion and Karachi politics with Sohrab but Jamshed was my favourite. An excellent businessman, shrewd, witty, articulate, and honest, he knew how to get things done and could be the life of the party. Fond of good food, drink, and conviviality (which showed around his middle), he was well educated and had wide-ranging intellectual interests. He laughed frequently and infectiously, yet there was an air of sadness about him. Gradually I extracted his story from him. He had become enamoured of Western thought and the Western way of life and wanted to live in England, which he remembered fondly from his student days and where he had excellent business prospects. Moreover, he had fallen in love with a Canadian woman. Alas, his older brother, who had been expected to succeed his father in heading the family firm and wed a Parsi, had married an English woman and stayed in England. His father had been heart-broken and now depended on Jamshed to replace his brother, the deserter. The final irony was that he was staying to please a father who had always showered his affections on the older brother. Jamshed had steeled himself to stay in Karachi but could not bring himself to marry a Parsi. His caustictongued older sister, herself frustrated in love, never let up on her criticism of his aversion to Parsi women. Our friendship helped him escape from the omnipresent family. For me, it was a wonderful entree into the group of Westernized local business and government executives who made Karachi hospitable as well as fascinating. I completed my two-year posting in 1958. When we left, the whole family were filled with tropical bugs. Yet, although unwell and disappointed by some Pakistani attitudes toward development, democracy, and the class structure, I left in high spirits. I had found adventure and job satisfaction. I had discovered some Pakistanis who were dedicated to bettering their country's lot and to working with Canadians for our

Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan 47 mutual benefit. I had made new friends. I had learned a lot about a different culture, about working abroad, and about myself. I was still a stubble-jumper and a puritan but a little broader and more mature. And I had verified that there was a lot more to diplomatic life than wearing striped pants. I was hooked on the Foreign Service.

4

A Dancing Leader: Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Pakistan

So Sir, to be the Prime Minister of Pakistan which has been held by certain gentlemen who have been turned out, taken by the ears and thrown out as it suited the ruling coterie, is not a matter of very great honour. H.S. Suhrawardy speaking in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, spring session, 1958

Within a week of our arrival in Karachi, my wife and I received a most unusual telephone call. A clipped, British-type voice with an Indian lilt said: 'I am calling with an invitation from Prime Minister Suhrawardy. Would Mr and Mrs Drake of the Canadian High Commission please join him at his home for an evening of dancing?' This was unheard of in normal diplomatic circles. Invitations from a prime minister are rare in the best of circumstances, but for the embassy's most junior diplomat who has just arrived in town, it seemed extraordinary. Moreover, this was an Islamic republic where social dancing is not a normal pleasure. We thought that someone was pulling our leg, but the officious voice at the other end was insistent: 'Yes, this is the Prime Minister's Office. The prime minister does understand your rank and position. He would appreciate the courtesy of a reply to his invitation this evening, as we must prepare a list of guests for the guard detail at his residence. And you are expected on time at 8:00 p.m. sharp to-morrow.' How had this happened and what did it signify about this unusual prime minister? Three days after our arrival we were taken along to a large reception at the prime minister's residence by Canada's deputy high commissioner to Pakistan, John Sigvaldason and his wife, Olga.

Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Pakistan 49 John, a big, stolid, Icelandic-Canadian, was honest, blunt, conscientious, and intelligent but rather plodding. While stationed in Britain as an RCAF officer during the war, he had met a refugee from Vienna named Olga. She was everything that John was not: tall, slim, spontaneous, given to florid gestures, and cultivating a hint of mystery and an air of sophistication. She liked piling her ample hair on top of her head in a mock-turban style and wrapping herself in pale chiffons, with wispy bits trailing in every direction as she swept hither and yon, always striving for the dramatic effect. Apparently John had been smitten by her central European glamour and exchanged his unexciting Icelandic wife back home for Olga. As Olga told my wife, Joyce, who was overwhelmed by the responsibility of having just brought a six-week-old baby to Karachi, 'I have no maternal instincts, only social-climbing ones. When I first saw my only child I said to the nurse, "Good God, is that mine? Take him away and don't bring him back f a year when I hope he will be less messy!"' It was Olga who said to us, with a grand sweep of her bejewelled arm: 'You simply must come along to the party because the prime minister is partial to young blonde women who can dance.' When I protested feebly that I understood that this was a formal reception for local dignitaries and senior diplomats, not a dance party for blondes, I was brushed off airily: 'Every party at the PM's has the capacity to turn into a dance party. Come along and let's see if Joyce catches his eye. He won't even notice if you are there - but you will get used to that.' I am hopeless at dancing and do not enjoy it on any occasion. Also, I did not much fancy this flippant approach to my first diplomatic outing. But the spouse of my new boss was insisting and my wife was a good dancer, so off we went. It was a large and incoherent party, dominated by non-dancing Pakistanis who mostly milled about and talked and snacked. We met the prime minister perfunctorily as part of a long and aimless receiving line. I thought that he paid no attention to us whatsoever, but Joyce told me that he had asked her to repeat her name. There was a bit of desultory dancing towards the conclusion of the party after most Pakistanis had left. The prime minister came over to the Canadian group and asked Olga to dance, which she did with a triumphant smile at us poor little newcomers. John asked Joyce to dance and I sat there pretending to be taking careful note of the diplomatic significance of the occasion, but really just feeling awkward and ill at ease. I did notice, however, that the prime minister paid more attention to Joyce's dancing skills than he did to Olga's animated conversation.

50 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants Who was this prime minister? He was a fifty-nine-year-old widower named Huseyn Shaheed (usually called H.S.) Suhrawardy. He was short, chubby, dark-skinned, and homely but had quick, intelligent eyes and a razor-sharp mind, was highly articulate in English and two local languages, possessed a brilliant record as a lawyer and politician, and was light on his feet, both on and off the dance floor. I made it a point to leam as much as I could about this unusual man. H.S. had grown up in the great metropolis of Calcutta, which was the centre of a lively Bengali culture. Even foreigners can wax eloquently about that unique language and culture: Bengali is a language capable of expressing the finest modulations of thought and feelings, a language never failing to respond to the ever-changing play of life ... Life is hard and demeaning, grim and demanding, but the Bengali refuses to yield to his plight. There is a special tenaciousness built into the Bengali psyche ... The Bengali cherishes life, extols its torments, but also finds pleasure in rhapsodising the essence of the eternal ... Bengalis are emotional, sentimental, expressive and passionate. The Bengali is the essential romantic, given to images and symbols, but who readily acknowledges and does not fear reality ... The Muslim Bengali is somewhat unique among Muslims generally. He is emotional and explosive, but not given to fanaticism. Toleration is as much a part of Bengali character, as is melancholy and remorse.1

Suhrawardy achieved a glowing academic record in Bengal and then went to England to finish his legal studies before returning to practise at the Calcutta bar. Then he entered the labyrinthine world of Bengali politics in British India. Bengal was split in several ways: between Muslims and Hindus; between the great metropolis of Calcutta and its hinterland; and between its Eastern and Western geographic regions. But it was united by its common language, common love of literature, painting, and music, and by its dislike of the military tradition. H.S. was a Muslim and a Calcuttan, but he projected such a broad appeal that he rose to be chief minister of all Bengal in British India before it was partitioned along religious lines (with the Western portion assigned to India and the Eastern to Pakistan). After partition, Suhrawardy migrated to Pakistan, formed an opposition party based in the Bengalispeaking East Wing and became prime minister in September 1956, just before our arrival in Karachi. I did not learn until later how controversial a figure he had been in India.

Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Pakistan 51 H.S. Suhrawardy had never remarried after the death of his wife and seemed to be close only to his one child, a married daughter known to everyone as Baby Suleiman. She and her eminently forgettable husband lived in Karachi, where he was in business. Baby had most of her father's traits but, alas, while being short, chubby, dark-skinned and homely were not fatal attributes for a man, they gave Baby an inferiority complex about her appearance which her sharp mind resented. She was included in most of her father's parties. As two wallflowers, Baby and I often talked while others danced. Occasionally, I would bestir myself to lead her out onto the dance floor where she was far more adept than me. She and her husband also became my landlords, so we saw them regularly. Fortunately, our flat was new, in a good district, had no serious problems of upkeep, and we paid our rent regularly, so it was a trouble-free relationship. She was a good conversationalist but was too careful and clever to tell me anything hot which I could report to Ottawa about her father's views on any political subject. However, I never admitted this to my colleagues in other embassies. They all envied me because, as far as they knew, I was the only third secretary in town who regularly talked to the prime minister's daughter - and I did nothing to dispel the illusion that she regularly confided state secrets to me which I was sworn not to pass on. Joyce and I were invited several times, on short notice, to informal dance parties at the prime minister's residence during our first year in Karachi. Most guests were other Western diplomats with young wives, although there were a few Westernized young Pakistani couples included as well. The parties were pretty tame affairs - a bit of food and drink and relaxed Western dance music from records. The lights were dim but there were no dark corners and everyone behaved quite respectably by Western standards. They always ended by midnight. The prime minister enjoyed himself in a relaxed way by dancing with many of his guests, but his behaviour was always gentlemanly. He did enjoy an alcoholic drink or two but I never saw him even slightly inebriated. These parties were certainly not bacchanalia, as some of the Islamic clerics imagined. But this was an Islamic republic. Some branches of Islam, with many followers in Pakistan, believed that it was sinful for unveiled women to be in the presence of men, much less to be held in the arms of strangers on the dance floor. It was an unconventional, and even daring, way for a local political leader to entertain and we speculated on why he did it. I thought it was his way of asserting his per-

52 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants sonal values in defiance of the Muslim clergy. He seemed to me a cosmopolitan product of two cultures and I liked the way he resisted sectarian bigotry in a subcontinent that was consumed by it. It was only later that I learned how personally affected he had been by his dramatic involvement in one of the worst communal disturbances in Indian history - and foresaw how irrational forces would drive him from office. Guess Who Is Coming to Dinner? So we saw the prime minister and his daughter socially from time to time during our first ten months in Karachi but always in the midst of a crowd and never in an atmosphere where one could have a serious conversation with him. Then a curious thing happened; through an act of spontaneity, we spent a private evening with him. It all began when our elderly high commissioner, Morley Scott, decided to invite people to a reception on the grounds of the Canadian official residence to watch a rare eclipse of the moon. The people of the Indian subcontinent have always attached great significance to eclipses and it seemed like a pleasant excuse to hold a party for the senior government officials with whom we dealt. Invitations went out to a wide array of people but we had no idea how many would show up; one rarely does at such events in Pakistan. But we were not worried because the residence grounds were spacious and we were only serving drinks and snacks, so we did not have to calculate the food requirements very carefully. To our surprise, the prime minister came; this was an unexpected honour. But then the honour began to turn into an embarrassment because he stayed on and on. It looked as if he had nowhere else to go that evening and was looking for a dinner invitation. Then it became painfully manifest that he was lonely and depressed, as I learned when I accidentally stumbled on a couple seated in a dark corner of the garden and overheard the prime minister's voice say teasingly: 'J°yce/ be noice to me.' I was indignant; prime minister or not, he could not make a pass at my wife! Joyce quickly reassured me. It was not as it sounded; they had been dancing and he had asked her to sit with him and talk in a secluded corner where no one would bother him. When she protested that they should rejoin the others, he had coaxed her to stay with this silly little phrase. Our worried high commissioner called over some of his young officers: 'What am I to do? No one can leave the party until the PM departs

Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Pakistan

53

and he just stays and stays. My servants are not able to serve dinner because this reception has thrown them and the kitchen into total disarray. Please help me/ Three of us looked at each other. We and our wives had planned to have a simple meal together after the party at one of our homes and we all knew the prime minister slightly through his famous dancing parties. I suggested, 'Why don't we ask him if he would care to join us six junior Canadians for a simple, informal bite to eat. He will probably say no but at least he will get the hint that we all have plans to eat out and there will be no more food served here at the residence.' The high commissioner continued to look worried but replied: Tt breaks every rule of protocol for three junior officers to invite a prime minister to dine but we are dealing with an unusual man, so give it a try.' We did and, to our amazement, he accepted with little hesitation. Moreover, when we made it clear that there would not be room for more than himself and one accompanying person, he responded: 'Great. I prefer to come alone anyway.' We sped into action. Bill and Helen Mills raced home to alert their cook to set one more place - for the prime minister. Because Bill was a notorious tease and because his instruction sounded so preposterous, his cook refused to believe that the extra guest was anyone of importance. Meanwhile John and Diane Blackwood had roared to their home and that of colleagues to collect dance records. Joyce and I were elected to divert the attention of the prime minister and hold him at the residence until preparations were ready at the other end. When we got the signal from the Mills, we escorted the prime ministerial limousine to their residence. Then the prime minister strolled in without the slightest fanfare - to the utter consternation of the Mills's cook, who almost collapsed from embarrassment at the casual meal he was offering to the highest dignitary he had ever seen in his life. The six of us were a little apprehensive as to how the evening would go but we need not have worried. Mr Suhrawardy could not have been more gracious and relaxed. He gave every indication of enjoying our unpretentious Western meal. He danced with each lady several times, especially Diane Blackwood, who was six months pregnant. Indeed, the atmosphere became so relaxed that the irrepressible Bill Mills joked about the similarity in shape of the pregnant lady and the rotund gentleman dancing with her. But for me, the best part of the evening was that Suhrawardy let down his hair and told us something about what made him tick. He recalled how his first love had been the vibrant city of Calcutta in

54 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants British India when Muslims, Hindus, and Christians had mingled as friends and shared their common pleasure in the literature and art and political debate of Bengal. His second love had been the discovery of English law and learning and sophistication at Oxford where he had earned his MA and law degrees before being called to the bar at Gray's Inn. At Oxford he had first become comfortable with Canadians, whom he found to be less pompous than their British cousins and more willing to listen to an Indian than their American neighbours. He had even become enamoured of Canadian poetry which he quoted to us at some length, to our utter astonishment. The Great Calcutta Killing and the Odd Couple Miracle Suhrawardy was the prototype of the corrupted, venal politician Gandhi meant to condemn ... Worst of all, his hands were covered with blood. L. Collins and D. Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight I trust him. He is my friend. Mahatma Gandhi, referring to H.S. Suhrawardy in 1947

After a bit of prodding and a bit of wine, Suhrawardy talked to us about the most traumatic experience in his past and his fears for the future. He had enjoyed a long political career in undivided Bengal, one of the principal provinces of British India. Bengal was centred on the city of Calcutta but it also spread out to embrace a large hinterland and a large population of both Hindus and Muslims. He served as deputy mayor of Calcutta and was an elected member of the Bengal Legislative Council for twenty-five years. He frequently served as minister and in 1946 became chief minister of Bengal. He considered himself a tolerant cosmopolitan but he was by birth and culture a Muslim. Naturally, he was active in the Muslim League which was for years the voice of the Muslim minority in India. Admittedly, he was sometimes partisan in furthering the interests of his co-religionists. Everyone did that in India. But he was unprepared for the violence which savaged India after the fatal announcement that the British would leave the subcontinent precipitately and facilitate its partition, on communal grounds, into India and Pakistan.

Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Pakistan 55 Instead of splitting Bengal into an Indian portion and a Pakistani portion, he argued for the province to be left intact and declared a separate, secular country without any division on religious grounds. When this proposal was rejected and people realized that Bengal would be torn apart over religious differences and many would have to move away from their ancestral homes, they began to react violently. Mobs formed, each ready to punish people of the other religion. As chief minister, Suhrawardy had a responsibility to protect both Hindus and Muslims but he failed to do so adequately because, as an intellectual and a lawyer dedicated to the rule of law, he had not anticipated how inflamed prejudice and passion can change people into savages. When warned of possible riots on a certain date, he declared the day a public holiday in order to minimize the chances of conflict while people were en route to and from work. When the government forces relaxed, the 'Great Calcutta Killing' began on 16 August 1946 and lasted four days, killing approximately four thousand and injuring eleven thousand on a scale of violence and terror never before seen in that region. Both Hindus and Muslims were involved and it was feared that the communal violence would spread all over India. At first Suhrawardy was reviled by Hindus and foreigners alike and he was personally appalled at the carnage, at the bigotry that had fuelled it, and at his own failure to prevent it. He then ordered the police to suppress every subsequent sign of disorder but realized that that was only a temporary solution. The police and the army could quell the violence only by applying brute force themselves; the long-term answer was to uproot the bigotry itself. Then, something miraculous happened. Mahatma Gandhi visited Calcutta in September 1947 to see if he could restore some sanity to the city after a month of the worst communal violence since the Great Killing. Gandhi was a revered figure among the Hindus and a few Muslim intellectuals and he preached non-violence. His base was in faroff Western India where he lived, and he knew little of Bengal; many doubted that he could have much effect in this alien city. But Suhrawardy thought otherwise. In a daring move for a Muslim, he went to Gandhi's Hindu ashram and pleaded with him to stay in Calcutta and work with Suhrawardy against religious conflict. Gandhi made an extraordinary counter-proposal: he and the chief minister should move into a deserted Muslim house in one of the most turbulent areas and live together as an example of Hindu-Muslim cooperation until peace was

56 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants restored. They should live in brotherly fashion, unprotected by the police, and approach the common people, reason with them, and foster a return to sanity. The chief minister considered this astounding idea for twenty-four hours and accepted it without qualification. They stayed together for three weeks, met people from all walks of life, attended joint prayer sessions, fasted together, and became friends. Although initially confronted by hostile crowds, this extraordinary experiment restored peace and promoted unprecedented Hindu-Muslim fraternization as members of both communities came before the two leaders to air their grievances and seek their advice. All India was astounded; unfortunately, not all regions followed this wonderful example. Lord Mountbatten, India's governor general, sent the following telegram to Gandhi: 'In the Punjab we have 55 thousand soldiers and large-scale rioting on our hands. In Bengal our forces consist of one man and there is no rioting ... may I be allowed to pay my tribute to the One Man Boundary Force, not forgetting his Second in Command, Mr. Suhrawardy/2 Many observers still regard this as Gandhi's finest hour. Curiously, Suhrawardy received very little praise, even though the record is clear that Gandhi alone had been unable to bring peace to Calcutta. It was the drama of the living Gandhi-Suhrawardy partnership which had transformed the situation. Gandhi himself praised Suhrawardy as his trusted friend but no one listened. The Hindus and the Europeans gave Gandhi all the credit, while many Muslims faulted Suhrawardy for consorting with a Hindu leader. Everyone praised Gandhi's selflessness but exaggerated Suhrawardy's past transgressions. The clearest illustration of totally biased writing against Suhrawardy occurs in the popular history of India-Pakistan independence by two skilled Western journalists, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. In their widely read book Freedom at Midnight, published in 1976, long after the events, they repeated all the Hindu hate propaganda about Suhrawardy. Their vicious caricature read as follows: Suhrawardy was the prototype of the corrupted, venal politician Gandhi meant to condemn ... His political philosophy was simple: once a man had been elected to office there was never any reason to leave. Suhrawardy had assured his continued presence in power by using public funds to maintain a private army of hoodlums who, quite literally, clubbed his political rivals into silence. During the 1942 famine that had devastated Bengal, Suhrawardy had intercepted and sold on the black market tons of grain destined for the starving of

Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Pakistan 57 Calcutta, an operation which had earned him millions of rupees. He dressed in tailor-made silk suits and two-tone alligator shoes. His jet black hair, dressed each morning by his personal barber, sparkled with brilliantine. Where Gandhi had spent the past four decades of his life trying to uproot the last vestiges of sexual desire, Suhrawardy had given his free run, setting himself, it seemed, the prodigious task of bedding every cabaret dancer and high-class whore in Calcutta. The fizzing glass in Gandhi's hand invariably contained water with a dash of bicarbonate of soda. Suhrawardy's usually held champagne. While the Mahatma had been nourishing himself on soya mash and curds, Suhrawardy's diet had run to filet mignon, exotic curries and pastries, leaving him enveloped by swelling rings of fat that sloped down from his breasts to his groin. Worst of all, his hands were covered with blood. By declaring a public holiday and letting his Moslem League followers know the attention of the police would be elsewhere, Suhrawardy had set the stage for the killings which had ravaged Calcutta.3

While Gandhi became an immortal hero-martyr, Suhrawardy lost his position as chief minister of Bengal when India was divided, then was forced out of the Muslim League and passed over as premier of Bengalispeaking East Pakistan in the new nation of Pakistan. Subsequently, he had a long struggle before he came to power again as temporary prime minister of all Pakistan just before my arrival in Karachi in 1956. Yet on the night he spoke to us six Canadians in 1957, he did not dwell on past injustices. What consumed him was that the same old forces of bigotry were again being exploited by the ruling groups in contemporary Pakistan. He warned us that his days as prime minister were numbered because the power brokers from the West Pakistan landlord and military classes resented the fact that he was a Bengali and a democrat and was soft on Hindus. Within three months his prophecy came true. The End of Suhrawardy's Regime - and of Democracy That private dinner conversation changed my view of Suhrawardy. No longer did he seem to be a frivolous Westernized playboy addicted to dance parties. That was just a superficial expression of rebellion against the dictates of Muslim clerics. More importantly, he seemed to be the main advocate of communal tolerance and democracy. He was the democratic choice of the people of East Pakistan, and they represented over half the total electorate of the country.

58 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants At that time the population of the West Wing was only forty-three million whereas the East Wing population numbered fifty million. However, the power-brokers in Karachi considered the East Wing inferior because it included ten million non-Muslims. The ruling coterie were all originally from the western part of India and represented the Muslim League, which had been the vehicle used in the first place to promote the idea of Pakistan and achieve independence. They were blatant in claiming that the Muslim League was the only legitimate political party in Pakistan. They were all Urdu speakers and most were landowners, urban professionals, or army officers. They established the capital of Pakistan first in Karachi and later in Islamabad, both as far away as possible from Bengal where the majority of their fellow-Pakistanis lived. When Bengalis such as Suhrawardy created a new political party, the Awami League, to protect the interests of Bengal, the Muslim League treated it with contempt. The truth is that these men, as descendants of Muslim conquerors, looked down on Bengalis as people of a lower culture because they were a mixture of Muslims and Hindus, were of a different race, and lacked martial spirit. 'East Bengal was to be exploited for its jute, and for the benefit of the national enterprise. But it was seldom, if ever, judged an equal partner by non-Bengali Pakistanis. Even the strenuous effort to deny Bengali the status of a national language, addresses the contempt in which the eastern province was held by those who sought to sustain it as a distant hinterland/4 I learned later that it was only because of internal struggles among the West Pakistan elite that Suhrawardy and his Awami League followers had been allowed temporarily to assume the leading role in the legislature. The real power was not in the legislature but in the army. Even before I got to know Suhrawardy personally, I had been sympathetic to the people of East Pakistan and their aspirations for equality and social justice. As a prairie idealist, my sympathies were all with the Bengalis who were far from the national capital and whose economic and political problems were often ignored by the power-brokers. On my trips to the East Wing, I had got to know some of the local reporters and been invited to have drinks with them at a local bar where fiery young radicals gathered to let off steam. On one occasion they waxed indignant about how the local farmers were largely dependent on the jute crop but failed to get much return from their crops because the marketing was all in the hands of a cartel of wealthy men. The prairie socialist in me flared forth as I told them how Canadian prairie wheat

Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Pakistan 59 farmers had faced the same type of exploitation. I warmed to my stirring story of how the farmers had won their struggle against vested interests by taking agricultural marketing away from the monopoly capitalists and putting it safely in the hands of producer cooperatives and government marketing boards. Inspired by memories of prairie radicalism - and by conviviality and beer - I ended with a rousing peroration: 'Our Bengali brothers have much to learn from the struggles of Canadian farmers. You too can take your destiny in your own hands and win social and economic justice!' My speech got a warm round of applause that night in the atmosphere of bar-room camaraderie, but I was chastened to see it retold in even more fiery tones in one local newspaper the next day under a vivid headline, 'Canadian diplomat calls for farmers to overthrow their oppressors/ Fortunately for me, it was an unimportant paper with a small circulation and a reputation for exaggerated reporting so the Pakistani authorities ignored my call for revolution. But it was a sobering lesson that I should not take sides in local politics and should keep my opinions to myself. Nevertheless, at first I was comfortable in my new conviction that East Pakistan's democratic majority had finally been recognized and that all Pakistan was fortunate to be led by an experienced premier who believed in communal harmony and democracy and who had learned positive lessons from his ordeal in Calcutta. Then my comfortable viewpoint collapsed. First, there was a change of command at the Canadian High Commission. Both Morley Scott and his deputy, John Sigvaldason, who tended to be sympathetic to Suhrawardy, completed their assignments in Karachi and returned to Ottawa. The new high commissioner had very different views. Herbert Moran was a former army officer who had formed a deep appreciation for the stability emanating from army rule in Turkey, where he had recently served as ambassador. It was, after all, a period in world history in which generals such as Eisenhower and de Gaulle were playing a moderate and respected role in civilian politics. Moreover, in Turkey, Moran had met and formed an admiration for a frequent Pakistani visitor, a general named Ayub Khan. He was commander-in-chief of the Pakistan army and an advocate of the view that the army represented the best traditions of the Muslim ruling classes and had a patriotic duty to intervene if squabbling politicians threatened national unity. He was also a tall, strong, handsome, taciturn Punjabi with close links to the Muslim League and little sympathy for

6o A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants the tiresome little chatterboxes who inhabited East Pakistan. Moran soon let me know that he thought my sympathies for Suhrawardy were misplaced. The latter had a terrible reputation from his old days in India and was looked upon as an upstart and troublemaker by all the right people to whom Moran had spoken in bo.th Karachi and Ankara. Suhrawardy's policies and his rhetoric were stirring up enmity between West and East Pakistan and threatening the unity of the country. Secondly, the new high commissioner intended to reverse the image of the Canadian High Commission as an effete group addicted to dance parties. From now on, we would concentrate on good relations with the real power-brokers in the president's office and the army high command. Moran then proceeded to cultivate these relations very effectively and was henceforth much better informed about the machinations of local politics than we had ever been. And thirdly, Pakistan went through a turbulent time over the next few months. The president forced Suhrawardy to resign on 10 October 1957 after thirteen months in office - much as H.S. had predicted during our private dinner. His improper and unceremonious dismissal sent negative signals about the future of democracy and fair play to his home province and to aspiring young politicians there who were later to lead the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan. He was quickly followed by two other prime ministers, both from West Pakistan, the last being the seventh to hold office in eleven years. Weak and unstable government plagued Pakistan for the whole year after the ouster of Suhrawardy. In October 1958, the president and the army commander decided to declare martial law, suspend the constitution, close all legislatures, and institute efficient bureaucratic government. They alerted our high commissioner to their plans forty-eight hours in advance. He, in turn, confided this highly sensitive intelligence to me on the condition that I tell no one. It was exciting to be trusted with secret advance information about an army coup, but I had a twinge of conscience. The likelihood was that prominent politicians would be arrested by the army. Should I alert Suhrawardy? We were not exactly friends but he had taken me into his confidence that one night and, as far as I was concerned, he had the best claim to be regarded as the democratically elected leader of the country. It would be impossible for me to see him on short notice without attracting a great deal of attention and suspicion but perhaps I might be able to pass a veiled warning through his daughter. I toyed with the idea briefly but discarded it. My primary duty was to my

Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Pakistan 61 Canadian chief and he had sworn me to secrecy. And I should not meddle in local politics. So I did nothing and felt a little ashamed. I heard the rumble of tanks on the streets for the first, but not the last, time and watched the army take over control of government without any overt opposition. The army placed Suhrawardy and other politicians under house arrest. I observed General Ayub Khan and his cohorts strive to run the country. They were not evil men; they honestly believed they had acted in the country's best interests and at first they did bring stability and better administration. Gradually however, the difficult economic decisions, the regional and personal jealousies, the social tensions, and the temptations of power wore down their good intentions. As time went by and the army clung to power for its own sake, bitterness and resentment built up among East Pakistanis about the arbitrary ouster and continued arrest of their champion, Suhrawardy. He symbolized their aspirations to be respected as equals by the dominant West Pakistanis and their preference for democracy (albeit an imperfect form of it) over arbitrary army rule. He was kept under house arrest for forty-four months without a charge ever being made against him. Later, followers of Suhrawardy cited this mistreatment in order to foster the movement towards a bloody separation of East and West Pakistan. In this sense, he became one of the fathers of Bangladesh, but it was a sad imitation of his original call for a united Bengal which would peacefully become a secular state where Muslims and Hindus would live in harmony. I saw these unhappy events unfold and then, a few years later, heard the news that Shaheed Suhrawardy had died in Beirut, alone and far from home. I reflected again on his mixed legacy in the politics and governance of India and Pakistan and feared that history would forget his one great shining moment when he and Gandhi bested the beast of bigotry by their quiet courage. I would always remember him as the dancing prime minister who dared to defy intolerance but failed to break the undemocratic control of the Pakistani power-brokers. As for me, I emerged from this personal encounter less naive and idealistic about the political process but perhaps a shrewder and more objective Foreign Service officer.

5

Confrontation and Partisanship: Malaysia, 1961-1964

Why do we oppose it? Because Malaysia is a manifestation of neo-colonialism in our vicinity. President Sukarno of Indonesia The relentless logic of geography and the force of historic, ethnic and economic factors will prevail... in Malaysia. Prime Minister Lee of Singapore

At the end of 1961 I was sent on another overseas posting, this time as first secretary at the Canadian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya. Thus I was to be the number two officer at a very small and remote post, literally on the opposite side of the world from Ottawa. It was another Asian posting, but Malaya enjoyed a much more prosperous and modern economy and a healthier standard of living than Pakistan. That was welcome because I did not want my young family (now with the addition of one-year-old Catherine) to be exposed to as much illness and difficult living conditions as in Karachi. Internationally, 1961 was an eventful year. The Berlin Wall was built, Britain applied to join the European Economic Community, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba failed, Kennedy and Khrushchev met, and Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Communism and the democratic, market economy system were competing for the hearts and minds of people all over the world.

Confrontation and Partisanship: Malaysia 63 The Malaysia Struggle In the country which was still called Malaya, 'our side' had just won its first major victory in the Cold War after a long military and political struggle against well-organized communist terrorists (CTs) backed by the People's Republic of China. The struggle began soon after the Malay peninsula was freed from Japanese occupation in 1945. The resistance during the war was led by tough, communist, ethnic-Chinese residents of Malaya who learned how to survive in the jungle and harass the enemy with guerrilla tactics. With the return of the British colonial power, the CTs retained their organization and tactics but redefined the enemy to be the British and their Malayan government allies. Malaya was granted independence in 1957. This took away from the CTs the claim that they were fighting for freedom and shifted the focus to ideology and race relations. The terrorists stood for communism which then appealed to many Asians as a panacea for achieving prosperity and social justice for the masses and economic independence from 'capitalist and colonialist exploitation.' The new Malayan government stood for the free market system and a British-style parliamentary and federal government (similar to Canada's). To a Westerner there was no question which system was superior, but to local workers the communists could make a plausible argument that the Malayan government was a 'neo-colonialist alliance of British business and Malay feudal, ruling class, interests.' Race relations were also a critical element in the struggle. The indigenous Malays, all of whom were Muslim, held a slim majority of the voting power and, through the upper-class, British-educated members of their community, dominated the government. However, the vigorous, non-Muslim, immigrant communities (largely from China but with a significant group from India and Sri Lanka as well) dominated the economy. One element of the Chinese community also ran the CT movement. The government under Tunku (Prince) Abdul Rahman made a major effort to be multiracial. The ruling group called itself the Alliance Party whose constituent members were Malay, Chinese, and Indian political organizations. The prime minister was Malay, but a very tolerant and gregarious one, with friends from all races, who awarded some key cabinet portfolios (including Finance) to Chinese and Indians. He also entered into defence alliances with Britain, Australia, and New Zealand

64 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants to station troops in his country and to help in the armed struggle to suppress communist terrorism. By the time I arrived, the military fight had been largely won, although on one occasion I did see the smoke from a CT campfire in the jungle near the Thai border. The real struggle became a political and economic one to convince all races that they had chosen a system that would enable them to live in prosperity and peace. A key issue that was to dominate all debate during my tenure was the proposal to create a larger federation. In May 1961 Malaya's prime minister publicly proposed, with British approval, that Malaya, Singapore, and Britain's possessions in Northern Borneo join together to form a new federation, to be called Malaysia. This was immediately denounced by China, and subsequently by Indonesia, as a plot by Britain and its aristocratic Malay allies to preserve Western political and economic influence against the spread of communism and its sympathizers. Sukarno, the flamboyant leftist president of Indonesia, declaimed: 'Why do we oppose it? Because Malaysia is a manifestation of neo-colonialism in our vicinity. We consider Malaysia an encirclement of the Indonesian Republic. Malaysia is the product of the brain and efforts of neo-colonialism. Malaysia is to protect the safety of tin for the imperialists and Malaysia is to protect the rubber for the imperialists and Malaysia is to protect oil for the imperialists.' The opposition of China and Indonesia was a serious challenge to the future of this small, fledgling state. They were two of the largest nations in Asia and had enormous influence on the ethnic Chinese and Malay citizens of Malaysia to whom they were connected by blood, culture and, in the Indonesian-Malay case, the Muslim religion. Moreover, as time went on, the Indonesian opposition intensified and moved from rhetorical to diplomatic and, finally, in 1963, armed confrontation. Little Malaysia, with only sixteen million people, felt very threatened by its huge Indonesian neighbour with 166 million people, backed by China with approximately one billion. In these circumstances, Malaysia was looking for all the support it could get from Western friends such as Canada. Canada was well-disposed toward Malaysia because it was a fellow member of the Commonwealth, a federal, parliamentary democracy, and a bastion of free enterprise. However, it was far away and Canada had never had any close trading or cultural links; its problems and its relevance for Canada seemed very remote to my superiors in Ottawa. Canadian goodwill was largely rhetorical. I was determined to change

Confrontation and Partisanship: Malaysia 65 this outlook and obtain tangible Canadian support for Malaysia. But I did not yet realize that I would encounter some remarkable personalities in the course of my quest. Personalities Tunku Abdul Rahman, prime minister and father of Malayan independence, was an hereditary prince from a state near the Thai border who had been educated as a lawyer in England. He was gregarious and affable but also courageous and politically shrewd. He was a Malay nationalist but a tolerant internationalist and though a Muslim, a very relaxed one. Many people wrote him off as a mere figurehead who delegated most administrative tasks to his able assistants. But, as I got to know him better, I gradually realized the vital role he played in keeping the country together in the face of internal divisions and external pressures. (I will have more to say in the next chapter on the Tunku.) The next most important men in the country were the deputy prime minister, Tun Razak, and the finance minister, Tan Siew Sin. They were the perfect complements to the Tunku - one Malay and one Chinese but both stern, committed workaholics with a genius for organization and promoting economic development. The Tunku made the domestic and international political decisions and functioned as a beloved father figure and his two lieutenants made the economy hum and kept the private and public sectors working efficiently and cooperatively. They were an impressive team. I often visited Tun Razak's 'operations room.' Originally set up to track progress on the war effort against the terrorists, it had been converted into the nerve centre for tracking the equally important struggle to win the peace through equitably shared economic development. The other key figure in the area was Lee Kuan Yew, the brilliant young Cambridge-educated prime minister of Singapore. Under the Malaysia plan, his city-state was to graduate from British rule and join the new federation, and from London's perspective, this was a critical part of the plan. Singapore was the main British naval base and commercial centre in the region. It was constantly restive under colonial rule, however. The plan was to keep Singapore quiescent and proWestern by giving it independence but making it politically subservient to the Tunku and other British allies in Kuala Lumpur. From the Malay perspective, this was a risky strategy, because it was imperative that they keep political control away from the economically-dominant

66 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants Chinese. By bringing in Singapore, the Chinese population would equal that of the Malays. By bringing in the ethnic-Chinese Lee Kuan Yew, the British and the Malays would be taking a further risk because he was an exceptionally smart, ambitious, and aggressive politician, who would probably not be content to remain in Singapore but would try to oust the Tunku or his Malay successor as federal prime minister. Lastly, there were the leaders in British Borneo, which consisted of the separate colonies of Sarawak and North Borneo. They were a very different type than the urbane, Westernized Malay aristocrats and Chinese business and professional men who were the ruling group on the mainland. The Borneans were less polished, more earthy, pragmatic, people of the frontier, too busy trying to earn a living on the edge of the tropical jungle to worry about social graces and cultural subtleties. My favourite was Temenggong Jugah, the cabinet minister from Sarawak. He was paramount chief of the Ibans, the largest and strongest tribe of all the aboriginal peoples in the jungle. Most of the time he lived in the jungle, in a communal dwelling aptly called a longhouse built on stilts from forest products. His group practised slash-and-burn agriculture. They wore very few clothes, which they regarded as a silly encumbrance. On festive occasions, they put on bright feathers as decoration. One other detail made Jugah stand out from others; in his younger days he had been a head-hunter. Into the Jungle The Iban homeland of Sarawak was a remote and forgotten part of the British Empire quietly exporting some rubber, coconuts, and spices. Its main claim to fame was as the habitat of the world's largest and most beautiful butterflies. It wanted nothing more than to remain a lightly ruled British colony. Alas, global politics would not permit Sarawak to retain its innocence! Britain was dismantling its empire but wanted to do it in a way which would leave behind stable, prosperous, and proWestern states. Sarawak was too small to be viable on its own and would probably drift into the unwelcome orbit of neighbouring Indonesia, with which it had few cultural, economic, or political affinities. Moreover, Indonesia was currently ruled by the erratic and antiWestern Sukarno. The prospect of Sukarno expanding his influence and upsetting the regional balance of power frightened London, Kuala Lumpur, and Washington. Hence, sleepy Sarawak was told that, regardless of its wishes, it was being joined with Malaya, Singapore, and

Confrontation and Partisanship: Malaysia 67 North Borneo (soon to be renamed Sabah) to become part of the new Malaysian federation. Jugah had lived virtually all his life in the jungle, only occasionally venturing out to one of the small market/administrative towns on the edge of the forests. Now, suddenly, he was thrust onto a larger stage. For domestic political reasons, the new federation had to have cabinet representation from all its main constituent parts. He was the paramount chief of the largest ethnic group in Sarawak. Although not important economically, the Ibans were important militarily because they controlled the jungle border with Indonesia, which had just proclaimed armed confrontation with Malaysia. Unexpectedly, this unlettered ex head-hunter was named minister for Sarawak affairs in the federal cabinet and required to fly to alien Kuala Lumpur to help conduct the nation's business. I felt sorry for him in Kuala Lumpur. He was lonely and totally out of place. He had no social graces, no small talk, and was uncomfortable in clothes and houses; indeed, I often heard people joke about the 'savage.' I tried to be friendly to him but we had little to talk about. In September 1963 I was sent to Sarawak for a visit and met him again on his home ground. The occasion was a ceremony to welcome the state into Malaysia. As accommodation was limited, only a few Commonwealth countries were invited. Britain and Australia sent senior ministers from home but the others (Canada, New Zealand, India, and Pakistan) were represented by junior diplomats. At the reception, I saw Jugah standing alone and spoke to him. In a burst of unguarded zeal, I said: 'This whole affair is so artificial, a bunch of officials drinking British gin in a white man's club; we should be celebrating in a longhouse with your people, they are the ones who are affected by this event.' Jugah responded with enthusiasm: 'You are right, but I did not think anyone cared about them. Would you really go deep into the jungle to meet them?' "There is nothing I would rather do,' I replied with more passion than honesty, but then added: 'But, of course, I am here with five other Commonwealth representatives. I could not leave them. They would all have to be invited.' 'Leave it to me/ said Jugah, now self-assured, on his home ground. A little later, a red-faced Royal Air Force officer strode up to me: 'Are you the bloody fool who proposed to Minister Jugah that we transport the lot of you into the jungle in the middle of an undeclared war? It's dangerous out there. As far as you are concerned, I don't care whether

68 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants the snakes or the Indonesians get you first. But we don't want to lose the British minister, who is Churchill's son-in-law, and we can't afford to lose a helicopter. Now, please come to your senses and ask Jugah to call off this expedition.' I outlined to my diplomatic colleagues the extraordinary invitation we had just received and the misgivings of the RAF. The two senior ministers suddenly discovered they had urgent business back in their capitals, but we four young diplomats all said 'Let's go for it. The adventure is worth the risk.' Within hours we were off by helicopter into the jungle with Jugah as our host and one Gurkha soldier to protect us. After we were airborne, we were told: 'By the way, we would risk an attack on the helicopter if we left it in the jungle. Therefore, we will take off as soon as we drop you and you will stay in the longhouse until we can spare a boat to go up-river for you. Good luck.' Jugah and his people were warm and convivial hosts. We could not satisfactorily answer their questions as to why the British Queen no longer wanted them when they had been such loyal subjects for so long. We could not completely convince them that the New Zealand first secretary, Sheila Sharpley, was representing her own country and was not my wife (their logic was impeccable: a woman would not travel alone in the jungle and therefore she must belong to someone and I was the only male member present from her Caucasian tribe). Eventually, we stopped talking politics and concentrated on the activities of greatest interest in a longhouse: reciting tales of heads taken long ago; performing a dance-interpretation of a head-hunt against the enemy; drinking fiery palm liquor from a bamboo tube; and singing courting songs. The latter was a challenge. The prettiest girl of the longhouse was asked to compose and sing a love song praising all my attributes and then offer me a stiff drink. If I drank it non-stop, it meant I was interested in her. So far, so good. Then it became clear that I was expected to reciprocate by singing a song in her praise. My mind went momentarily blank. Then some repressed Canadian reflex came into play. I sang 'Alouette' and put in all the actions, pointing to eyes, mouth, neck, and so on. It was a tremendous hit. Everyone joined in and we sang it over and over. Fortunately, no one knew that I was singing about a plucked bird rather than a pretty girl. I thought my performance was over but I was wrong. Chief Jugah indicated that I must offer the girl a drink and see if she would accept. She acted shy and only took a modest sip. Then the chief laughed and

Confrontation and Partisanship: Malaysia 69 coached me. I must grab her long hair with my left hand and pull her head back. At the same time, I must force the liquor down her throat with the other hand. She was only being coy. Longhouse girls like a show of manly force and eagerness. There was much cheering, laughter, and spilt liquor but down it all went. It was only then that I realized, from the laughing explanation of the chief and the scowls of the maiden's boyfriend, that I had won her favours for the night. Next, a young man was selected to perform the same ritual with my New Zealand colleague. At this stage, Sheila decided to abandon her nationalist and feminist standards temporarily and claim that she was my wife after all and therefore we could not accept our prizes for the night. Our adventures and emotions in the longhouse were too lengthy to be recorded further here. Suffice it to say that we were not attacked by snakes, Indonesians, or head-hunters and a boat eventually took us back safely. We were all touched by the warmth, openness, humour, and generosity of our hosts. And yet, I must confess that one of my most enduring memories is about the four of us diplomats, from three different continents, instinctively sleeping together as a measure of comfort and solidarity in those exotic surroundings. I woke up in the middle of the night and realized we were not alone. The whole community was squatting in a circle watching us. For one horrible moment I wondered if they were contemplating our heads for their trophy collection. Then I saw Temenggong Jugah smiling - and I knew we were safe! Taking Sides My duties at the High Commission would normally have been confined to reporting on political and economic developments and administering the development assistance program. This was not a normal situation, however. The future of Malaysia" was threatened and with it a bastion of pro-Western policies and a noble experiment in building a nation on a basis of multiracialism, democracy, the rule of law, and the market economy. I decided to be a partisan - to support Malaysia in every way I could consistent with my first duty to Canada. Within the limits of my middle-rank position, I promoted support for Malaysia both officially and privately. On the official side, I encouraged visits so that prominent Canadians could see for themselves this brave experiment in blending Eastern and Western traditions. When Canadian parliamentarians were hesitant about visiting a zone of 'international tension/ I gave them personal assurances about their safety and

70 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants solicited their support for a democracy under siege. They came and were met at the airport by the local press anxious to report on international support for the Malaysian cause. I shall never forget one of the resulting headlines: 'Prince Edward Island is with us'! I also advocated that the Royal Canadian Navy complete its scheduled visit to Malaysia. This call by three destroyer-escorts had been arranged as a combination training and goodwill exercise long before confrontation arose between Malaysia and Indonesia. As the date approached, some nervous people in Ottawa wanted to cancel the visit because it might look as if we were taking sides in an Asian quarrel. I argued that was precisely what we should do. We should support a friendly government which espoused our ideals and was allied with Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. By the same token, we should not worry about offending a government that was, at that time, a procommunist bully (backed by China and the Soviet Union). It was eventually agreed that our ships would come and I would be liaison officer for the visit. It seems hard to recall now, but at that time Canada had state-of-the-art destroyers which we were proud to show off. Enticing people by promising to demonstrate our technology, we persuaded the deputy prime minister, half of the cabinet, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and most leading officials to come on board for a cruise. Once we had this impressive guest list in hand, I went to the Canadian squadron commander and said: 'Now, you have the greatest captive audience we have ever had in this country; let's show them what you can do. No holds barred.' Our navy put on a dazzling performance that day. The destroyers roared up and down the Straits of Malacca, with the top Malaysians on the command deck, in full view of the Indonesians. We performed intricate manoeuvres at top speed, firing in all directions. The finale was a dangerous-looking operation whereby a rope was fired across from one ship to the other and hanging on it a crude cradle in which a man is hauled from deck to deck. This was performed while both ships charged through the waves at top speed, thus requiring split-second control. First, a Canadian was hauled over and then the Malaysian commander-in-chief was invited to risk a try. This man had risen to the top because of his royal blood and without any battle experience, so his bravery was an unknown quantity. He did not hesitate to put his safety on the line with the Canadian navy that day and thereby won his spurs with both the Canadians and his own Malaysians. The two nationalities forged an emotional bond during that exciting day

Confrontation and Partisanship: Malaysia 71 and the Malaysians felt less isolated knowing they had some friends with naval muscle. I also argued that our development assistance program should do unconventional things to demonstrate our support for Malaysia in its time of trial. The challenge was to forge a sense of nationhood from several separate regions and three main ethnic groups. The poor east coast was the most isolated and alienated area, susceptible to separatist and pan-Islamic propaganda. To counter this, we mounted four unusual programs in cooperation with the local authorities; they involved fish, a highway, a dam, and television. First, we promoted fisheries cooperatives among the east coast Malays to free them from the monopoly control of the Chinese fishing-boat owners. Fishing was a principal source of employment in the area but the exploitation inherent in the monopoly control created poverty and ethnic tension. To give the Malay fisherman a chance to control his own wealth, we supplied fishing equipment to improve his catch and cold storage plants to increase its shelf-life. Most important, we imported Louis Berube, a wonderful zealot from Quebec, to preach the cooperative movement gospel that fishermen could largely control their own destiny if they worked together to catch and market their produce. What even Louis could not influence was the different cultural values each racial group would display in enjoying the benefits of their new equipment. The Chinese used it to get more fish in order to earn more money, some of which would be reinvested in more equipment. The Malay fishermen, on the other hand, would use their equipment to get a good catch early in the day. Then they would say: 'Allah has been good. We have our normal catch for the day. Let us fold our nets and return to shore so we can enjoy the day relaxing with our families and composing song-poems.' To complement the fisheries program, we sent one team to survey and design a new highway linking the prosperous west coast and the poor and isolated east coast and another group to locate the site for a giant hydroelectric dam. The latter would provide power for the national electricity grid and help end the isolation of the north and east. What was unusual about these projects was that they were both situated in the northern jungle stronghold of the remaining CTs. Our forays were dangerous and constituted taking sides in local quarrels; but they were vital support for our Malaysian friends' efforts to forge a nation in the face of adversity. Eventually, both projects were completed successfully, both monuments to the zenith of Malaysia-Canada cooperation.

72 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants Our most unusual project was to help develop a national television service. The Malaysians decided this would be an excellent way to improve public education and to create a sense of nationhood as well as to entertain their multicultural nation. What better model than the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation? They asked us to supply a CBC team to help solve technical, production, artistic, and management problems during the service's introductory years. The CBC supplied an outstanding group with unusual talent, dedication, and adaptability. My hardest job was to convince Ottawa that this was a legitimate use of aid money; it seemed very frivolous to the development purists. We had never supported the introduction of a national television system before and never would again. I do not believe Canada should do so in normal circumstances, but there was nothing normal about the threat to Malaysia's survival in the 19605. I still firmly believe we were right. Our CBC team gave invaluable assistance at a critical period and contributed to the creation of a beneficial and powerful medium which helped nurture a fledgling nation under stress. My whole family threw themselves into identifying with the Malaysians. My wife became a keen supporter of indigenous arts and crafts. My daughter's best friend was Yvette Arianayagam, the daughter of the Malaysian deputy minister of education, and they have maintained that friendship over the years in different countries, using three different languages. My son became so Malay in his outlook that, when he was presented with a complete local costume by friends and looked at himself in a mirror, he burst out: Tf only I did not have this ugly white skin, I could be a real Malay like you.' We formed close personal friendships with Malaysian government officials which went far beyond the normal, polite, diplomatic contacts. Kuala Lumpur was a small city with an even smaller group of local and foreign diplomats. My warmest companionships were with the small band of young officers in the Foreign Ministry, who were struggling night and day to save their country and felt close to those few foreigners who openly shared their concerns. We dined, drank, and played regularly with them and their families and talked about their private as well as their national fears, pleasures, and triumphs. We thought of each other as friends who enjoyed one other's company, rather than as national representatives. The political highlight was a touching vote of confidence in me as a friend. When Malaysia and Indonesia broke diplomatic relations it was a traumatic event. These were not just neighbouring countries. Indone-

Confrontation and Partisanship: Malaysia 73 sians had always acted as big brothers to the Malays, reflecting all their historic, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, kinship, and religious links. It was essential therefore that Malaysia appoint a friendly and reliable country to represent it in Indonesia to protect its interests and keep Kuala Lumpur informed. We all assumed Malaysia would ask an Asian country to do this. Instead, they asked Ottawa to send me to Indonesia to look after Malaysian interests. I was very touched and honoured. To my regret, Ottawa politely declined the invitation on the grounds that Canada was too far removed from the scene to do the job adequately. In retrospect, I think Ottawa made the right decision. Perhaps I had become too pro-Malaysian for my own long-term good. Canada would not always want to be so closely identified with Malaysia. In the future, Malaysia's objectives and new government leaders would appear less sympathetic to Canada and Indonesia's become more congenial to us. At the time, however, I felt animated and enthused about my personal involvement in a partisan cause, where I was serving another country as well as Canada. Never again would I allow myself to be so emotionally involved with a host country, but Malaysia under the Tunku was a uniquely seductive place. The Malayan language has more words to describe love in all its aspects than any other language. Malaysia's national anthem was taken from a haunting love song. And this new country was experiencing an emotional, as well as a military and diplomatic, crisis, as it resisted attack from the motherlands of its two main founding races. The emotional nature of the people and of their crisis invited a fervent response from those who lived there. I fell in love with the country and its people. Thailand and Burma In the early 19605 the Canadian diplomatic service was small and our interests in Southeast Asia not yet fully realized. Therefore we did not have resident missions in every country but maintained relations with them through non-resident accreditation. In my case, I was co-accredited to Thailand and Burma and made occasional visits there from my post in Kuala Lumpur. In the neighbouring countries, our base of operations was the British embassy, which kept an eye on Canadian interests for us. I went most frequently to Bangkok and was intrigued by its languid, lush, indulgent atmosphere and gaudy Buddhist temples. It was a vivid

74 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants contrast with Malaysia, where the atmosphere was dominated by a curious mixture of Islam and British colonial attitudes and tastes. Compared to Thailand, Malaysia was Westernized, efficient, honest, restrained, and puritanical. Thailand, in those innocent days before the American forces made it a notorious centre for rest and recreation, was a quaint oriental backwater, little changed from the descriptions given us by Somerset Maugham. My recollections are of the elegant but ageing Oriental Hotel and the nearby offices of the East Asiatic Company as the sole visible outposts of Western influence. The rest of Bangkok was a sprawling collection of temples, palaces, modest shops, and palmthatched homes. The main traffic was hand-poled boats on the rivers and canals and pedicabs on the streets. There were bars, bar girls, and cars even then, but they were sparse and did little to distract from the charm of a quiet, canal-laced, treed city, with little economic dynamism but a pervasive, Buddhist tranquillity. I am glad I knew it before it lost its soul to the flesh trade and the automobile. It was Burma that really caught my attention, however. The country was an historical anachronism, predominantly a Buddhist country isolated from the changes in the outside world. There was no hint of modernity or consumerism. Rangoon, the capital city, was dominated architecturally and spiritually by the two-thousand-year-old Shwedagon Pagoda whose spire towers over the city centre. The people are devout but also warm, articulate and, sometimes, argumentative. They had a long tradition of learning and political debate. The government had long been dominated by U Nu, a Buddhist scholar who ran the country benignly and fairly democratically but not very efficiently. During his regime, the armed forces had chafed under his refusal to allocate to them the financial resources and power they wanted. Their aims were to create a socialist Burma and to take vigorous military action against the ethnic minorities and bandit groups that exercised autonomy in the outlying regions of the country. Finally, in March 1962, the military forcibly took power under the leadership of General Ne Win. They nationalized all major economic enterprises (and put soldiers in charge!), arrested U Nu, and suspended parliamentary democracy and all civil liberties. No one knew whether this was a temporary expedient or a permanent measure heralding a repressive regime. By coincidence, I had to visit Burma a few days after this grave turn of events. Before leaving Kuala Lumpur, I asked some colleagues who knew Burma well for the names and addresses of good local contacts in

Confrontation and Partisanship: Malaysia 75 Rangoon. They suggested the editor of the main newspaper in Burma and the dean of arts and sciences at Rangoon University. I called both of these people on the telephone soon after my arrival and got a very different response from each of them. The editor said 'Yes, I will see you if you come right away/ This surprised me because editors are notoriously busy individuals who can rarely be pinned down for a meeting. I rushed to his office before he changed his mind. He ushered me in to his private office, closed the door firmly, and came straight to the point. I agreed to see you because of our mutual friend in Kuala Lumpur and because you may represent my last chance to send a message to my friends in the outside world. I have concluded reluctantly that the Ne Win regime is totally brutal and despotic in nature. It will not tolerate any opposition to its policies or even any debate about them. Nor will it permit free contact with the Western World. Someone like me, who believes in democracy and a free press, has no future here and so I am leaving within hours to join the remnants of opposition in the jungle.

Initially, the university dean reacted quite differently to my telephone call. He replied curtly: 'We patriotic Burmans want nothing to do with you foreign exploiters. I will not agree to see you in my office.' Then, curiously, he added, 'But where did you say you were staying?' That evening, as I sat alone in my hotel room, there was a knock on the door and a young boy handed me a sealed but unsigned note which read: T am waiting to see you in the darkest corner of the hotel bar/ I went down at once, a little apprehensively, to meet the author of this mysterious note. It was, of course, the dean, filled with apologies for his rudeness on the telephone. He went on to explain: 'We have all been ordered to have no contact with foreigners and we know our telephones are tapped. What could I do?' He went on to give me the same assessment as the editor and his sad conclusion that he too would have to leave his beloved university and flee to the jungle. I was greatly excited and disturbed by these two dramatic interviews. As I was unfamiliar with the country, I had no way of knowing whether they were giving me an accurate assessment or whether they were injecting melodrama and exaggeration into the situation. My instinct was that these individuals were honestly frightened and repelled by what they had seen of Ne Win and were serious about fleeing from his authority. And yet on the other hand, Burma appeared, to a neophyte

76 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants like me, as so gentle and pious that I wondered if they were misinterpreting the threatening nature of the regime. Could anything so sinister really lurk under the spell of that dominant pagoda spire, radiating its timeless Buddhist message of non-violence and freedom from the temporal world's greed and turmoil? I tried to write down as detailed a record as possible of my meetings with the editor and the dean so as to preserve a faithful, private report for their friends and for Ottawa. The next evening, I carelessly left my notes on the bedside table when I went downstairs to dine. When I returned I had the uncomfortable sense that some stranger had been in my room. Nothing was disturbed but my notes were not exactly where I had left them. When I questioned the room boy, he protested, too strongly I thought, that no one had been in my room. The incident worried me, not for myself (I had diplomatic immunity and was leaving the next day), but for my two interlocutors who had been dangerously candid with me. I comforted myself with the knowledge that my penmanship is virtually unintelligible to anyone and then decided that I had been reading too many spy novels and was just imagining a problem. I returned to Kuala Lumpur and learned a week later that the editor and the dean had been arrested the day I left Burma. Of course, the probability is that they were already scheduled for arrest as known opponents of the regime. But it has troubled me ever since that a moment of carelessness on my part may have led to their arrest. It has also made me an implacable enemy of the dreadful Ne Win government that made free and bountiful Burma a corrupt, isolated, impoverished, and brutalized land. I have taken grim satisfaction in seeing that every critical report I made in those early days has been verified over the years. Lastly, it taught me a bitter lesson not to be misled into believing that benevolent Asian religious ethics have any positive effect on despots.

6 An Avuncular Leader:

Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia

Abdul Rahman is not a man of startling intellect. He is an extraordinarily shrewd politician who prefers discussion and compromise ... The Tunku's greatest political asset is his remarkable intuition. He grasps instantly the political implications of a situation while his advisers are groping with the mystique of decision. This is especially true where Malay matters are concerned but he is rarely at fault in his judgement of Chinese or Indian feeling. Harry Miller, Prince and Premier, 212-13

It was a tense evening in Kuala Lumpur in 1963. The new country of Malaysia was about to be proclaimed but was reeling under threats from its giant neighbour to destroy it. Indonesian regular troops were fighting against the formation of Malaysia in the jungles of Borneo. We had just learned that President Sukarno had ordered the Indonesian navy to sink any Malaysian boats in the Straits of Malacca and had dispatched a raiding force of more than one hundred guerrillas to land at three separate places on the Malaysian mainland. I was attending a banquet for a young Malaysian diplomat, named Abdulla, on the occasion of his wedding to a beautiful and intelligent woman named Badaria. Indeed, I was supposed to be the master of ceremonies charged with making everyone happy and relaxed, but I had failed miserably because everybody was tense and preoccupied. The whole Malaysian Ministry of External Affairs was there, all suffering from mixed emotions: we were happy for the popular young couple, but everyone knew that the whole country was in a state of high alert and in real danger. The banquet had not been a great success. Even the

78 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants wedding had been in doubt until the last moment because Badaria was an Indonesian national and her security clearance had been difficult to obtain (although she had been living in Malaysia for several years). People tried valiantly to be jovial but kept lapsing into hushed tones and listening to the latest radio news reports. Then a tall, dignified gentleman with twinkling eyes walked into the room, quite unexpectedly and without fanfare. Everyone stopped, smiled, and burst into applause. The atmosphere became warm and relaxed, as if the sun had burst out after a monsoon deluge. It was Tunku Abdul Rahman, the prime minister and trusted friend of every race in this polyglot nation. He had been invited to the banquet but few thought he would be able to come at such a time of national emergency. For a moment, I wondered what I should do because, as master of ceremonies, I should probably make some announcement introducing the prime minister. But that was superfluous; everyone knew the Tunku and he immediately took over my role without the slightest formality. He congratulated the new couple and soothed all our disquiet by talking about how their Malaysian-Indonesian love affair was a happy augury for the forces of good which would eventually triumph in the relations between the two warring neighbours. However bleak the moment might seem, he was confident about the future for this couple and for friendship between these two nations which had so many cultural ties. Then, after a personal word with every person in the room, he left us with a jaunty air, never admitting that he was headed straight back to the crisis operations room! My friend Jack DeSilva, a Malaysian diplomat of my age, leaned over to me and declaimed with typical DeSilva passion: 'The Tunku will lead us through this crisis. He is no warrior and no fiery orator like Sukarno. He is a man of reason and of human warmth whom people of all races trust. He got us independence, he defeated the communists and he will surmount this Indonesian confrontation too. I am a Portuguese Catholic commoner by heritage, not a Malay Muslim aristocrat like the Tunku, but he transcends cultural groups and he has my loyalty forever/ Deciding that this was a good opening to start a spirited discussion, I responded in a loud voice in order to engage others at the table: 'Jack has just proclaimed that the Tunku will save you from Sukarno through reason and trust but I am going to be the Devil's advocate. We all love the Tunku; that is not in dispute. But I put it to you that he will not be able to save you this time. It is not reason and trust that will be the

Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia 79 dominant factors in your struggle with Indonesia, but armed force and economics. You will be saved by two things. Initially, your allies the British will win the military struggle because they have better trained troops and better equipment than the Indonesians. Secondly, you will eventually win the political battle through the strength of your economy because that will keep your people fed and content while disastrous economic policies will create widespread discontent in Indonesia.' And to be even more nastily provocative, I added: 'And it is your Chinese and Indian compatriots, not the Tunku, who make your economy superior/ I was, of course, hooted down. And it was done in good spirit because they accepted me as a friend who was only tweaking their noses for the sake of a good debate. The gist of their rebuttal was that I had spoken like a typical Westerner. Only a culturally blinkered Caucasian could attribute the destiny of nations solely to armed force and economics. Equally important were historical, cultural, ethnic, and religious harmonies and disharmonies, and the interplay of personalities and leadership in mobilizing public support. And they spoke with passionate conviction because they had just achieved independence from Britain and victory over the formidable CTs. If force and economics were decisive factors, they argued, then Malaya should still be a British colony because Britain was much stronger militarily and economically than their homeland. One could also argue that the CTs should have won because they were backed by the power of China and they promised economic benefits for the masses by freeing them from feudalism and capitalism. Force and economics were important, but only when combined with more subtle factors like overcoming differences between racial-religious groups, strengthening the latent harmonies among rival personalities and clans, and having the patience to wait for the flow of history. This all required leadership of the highest order - and the Tunku demonstrated that he had it. The more I questioned their position, the stronger and more united was their response that I was wrong. And this was rather surprising because, although they could be expected to share similar views as fellow diplomats, in most respects they had quite divergent backgrounds: Muslim Malays, Buddhist Chinese, Hindu and Sikh Indians, and Christians of mixed blood. They all agreed that, in the struggles to win independence and defeat communism, the Tunku had realized that the real problems were not the British colonial masters and the CT in the jungle

8o A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants but Malay feudalism and conservatism, latent communal tensions, personal rivalries, and the need for a more equitable division of economic benefits. The Tunku had taken one step at a time. First, he negotiated a peaceful and harmonious separation from Britain and reassured the feudal Malay rulers that they would not lose all their privileges under the new constitution. Then he used independence as a rallying cry to unite the disparate racial/economic groups in Malaya and invited the British troops to stay as long as needed to fight against the terrorists. The Tunku's formula emphasized that it was independent Malaya which would decide how long the British troops would stay. The British were no longer designated the foreigners; they had been invited to stay as guests and helpers. It was the Chinese communists who now represented the foreign disruption. In similar fashion, he had sought allies and stressed common interests to overcome racial divisions and personal rivalries. Lastly, he had given his Malay deputy, Tun Abdul Razak, the task of ensuring that the local Chinese and Indians shared their economic gains with poor Malays. His approach was always avuncular, not confrontational. The exchange ended when I admitted total defeat after a wonderful sally from one of the senior Malays: 'How can anyone doubt which approach will win on tonight of all nights? Sukarno uses rhetoric to inflame suspicion and animosity; the Tunku uses sweet reason and love to bring people together. Who can doubt that the Tunku's way will triumph when we see that our colleague Abdulla, who possesses neither force nor money, has used love to win the hand of Badaria, the fairest Indonesian of all.' Personal History and Character of the Tunku The many orthodox Malays in Kedah who believe in signs, omens and portents like to say that Menjelara's grace and charity in interceding on behalf of the unhappy wife of the Keeper of the Seal were passed into her next child, and that is why Abdul Rahman is the kind, generous, open-hearted man he has always been. Harry Miller, Prince and Premier, 12

Of course, I had met the Tunku several times before the wedding banquet. I knew from many inquiries and some personal experience that he was regarded with affection by all segments of the nation. As he was

Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia 81 the son of the mad Sultan of Kedah and his favourite wife, a Thai lady named Menjelara. When Abdul Rahman was born in 1903, his father's dynasty had ruled the northern state of Kedah for more than a thousand years, often under the suzerainty of Thailand, but recently Kedah had become very pro-British. Abdul Rahman was one of the younger of his father's forty-five children and too junior in line to have any hope of ever becoming sultan. But according to an oft-told tale, he was considered remarkable because of the circumstances of his birth. When the sultan's leading official, the keeper of the seal, was accused of embezzlement, the sultan sentenced him to execution and his entire family to mutilation. The keeper's wife appealed for-clemency to the sultan's kind-hearted wife, Menjelara. She dared not intervene directly but instead reminded her husband of the superstition that he should do nothing evil during his wife's pregnancy or it would be passed on to their child. The sultan was so pleased at the news of her pregnancy and so worried about the superstition that he suspended the terrible sentences. In fact, Menjelara's heart had overruled her head because she was not pregnant when she made her appeal. Fortunately she soon became pregnant and eventually gave birth to Abdul Rahman. Many people believed that Menjelara's goodness was passed on to her son, who distinguished himself from his many siblings by his sunny disposition, his ability to win friends, and his penchant for doing the unexpected. Although not a great scholar, he eventually managed to win a law degree in England and return to a civil service career at home. Although expected to marry a Malay princess of his father's choice, he defied convention by marrying a Chinese and then an English woman before he found the right Malay princess. Although far closer emotionally to his mother than his father, he was the only one of the sultan's children who had the good sense and the courage to rescue his father and take him to safety minutes before the Japanese invaders arrived. Although a devout Muslim in his heart, he cheerfully flouted some of its rules which he considered silly, such as the clerical prohibition on the pleasures of gambling, dancing with women, and drinking good brandy. Although he had not sought political office, he had the presidency of the leading political party thrust on him by his friends. Loyalty to one's own community was considered of paramount importance in Malaya, but he always went out of his way to include nonMalays in his wide circle of friends. I heard about most of these attributes from others, but I had personal evidence that he appealed to all ages as well as all races. Because a team of Canadians was helping Malaysia install its national television sys-

82 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants tern, my family and I sometimes visited the new television studios. In the early days, the Tunku used to appear frequently at the TV station to give little personal chats to his people. On one occasion he met my daughter Catherine, who was then about three years old. He quickly overcame her shyness by giving her a warm smile and by whispering his name in her ear. His name seemed to appeal to her. Thereafter, she would beam with pleasure whenever his smiling, avuncular face would appear on our TV set. 'Oh good,' she would say, 'there is my friend Tunku Abdul Rabbit/ At more than one formal state banquet where no alcohol was allowed, I saw him served from a special silver tea pot. Suspicious of the tea's deep colour and the prime minister's joviality, I once asked if I might share his tea. He smiled and said it was medicinal tea reserved for his exclusive use but I could smell it. It was pure brandy of the best quality! He had a wonderful, rollicking sense of humour. One time I was present when he was casually discussing the Profumo scandal in Britain with some of his cabinet colleagues. This scandal involved John Profumo, the British defence minister, who had lied to the House of Commons about his affair with a prostitute. The Tunku opined that the British were making too much of an indiscretion: 'Why, I expect that, at one time or another, every one of my ministers has been a Profumogator.' He then noticed a particularly sanctimonious Indian minister in South Indian dress who looked very disapproving of his remark, and added quickly: 'Except old Sambanthan there. I don't think he knows how to get his dhoti down!' The Canadian High Commission was headed at that time by E.A. McGaughey, universally known as McGuff. He saw the Tunku much more often than I did, particularly at the Malay ronggeng dancing parties the premier gave for senior men. These involved dancing to an intricate Malay rhythm and required the execution of a series of graceful figures emphasizing the arms, hands, and body and leaving the feet to play a minor role. The dances involved couples who never touched each other. Most married Malay women refused to participate in these lewd' dances and therefore left the floor to professional taxi dancers who would charge a small fee for each dance. McGuff was a short chubby man but surprisingly light on his feet and loved to perform the graceful Malay ronggeng dances. He also possessed a sardonic sense of humour and a hearty laugh. His open enjoy-

Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia

83

ment of his many years spent in Asia and his natural affability made him a great favourite of the Tunku. When McGuff's term was up and he was about to leave Kuala Lumpur, the Tunku gave him a farewell party. It was a dance party with professional dancing girls. At the end, the Tunku made a surprise announcement to the effect that he wanted to be sure that McGuff never forgot his happy days in Malaysia and therefore he was giving him his favourite dancing girl to take back to Canada. McGuff's face fell because he did not know if the PM was serious. How could he refuse such a princely gift? On the other hand, how could he explain such a dancing girl to his wife and Canadian immigration? The dancing girl seemed in shock as well. Then the kindly Tunku added: 'There is just one condition. Because she will be homesick, you must promise to bring her back with you on a visit in the near future.' McGuff saw his escape and replied: T was tempted to accept your generous gesture of technical assistance to a culturally deprived country which needs to learn the richness of Malay dancing but then you added a condition. You have always told me that you would never accept Canadian technical assistance if it had conditions attached and therefore I know that you would not expect me to compromise my principles either. So, I will accept your gift but leave her in Malaysia where she will be happy and will constitute a good excuse for me to return often.' The Tunku smiled benignly and never indicated whether he had ever been serious about the gift in the first place. However, despite the general consensus that he was a charming and successful political leader, I had never thought much about his special qualities of leadership in a crisis until the animated discussion at Abdulla's wedding banquet. Then I began to reflect on his relationship to the other principal players on the stage - Chinese, Indonesians, and Malays. Chinese The Malays are prepared within reason to share their rights with others who owe loyalty to this country. I must, however, ask non-Malays to be fair and considerate, and not make unreasonable demands ... Malays do not covet the riches or wealth in other people's hands. All that we have asked for is to be given the respect due to us as the sons of the soil. Tunku Abdul Rahman, broadcast to the nation on the eve of independence

84 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants The key issue in Malaysia has always been Malay-Chinese relations. The British had brought the Chinese to the country in the nineteenth century to do the hard manual labour in the tin mines and rubber estates. The Malays were not sufficiently motivated by money to put in such gruelling work. Because the values and attitudes of the two races are diametrically opposite, the ambitious Chinese had prospered economically and the languid Malays had not. Some Malay firebrands resented the economic imbalance but more generous people believed that the natural resources of the land were bountiful enough to support both races. They were not worried as long as the Malays constituted a majority of the population of the Malayan peninsula and held the political power. It was the formation of Malaysia, which brought in Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah, that upset the balance by giving the Chinese a slight plurality. The theory was that the aboriginals of Sarawak and Sabah and the old Chinese merchant class would side with the Malays against the pushy Chinese of Singapore and the poor Chinese farmers, but no one knew for sure. To work out a modus vivendi meant coming to terms with several key figures in the Chinese community. First, there was the merchant class who had lived and prospered for many generations in the towns and cities. Known as Babas, their ancestors had come from China centuries before and were now fully assimilated to life in Malaya. Their most prominent leader had been Tan Cheng Lock, who had been one of the earliest advocates of Malay-Chinese cooperation in order to achieve peaceful independence from Britain and form a new multiracial nation. He and the Tunku had been frequent allies in those early struggles. When the Tunku saw that his old associate was getting too elderly to join the first post-independence cabinet, he appointed his son, Tan Siew Sin, and gave him the key portfolio of finance. The Tan family reciprocated that vote of confidence by faithfully delivering most of the Chinese business vote to the Tunku election after election. But the prosperous, pro-Malay Tans and their friends could not deal with another element in Malaysian society, the poor Chinese-speaking farmers and workers. They had formed the backbone of the communist terrorist movement, which had sprung up initially to fight the Japanese invader but remained in the jungle after the war to resist the return of British colonialism. Supported and encouraged by the new revolutionary government of Communist China, they became a formidable force. It was led by a young, former local schoolmaster named Chin Peng

Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia 85 who was smart, dedicated, and tough. For the first few years, the CTs seemed to gain the upper hand but eventually they lost ground because the British and Malay forces fought effectively and because CT membership remained almost exclusively Chinese. Although the Tunku had no use for communism or violence, he respected Chin Peng because he had fought bravely against the Japanese and professed to be fighting now for independence. So the Tunku and his old friend Tan Cheng Lock went into the jungle to reason with Chin Peng and try to persuade him to give up violence and pursue his political and economic objectives through the ballot box in a free Malaya. They talked for several days with Chin Peng arguing that the Communists should be treated the same as any other political party because their aims were pure: independence, peace, and social justice. The breaking point came when Chin Peng refused to give up his arms even when the Tunku promised the CTs freedom to pursue their aims peacefully. The avuncular Tunku gained much stature from this meeting because he had demonstrated his bravery in going into the jungle, his willingness to give every chance to discontented Chinese, and his ability to be firm and decisive when necessary. He still had to deal with another type of Chinese, however - the educated, aggressive professionals and businessmen centred in Singapore. Unlike the Babas, they were still very Chinese in their outlook and unwilling to take a back seat to the Malays in politics. Their leader was Lee Kuan Yew, an extremely bright product of a dual heritage - a strong Confucian ethic and a British legal education. Born in 1923, he quickly became involved in local politics and became prime minister of Singapore in 1959 at age thirty-six, a position he was to hold for the next thirty-one years. He and the Tunku were forced to become temporary allies when Singapore joined the Malaysian Federation in 1959 but they never liked one another. The brash young Lee thought the old prince was not bright or tough enough to be his equal and the affable Tunku disliked Lee's arrogance and ruthlessness. On one occasion, they squared off against each other in a golf foursome. Lee chose as his partner the Australian high commissioner Tom Critchley, reputed to be the best golfer in the country. The Tunku chose the New Zealand high commissioner Colonel Bennett, also a fine golfer but an older man and a war hero. To everyone's surprise, the two older men squeaked out a narrow victory in the first round. Three of the participants expected that would be the end of a pleasant outing but

86 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants Lee insisted that they play another round. In the second round, the two older men tired and Lee and Critchley won the combined score for the day. As an annoyed Critchley told me later, Lee made a point of asking Colonel Bennett after the game: 'By the way, is there something the matter with your left leg?' When the colonel replied that his old war wound pained him when he over-exerted, Lee responded: 'I thought you had a weakness there; that's why I pressed for the second round.' Lee was good at winning but no one ever accused him of being a gentleman. With the formation of Malaysia in August 1963, the Tunku and Lee had to try to work together for the success of the new federation and for the easing of communal tensions (with the Malays feeling politically threatened and with Singapore having been granted more autonomy than any of the other states). Communal riots in Singapore in 1964 and Lee Kuan Yew's efforts to create a new national party in opposition to the Tunku's ruling Alliance Party created deepening tension within the Malay community. The latter demanded that either Lee Kuan Yew be replaced as prime minister of Singapore or the state be expelled from Malaysia. Discouraged and ill, the Tunku tried every way to reach a compromise but found Lee unaccommodating. Finally, in August 1965 both sides agreed that Singapore should peacefully separate and become an independent republic. The Tunku's deputy leader, Tun Razak, placed all the blame on Lee: 'the prime minister of Singapore ... is like a bride who finds the new home unsuitable ... Having married into this new family, the bride is not content with being just a member of the family, or having the right to inherit the family property; she wants to dominate and rule the family at the same time.' Typically, the Tunku did not allocate blame but concentrated on preserving cooperative arrangements between Malaysia and Singapore after separation against any common enemy and reassuring other states of the federation that there would be no cause for them to leave it. He had played the role of everybody's favourite uncle right to the end. In retrospect, it seemed to me that the Tunku has been the most successful Malaysian politician in dealing honourably with all sections of the Chinese community. It is true that he was unable to keep Singapore in the federation, but others bore the main responsibility for that failure and he still retained the goodwill of most Chinese after that painful but peaceful separation. The remaining question for me was: how would he fare with his Indonesian cousins and his Malay brothers?

Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia 87 Indonesians On the face of it, the Tunku's biggest problem was the animosity of President Sukarno of Indonesia. The fiery leader of Malaysia's giant neighbour had declared virtual war on Malaysia. Yet the Tunku seemed supremely confident that he could win that struggle. He even taunted his rival. He remembered that Sukarno, who always had an eye for the ladies, had tried and failed to seduce a famous Malayan singer. Now the Tunku recruited her to sing love songs nightly on a special shortwave radio broadcast beamed to Jakarta and to weave in allusions to the declining virility of a former suitor who was mostly bombast. Many people on both sides of the border loved the subtlety of the message, in comparison with the heavy-handed propaganda of Sukarno. The truth was that many Indonesians were weary of Sukarno's external adventures and his neglect of their declining standard of living. His anti-Malaysia campaign was especially unpopular among certain army officers, intellectuals, and the people of Sumatra who were the closest neighbours and trading partners of the Malaysians. My Malaysian friends hinted to me that several Indonesians secretly supported their cause, they even introduced me to one intellectual who had sought asylum from Sukarno. But I did not realize that clandestine talks were going on with friendly Indonesian army leaders determined to thwart Sukarno's mad campaign to attack a friendly neighbour which had powerful Western friends. The Tunku played the Indonesian game superbly. He used the external threat to rally and unify the divided elements at home, including the indigenous people facing the brunt of Indonesian attacks in the jungles of Sarawak. He persuaded his British allies to avoid provoking the Indonesians but to respond swiftly and firmly to any attack. And he encouraged the British to use Gurkhas and not white troops. The Gurkhas were feared for their silent and deadly attacks and they were fellow Asians. There could be no photographs of white troops which could be used to bolster Indonesian propaganda that Malaysia was itself a plot to perpetuate white colonial rule. And the Tunku consistently stressed his friendship for the Indonesian people. The only enemy was a megalomaniac leader who had fallen increasingly under the influence of Communist China. Lastly, the Tunku waited for the rotting regime of Sukarno to collapse from internal disaffection. He only had to wait until 1966 when Sukarno fell from power and his pro-Western successor ended confrontation.

88 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants That left only the conundrum of whether the ageing prince, with his old-fashioned instincts for fair play to all races, could continue to command the support of his fellow Malays. I had guessed correctly that he would be successful in handling the Chinese and Indonesians; I thought, mistakenly, that the Malays would be his easiest test. Malays As his friends well know, Tunku Abdul Rahman, like most Malays, loves all the good things in life ... one is immediately struck by his unbounded faith in God and in the inherent goodness of his own people. BBC broadcast by Malay students, 1948

For most of his life the Tunku was fortunate. He inherited generosity of spirit from his mother and most people responded in kind with affection towards him. He benefited from a basic Islamic faith which sustained him in times of turmoil but did not inhibit him from enjoying the pleasures of secular life. Lastly, he enjoyed the conviction that the innate goodness and simplicity of his father's fellow Malays were preferable to the ambition and avarice that animated more 'sophisticated' races. In this conviction he was sustained by the actions of most Malays until near the end of his career. When he was still a student in Britain, the Tunku had been approached by a group of influential Malay students who had asked him to assume the leadership of the Malay Society of Great Britain. The leader of that group was a brilliant Malay student named Abdul Razak. He came from an aristocratic family but was not of princely rank (although he was later given the title Tun Razak) and he was much younger than the Tunku. The Tunku threw himself into leading the Malay Society, noting that the reason it had languished of late was that its members rarely ate Malay food together. So the Tunku invited everyone to sit down and eat a feast which he prepared with his own hands. The Tunku's home-cooked meals became a regular feature of society meetings thereafter. The workaholic and studious Abdul Razak had never met such an ebullient and gregarious person and the two became fast friends. Several years later, Abdul Razak led another delegation to the Tunku's house in Malaya and asked his old friend to assume the leadership of a

Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia 89 far more important group called the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO). This was the main Malay political party which, in concert with smaller Chinese and Indian groups, dominated the ruling Alliance Party. Abdul Razak explained that he had been offered the leadership of the party but had declined because he knew that his strength lay in organizing the 'back room/ whereas the party needed a respected leader with a genius for dealing with people in the 'front room.' At first the Tunku demurred, but Abdul Razak pressed him to accept out of love for his people. He also promised the Tunku that he would be his hardworking deputy as long as he stayed in office. That partnership steered the ship of state through every storm for the next twenty years until the Tunku decided to retire and turn over the prime ministerial office to his faithful deputy. But not all Malays were like the Tunku and his deputy. There was always a group of extreme nationalists and Islamic fundamentalists who thought the Tunku and his friends were too pro-British, too proChinese, and too casual about observing Islamic rules of conduct. The nationalists and fundamentalists were kept at bay as long as the country was facing external enemies. But after the fright of Chinese political domination during the brief union with Singapore, the young extremists gained more power. Dr Mahathir bin Mohammed, a radical new intellectual leader in the Malay party, precipitated what later became a major schism in the party. On 18 June 1969, one month after the country's worst race riots and two days after the prime minister came out of hospital, he received a letter from Dr Mahathir, blaming him for the desertion from the party of large numbers of Malays and demanding that he resign from the premiership and withdraw altogether from politics. The writer was the same man who had gained notoriety as a rabble-rouser during the race riots. The letter was later reproduced and widely distributed, which made it a matter for party discipline. The Tunku barred himself from dealing with the matter but sent a copy to Tun Razak who called a meeting of the party executive. The latter asked Dr Mahathir to resign from the party and most of us thought we would never hear from him again. But we were wrong. He spread his pro-Malay views in a book, The Malay Dilemma, which struck a chord among many of the lower classes who felt threatened by Chinese economic gains. And as a commoner himself, he appealed to the myth that aristocrats like the Tunku were in league with the Chinese to exploit the rural poor. Although I

90 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants could not imagine it at the time, eventually this blunt, abrasive and autocratic but politically astute economic nationalist would become prime minister. Several years after I left Malaysia, the Tunku paid an official visit to Canada and I was assigned to escort him. He performed all his official duties but then unexpectedly decided to stay on in Montreal privately, instead of departing on schedule. After two days had gone by and everyone was puzzled as to what he was up to, I was given the delicate task of asking him. Was he unwell? Did he have meetings we could help arrange? Had we offended him? No, it was none of those things, he explained disarmingly. Just before departing for the airport as planned, he had glanced at a local newspaper and seen that his favourite Egyptian belly-dancer was performing in Montreal. He had gone to her performance that night and found it so inspiring that he had stayed a second night. Reluctantly, he had now decided that he should head home to face many troubles and problems. It was kind of me to inquire as to his welfare but frankly he felt much better since witnessing her dancing and he was only sorry he could not see more of it. He was as warm-hearted as ever but seemed weary and distracted. It was a sign that he was getting ready to step down. And on 31 August 1970, he did retire as prime minister exactly twenty years after he and Tun Razak first agreed on their partnership. I could not help but be struck by the contrast between this disarmingly honest and likeable leader and his abrasive successor when I had to escort Dr Mahathir on a visit to Ottawa many years later. That visit started off on the wrong foot because Dr Mahathir and his wife arrived at Ottawa airport dressed in Malay silks and open sandals on a bitterly cold day. Ottawa airport had not yet acquired an enclosed passenger ramp, so the shivering Malaysians had to walk through the snow to the terminal building. They were not amused. We were whisked to Prime Minister Trudeau's residence for lunch. Dr Mahathir took one look at the view of the frozen Ottawa River and the snow-covered Gatineau Hills beyond and asked Trudeau: 'I have two questions for you. How do you stand this inhuman weather? And why do you want to?' Graciousness was never his strong suit. Trudeau responded in good spirit and talked about how the changing seasons stimulate creativity and adaptability. He went on to explain how a frozen river can enhance rather than inhibit communication. His own father had trouble courting his mother who lived across the river until winter came and he could cross it easily on the ice. Dr Mahathir

Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia 91 had the grace to smile at Trudeau's apt story but I thought how different the atmosphere would have been if the Tunku had been there. But it was pointless to make these comparisons. The two Malaysian leaders had very different personalities and different legacies. The Tunku's place in history was secure as the father of his country, but Mahathir could claim to be the champion of Malay economic nationalism. Dr Mahathir had undone some of the Tunku's good work in building trust among the races but, it must be admitted, he has been more successful in fostering a new breed of entrepreneurial Malay businessmen who can compete with the Chinese on their own terms. And he represented a new, more confident age when Malaysia did not need foreign friends to defend it and could indulge in the luxury of chastizing them regularly, as Dr Mahathir has taken pleasure in doing. So perhaps the score was roughly even between the two leaders on political and economic grounds. But the Tunku had one last ace up his sleeve - religion. It was a delicious irony that the brandy-drinking, poker-playing, Westernized Tunku, rather than the pious, self-righteous Mahathir was the first Malaysian ever to become secretary-general of the Islamic Secretariat in Saudi Arabia. I like to think that the Muslim worthies who made the choice knew which man had the purest heart in the eyes of Allah.

7

International Development: Ottawa, 1965-1968 and 1972-1975

The government believes that a firm commitment to the support of international development is one of the most constructive ways in which Canada can participate in the international community in the coming decades ... Canada's example can at this time make a significant difference in the precarious balance in which the future of the entire development enterprise is now poised. Foreign Policy for Canadians: International Development, 1970

We need less CIDA red-tape and more speed. Aid given quickly would be like aid given twice. Eugenia Charles, premier of Dominica

My postings in Pakistan and Malaysia whetted my appetite for more involvement in the field of international development. In both countries, my main job at the embassy had been political and economic reporting. But the work that seemed the most rewarding and tangible was administration of Canada's aid program. It had a high priority in Canada's postwar foreign policy formulation. It had a moral dimension; we were fulfilling the biblical injunction to 'be our brother's keeper.' We were helping the people of poor and underdeveloped countries to acquire the equipment and training to improve their standard of living. Moreover, we were doing it in a pragmatic way which enabled the recipient to retain the maximum self-respect. We were following the old oriental adage: 'If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day: if you teach a man how to fish, you feed him for life.'

International Development 93 Another attractive aspect of the work for me was that it was tangible. The reporting on political and economic change was so ephemeral. The analytical pieces which one thought were so brilliant just disappeared, without a trace, into the great yawning maw of External Affairs headquarters. You never knew whether anyone agreed or disagreed with them, ever contemplated using them for any purpose, or for that matter, even read them! The aid people were at least training real people and shipping equipment that could be counted and, hopefully, put to good use. Under the leadership of Pearson and Trudeau, Canada was motivated by high ideals. In its 1970 series of statements, entitled Foreign Policy for Canadians and issued under the authority of Mitchell Sharp, the secretary of state for external affairs, a whole section was devoted to international development. It recalled the Commission on International Development headed by L.B. Pearson which had assembled a panel of eminent international statesmen to undertake an analysis of development assistance in a global context. It cited several reasons why Canada should support the universal aid effort which was being mounted. For me, the most telling argument was, as follows: The increasing awareness of poverty in the developing countries will be imposed upon a Canadian society in which concern for the welfare of others is one of the central values. To ignore that awareness would be tantamount to a regression to a form of society in which the values of that society are inverted at its boundary ... A society able to ignore poverty abroad will find it much easier to ignore it at home; a society concerned about poverty and development abroad will be concerned about poverty and development at home. We could not create a truly just society within Canada if we were not prepared to play our part in the creation of a more just world society.1

But it was not easy to translate these high ideals into practice and retain political support at home. How much should be tied to providing Canadian goods and services? How should we ration our limited resources in order to obtain the maximum effect in 'the creation of a more just world society/ The global needs were enormous. Should we concentrate on a few sectors where we had internationally acclaimed expertise (forestry, transport, and telecommunications), or scatter a little bit of assistance in every sector? Should we specialize in training people, or moving machines and commodities? Should we help only the poorest and neediest countries, the friendliest nations, or those who seemed

94 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants most likely to use it effectively? Or should we give something to almost everyone? Should we concentrate on country-to-country, bilateral assistance, or pool our efforts with others in a multilateral effort? In a typical Canadian response, the politicians decided the answer was yes to all questions. We would do a little bit of everything. What was not so clear to me was whether all this well-intentioned idealism was being handled very efficiently or realistically. My doubts grew as I handled some aid work in Malaysia for a separate, new organization in Ottawa called External Aid Office (EAO). I often felt that this office was out of touch with the realities in the field. The breaking point for me came on an innocuous project, the provision of a mobile laboratory to investigate the ecology of the tropical rain forest. The University of Malaysia had good scientists who had devised a sound research project but needed a mobile laboratory to conduct tests inside the forest. Canada had the needed equipment. I supported the project and eagerly awaited the shipment. The heavy laboratory equipment was assembled and fitted into a large trailer mounted on one axle and two wheels. It came from Calgary, Alberta, and was shipped via the Pacific Ocean. The small, four-wheel-drive vehicle designated to pull the trailer was shipped from Eastern Canada and came via the Atlantic Ocean. But the two units were never matched together in Canada. Like a bad parable of the Confederation story, Eastern and Western components set off to pursue a common goal with no communication between each other. I was invited to represent Canada at the ceremony when the two components were joined together to begin their work in Malaysia. The unbalanced, front-heavy trailer was joined to the small jeep and the two jack-knifed in the middle. The tail of the trailer and the nose of the jeep went into the air and both units sagged to the ground where they were joined! The Malaysians were embarrassed and I was humiliated. But I assured the Malaysians that this was just a technical hitch which would quickly be put right. I sent a graphic telegram to EAO explaining what had happened and how important it was to correct this mistake quickly so that the project would not be further delayed and our reputation for efficiency not be further eroded. I shall never forget my outrage at the colossal stupidity of the response I received: 'Our examination of this matter has determined that all specifications on these procurement orders were met correctly. Therefore, there is no problem. You must be wrong/

International Development 95 I determined then and there to return to Ottawa and try to drain this bureaucratic swamp. In my youthful optimism, I thought this would be a short and easy task. That was 1964. Little did I suspect that I was to spend much of the next twenty-eight years working with EAO, its successor, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and related multilateral organizations - the Organization for Economic Co operation and Development (OECD) in Paris and the World Bank in Washington. I always enjoyed the substance of my work and the dedicated people with whom I was associated, but I never succeeded in making headquarters any less bureaucratic or any more sensitive to what people in the field were saying. CIDA Headquarters My work at EAO/CIDA headquarters was split into two portions: 19648 and 1972-5, with an assignment representing CIDA at OECD-Paris in between. My first job at EAO was as executive assistant to its chief executive officer, Herb Moran. He had been my high commissioner in Karachi and had asked me to rejoin him. Like me, he was a Foreign Service officer on loan from External Affairs to EAO. Most of the staff were permanent employees of EAO, an autonomous organization which was related to External Affairs through common interest in relations with foreign countries and through sharing a senior minister. However, being related did not mean affinity of style and spirit. Most External Affairs officers were realistic, cynical, policy-oriented, politically minded, and motivated to promote Canada's interests abroad. Most aid officers were idealistic, trusting, action-oriented, economically minded, and motivated to promote the interests of the poor and under-privileged outside of Canada. With a few exceptions, the External types were Yuppies and their EAO colleagues were missionaries in outlook and demeanour. There was little understanding or affection between them. I was a mixture of both. Throughout the rest of my career, I would experience an identity problem trying to decide where my true loyalties lay. In the early days, EAO was an enthusiastic, amateurish, and unbureaucratic place. Every new challenge elicited an ad hoc response. One day, a request came from Pakistan to find and send an expert in the maintenance of stationary boilers for power generation. My EAO colleagues had no idea where to look but suddenly had an inspiration. Out their window, they could see steam rising from underground shafts

96 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants conducting heat to the various government buildings on Parliament Hill. Where there was steam, there must be a boiler. So down they went into tunnels in the bowels of the earth and discovered a whole network of heat and sewer pipes and electrical lines. In that maze, they discovered a large steam boiler being tended by a man named Maurice Lavallee. Without much formality, they asked him whether he would like to teach people how to tend boilers in Pakistan. Maurice replied that he had no idea where Pakistan was. He was fifty years old and had always lived in the village of Carp, some twenty miles from Ottawa. He had never been anywhere else but his village and Ottawa. Nevertheless, he would be interested in a change of venue if the pay was right. He had limited education but knew everything there was to know about 'bilers' and would be glad to teach others. Thus he was recruited. Then EAO had a twinge of concern about sending the unworldly Mr and Mrs Lavallee to a completely strange country and culture without any preparation. So, a one-day briefing session was hastily arranged which tried to anticipate the thousand questions which they must have. The two strangers from Carp sat stoically all day long and listened to a hodge-podge of lectures on the political, social, and economic problems of Pakistan and the theological differences among abstruse Muslim sects. They never said a word. Finally at the end of the day they were asked: 'Do you not have any questions about this strange adventure on which you are embarking?' 'No/ said Maurice, 'A biler is a biler anywhere.' But then Mrs Lavallee intervened. There was one question that was bothering her: 'Do you wear a hat on an aeroplane?' The sequel is that they were a great success. Maurice stuck to what he knew and never pretended to be anything more than a practical boiler operator. He was completely open, pragmatic, and 'hands-on' with his Pakistani counterparts about how to cope with every problem that could arise with a boiler. The Lavallees never complained, were never pretentious, and were never judgmental about the new customs and values they found. The Pakistanis were delighted with this expert and kept him for years. So much for the alleged shortcomings of informal recruiting and ad hoc briefings! As years went by, Herb Moran left and the aid administration became less ad hoc, and bigger and more sophisticated - but also more bureaucratic. The old EAO acquired a more independent structure and a grander name, the Canadian International Development Agency. Its first two presidents of CIDA, with whom I worked, were both semi-

International Development 97 political appointees brought in from outside the federal government. They were Maurice Strong, the former president of Power Corporation and future international environmental leader, and Paul GerinLajoie, the former minister of education of Quebec and a principal architect of the postwar modernization of his province. They brought a new and fresh style to CIDA and asserted its independence from External Affairs. The first three heads of our development assistance program could not have been more different in personality and operating style. Herb Moran was a conscientious, efficient, self-effacing bureaucrat who was good at executing ministerial directives through top-down commands to his staff; but he was also an autocratic bully and very subjective in his personal likes and dislikes. He liked me and treated me well, but I could see that he mistreated others, and seemed to enjoy it. He had been a colonel in the Second World War and still behaved as if he was in the army. He installed a one-way buzzer system which enabled him to ring direct to his subordinates. If that buzzer sounded it could only be Moran and everyone was expected to stop whatever he was doing and answer it. Whenever the boss called, one subordinate (who had also been in the army) used to stand at attention, gulp a tranquillizer, and salute before answering. Moran did not solicit views from his subordinates but had a unique way of keeping himself informed about their views. My office was next to his and we had a connecting door which seemed to be sound-proofed because I could never hear his conversations. People used to gather in my office at the end of the day to shoot the breeze and grouse about the boss. Being in such close proximity to the 'old S.O.B.' but just out of his earshot gave an extra spice to complaining about him. Then one evening he buzzed and asked me to come in to see him while the boys were in my office. As I listened to him, I suddenly realized that he could hear every word that was being said in my office. He noticed my eyes widen and commented wryly: 'Interesting what one hears through that door/ He never reprimanded me for those gripe sessions or even referred to them directly, but he chose this way to let me know that we should tone them down. In direct contrast, Strong and Gerin-Lajoie were not introverted bureaucrats but political figures keen to make public their own ideas and personalities. They did not understand the inner workings of the bureaucracy the way Moran did, but they brought to their work much personal idealism and enthusiasm about the importance of international development and a vision of an ambitious role for CIDA. Their styles

98 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants were different from each other. Strong sought his ideas from an amazing network of top people in Canada and abroad. Gerin-Lajoie kept in touch with a smaller group of top people but loved to brainstorm with his staff and selected outsiders. Maurice Strong would accept questions about his decisions and some criticism from his staff provided it was done privately, but Paul Gerin-Lajoie positively revelled in debate and challenges to his ideas. I respected them both and came to have great affection for Paul. I never met a man who had greater enthusiasm for CIDA leadership or was more open to fresh ideas for his program than Paul Gerin-Lajoie, but he had one weakness. He loved to play the role of benefactor on a grand scale. He had a particular affinity for Africa and believed that its people appreciated economic assistance best if it was personalized through frequent visits by the president of CIDA. Aid should not be seen as some cold impersonal instrument but as a gesture of human warmth and brotherly ties. He was always greeted with great pomp and ceremony as befited a virtual head of state who brought generous gifts. This was all quite harmless because the Canadian assistance had all been well assessed for effectiveness and appropriateness beforehand; it was simply that the handover ceremony was invested with great ceremony by the president who invariably arrived by first-class air accompanied by a large retinue. The Africans loved his sense of grandeur. The problem was that Gerin-Lajoie worked for the parsimonious Canadian government whose taxpayers hated to see anyone enjoying himself at their expense. He was told sternly that his future trips would have to be economy class. Marc Faguy, a CIDA colleague, and I were sent ahead to meet him when he arrived in Morocco for a gathering of all the governors of the African Development Bank. A red carpet had been laid to the front door of the aircraft and all the dignitaries were lined up on it to greet Gerin-Lajoie, on the assumption that the president would emerge from the first-class section. We Canadians knew that he would emerge from the back door and feared that the result would be confusion and embarrassment for both the president and his hosts. We suggested that the red carpet be taken away and an informal welcome might be more appropriate for 'old friends' but the Moroccans would not hear of such lese-majeste. But Paul, the wily fox, fooled us. The aircraft landed at night. He persuaded the aircrew to open the back door for economy passengers before the front door. Then, while everyone was watching

International Development 99 for the front door to open, he slipped out quietly, ran around behind and under the plane and suddenly appeared, as if by magic, on the red carpet. The Moroccan dignitaries surged forward to greet him, the band struck up and everyone's dignity was saved. The Caribbean The Commonwealth countries of the Caribbean were the developing nations Canadians knew best. West Indians spoke English, were situated nearby, had similar institutions to ours, and had sent many emigrants to Canada. We decided it would make sense to encourage these micro-states to pool resources and collaborate in a regional Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to which Canada, Britain, the United States and, hopefully, others would contribute. I was heavily involved in these negotiations, which did not go smoothly at first. We convened what was intended to be the founding conference of the CDB at a West Indian resort by the sea. The setting was idyllic but the atmosphere was charged with tensions of which we were only dimly aware. The West Indians opened the conference with traditional, fiery rhetoric about how all their troubles were directly attributable to centuries of exploitation by the nasty British. It was all good-humoured stuff. The British and West Indians got on splendidly and many of them would have preferred to stay under a light British rule, except that Britain could no longer afford to look after its colonies. Thus, there was nothing serious about their statements, but West Indians are marvellous orators and love a chance to declaim for the sheer pleasure of listening to the rolling cadence of thunderous English phrases. Unfortunately, no one told the head of the American delegation, who had just been appointed ambassador to Barbados as a reward for his contributions to the political party in power in Washington. He concluded that the West Indians were about to attack the British with a lethal force to match the power of their rhetoric. He moved to terminate the conference, making a last appeal to the West Indians as follows: 'We understand how you feel about the British. We had to revolt against them too. But we have forgiven them and you should too!' After we had resolved that misunderstanding, we encountered a more serious one. This concerned Jamaica's campaign to be selected as the site for the new bank. Everyone understood that Jamaica had a good claim because it was the largest member country, with an excellent

ioo A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants central bank. But other countries had good claims as well and some of the small islands had fears of Jamaican dominance and resentment at Jamaican arrogance. The situation was tense but under control until just before the vote on the site was to be taken. The Jamaican minister made a provocative speech, threatening to boycott the new bank unless Jamaica were chosen. The tension rose. No one spoke for several minutes. The first man to rise in response was Paul Southwell. He was deputy premier and finance minister of St Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla, a fragile union of three small islands which was currently being threatened by secession from Anguilla, the tiniest but noisiest of these communities. Paul Southwell was in a weaker political position than any of the other delegates but he had a better sense of drama than the rest. He was an amateur Shakespearean actor with a powerful, resonant voice and a commanding face and figure. He used his cane to draw himself erect to his full height. Then he declaimed about how he had come to this conference full of high hopes for the future of cooperation in the region. He had come with an open mind, ready to be convinced by reasoned argument on where to situate the new bank. What he had just heard was totally unacceptable, however. He ended his peroration: 'As all of you will know from the long and proud history of St Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla, we have never bowed to tyranny from the British, we are not surrendering to rebellion from Anguilla and, by God, we shall never take blackmail from Jamaica!' It was a wonderful, histrionic tour de force which brought the house down. Unfortunately, it also ended the conference. We had to wait a long time for emotions to cool and the government in Jamaica to change before we could put all the pieces back together and establish the Caribbean Development Bank, this time in Barbados. We were often frustrated at the languid pace in the Caribbean, but West Indians were equally frustrated with the increasingly slow pace of Canadian decision-making. As the size of the CIDA operation grew, so did the size of our bureaucracy. Accounting and expenditure rules that were designed for purely domestic use in Canada were foisted on the organization, which had to administer an experimental program involving different cultures, different systems, and different standards. For every dollar that was added to our aid program, it seemed that the amount of time involved in processing the money was doubled. I once chaired a meeting in the Caribbean where we assembled most of the donors and recipients for a frank exchange of views on what was work-

International Development

101

ing and what was not working well. All recipients said they respected Canada's good intentions more than those of the big donors but urged us to expedite decisions. The premier of Dominica said it best: 'Aid given quickly would be like aid given twice.' Not even our notorious red tape could destroy the West Indian sense of humour and joie de vivre. Towards the end of the conference we had a relaxed barbecue around the swimming pool. It was supposed to be a private affair, restricted to official delegates and their families. I noticed the portly and middle-aged Paul Southwell cuddling on his lap a lissom, teenage beauty. I approached Paul and said that I did not believe I had met this member of his official delegation. Our exchange continued as follows: Paul replied: 'Oh, she is not an official. She is a member of my extended family. A cousin.' I retorted: 'How fortunate that you have such an attractive cousin on this very island, far from your home. I am envious.' He did not miss a beat and closed the conversation with a last sally: 'You might well be jealous, man. I have cousins like this one on every island!' Wartime Vietnam In theory, all our aid allocations were made on the basis of the highminded principles in the government paper on international development. In reality, they were heavily influenced by a variety of other factors. In the Caribbean they depended extensively on personal relations and local politics. I soon learned that the reality in war-torn Vietnam was quite different. It was 1968. The United States was deeply mired in the war in Vietnam, while Canada was appalled by the carnage on both sides. We tried to find a way in which we could alleviate civilian suffering but avoid taking sides in the military struggle. A year earlier, CIDA had opened a hospital in Vietnam to treat tuberculosis. However, the hospital was in a remote area and we rarely heard from our team. No one at CIDA headquarters knew what our medical staff was really doing out there. Moreover, we wanted to expand our medical program to cover the rehabilitation of civilians who had lost limbs in the conflict. So a team of Canadian doctors was assembled to visit Vietnam to assess the current medical program and recommend how it might be expanded. I headed the team as the representative of CIDA.

102 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants In order to preserve our purity from the American military, we chartered our own aircraft from what we naively thought was a private company. It was called Air America, and was subsequently revealed to be the CIA airline. My suspicions should have been aroused when we loaded the plane on the first day at Saigon airport. When I asked the young American pilot what he was lugging in a canvas bag, he said: 'A machine gun. They don't like us out there.' I rode with him in the copilot's seat. Later, when I inquired about the pretty puffs of smoke below us, he replied laconically: 'That is Vietcong fire directed at us.' When we arrived at our CIDA hospital in Quang Ngai, we found the reality was startling. There were very few TB patients. The hospital, which was on the front line between the two warring sides, was controlled by South Vietnam in daylight and the Vietcong sympathizers after dark. The hospital treated civilian war casualties by day and suspected Vietcong soldiers by night. Clearly, the sympathies of the Canadian staff were with the Vietcong. Everywhere we went, we saw civilian casualties, mostly from land mines and bombs. Indeed, we saw this human suffering far more closely and graphically than I wished. The Vietnamese officials were anxious to demonstrate how much they needed help. As I was the official team leader, I was always pushed up front to see all the blood and gore for myself. I had nightmares about those scenes for a long time afterwards. We also began to realize that it was pure nonsense to trust the theory that we were safe because we were Canadian civilians. We looked and sounded like Americans and consorted with them. We were also terrorist targets. One night in Danang we were invited to dine in the American officers' club. I was reluctant to accept because we were supposed to be neutral civilians and because the club was such an obvious target for terrorists. I was outvoted because my colleagues were hungry for good Western food and conversation. Forty-eight hours after we left, the club was blown up at dinner hour with a large loss of life. It was not a pleasant trip but it was a revealing one. Because civilian accommodation was limited in the small cities we visited, we had to double up. My four Canadian medical colleagues bunked, two to a room, with each other. I volunteered to room with our Vietnamese medical escort officer. Thus we had lots of time to talk and exchange views. I told him that I could not stand being cooped up in our hotel room every night respecting the dusk-to-dawn American curfew. He said that, if I was prepared to take some risks and to trust him, we could go out together every night. I put on some of his clothes and

International Development 103 wore a cap that covered much of my face. We also agreed to say as little as possible and to speak only French if anyone came near us. So each night I saw a vigorous Vietnamese community life which was thriving, totally oblivious of the American curfew. I also looked up John Wheeler, an old American friend from Malaysia, who was now stationed in Vietnam as a resident correspondent for Associated Press. He assembled some of his press colleagues to meet me. I asked how they could be filing stories saying that the Americans were winning the war when, it seemed clear to me, they were not. They all responded in the same vein: 'We are telling the hard truth but our editors at home are rewriting our copy/ My CIDA team came back with a recommendation to restrict the tuberculosis program and establish a Canadian rehabilitation program for civilian amputees. But I was under no illusion that this was more than a tiny and temporary palliative. The reality was that we would eventually have to establish a program with the North Vietnamese, and not the Americans and their puppets, if we were serious about longterm development in that country. If I had any doubt about this assessment, it was soon dispelled by the Vietcong successes in the Tet offensive which began within weeks of our return. Politicians Abroad Soon after my Vietnam adventure, I was posted to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris and remained there from 1968 to 1972. This stirred my interest in a different approach to development. Instead of concentrating on a restricted relationship between Canada and the recipient country, why not situate more of our assistance in a broader context involving other countries - in other words, a multilateral approach? My theories were put to the test when I was brought back to CIDA in 1972 and made vice-president in charge of multilateral relations. This often meant acting as head or deputy head of the Canadian delegation to the meetings of a wide range of United Nations, Commonwealth, World Bank, and regional organizations and making recommendations on how much assistance to channel through them. Most of the work was routine preparation of position papers, extraction of information pertinent to Canada, participation in endless debates with other delegations and, in the best Canadian tradition, working behind the scenes to forge a pragmatic compromise that could be presented as an interna-

iO4 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants tional consensus resolving the issue at hand. What appeared to outsiders as glamorous jet-setting to conferences around the world was mostly hard work; long, tedious hours of listening to boring and pretentious speeches, and discomfort from cramped aircraft and hotel rooms. The other 10 per cent was professional satisfaction from advancing your country's interests in a civilized setting of debate and compromise and the occasional bit of fun and excitement. The first time I led a Canadian delegation to an international meeting, I almost expired from embarrassment, but was saved by an Italian soprano! That sentence sounds quite implausible, but the explanation illustrates that diplomacy sometimes has its frivolous aspects. I was sent to Geneva to lead the Canadian team to the annual meeting of the governing board of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Canada was a leading contributor to this major UN technical assistance program and my team went there to ensure that our money was being properly used for a well-designed and well-executed series of operations. I felt well prepared because I had studied all the relevant reports and could evaluate them on the basis of my experience in administering similar Canadian programs. What I had not fully realized however, was that these meetings were not just about professional competence but about international gamesmanship against a Cold War background. As soon as I arrived, my colleagues from other Western delegations asked me repeatedly if I was going to carry on the Canadian tradition of leading the singing at the wind-up banquet. I knew that my predecessor, Harry Hodder, had a good tenor voice and loved to sing light opera, but I had no idea that his musical prowess had made him a key player in one-upping the Soviet bloc at the wind-up banquet of these annual meetings. As I made light of these repeated questions about my voice, my Western colleagues became more concerned. They regaled me with tales of how Harry's bravura performances had squelched the Soviet side when East and West competed with each other in song at the final banquet before delegates from the whole world. Rumours were that the Russians were determined to gain their revenge this year with their new head of delegation. During the working sessions of the meeting the Russian leader revealed that he knew virtually nothing about the work of UNDP - but he did have a mellifluous voice. As the final banquet drew near, I became more and more worried. The banquet, given by the Swiss government, was held on board a splendid yacht which cruised Lac Leman. Sure enough, as soon as dessert was served the Russian began to sing. And could he sing! I am sure he was hand-

International Development 105 picked from the Music Academy because his voice and showmanship were splendid. All Western delegates looked to the Canadians to respond to this challenge. I tried to hide in the recesses of the engine room and hoped someone would fall overboard to divert attention. Next, I tried feebly to form a Western opposition chorus but nothing could stop the triumphant Russian tenor. Then, carried away by his easy success, he made a fatal mistake - he switched from Russian songs to Italian. The honour of Western culture was now at stake. As he launched into 'O Sole Mio/ we heard the soprano voice of the shy Italian delegate's wife emerge clearly above his. The Italian claque roared their appreciation, then the rest of the Western crowd joined in enthusiastic applause and fervent shouts of 'bellissima/ 1)61115511113.' Her voice soared higher and her presentation became more assured and dramatic. Then she launched into a repertoire worthy of Pavarotti. For a time, the Russian tried to compete with her but then he subsided and just attempted to sing along quietly with her. By the time she ended with a wildly applauded encore of 'O Sole Mio,' the Russian became mute in abject defeat. The honour of the West had been saved and everyone but me forgot that Canada had almost let down the side! Another spot of fun was working with Eugene Whelan, long-time Canadian minister of agriculture and active participant in international agricultural issues. Whelan was no intellectual and no fashion plate, but he was a practical farmer who cared about the well-being of farmers around the globe. Unlike many of his fellow politicians, he did not have an inflated ego and could laugh at himself. When we were preparing a major paper for cabinet on how to set global targets to overcome the looming international food shortage, we were startled to hear the minister increase our figure. We questioned his ambitious target. What methodology had he used? He hemmed and hawed but we pressed the point because the consequences were enormous. Finally, he admitted that he had thought about what he could do with his own three hundred acres of farmland in southern Ontario. If he planted his fallow land and double-cropped his best acreage by the creek, he could probably increase his own production by 50 per cent next year. If he could do it with an extra effort, why couldn't every other farmer in the world? He also had a folksy way of putting other delegations at ease. He made a special effort to break the ice with the Communist Chinese, who were very isolated from the Western world in the early 19705, because he realized their tremendous potential impact on world agriculture. At a World Food Council meeting, the Canadians and Chinese dined to-

io6 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants gether. The Chinese minister was an old man who had been on the Long March and wanted to talk about socialist theory. Whelan wanted to talk about farming. He had brought with him the provincial agriculture minister from the NDP government of Saskatchewan in order to present a non-partisan Canadian delegation. Whelan disarmed his Chinese colleague by observing that he and his family ran a small farm, while his colleague from Saskatchewan owned a huge farm and much expensive machinery which he hired workers to operate: 'But I call myself a capitalist and he calls himself a socialist. In Canada, we are more interested in who gets the best farming results than in political labels.' He was such a likeable fellow that we did unusual things to help him. At a World Food Council (WFC) meeting in Rome, Whelan was suddenly upstaged from his usual role as head of the Canadian delegation by Allan MacEachen, a more senior minister. When it was announced that the pope would receive only the most senior minister from each delegation and the chairmen of the three conference committees, Eugene was crushed. He was a Catholic with many Catholic constituents and he had worked on the WFC for years. How could he return from the most important WFC meeting of the decade without a picture of himself and His Holiness? We civil servants pitched in. The only hope was to get him elected to one of the committees. The two main committee chairmen were already decided in advance but the obscure credentials committee could still be fought for. We lobbied and promised and did back-room deals, on into the night, until we won a narrow victory. Other delegations were puzzled why Canada fought so hard for this arcane honour but concluded that it was a refreshing lapse from our usual boy scout image. Of course, all ministers had their foibles. When Jean Chretien was minister responsible for CIDA, he hated to say no to requests for assistance. Once, when the Philippine foreign minister had made a moving appeal, Chretien smiled and said: 'If it was up to me personally I would help you but Mr Drake will tell you the official Canadian position/ As we left, he turned on the charm, put his arm around my shoulder, and added: 'You don't mind that, eh? I do your dirty work sometimes, so you do mine for a change. And besides, you are so good at turning people down/ Allan MacEachen was a great supporter of the Canadian aid program, both in public and in the confidential battles over budget alloca-

International Development 107 tions. He was extremely knowledgeable about the issues. He was also a lonely man, so he sometimes called me over to have long chats about the pros a cons of our program, usually after working hours. I never complained because it was such a treat to have a minister who took such an informed and personal interest in our work. But he had one flaw: he hated to make a decision. He was a sort of Hamlet figure who could ruminate eloquently over the issues but rarely bring himself to act. On one occasion I was the Canadian spokesman in a negotiation over how much each country should contribute to funding a huge international aid program to help the world's poorest nations. As we were the host country and our contribution was pivotal to what several others would give, much depended on the Canadian decision. We had put a range of options to MacEachen but could not get him to select one of them. Time was running out at our meeting, where we were unable to reach a consensus in the absence of a Canadian position. At lunch hour of the last day, I spotted MacEachen and Prime Minister Trudeau riding up an escalator together. In a brazen act of lese-majeste, I raced up and interrupted their conversation while they were trapped on the escalator: 'Excuse me, Minister, but our conference is in danger of collapsing. I must have your decision now.' He looked at me wearily and murmured: 'Earl, use your best judgment on this one.' So, without any written authorization of any kind, I went into the meeting and made the maximum pledge which could be considered fair and reasonable for Canada and thereby pushed other nations into a US$io billion fund! I still believe that my decision that day was the right one for Canada and the world, but it would not have happened if a minister and his official had not trusted each other completely. Joe Clark loved participating in the formal part of international meetings but disliked the informal side. Whenever singing would burst forth, as we celebrated the conclusion of our annual meetings in Southeast Asia, he would leave the room and ask me to round up Canadian singers to represent him. If he had concluded that he had no singing voice, it was ironic that he turned to the second worst singer in the Canadian government to bail him out! But I think his problem was not so much with song per se but because he was only comfortable with rational discussion and not with unexpected displays of emotion. Once in Ireland, we attended a ceremony for grieving relatives of an air disaster. The mourners were of East Indian extraction and, in their tradition, turned to the minister as an authority figure to whom they poured

io8 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants out their laments in weeping and wailing. He paled visibly and told me to arrange his escape, leaving me, the undemonstrative puritan, as the surrogate figure for lamentation. On another occasion I also became the surrogate figure for Joe Clark in reacting to a different type of emotion from his own wife. The minister, his wife, Maureen McTeer, and I were flying together over the Thai-Cambodian border in a small aircraft to observe the tense situation below involving refugees and the notorious Khmer Rouge guerrillas. It would be a frightening experience for most people flying in a small aircraft over hostile jungle in a war zone. It was doubly so for Maureen, who feared flying in the best of circumstances. As I sat behind her, I noticed that she gripped the rim of her seat in fear and looked across to her husband for reassurance. He was so intent on studying the jungle below him that he ignored her. She then turned back to me and pleaded with me to come and sit beside her. So I moved up into the empty seat between Joe and Maureen and held her hand in a calming gesture while her husband remained blissfully unaware of this little drama. It was not that he was uncaring about people - he could be very warm and loving to his daughter - but he did not have a natural instinct for other people's emotional needs. Another ministerial favourite of mine was John Crosbie, who was every bit as cerebral as Joe Clark but could also be surprisingly witty and spontaneous. I met him first when he had just been appointed minister of finance and had flown to attend the World Bank annual meeting in Belgrade. He took a novel approach to prepare for his World Bank role by suggesting that his officials play 'dirty questions' with him. He explained that this meant that we would pretend to be reporters and we could ask him any tough questions we liked to help him prepare for his press conference; then we would comment on how he could improve his answers. It seemed like a good technique but we asked him how nasty we could be. He replied: 'Ask anything you like and I won't hold it against you but if you go too far I'll let you know immediately.' Fair enough. So we started by lobbing easy shots at him. He was a quick learner, so we fired harder. He kept up the pace with good humour until a colleague aimed a wicked shot at him: 'Minister, your party was just elected on the promise that you would eradicate unnecessary expenditure. How do you defend travelling half way around the world to this meeting with your wife and a gaggle of officials?' His smile disappeared and he fired back: 'Good point. Next year I will just bring my wife and leave the officials at home!' End of the dirty questions session, but he never held it against us.

International Development 109 On the same occasion, he displayed another side of his personality. I explained that it was traditional for the Canadian minister to receive calls from finance ministers of the other major Western countries. 'Fine. I'll be glad to see them all - except the French/ he replied. Taken aback by the last remark, I protested: 'But sir, you really cannot refuse to see the French minister. It is not a personal matter. It is Canadian policy.' He frowned and responded: 'Very well, if you insist; but I shall do it under protest. Moreover, I will not receive him in my suit. I shall wear a Newfoundland fishing jacket to make my point.' I left the room completely puzzled and asked his executive assistant to explain this curious behaviour by the dapper minister. His aide responded: 'You don't know anything about the history of Newfoundland, do you? In 1759 the French attacked us. They killed our men, deported our women, and stole our fish. And we shall never forgive the bastards!' The minister's point was now clear to me, but I doubt that it registered on the French minister of finance. An Afghan Princess My only truly romantic multilateral incident occurred at a Colombo Plan meeting. The Colombo Plan was the least structured of all the international aid groups. It had been cobbled together on the margins of a Commonwealth Prime Ministers' meeting in Colombo, Ceylon, in the 19505 as an ad hoc expedient to facilitate extending a bit of assistance to India, Pakistan, and Ceylon. As other regional countries became independent and eligible for aid, they were tacked on to the Plan with little formality. A small, casual secretariat was added to exchange information. It was the complete antithesis of the World Bank, the largest, most professional, wealthy, and sophisticated of all the multilateral organizations with which I dealt. In those days, I preferred the Colombo Plan to the haughty World Bank and was delighted to head the Canadian delegation to the Plan's annual meeting. I was particularly pleased because the meeting was being held in Karachi, the site of my first posting. That enabled me to renew my friendship with Jamshed Katrak, who seemed as ebullient as ever. It also enabled me to do something I had always wanted to do - visit Mohenjo-daro, the remote Indus River archaeological site. It is one of the world's great archaeological digs but so inaccessible that few people get to see it. Fortunately I had to inspect a CIDA project nearby, so the two visits could be worked in together. My CIDA colleague and pal, Stan Westall, accompanied me. We were flown from Karachi at dawn

no

A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants

by small aircraft and dropped alone at Mohenjo-daro. No one had told us that the site is absolutely deserted and unprotected from the searing tropical sun. You are alone with ancient artefacts and the Sind Desert. There is no food, no drink, no shelter, no telephone, and not another living soul in sight. In its glory, Mohenjo-daro had been situated on the mighty Indus River which served as its artery of transportation and commerce and its source of water and food. Several millenniums ago the river had shifted course and left Mohenjo-daro and all its subsequent visitors completely isolated. By 11:45 a-m- on me day °f our visit, we were parched with thirst, starving, semi-dehydrated, and very worried that, by the time the message reached our CIDA project team to rescue us, it would be too late to find anything but two desiccated skeletons. Precisely at noon, there emerged out of that trackless desert one of the most beautiful sights of my life. It was a land rover with two Canadians. With awesome efficiency, they unfurled a sun shade attached to the rear of their vehicle, put down a rug and cushions and served us, from their portable freezer, cool drinks, caviar, smoked salmon, and other delicacies. Only the absence of the fabled black-eyed houris, the heavenly damsels who attend to the needs of Muslim warriors who fall in battle for the faith, finally convinced us that we had not expired and gone straight to Muslim paradise! But the true romance of the meeting had yet to begin. Back in Karachi, I was briefed by our resident Canadians that the Afghan delegation would try every measure to convince me to award them CIDA assistance in the form of Canadian Beaver aircraft. These versatile and hardy little planes were designed for bush pilots in our North who needed to take off and land on short, rough landing strips in all weather. They were exactly what Afghanistan needed to help keep together its country of tribes and valleys separated by mountain ranges and centuries of distrust. But Afghanistan had no money and no history of friendly relations with Canada. Our nearest diplomatic post was in Pakistan. The only thread of contact was the annual Colombo Plan meeting. In an unprecedented move to attract my sympathy, Afghanistan had named as its head of delegation an unmarried royal princess aged twenty-two, and had asked to be seated beside the Canadians on all occasions. I should be on guard against all Afghan dirty tricks, including attempted seduction and blackmail. I was very wary of Afghan intentions but certainly curious. This socalled princess was probably a scheming fraud and ugly as well. In any

International Development 111 event, I had no authority to make Afghanistan a new recipient of Canadian aid; that could only be decided by Canadian ministers. So, I said to myself, there is no danger of a prairie puritan being susceptible to this ploy by a remote, feudal monarchy. As it turned out, I was wrong on all counts. She was a beautiful, well educated (recently graduated from a European college), somewhat shy but fun-loving, genuine royal princess. We immediately liked each other. We sat together for all formal meetings and for informal gatherings as well. She and her delegation made a dignified request for assistance to acquire Beaver planes. But she spent most of her time telling me about her life, her aspirations, and her fears. At home she had to wear a veil which she hated. Her family was trying to marry her to a fat old nobleman for the good of the dynasty, regardless of her wishes. She loved Europe and the diplomatic life but this might be her last trip abroad. She was supposed to persuade me to give her country planes but recognized that this would have to be done by Western methods of persuasion. She worried about the future of her country and the monarchy because malevolent foreign influences were trying to exploit its isolated and tribal nature in order to create a power vacuum. We were together morning, noon, and evening and became more and more smitten with each other in that artificial atmosphere of forced camaraderie and flower-scented, tropical nights. We virtually forgot everyone else and spent a lot of time sighing, whispering about the cruelty of fate, and looking into each other's eyes, in total disregard of diplomatic protocol. At the farewell banquet, we threw all decorum to the winds and held hands and nuzzled. Suddenly, my pal Stan Westall came up and said that he had to speak to me urgently. I told him that I was too busy but he insisted. He took me to the back of the room and pointed out a particularly mean-looking Afghan who always seemed to be loitering nearby and glaring. This Afghan thug had just taken Stan aside and said that he was the bodyguard of the princess. He did not like my increasing familiarity with her highness and wanted Stan to tell me that, if I should attempt to get too close to her that night, it would be his duty to slit my throat! When I returned to Canada, I did explore whether we could help Afghanistan because our aircraft fitted their demonstrable needs so well. But Afghanistan never got its planes; it did descend into tribal anarchy bedevilled by foreign meddling (as she predicted); and I never saw the princess again.

112 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants Realistically, one must conclude that nothing ever could have come of our chance encounter. We came from two different worlds and social classes. I was married and she was betrothed. Afghanistan and Canada had few common interests. And yet sometimes, when I reflect on the strange blend of idealism and reality that animates international development and the mixture of objective and subjective factors which influence decisions, I wonder if this episode might not have had a happier ending. If the Afghan royal family had been able to trust a single foreigner to give them unbiased advice, if they had acquired planes to keep all the country's isolated valleys in touch, is it just possible that Afghanistan could have mitigated some of the tragedy that subsequently befell it? Whimsically, I wonder if international relations in this century are not the poorer for their lack of romanticism.

Greeting Prime Minister Diefenbaker on his visit to Pakistan, 1958. The Canadian high commissioner, Herb Moran, is on the left and my former wife, Joyce, on the right. (Author's collection, courtesy of Government of Pakistan)

H.S. Suhrawardy, my favourite prime minister of Pakistan. (Struggle for Independence [Karachi: Pakistan Publications, 1958])

Canadian and Malayan diplomats in formal attire for the accreditation of Canadian High Commissioner E McGaughey in 1961.1 am in the second row. (Author's collection, courtesy of Malayan Governme

Presenting Canadian External Aid Office equipment to a minister in Kuala Lumpur, 1962. (Author's collection, courtesy of Malayan Government)

Dancing with Temenggong Jugah in a Sarawak longhouse on the occasion o the formation of Malaysia, 1963. (Author's collection

Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's beloved first premier. (Lee Kuan Yew, The Battle for Merger [Government of Singapore 1961])

Greeting External Affairs Minister Allan MacEachen when he visited CIDA in 1974. The CIDA president, Paul Gerin-Lajoie, is on the right. (Author's collection)

Conversing with Robert S. McNamara, president of the World Bank, in h Washington office, 1980. (Author's collection, courtesy of World Ban

Advising External Affairs Minister Joe Clark during a visit to India in 1985.

(Author's collection)

Inspecting a guard of honour on the occasion of presenting credentials to President Suharto in Jakarta, 1982. (Author's collection, courtesy of Indonesian Government)

Accompanying Prime Minister Trudeau during his meeting with President Suharto in Jakarta, 1982. (Author's collection, courtesy of Indonesian Government)

Prime Minister Mulroney meeting paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in Beijing, 1986. (Author's collection, courtesy of Chinese Government)

Presenting credentials as ambassador to China, flanked by embassy managers and Chinese officials, 1987. (Author's collection, courtesy of Chinese Government)

Speaking at a Chinese army ceremony in memory of Dr Norman Bethune in 1987, flanked by wife Monica and Commander-in-Chief Qin Jiwei. (Author collection, courtesy of Chinese Government)

Presenting CIDA assistance to a rural school in the remote Chinese province of Gansu, 1988. (Author's collection)

With a Tibetan monk at the ruins of Ganden monastery during a private walk to avoid our Chinese handlers. (Author's collection, courtesy of Hau Sing Tse, an officer of the Canadian Embassy in Beijing)

Scene from a Canadian embassy staff quarter at noon on 4 June 1989, three kilometres east of Tiananmen Square a several hours after the massacre. Soldiers are seated waiting for orders beside their disabled truck and several corp covered by coats. A little later, the soldiers departed and the bystanders set the truck ablaze. This same evening Canadians were evacuated after shooting erupted in the area. (John Morrison, an officer at the Canadian Embassy Beijing)

Disagreeing with Premier Li Peng about the consequences of the Tiananmen crisis at a meeting in the Great Hall of the People, 1990. (Author's collection, courtesy of Chinese Government)

Greeting Premier Li Peng and his wife at a Chinese banquet for Prime Minister and Mrs Chretien during the Team Canada visit, 1994. (Author's collection, courtesy of Chinese Government)

8

The Temptations of Paris: The OECD, 1968-1972

How are you going to keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paree? First World War song

I should have known that Paris would be different from my other postings. My relationship with Paris started off unevenly from the first time I visited the City of Light, four years before I was sent there to live. On my first visit to Paris in late 1964,1 was the most junior member of a large delegation headed by Mitchell Sharp, the secretary of state for external affairs, who was accompanied by his invalid wife. We flew on a Canadian government aircraft. On the flight, I sat beside the minister's private secretary, Jeannette Dugal. I told her how excited I was to be making my first visit to Paris but how disappointed I was that I would have no time to see anything of the city because I would be so busy arranging logistics and taking notes at the minister's meetings. 'We can't allow that; Paris is too wonderful to be missed,' she replied. 'I went to university in Paris and was planning to revisit some of my favourite haunts as soon as we check into our hotel tonight. I invite you to accompany me, if you are prepared to give up half a night's sleep.' So off the two of us went and had so much fun touring the Left Bank that we got no sleep at all. We barely made it back in time to begin the meeting the next morning. The minister saw me yawning and inquired in friendly fashion why I was so tired. He smiled when I explained that I had sacrificed a night's sleep to see something of Paris by night but then turned very cool when I added that it had all been made magical for me because Jeannette had been my nocturnal guide. I was com-

ii4 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants pletely puzzled until I learned much later that the minister was a great admirer of Jeannette, whom he eventually married after his wife died. Much later and quite unexpectedly, I was posted to Paris as a Canadian representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). If my personnel officer thought he was giving me a respite from travelling to exotic and dangerous parts of the world, he was mistaken. My family and I landed in Paris in 1968, in the midst of the most tumultuous summer since the end of the Second World War. Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia and Hungary to crush the nascent liberalism appearing among both young people and nationalist leaders. The violent crisis in Northern Ireland began. Intellectuals of all ages passionately debated these foreign crises and expressed popular discontent over President de Gaulle's authoritarian handling of domestic problems. In Paris itself, student demonstrations led to clashes with police and factories were taken over by workers and students. I was beginning to think that I attracted a crisis wherever I went: an army coup in Pakistan; armed confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia; open warfare in Vietnam; and now student-police clashes in Paris. But the OECD itself was a haven for quiet discussion and research among the representatives of like-minded, advanced industrial countries who tried to learn from each other how to improve all aspects of their economic performance. We met in a charming old wood-panelled chateau near the Bois de Boulogne, where the Montgolfiers had launched one of their first balloon flights. Our discussions proceeded at a leisurely pace, interspersed with long, wine-inspired lunches. The OECD was a cozy, rich-country club which promoted economic cooperation by sponsoring research and exchange of information, by encouraging dialogue among members on subjects of common interest, by developing common standards and guidelines, and by conducting an annual examination and critique of each country's economic programs. My area of responsibility was comparative study of the theories and practices of international economic development. This stirred my interest in different approaches to development, taught me some negotiating and speaking skills in a multinational environment, and allowed me to meet some impressive international officials. It also enabled me to enjoy the cultural delights of Europe for the first time. Unfortunately, it had another result. After a struggle to resolve my love/hate relationship with Paris, I became so enamoured of the charms and distractions of Europe that I temporarily lost my sense of purpose and of moral values. The prairie puritan stumbled from the path of

The Temptations of Paris 115 righteousness and emerged a more rounded personality, but also one less at peace within himself. My wife Joyce, our children David and Catherine, and I took the opportunity while in Paris to visit many parts of Western Europe. Every holiday for four years we took off for another corner of Europe and tried to imbibe as much as possible of different cultures, foods, arts, recreational facilities, and scenery. We sampled Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and, of course, the United Kingdom, where we felt most at home. These were all enjoyable and non-threatening diversions because they were brief visits and we did not have to make a home there. My first problem was coming to terms with France where we now lived. As a student, I had never liked anything about its history. I had always been a committed Anglophile. In my view, the French were arrogant, elitist, self-indulgent, rigid and uncompromising in thinking, and morally lax. To me, France had always been xenophobic and an unreliable ally. So I began with an overt prejudice against the French, and my first months in Paris strengthened those feelings. All big cities tend to produce tough, self-sufficient, and brusque citizens who have little time for pleasantries with strangers. But Paris is in a class by itself in terms of nurturing rude, haughty, and aggressive denizens. Over the centuries Paris has excelled in perfecting 'civility' in interactions among members of the upper classes who are properly introduced to each other; the anomaly is that the same city has never applied more than a modicum of civility to most strangers in its midst. I was determined not to be over-awed by this most glamorous of cities. Early in my stay I had taken a visiting Canadian government delegation out to dinner and been briefly amused and reassured to hear the dusty reaction of the Saskatchewan member when everyone else was gushing over the lights of Paris. Turning to me, he commented with mock seriousness: 'Earl and I know differently. If you have ever driven south on the Saskatoon-Regina highway at night and been wrapped for hours in all the dark immensity of that endless, lonely prairie and sky and then come over the last height of land and suddenly see all the lights of Regina spread before you - what are the lights of Paris in comparison?' Over the four-year period I spent in Paris, I travelled to many parts of France and soon came to appreciate that its inanimate features - the buildings, the bridges, the paintings and sculptures, the food and wine, the music, the clothing styles, and the treed boulevards - were impres-

n6 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants sive, even beguiling. Mostly, however, it was the wonderfully evocative remnants of the past that stirred me more than contemporary France. I also came to realize that the French outside of Paris were really quite delightful and never dull. Sometimes they stirred me to admiration, sometimes to condemnation, sometimes to bewilderment, but I was rarely left indifferent. It was a different story with our Parisian fellowcitizens, however. On most days I still found them rude, cold, and selfcentred with few redeeming qualities. My response was to repay Parisians in their own coin - to be as rude as they were. (I am normally polite to a fault; Paris was the only place that ever drove me to this unnatural response.) My most effective instrument was the automobile. I spent a lot of time commuting between the suburbs where we lived and my office in the i6th Arrondissement of central Paris. The distances were great and the traffic was horrendous. It gave me the opportunity to study the driving habits of Parisians and to plan my revenge. I concluded that Parisians longed to drive with speed and panache but were constantly frustrated by the number of cars on the road and by the configuration of streets, which put a premium on graceful bridges and on boulevards radiating out from concentric circles, but not on efficient freeways. Parisians observed only two rules of the road: sneakiness and intimidation deserve respect; and the car to the right has the right-of-way, no matter what damn fool thing it is doing. In response to this analysis, I bought two cars: a tiny Fiat 500 (which was useful for sneaking down tiny alleys and sidewalks where one could happily frighten cyclists and pedestrians) and a big Mercedes (designed for bullying drivers of French cars, which tended to be smaller and lighter). The trick was to anticipate which car would be best in the traffic nightmare which loomed on any given day. Most days I opted for the Mercedes and plunged into bullying. That is where the right-ofway rule came into play. Most countries observe this rule but temper it by common sense; the French take it as an absolute right. Nothing gives French drivers more pleasure than to roar out of an obscure side street into a six-lane thoroughfare without warning and force all lanes of traffic to their left to brake to a sudden halt. It took me some time to perfect this technique and to summon the chutzpah to execute it, but eventually I was able to perform it with sangfroid several times a week. My piece de resistance was to speed out of an obscure alley into the Place de 1'Etoile, swirling with traffic coming and going from the eight streets radiating out of it, and never look to the left even when I heard the squeal of brakes and the curses of drivers to my immediate left!

The Temptations of Paris 117 Nothing illustrates the differences between the French and the English better than their approach to driving. The French are individualists who love to assert themselves; the English are conformists much given to politeness as defined in England. One drives on the right and the other on the left. Both are supremely confident that their behaviour is the only civilized approach to driving - and everything else for that matter. Although their histories have been intertwined for millenniums, they basically dislike each other. These observations were confirmed for me on the morning of i April 1969. On that day, Radio France solemnly announced that, as part of the price for Britain entering the Common Market, France had agreed that all traffic must immediately shift from the right to the left side of the road! After a few minutes of public shock and traffic confusion, the radio admitted that it was all an April Fool's joke and nobody had been expected to take it seriously. But Radio France could not contain the explosion of indignation from the French public. Hundreds of people called to express their outrage at the very idea of giving in to the English on a matter as sacred as driving. This was the stupidest thing they had ever heard of. It made absolutely no sense to shift traffic to the left side. Even if there was some technical or political argument in favour of such nonsense, they had no intention of doing anything English. The English did not have the faintest idea of how to drive an automobile with panache. Moreover, no Frenchman wanted Britain in the Common Market anyway. My daughter Catherine was eight years old when we arrived in Paris. She brought no knowledge or preconceived notions of French history, culture, or language. After one year's study at a fancy downtown school which taught in both English and French, she asked to attend the local French school a block from our house. We warned her that it would be difficult to learn a new language but she wanted to go to a normal neighbourhood school where she could make friends. We assumed that the school would make some allowances for a stranger who did not know the language or the curriculum and help her adjust. We were wrong. Catherine was always a good student and quite adaptable to new surroundings, so she applied herself diligently. We hired a tutor to help her after hours. Her teacher piled on the homework so relentlessly and marked every minor mistake so savagely, that Catherine became discouraged. We went to see the teacher to ask her advice and support. The principal told us coldly that there were no allowances made in her school for strangers and she could not afford to hold back the class

n8 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants because one child could not keep up. She could give no support beyond teaching and marking Catherine as strictly as any French child. Her only advice was for Catherine to work even harder or else she would fail. There was not a hint of human compassion or professional concern for a student struggling with problems beyond her control. But eventually the school had to adjust to Catherine in one respect. In her second year at the French school, the class began to study English in accordance with the curriculum set long ago by some administrator in Paris for every classroom in France. The teacher began with nursery rhymes. By this time Catherine spoke such excellent French that the teacher had forgotten that English was her mother tongue. Thus, Catherine's Canadian speech was corrected and she had to mimic her teacher's heavy French accent in reciting rhymes like 'Mary had a little lamb.' The next step was the introduction of tapes recorded in England and the class had to shift to a British accent. So far it was Catherine who had to make all the adjustments, but there was a surprise in store for her teacher. Unexpectedly, the class was visited by the inspector of English language instruction from the Ministry of Education. The inspector was an American lady. She introduced another accent. More importantly, she spotted that Catherine was a native English speaker and invited the pupils to copy her. The teacher was humiliated and suspended the class for a week. Then she resumed the class with the following introduction: 'Now, pupils, we have recently learned the important lesson that there are several accents in English, including the British, the American, and the Canadian. In France, we all know the importance of avoiding the terrible accents in some of the provinces and of using the only correct accent, which is that of Paris and the Loire. I have done some research during the past week to determine which English accent is the most pure and free of affectation. I have determined that it is CanadianEnglish and therefore, in this class, we shall follow Catherine.' Catherine stuck it out at the school, worked even harder under the guidance of a private tutor, and eventually became a star pupil and a great admirer of all things French. Indeed, the teacher later told us a story to demonstrate how she had transformed our daughter. When the class was studying the word nostalgic, the teacher asked Catherine to explain it to the students because she was the only one away from her home country. Catherine was unable to do so and confessed that she felt no home-sickness for Canada because 'J'aime la France.' Another time, after a particularly jingoistic history lesson, Catherine asked me

The Temptations of Paris 119 indignantly: 'Daddy, do you have any idea what those terrible English did to that great man Napoleon?' The teacher felt she was vindicated; her stern methods had produced a model French student who now spoke and wrote perfect French and believed that France was the centre of the world. To me it epitomized my love/hate relationship with the French. They valued logic more than charity; they had a splendid education system for the intellectual training of top students but little for the practical training of ordinary pupils; they were so supremely sure of their own importance in the world that their conduct often verged on chauvinism. My son David was three and a half years older than Catherine and did not adjust as well as his sister to French pedagogical methods. He had little trouble learning to speak fluent French. He also experimented with the local lycee but could not abide a system which judged students on how well they could memorize exactly what their teachers and textbooks said and would not tolerate pupils who tried to question or debate their teachers. He investigated the American School of Paris but opted for the English School which was smaller and enjoyed a good student-teacher ratio and an emphasis on self-discipline through the prefect system. Under the latter arrangement, older students who became prefects were expected to take the lead in student government and guiding younger pupils. David's school had a wonderful site on the River Seine, a few miles upstream from Paris. It also had some evocative personal associations. The headmistress was reputed to have been a famous spy for the British and the French Resistance during the Second World War. Her administrator lived nearby in a chateau once inhabited by the romantic novelist Alexandre Dumas. Each room had a different theme. David's favourite was the Moroccan room done in a hybrid of fin-de-siecle opulence and eastern exoticism, reflecting French conquests in North Africa. Somehow, the Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo never seemed far away in that wonderful chateau with its adjacent lodge. Dumas had constructed the lodge across a moat from the chateau so that, whenever the crush of his friends and admirers prevented him from writing, he could escape by crossing the drawbridge and pulling it up behind him. Although David never became as uncritical an admirer of French culture as Catherine, he outdid her in one respect. He adored French cuisine. As a growing boy at a school which encouraged outdoor activities, he had an enormous appetite. He liked all good food but he specialized in French cooking. One time when his mother and sister were

12O A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants out of town, he persuaded me to take him to one of the finest restaurants in Paris so that we could gorge ourselves on snails swimming in garlic butter. We planned to keep this a secret from the girls but, on their return, we still reeked so strongly of garlic and suffered so obviously from over-eating that we were forced to confess. This experience did not deter David in the slightest. Later, he and I drove together in northern France with a newly arrived Canadian father and son. We stopped in a local restaurant for food and the new boy ordered a hamburger. David looked even more aghast than the waiter. He seized the boy by the arm and gave him a short but forceful lecture: 'Listen, kid. When I first arrived here I thought hamburgers were great too. But I want to tell you that hamburgers are a dumb thing to order here for two reasons. First, France has the greatest food in the world so eat up and enjoy it. Second, a French chef won't cook hamburger anyway so you are wasting your breath/ To our surprise, we learned that David had acquired another passion from France, a fascination with politics. One weekend we were strolling in the woods near our home and happened upon a fund-raising picnic where food was for sale. We all felt hungry and rushed to the picnic tables, with David in the lead. Suddenly David stopped and threw up his arms in horror: 'We can't eat here - it's a Communist Party fundraiser.' As we looked around, we realized that he was right but then took stock of the fact that we were all starving and it would be a onemile walk back to find other food. 'Let's eat here anyway; it won't add much to the Communist coffers/ I suggested. David was shocked; how could I propose to give one centime to communists - didn't I know what they espoused? I then proposed that each of us should try to balance his or her political preferences against the exigencies of imminent starvation. Each person could decide on their own whether to eat or not to eat. David refused to eat a morsel. Three of us decided to eat modestly but felt quite sheepish, knowing that the hungriest one among us was acting on a matter of principle. Turning down French cuisine made it seem a matter of passion as well. We learned later that the reason for David's vehement reaction was that he had been subject to daily harassment from communists at his French school in Sevres (a Paris suburb) before he had moved to the British School. Most of the residents of Sevres were from the working class and supported a Communist municipal government. Only those of us who lived in a small affluent section on the hill above the town were openly non-communist. Every day, as pupils entered the small

The Temptations of Paris 121 gate of the Lycee, one by one, they were forced by their older classmates to choose between one of at least five daily propaganda pamphlets produced by rival communist factions. This forced choice turned a political innocent from Ottawa into a rabid anti-communist who, once outside the school gates, would occasionally taunt his schoolmates that they were stooges for repression. Even when he was sent to fetch our daily baguette at the local bakery, David would be faced with the communist greeting: '55 centimes, camarade/ And he would always respond: 'Merci monsieur, et je ne suis pas votre camarade.' One of our greatest shocks was to find that the Parisians have no sense of neighbourliness. It is a Western Canadian tradition to get to know your neighbours. When our parents came to their new land, they often had to depend on the people next door to help them harvest their crop, fight insect infestations or fire, go for medical help, search for children or cattle lost in a blizzard, or depend on them for basic human contact in an empty and harsh land. Moreover, it was an intensely egalitarian society where every man was judged on his ability to contribute to local needs, not by his lineage or his learning. We had assumed that all Europeans shared our concept of neighbours, but we soon found that we were wrong. Our attempts to smile and make polite small talk with our neighbours were summarily rebuffed. This continued for the entire year we lived in an apartment complex. The people who got on and off our elevator every day refused to acknowledge our existence even by smiling or nodding. We then moved to a house in one of the suburbs and hoped that would enable us to get to know some of the local residents. We did get to meet some local residents through the local school which Catherine attended and they were quite civil to us. However, we failed to engage a single neighbour in conversation on any topic - until an accidental occurrence, just before we left. One evening our doorbell rang unexpectedly. A young couple asked us in laboured French if we knew when our neighbours were due to return. Recognizing a British accent, we switched to English and explained that we did not know our neighbours at all. We asked whether there was a problem and whether we could help. They replied that they lived in Britain but the people next door were friends who had invited them to stay at their home after their holiday in the south of France. The English couple thought that they were expected today and had driven all day to reach Paris. However the neighbours were not at home to receive them and their two small children were exhausted. They did not know where to look for a hotel in our remote suburb. We

122 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants discussed the problem, took a liking to the English family and invited then to stay overnight with us in the hope that our neighbours would appear tomorrow. It was the sort of thing that any Western Canadian would do in the circumstances and we did not think much of it. The next day the neighbours returned, apologized for the confusion over the date, and took over their British friends. They also made a point of inviting us to their home. They turned out to be delightful people and we were able to discuss our different concepts of the role of neighbours. They were astonished that we would take in perfect strangers for the night. That was not a prudent thing to do in a big, tough, cosmopolitan city. They explained that the citizens of a huge metropolis like Paris chose their friends on rational grounds, such as family connections or affinity of interests, but considered geographic proximity an irrational reason for a personal relationship. Coming from a different background, we never reached agreement on this point but were both glad that common acquaintances had enabled us to meet, despite being neighbours. Incidents like this, which enabled us to understand our neighbours and find some common humanity, softened our view of Parisians a little. I even met a taxi driver with a kind heart on the day I suffered a violent attack of kidney stones. Such an attack can cause one of the most extreme pains known to man. I could hardly see straight, much less think calmly. I grabbed a cab and asked the driver to take me to the American Hospital of Paris where I had gone previously for less acute kidney stone attacks. It was a long trip despite the driver's heroic efforts to bypass traffic bottlenecks. I wanted to reward him handsomely but could not see to count the money, so handed him my wallet. He not only refused any money for his act of mercy but helped me into the hospital. Finally I had to admit that Parisians were full of surprises sometimes very warm ones! Mia and Elena My family gradually came to a grudging appreciation of Parisians. But for me personally that was a secondary issue; the serious problem was coming to terms with the sophisticated European lifestyle of my new colleagues at the OECD secretariat. The two OECD colleagues whom I came to know best were Mia Gestrich and Elena Borghese. Both were single women, both were European intellectuals who knew nothing about Canada, both were mem-

The Temptations of Paris 123 bers of the secretariat dealing with my subject of international economic development. They were each other's best friends, but there the similarities ended. One was a member of a German-English, middleclass professional family and the other was an Italian-White Russian princess, related to popes and aristocrats. One was a Protestant with middle-of-the-road political views, and the other a fallen Catholic who had become a fiery socialist in rebellion against her father (who was the leader-in-exile of the Italian Fascist party). One was a near-professional skier and the other a poorly coordinated, indoor intellectual. One was a striking Teutonic blonde in appearance but shy in public and the other nondescript in countenance but fearless in public debate. I came to know them both well and spent much time with them. Through them, I became entranced by another way of life - European hedonism. They scoffed at my notions of duty to God, country, family, and employer. They poured scorn on the puritan revulsion at the sins of the flesh as well as the idea of maximum attention devoted to serious work and minimum time wasted on frivolities. Their view was that our temporal life was the only one we could count on, so we should enjoy it to the hilt. Some attention to your employer and your family was required, but this should be minimized to permit tasting any healthy diversions which tempted your mind or body. My friends were not French and believed that Western European culture embraced Italy, Spain, Greece, Britain, and Northern Europe as well as France. They urged me to drink deeply of the continental experience and become a convert to their view that, in terms of history, culture, learning, philosophy, architecture, literature, music, cuisine, and lifestyle, Europe towered over nouveau riche North America! Europe can indulge any desire, satisfy any whim; why resist the lures of this fascinating continent, especially if you have friends ready to initiate you into a new way of life? So gradually I succumbed to temptation. Before long, I was neglecting my work and my family in order to enjoy the luxuries of a glorious city and sophisticated companions. I enjoyed excellent food and wine, I skipped a few OECD meetings in order to stroll in historic quarters, ruminate through galleries and museums or listen to music, sometimes sublime and sometimes painful especially the avant-garde variety. My friends and I met, ate, explored, and played together as often as we could. We arranged to journey together to visit romantic chateaux and historic sites in France and Italy. I even took up Alpine skiing - despite my Prairie terror of height and my lack of athletic coordination - in a headlong lunge to emulate la

124 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants dolce vita of my new European friends. We discussed art, politics, philosophy, gender relations, and religion. But most of all we shared our common passion for tracing the historic origins of trends in art, politics, culture, and national styles and attitudes. I loved playing the historian and they loved trying to convince me that most stimulating ideas and creative styles originated in Europe, not in philistine North America. Suddenly, a repressed prairie puritan and frustrated historian was let loose in the citadel of indulgence and in one of the mother lodes of history. Relations with my wife became strained. My work suffered. I lost all sense of purpose except to indulge myself and enjoy the sinful pleasures of Paris with my new companions. My rational self realized what was happening to me, but I continued down the path of hedonism. Gradually, I discovered that hedonism has its limitations. I learned that Mia and Elena were not as happy and content with what seemed to be an idyllic lifestyle as I had thought. Their lack of commitment to their work was partly due to boredom with its content; their absence of emotional commitment to family was partly because they had no functional family units of their own. Moreover, in Mia's case, I eventually learned that she was burning the candle at both ends in order to savour every emotion and pleasure while she could because she sensed that the angel of death was waiting impatiently for her. Her mother and her favourite brother had died young and she would soon follow them to a tragically early demise because of a lung tumour. She always had trouble breathing and she suffered terribly from asthma; sometimes every breath seemed like her last. She skied so hard and so dangerously because the air was clear on mountain tops and the thrill of the swift descent enabled her to forget the panic of fighting for air on the ground. To my amazement, I learned that this clever, pretty, athletic, educated woman, who had a good job in a fascinating city, was not happy and content with her life. The things she wanted most - relaxed laughter, the joy of exploring new ideas and pathways with a true friend in a warm, sharing relationship had been rare experiences in her life. Outwardly, she appeared to be happy and self-content; inwardly, she was shy, vulnerable, and unfulfilled. She was a wonderful companion and a stimulating guide to panEuropean culture. She taught me much about learning from other societies, shedding inhibitions and prejudices, and the joy of sharing emotions, ideas, and aspirations.

The Temptations of Paris 125 Whenever I remember Mia and Paris, I think particularly of the Chateau of Chantilly. It is north of Paris off the main routes and seldom visited by tourists. It is not as pretty or romantic as the castles of the Loire or as awe-inspiring as the great cathedrals of the lie de France. But Chantilly was our favourite because we felt that we had discovered it together and because it symbolized our common affection for historic sites and art which could evoke a romantic past. For history buffs, Chantilly is marvellously evocative because there have been chateaux on this site for two thousand years, stretching back to Roman times when Cantilius erected the first fort here to command passage through the Nonette valley. In 1450 a newer chateau passed into the hands of the great Montmorency family, the second most powerful clan in France, and the chateau remained there for almost four hundred eventful years. For romantics it conjured up the last love of King Henri IV who, on visiting Chantilly, was smitten by the beauty of Charlotte, the fifteen-year-old daughter of his host. The king arranged her marriage to the timid young Count of Bourbon-Conde under the misapprehension that this would enable him to have easy access to Charlotte. But on the day after their wedding, the young couple fled France and sought shelter with the king of Spain. A furious Henri blustered and threatened to no avail. The young couple waited in exile until his death and then returned to Chantilly where they sired one of the most famous families in France and lived happily ever after. They also made their chateau a meeting place for artists and writers and endowed one of the finest libraries and portrait collections in France. The beautiful library contains over six hundred thousand volumes and the museum contains 363 portraits of the leading figures of the sixteenth century, all by the great artist Clouet. These are not formal stereotype portraits designed to show the rank of the person but are character studies showing lines of worry, pain, or mirth. I still treasure a fine copy of a Clouet painting from Chantilly. It depicts Francois I as a proud, vigorous, self-satisfied, and wily Renaissance monarch. It is significant to me because Jacques Cartier discovered Canada during his reign and Frangois became our country's first king. I treasure this portrait because of its artistry and its historical connotation, but most of all because Mia gave it to me and it helps to keep her memory green. I was attracted to Mia partly because of her ability to mask her inner fragility. In the case of Elena, I was fascinated by her encyclopedic learning and her Italian way of dramatizing most things. I also liked

126 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants her lack of arrogance about her famous and eccentric family. She never mentioned to strangers that she was Princess Borghese, descendant of one of the most famous families of Italy on her father's side and a Russian noble on her mother's side. Under her mother's influence, she had frequented the Russian Orthodox church of Florence near the great Borghese Gardens bequeathed to the people of Rome by her father's ancestors (which included one pope, several cardinals and patrons of the arts, and a Napoleonic general who married Bonaparte's sister Pauline). Her father, Count Borghese, had been an Italian naval hero but then had disgraced the family by becoming the leader of the Italian Fascist party on the death of Mussolini. He was exiled to Spain. Elena rebelled by becoming an ardent socialist, moving from the family castle near Rome to live modestly in France and refusing all contact with her father for many years. As he lay dying, she went secretly to Spain for a reconciliation with him but swore Mia and me to secrecy. Count Borghese's death in Spain gave rise to a passionate debate in Italy. Should Italy allow his body to return to Rome for burial in the family crypt of one of the great churches of Rome? It was true that he had been a fascist but he had also been a war hero and a son of one of the great families. Finally, it was decided that he could be buried in the family crypt provided the Fascist party promised there would be no political demonstrations. Elena attended the funeral. She returned to tell us with great vividness of how, at the most sacred moment of the funeral service, the fascists had surged forward, seized the body, and paraded around the church singing patriotic songs while the antifascists shouted and struggled to prevent this travesty. Finally, the naval honour guard recovered the body. On hearing this account, I offered my sympathy: 'How awful for you to witness this indignity to your father. How terrible that neither side respected the solemnity of the occasion.' But Elena brushed off this Anglo-Saxon comment: 'Nonsense, it was wonderful. Exactly the way he would have wanted it - to leave with drama, struggle, and passion!' Elena helped introduce me to Italy. I went to her family castle near Rome and to her ancestral homes in Florence, Siena, and Gubbio. I plunged into Italian history and art and food. And I heard delicious gossip about this eccentric family. For example, we learned about how her aunt had squelched a budding romance between her elderly husband and a younger widow of the town with whom he had begun to dine daily. When the aunt heard of this relationship, she marched to the restaurant, seized a huge bowl of steaming tomatoes from a waitress,

The Temptations of Paris 127 and dumped them on the designing widow. The philandering husband crept back home under his irate wife's arm and the unlucky widow was known forever after as 'Madame Tomato.' I will be forever surprised about Italy and caught off guard by its charm. On one occasion I attended a formal lunch given by Count Sforza, scion of another famous Italian family and at the time secretary general of the Council of Europe. He seated me beside a distinguished, silver-haired Italian senator from Sicily. This gentleman displayed impeccable manners, erudition, and a delightful sense of humour. He noted that I was from Canada and possibly suffering from an over-exposure to American movies about the Mafia. He admitted that he was from Sicily, knew something about the Cosa Nostra, and would be glad to answer any questions. He could not speak about criminals in America but in Italy one should recall the historical origins of the organization to protect the common people against waves of invaders and the patriotism of the Mafia in fighting the Germans in the Second World War. He added that, except for a few criminals who were being rapidly weeded out in Sicily, the organization was roughly equivalent to a service club in Canada. He was very low-key but convincing. After the meal Count Sforza asked my opinion of the senator. I said that I had found him a delightful table companion and was grateful for his objective account of the Mafia. Sforza laughed heartily and said: The old fox has done it again. He is a master at charming the unwary. But beware, he is himself a senior Mafia don!' I have never been able to explain why I have such a generous and forgiving attitude towards Italians and am so critical and suspicious of their French cousins. That clearly reflects an irrational prejudice on my part, but I suspect that I am not the only Anglo-Saxon who shares it. Personal Adjustments Towards the end of my posting, I began to reflect on what had happened to me in Paris. I did not like what I saw. I had become selfindulgent and rudderless. I had drifted apart emotionally from my wife, who saw me experimenting with a lifestyle and value-system different from the ones we had both grown up with in Saskatchewan. I had also become indifferent to my foreign service career for the first and only time. But my career problem was more tractable than my domestic one. It suddenly came home to me that the root of my professional problem was boredom. I had become tired of the work at the

128 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants OECD. At first it had seemed challenging. Founded as an outgrowth of the Marshall Plan, the organization was dedicated to promoting the flow of information, study, and cooperation among Western market economies. It was a way to learn from the experiences of other industrial countries and to develop common economic rules and statistics which would ensure fair play among all parties. All these objectives were admirable but scarcely stirring stuff. To be sure, there were some political tensions underneath the surface. The OECD had been dominated by the Americans in the early postwar years. But there was now a backlash of resentment against Yankee influence as the Europeans grew stronger and more unified. Canada was inevitably caught in between the two sides and I usually ended up making common cause with the other 'fringe countries' - the Australians, the Japanese, and sometimes the Nordics. That could be stimulating but, after a couple of years, even that game wore thin as I realized that we were expending enormous energy fighting over minor points that were more theoretical than real. I recall vividly the occasion when I suddenly saw how removed I had become from reality. All of us in the OECD development section were spending much of our time debating abstract development theory and trying to reduce our measurements of progress to numerical tables. Then a fellow Canadian, David Hopper, stopped in Paris for a visit en route back to Canada from India, where he had spent the last few years working with poverty-stricken villagers. David was no missionary; he was a sophisticated, tough-minded economist who knew all the development theories. But he had not been content to study them in the abstract and had gone to India to test them in the field. A few of us tried to engage David in a discussion about how to allocate scarce aid resources: was it better to feed starving people now or to concentrate on long-term development so that future generations would have a better standard of living? There is, of course, no easy solution to this dilemma and the discussion became murky and inconclusive. In order to cut through the soft options, a French colleague then opined coldly that we should let Asian and African peasants starve in order to reduce population pressures and construct a more rational scenario for the future. David Hopper erupted: T have heard enough from you armchair theorists, sitting in luxury in Paris, debating Asian lives as if they were some of your precious statistics. We are talking about real people who have human needs and aspirations and some of them have great potential. Don't talk to me about letting people die for your theories until you are ready to come to my Indian village, work as

The Temptations of Paris 129 hard as they do in the fields, and tell a mother to sit by quietly and watch her child starve.' For me, the most interesting OECD technique was the annual examination of each country's programs by its peers. Thus, in my field of economic development, we took turns sitting in judgment on the other Western countries to learn if they had discovered more effective techniques for delivering aid or stimulating public support and to ascertain whether they were paying their fair share of the burden to support the economic growth of the poor countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These country examinations lasted a whole day and could be quite uncomfortable if the country in the dock was believed to be slacking in its efforts or fudging its figures, or both. We all believed that the French and Italians were the prime cheaters but it was not easy to catch out the clever French. I took all these examinations seriously and prepared diligently to ask probing questions at every country's session. Then came Canada's turn. I thought it my duty to prepare the Canadian team from Ottawa for our examination. To do so, I prepared a confidential critical analysis of the Canadian program, stressing its weak points so that we could prepare our defences in advance against probing foreigners. I circulated this critique to all the relevant departments at home and not just to CIDA which would be the main Canadian defender at the OECD. No Canadian official had ever prepared such a self-criticism before but I believed it would help CIDA if other departments, such as Finance and External Affairs which sometimes constrained CIDA, understood what we would be up against in this examination. But to my utter surprise, my former boss, Maurice Strong, took this as a personal attack on his management. He flew to Paris in a rage demanding that I withdraw the offending paper. I tried to explain that there was absolutely nothing personal in my comments; indeed they were designed to help him look good when he faced his peers in Paris. I declined to withdraw my paper but offered to mollify him by doing a companion piece analysing the strong points in the CIDA program from an OECD perspective. He never quite forgave me for daring to be so outspoken and I thought that I might go from being bored to being demoted. In my last year in Paris my outlook seemed bleak. I had still not completely resolved my love/hate affair with Paris or my emotional and intellectual relationship with my OECD colleagues. I had lost my naive but comforting belief in a puritan code of conduct. I had undermined my marriage. I found my work boring and unsatisfying. I had

130 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants soured my relations with my superior. It was as if the long, grey, damp Paris winter would never end. Then spring came to Paris, both literally and figuratively. Everything suddenly seemed filled with the promise of resurgent life. CIDA appointed a new president, Paul Gerin-Lajoie. He was a Renaissance man who had been one of the principal architects of the quiet revolution in Quebec and now wanted to help reform the world. He was, of course, a francophile but he was also an anglophile graduate from Oxford. He was a man who understood the pull of two cultures and philosophies but had been able to combine the best of both in himself. He believed as strongly as I did in the importance of promoting economic development in the world. And he welcomed - indeed encouraged - debate, new ideas, and criticism of CIDA management as a way of learning and improving one's performance. He knew all about my infamous critique of CIDA. Despite this - or perhaps because of it - he offered me a handsome promotion to leave the OECD posting and return to CIDA in order to join his new management team. I felt flattered and vindicated but mostly relieved that I could escape the beautiful trap that Paris had become for me. I could turn to new challenges and opportunities and put most of the trauma - and the pleasures - of Paris behind me. Such is the blessing of the Foreign Service, that one is never stuck in a difficult situation for very long. There is an underside to this rhythm, however; one rarely stays long enough to resolve deep-seated problems. It is too easy to evade them by moving elsewhere.

9

The Mighty World Bank: Washington, 1975-1982

The World Bank is the foremost international development agency. Some call it the best, some call it the worst; but no one escapes its influence. Cheryl Payer, The World Bank: A Critical Analysis, 15

In 1975 I was sent to Washington, DC to be Canada's resident representative at the World Bank. Technically, I was to be one of twenty executive directors who represented the shareholder governments which contributed the financial backing that enabled the Bank to conduct its vast activities. As executive directors, we were responsible for examining and approving, in weekly meetings with President Robert McNamara and his senior staff, all Bank transactions. These included borrowings on the world bond markets, loans to developing countries, oversight of affiliated organizations (notably the International Development Association, a low-interest loan program for the poorest countries), and the large administrative and research programs. The foregoing sounds like a pretty dull and routine job designed for a banking expert. In reality, it is one of the most fascinating jobs imaginable for a diplomat interested in effective international cooperation to promote economic growth in poor countries. It has little to do with banking and everything to do with international economics and politics. The imbalance among nations, in current wealth and in future prospects for a better life, is a major international problem. On the global scale, it threatens social and political stability, as much as slums do in any urban community. The major Western powers had recognized this

132 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants problem when they were reorganizing the international order at the end of the Second World War. They formed the United Nations to deal with political, social, and some economic questions; but they also established the World Bank to handle the financing of reconstruction and development in disadvantaged countries. Canada strongly supported both the UN and the World Bank. Everyone remembers that our Mike Pearson won the Nobel Prize for his work at the UN on resolving the Suez crisis through peacekeeping. Most people are unaware that he devoted as much time and imagination to chairing an international commission, under World Bank auspices, to promote systematic economic support for the developing nations. A Primer on the World Bank Before describing my relations with the Bank, it may be prudent to pause and insert a brief layman's introduction to this fascinating institution which is so little known to outsiders. In 1944 the major nations met at Bretton Woods, in the United States, to establish a postwar international financial system. They agreed to found the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which is commonly called the World Bank. The UN and the World Bank were fundamentally different in organization and outlook. The UN was based on the old League of Nations concept of one country, one vote, regardless of size or importance. The selection of its staff gave more weight to national quotas for each member country than to professional competence. The nationality of its secretary-general has rotated among regions. Its financial base was limited to relatively modest annual contributions from all members. At the World Bank the emphasis is on financial power, not political balance. Basing itself on the financial backing of its rich sponsors, it is able to raise huge amounts on the world bond markets. Voting power on Bank decisions is based on the amount of money a country has contributed to the institution. At the beginning, the United States, as the paramount economic power at the end of the Second World War, completely dominated World Bank decisions. All World Bank presidents have been American citizens, although as other countries such as Japan and Germany have gained economic power relative to the United States, American dominance has become less pronounced. Nevertheless, America and its Group

The Mighty World Bank 133 of Seven (G-y) allies can still control 50 per cent of the voting power at the World Bank whenever they agree to work together through their executive directors. Similarly, the Bank staff, although made up of more than one hundred nationalities, has a disproportionate number of Western and Western-trained personnel, who are selected on the basis of academic and professional qualifications, not country of origin. The World Bank has changed and expanded dramatically since its inception. Initially, the primary objective of the World Bank was to help finance the reconstruction of war-ravaged Europe and Japan. After European recovery was under way, attention shifted to economic problems in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. There, new players were emerging on the world stage, many of them after suddenly graduating from colonial dependency and with little preparation for coping with the complex responsibilities of full nationhood. The World Bank has now become the major multilateral, financial institution for the promotion of economic development. Each aspect of that definition requires some elaboration. As a multilateral organization, its membership is open to all governments prepared to accept its rules and responsibilities, as defined in its Articles of Agreement. It began operations in 1947 with only forty-five members because the Soviet bloc members did not sign the articles and, as yet, there were few independent nations outside Europe and the Americas. Today almost every country in the word belongs. As explained above, voting power is based on the amount of money a country has contributed to the institution. Another unique feature is that its management is supervised by a resident board of directors which speaks on behalf of its shareholders. Because the number of directors is limited to approximately twenty, the more than one hundred shareholder countries must chose which of the directors will represent them at the board. (By long tradition, the Canadian director also represents Ireland and the English-speaking Caribbean countries.) It is a financial institution because it borrows money in order to lend to member countries at a rate of interest fractionally higher than its cost of borrowing. It must ensure that its loans are sound in order to retain the confidence of its bondholders and its rich member countries who have guaranteed the repayment of the bonds. The Bank also administers some low-interest funds which are given to it by rich members for the benefit of countries too poor to repay its commercial-rate loans; these are known as International Development Association (IDA) credits. Nevertheless, even in the case of IDA credits, all World Bank projects are

134 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants conducted not as a charity but as a hard-headed financial operation. All loans are negotiated in great detail and designated for a specific purpose, with detailed conditions attached (for example, that purchases must be under international bidding rules which allow firms in all member countries to compete equally and fairly). The size of these operations is enormous; by 1996 the World Bank had loaned its members over US$3OO billion for more than six hundred projects in one hundred and forty countries. The promotion of economic development is the principal purpose of the Bank. Its rules do not permit it to take official note of political, human rights, or commercial considerations, although obviously the last often informally affect members' attitudes. Staff members have won international recognition for the Bank as the premier development institution in the world in terms of size, impact, and professionalism. Typically, staff members go far beyond ensuring that a loan will be repaid and spend a great deal of time with the host authorities on the project to ensure that development goals are identified, appropriate technology is transferred, local training programs are implemented, and indigenous institutions are strengthened. Given its great economic power, its pro-Western management, and its need to be financially viable, the Bank has inevitably attracted criticism over the years. But few of its critics would deny that it has become far more than a mere multilateral forum and financial institution. Despite its undoubted shortcomings, most observers would agree that it has become the leading theorist, researcher, practitioner, and educator about the transfer of funds and modern development concepts from the rich northern countries to the poor southern ones. In the words of a Western academic, Tt has served as a major purveyor of western ideas about how education and the economy are, or should be, connected/1 It is the combination of economic power and professional excellence that has enabled the Bank to become a major vehicle for transferring modern technology and economic thinking to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. For me personally, there were four challenging questions about this new assignment. Canada had only 3 per cent of the votes at the Bank. Could I make its voice be heard? Would I be able to reconcile the varied interests of Canada, Ireland, and the Caribbean, all of which I was to represent? Were Bank projects as infallible as its staff purported them to be? And finally, how would I get along with the Bank's domineering and controversial president, Robert McNamara?

The Mighty World Bank 135 Making Canada's Voice Heard This is a familiar question for Canadian diplomats in international organizations. We are a middle power in everything but geographic size; intermediate in population, in share of world trade, in financial resources, and in military clout. If we stand alone we are unlikely to be listened to. Therefore, the challenge is always to determine which group to align with in each institution in order to enhance Canada's voice and not submerge it. Before I arrived, Canadians had usually worked with the Scandinavians and the Dutch at the World Bank. Our countries are of similar size economically and shared similar progressive views on development questions during the days of Pearson and Trudeau. I decided to change that practice because, although I personally found their views to be congenial, I realized that these small countries had little clout in a power-conscious place like the Bank. The nations that mattered were those with major financial stakes in the Bank: the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. That is to say, the grouping of principal industrial market economies known as the 0-5. Moreover, even Trudeau was becoming enamoured of this club as it expanded to include Canada and Italy and to change its designation to the Group of Seven (G-y). This required some adjustment on my part. Over the years, I had always got on well with British, German, and Japanese diplomats but had experienced mixed relations with Americans and frequently disagreeable ones with the French. In my completely biased view, their officials were often brilliant and sophisticated but also arrogant, selfcentred, and unreliable as partners. The French are among the world's greatest chefs, artists, and conversationalists but the worst allies. In my experience, they only share information if it is self-serving and break solemn agreements whenever it serves their short-term advantage. For me, a handy rule of thumb in diplomacy had been: Tf the French are opposing your position, you must be doing something right!' The Americans are a more serious problem because their country is so important and because one cannot generalize about them. Some are the salt of the earth: well-informed, reliable, sensitive to others, and good companions. Others are so consumed by personal ambition, by a sense of national superiority, and by internal American politics that they are almost impossible to work with as members of a team. This is a

136 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants special problem for Canadians, who naturally expect that our neighbours, with whom we share so many economic and cultural links, will be our best friends abroad. Sometimes that happens but at other times, to our surprise and disappointment, we get on better abroad with others (often Australians, New Zealanders, and West Europeans) than with our North American cousins. Often the difference is based on whether the Americans are professional diplomats who have served abroad frequently and learned that America does not have a total monopoly on knowledge and wisdom, or whether they are recent political appointments with a very parochial outlook. So I approached the forging of alliances at the Bank with trepidation. To my pleasant surprise, I found all of my American counterparts (several succeeded each other during my seven-year tenure) to be first-rate professional colleagues. I was astounded to discover that even the French board members proved to be not only sociable but frequently cooperative. Thus, the stage was set for Canada to make its views heard through concerting positions in the congenial and powerful G-j grouping. But to be effective, we had to be mindful of two other sets of players - the other thirteen executive directors on the board and the management of the Bank. If we were too blatant in the exercise of our 50 per cent voting strength, we would alienate the other members and make the board divisive, confrontational, and unproductive. In this respect, Canada was more sensitive to the views of others than our G-j colleagues, who were accustomed to the exercise of power without thinking much about how their actions might appear to smaller countries. We knew what it felt like to be outside the charmed circle. Soon after joining the board, I had become indignant at a 'pre-cooked deal' presented to us by the G-5 and had railed against being dictated to by a cabal. President McNamara asked me how I defined a 'cabal,' with its pejorative overtones of secret intrigue. I responded: 'A cabal is any grouping from which Canada is excluded.' As I stayed in position at the Bank longer than my colleagues, I became the dean of our G-j group and had to take the lead in steering a course which would strengthen G-7 support for the Bank but avoid offending others. In considering individual borrowings and loans, we consulted informally only if something was of major concern to a G-j member. Usually, only a few of us would speak in support of our G-j ally and others would remain silent or speak on different points to

The Mighty World Bank 137 avoid the appearance of collusion. Normally, we used our own judgment on individual loans and felt free to differ with other G-j members to avoid the sort of bloc voting which marred United Nations' debates. In particular, I used to make a point of speaking against the selfish American opposition to loans for the production of sugar, palm oil, and citrus fruits for export because they might compete with American products. On another occasion, I encouraged the board to denounce a secret deal between the American government and the Bank management agreeing that the World Bank would not make further loans to Vietnam. I had some understanding of American sensitivities toward Vietnam, but secret agreements could not be tolerated and G-j solidarity could only be stretched so far. Relations with Bank management were complex. The managers were extremely able and far more experienced at manipulating Bank business than were itinerant directors. The managers controlled the flow of Bank information to us. Moreover, they had the zeal of religious converts in believing their program was right for the world and the instincts of authoritarians in subverting democratic opposition on the grounds that they knew better than the ignorant rabble. The authoritarianism was derived, not from some political creed, but from the tactics of Western business and financial bosses. During my time at the Bank, the two presidents brought their high-handed approach directly from Ford Motors and the Bank of America. Their approach was to decide everything in advance, present it as convincingly (and exhaustively) as possible to the board at the last moment, hope for minimal questioning on purely factual matters, and make a presidential determination that a consensus existed without any real debate or voting. This tactic usually worked because the ground work had been done so thoroughly and professionally by the staff and because the board was in fundamental agreement with the Bank program. Sometimes, however, the board threatened revolt. Then the managers tried cajoling and flattering us, usually with success. Whenever I signalled clear unhappiness about a project or policy, managers would invite me to dine privately and elegantly to explain the real reasons for the Bank's position. When I would demand more vigorous action by a Bank committee, I would frequently be named chairman of it. The longer I stayed, the more the management and I developed a symbiotic relationship. Occasionally, the board indicated clearly that it was about to say no, in which case the management usually withdrew the proposal

138 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants before it came formally before the board. That way, everyone saved face and the outward harmony of the unending board-management dialogue was preserved. The dynamic tension between board and management had another unexpected and far-reaching result for me personally. I had long suspected that the management edited the official reports of board meetings in order to give undue weight to their views and short shrift to those of board members. My G-7 colleagues and I even speculated that the management probably told the Bank secretariat what to record in the minutes before the meetings were held. And so I took the lead in convening a meeting with these faceless secretariat minute-writers to inquire how it came about that their reports always seemed biased against us. The meeting presented me with two surprises. First, the writers were not the slightest bit cowed by these serious accusations from the mighty board members. They defended themselves with professional aplomb. In their view, they were reporting with fairness and objectivity. One staff member in particular impressed me greatly. Her name was Monica Cruder. She was not only remarkably articulate in several languages but defended her role with passion and great conviction. Second, these staff members were not faceless, as we had thought, but memorable individuals with distinctive visages and, in Monica's case, a very pretty one framed by exuberant red hair. I left the meeting still suspicious of senior management's role but convinced that the minute-writers were not the problem because they were conscientious professionals. And it occurred to me that Monica was worth getting to know better. Later, after the unhappiness of my marriage breakdown with Joyce, Monica and I were to meet socially as well as professionally and eventually marry. This marriage has been a very happy one with a meeting of the minds on most points. But we still argue, largely for the fun of it, over whether the Bank management really cooked the record in its favour. Reconciling Canadians, West Indians, and Irishmen My voting constituency at the Bank included Ireland and seven Caribbean countries. During the annual meeting of the Bank, all member countries were represented at ministerial level, but during the rest of the year I had to represent and try to reconcile the views of all my member countries. On the face of it, this appeared to be a formidable task. What on earth did they have in common?

The Mighty World Bank 139 The answer is a shared language, common traditions of law and government, and a similar approach to the problem of international development. We were all inheritors of British governance and culture but also conscious of having shared a struggle to win freedom from colonial rule. Our histories had often been intertwined. When our delegations met at Bank meetings, we used to swap stories about how Canadian and West Indian maritime trade had begun on the exchange of cod for sugar and rum. As our current culinary habits displayed, salt cod remains a staple of the Jamaican diet and rum the favourite drink of the Atlantic provinces. The predominant accent of West Indians is Irish because their slave ancestors learned English from Irish plantation overseers, while the English landlords remained at home and became rich (exactly as they did when my Scottish ancestors came to Canada). The Irish still remember a Canadian episode in their long march to full independence; their prime minister chose Ottawa as a sympathetic venue in which to announce that Eire would sever its last links with the British crown. The three groups were at very different stages of economic development: Canada was a prosperous, industrial economy, giving financial support to the Bank; Ireland was a middle-income, mixed economy, just graduating from Bank lending; and the Caribbean countries were poor, agrarian economies, heavily dependent on tourism and borrowing heavily from the Bank. They also had very different styles. The Canadians gave me close supervision. The Irish gave me lots of latitude but encouraged my support with their charming gestures, like inviting me to spend a weekend at an Irish castle or to attend prestigious Irish dinners. The West Indians made little fuss over me but pleased me by treating me almost as one of their own. The Guyanese, in their marxist phase, even addressed me as Comrade Executive Director. With this potent mixture of cultures and national styles, there were bound to be a few little incidents. At a formal Irish-American dinner, I was seated prominently beside the famous screen star, Maureen O'Hara. Still beautiful in her late fifties, she had a graceful figure, perfect fair skin, and a proud head framed by that famous red hair and enlivened by radiant eyes and an expressive mouth which mirrored her quickchanging moods. The guest speaker was the Irish minister of trade, who gave a rousing appeal for Americans to invest their money in bringing new industry to Ireland. As he spoke, Maureen whispered to me, with much feeling, that she hated his speech. She worried that Americans would invest in dirty industries which would pollute the

140 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants lovely Irish countryside. Thinking to quieten her, I replied: 'If you feel so strongly, you should speak out on the matter later, when you have an opportunity/ The next thing I knew, the guest speaker had concluded his remarks and Ms O'Hara was called on to receive an award in recognition of her many services to Irish-American understanding. Instead of simply accepting the award and sitting down, she strode to the microphone and declaimed: T know that I am expected to sit quietly but I have been encouraged by my table companion, Earl Drake, to speak my mind and so I shall. I abhor the minister's appeal and I implore you to reject it, in order to save the green beauty of our motherland ...' She went on to develop this theme with passion and dramatic histrionics. The audience loved her performance but the visiting minister and his hosts did not. I was never invited back to these annual dinners! Most of my visits to the Caribbean were routine affairs, but two were associated with dramatic events: the Jonestown mass suicide and the American invasion of Grenada. The incident in Jonestown, Guyana, shocked the world. In this remote settlement in the Guyanese jungle an American cult leader had persuaded, or coerced, his entire religious community into committing suicide by drinking Kool-Aid laced with poison. The lurid coverage of this event by the American media infuriated local Guyanese, who resented the implication that somehow they were responsible for this tragedy. At the same time, the IMF, World Bank, and foreign commercial banks were putting great pressure on Guyana to put its financial house in order. In this emotional atmosphere, I was sent to Guyana to discuss how the government could extricate itself from this economic morass and put itself on the road to sustainable development. When I checked in to the only decent hotel in Georgetown, the manager insisted on giving me the most prominent room on the main floor. In the morning, he asked anxiously whether I had been bothered during the night. I replied that I had slept peacefully but asked if there was there some special reason he was inquiring about my welfare. He responded with more candour than tact: 'The night before you arrived, someone tried to set this room on fire while it was occupied by a New York Times reporter. We did not know whether it was a protest over Jonestown or IMF-World Bank economic dictation to Guyana. So we told everybody that you were here for the World Bank. As you were not torched, we can conclude that the protest was over Jonestown.'

The Mighty World Bank 141 The tiny, beautiful island of Grenada produced an extraordinary cast of political characters during my association with it. When I arrived, Grenada was dominated by a slightly mad dictator named Eric Gairy. This flamboyant character was obsessed with the idea that extra-terrestrial creatures regularly visited his island. He once tried to get the UN to adopt a resolution naming Grenada as its official UFO landing site. This nonsense could be overlooked but not his flagrant corruption and mishandling of the economy. He was also alleged to use both voodoo and local gangsters to intimidate his critics. I went to call on him about the economy and was chilled to see on his desk autographed portraits of the three foreign leaders whom he most admired: Pinochet of Chile, Duvalier of Haiti, and Idi Amin of Uganda. I was not sorry in 1979 to see Gairy overthrown peacefully by a leftist government under Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard. I preferred this group because they appeared to be honest and sincerely interested in improving the economic lot of their people. I had many friendly arguments with Bernard Coard, the new minister of finance and development. He was a big, bearded, bear of a man who loved to engage in provocative debate. I enjoyed his sharp, rational mind, which was such a refreshing change after the dissembling, mystic ramblings of Eric Gairy. I assumed that others would prefer an honest, rational marxist to a tyrannical swindler; but I was wrong. I urged Coard to drop the marxist rhetoric and the flirtation with Cuba, in favour of cooperation with the Bank and Western countries. In practice, he did work mainly with the West but could never quite give up his marxist rhetoric. He turned to Cuba only for limited assistance and only after the West turned him down. One of Coard's pet projects was the construction of an airport large enough to handle 6747 jumbo jets. Without this airport, all the main tourist traffic went to Barbados, which had the only airport large enough to handle the big jets, and only a few determined travellers would take the trouble to climb on a small aircraft the next day to go on to Grenada. It made a lot of sense in terms of prestige for Grenada, but both the Bank and Canada stated that they could not justify this large expense in terms of the probable commercial returns. So Grenada turned to Cuba which agreed to supply some equipment and personnel for the project. The United States government professed to be alarmed that this construction project was being rushed through by Cuba so that transcontinental Soviet aircraft could land there and upset the strategic balance of

142 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants the Western hemisphere. Just before finishing my term at the Bank, I made a last trip to Grenada to see for myself if there was any truth in these startling allegations. I half expected that Coard would refuse to let me see this 'Cuban project designed to upset the global power balance.' On the contrary, I was told that I was welcome to visit whenever I wanted. I did visit the site, wandered around freely, and took pictures. The only activity consisted of one Cuban driver and one sleeping Grenadian trainee on one Cuban asphalt roller moving at a snail's pace on a project that would take months or years to complete. I concluded that no sensible American could imagine how his mighty country could be threatened by this lethargic project on a tiny, sleepy, tropical isle. Clearly, I did not understand Ronald Reagan or American politics. Yet, despite the incidents and our cultural and economic differences, the Canadians, Irish, and West Indians almost always agreed on Bank policy questions and we all got on splendidly. Indeed, the national television program 'Canada AM' tried to set up a confrontation between Eugenia Charles, the premier of Dominica, and myself at the very end of my service at .the Bank. It was on the eve of the World Bank annual meeting in Toronto. CTV thought that having a black, female premier from a small West Indian country in one corner, and a white, male representative of big Canada and the powerful Bank in the other corner, was bound to produce a roaring quarrel. They did not realize that we were old friends and allies. The result was a public love-in. It was a great disappointment to CTV but a fitting finale to my happy days as a West Indian representative at the World Bank. Is the Bank Infallible, as Well as Arrogant? I came to the Bank resenting its air of superiority but trusting its claims to peerless professionalism. After I had stayed there a year and ingested a steady diet of impressive Bank documents, I began to believe that the Bank was virtually infallible. I lost my innocence over the Tondo project. The Tondo Foreshore of Manila, a shanty town of 180,000 residents, was the largest urban slum in the Philippines. The first lady, Imelda Marcos, took a strong interest in beautifying the capital and planned the total demolition of the Tondo squatter community and its removal to a new housing project on the periphery of the city. The government asked the World Bank to finance the project. The militant squatter organization resisted massive demolition and asked for minimum relocation coupled with upgraded housing facilities. The Bank

The Mighty World Bank 143 promised the residents that they would either be given title to their land or aided to move to a new location and that the total cost of all improvements would be less than what families were currently paying for purchased water supplies. On this basis, the board approved the project and the loan agreement was signed in 1976, two months before the annual meeting of the Bank was to be held in Manila. At about this time I heard, from Catholic Church contacts in Canada, that the Tondo squatters were not happy with the project. I told McNamara that I intended to go and visit the project myself. When we arrived in Manila, I was contacted by church workers from the Tondo area and invited to visit the site the next day. I took along a Canadian government official for what we expected to be a quiet look at an insignificant project. Our first surprise was that we had to cross barricades manned by the Philippine military. Our second surprise was to be asked to stop at the church and find it packed to the rafters with squatters and invited foreign media correspondents. The squatters had assembled to present their views to me, as a representative of the World Bank. I was the only one who had agreed to meet them and hear their grievances. In a very emotional meeting, they denounced the project as a sham, perpetrated by Imelda Marcos, to expel them and destroy their old homes in order to make way for Marcos's supporters to move into beautified new houses. When I tried to explain that I had no power to change anything but only to report what I had seen, they drew up a petition to McNamara and signed it in blood, with much melodramatic slashing of veins. Of course, the incident caused a furore when reported in the international press and contrasted with a rigged briefing arranged by the Philippine government for the other executive directors, which reported that all residents were happy with the project. Moreover, there was a sequel to this incident. The Bank staff promised me that they would ensure that all residents' rights were protected. We all thought that we had heard the last of the Tondo project and Mrs Marcos's strong-arm methods. We were mistaken. A few months later I noticed a press report on the arrest, without charge, of Mrs Trinidad Herrera, the leader of the squatters who had chaired my meeting at the Tondo church. I saw red! I went straight to the Bank management and the American executive director and delivered the following ultimatum: T believe that Mrs Herrera has been arrested to punish her for opposing Mrs Marcos and to prevent her from raising more awkward questions. The American government has a vital stake in the Philippines and professes to be interested in human rights and the Bank says

144 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants it wants consultation with those affected by its housing projects. You tell the Philippine authorities to release Mrs Herrera or give her a fair trial. If not, I will oppose every single Bank loan to the Philippines and tell the world why I am doing so/ The Bank, the Americans, and my own government tried to pressure me to drop this position but I stood my ground. The Far Eastern Economic Review of 2 December 1977 reported the event as follows: Clearance of two World Bank loans totalling US$75 million for the Philippines was 'delayed' earlier this year until the release of Manila slum-dwellers' champion Mrs Trinidad Herrera ... The stickler who apparently insisted on the prisoner's release first was Canadian executive director Earl Drake ... Mrs Herrera, who had been detained without charge and who claimed she had been tortured while in detention, was released soon afterwards (Review, May 27). World Bank officials in Washington are coy on the affair, but one said: 'Yes, there was some discussion about a woman prisoner at the time of the May loan. There was talk about the imprisonment of a lady and also of torture and things like that. And just before the loan was approved the lady was released. Now I don't think we should say there was a connection or that we at the bank communicated anything to Manila. It was just a coincidence. It was a nice coincidence.'

In retrospect, I do not believe that the Bank staff and management were deliberately trying to deceive us. I believe that Mrs Marcos and her henchmen were misleading Bank staff members. The latter believed that they were improving the lot of the urban poor because they could not tell the real squatters from the Marcos's cronies. The Bank was also wrong on several other projects where the staff used the latest economic and financial techniques to convince themselves and the board members that they were lending money for the most rational projects in each country. With benefit of hindsight, I can now see that we erred in not being concerned about the environmental effects of some projects or the over-dependence on one export crop that was being created by other projects. I do not fault the Bank staff and management for being unable to foresee the future, but I do fault them for the sin of hubris. They were the world's best group of development economists and project planners and were entitled to a professional pride in their work. But sometimes, as in the case of the Tondo project, their arrogance prevented them from seeing reality at the human level.

The Mighty World Bank 145 But the Tondo project was an isolated case. The real tests of World Bank effectiveness were its programs in India and Pakistan. These two countries had been the Bank's largest borrowers, with some five hundred loan projects dating back to 1949 and totalling approximately $35 billion. Yet relations had never been easy or automatic between the foremost development agency and its major borrowers. The high point came when the Bank took the lead on issues of great importance to the subcontinent: the division of the vital waters of the Indus River and the modernizing of agriculture. The Bank, India, and Pakistan reached a difficult agreement on the Indus Waters Treaty, which decided how those disputed waters would be shared between the two countries and be augmented by storage projects financed by the World Bank and its Western friends. Underlining the historic importance of this agreement, Prime Minister Nehru of India then flew to Karachi and signed it together with President Ayub Khan of Pakistan, the World Bank, and Western donor nations. It was the crowning achievement of the World Bank in negotiating Western financial and diplomatic support for these prickly, bickering nations. Although less dramatic, the modernizing of agriculture was of even greater importance. In the 19605 the huge agricultural sector of India and Pakistan was in distress as a result of population growth, low financial priority, and a series of droughts. India was importing ten to twelve million tons of food grains annually, a situation which could not be sustained. Approximately 80 per cent of the huge population lived in the countryside, where there was an average of one hectare of cultivated land for every three people and average per capita incomes below $200 a year. Most farmers were dependent on rainfall to water their crops. The unpredictable monsoon rains seldom came at the right time for the farmer and usually brought too little or too much water. With alternating floods and droughts, the growing population faced unreliable food supplies. In India as well as Pakistan, governments deliberately depressed farm prices to provide the politically important urban population with cheap food, even though this discouraged farmers from producing more. Malnutrition and even starvation were frequent in the countryside. Changes began when a number of foreign experts began pressing the Indian government to import the high-yielding wheat varieties that had been developed at research centres in Mexico and rice varieties developed in the Philippines. These new strains were highly responsive to

146 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants fertilizers and good water control and offered the potential for much greater yields. The Bank recommended the adoption of policies, programs, and institutions to exploit this new technology which became known as the Green Revolution. To underline its own commitment to these recommendations, the Bank offered large loans on favourable terms. Influenced by the attractive mixture of grain and fertilizer prices and easy credit, many farmers invested in the new technology in order to grow more food. The result was a rapid and dramatic improvement in productivity. India, which was the world's second-largest cereal importer in 1966 and 1967, reached basic self-sufficiency a decade later during my term at the World Bank. In short, the World Bank and the governments of India and Pakistan had formed an effective partnership to increase agricultural production by following up a scientific breakthrough and encouraging internal policy reforms. Several years later, questions were raised about the pros and cons of the Green Revolution, but at the time, most Indians praised both the increase in agricultural output and the collaboration with the Bank in this sector. Some recent critics infer that the Bank forced the Green Revolution on a powerless and reluctant India, but that is not true. The Indian government is clearly on record as welcoming Bank support for agricultural reform at the time and being quite explicit about resisting other Bank policies which it disliked. India and Pakistan have always been willing to give high priority to economic development in theory but have also had very strong ideas of their own on what they would accept from the World Bank. These differences can be illustrated by what happened to a major Bank initiative on behalf of India. The Bank mounted an international rescue effort to assist India with its balance-of-payments problems by forming the India Consortium. This group brought together annually all the major donor nations to review India's development plan, secure sufficient pledges of aid, and coordinate programs and policies towards India. Initially, India was very grateful, but that sentiment turned to resentment as the Bank and donors began to use the consortium to try to get India to change its policies. The Bank's official historians have commented ruefully: 'The Bank as organizer and chairman of these groups serves as a middle man, and the middle man's lot is not necessarily a happy one ... the Bank may find its power and influence enhanced by virtue of the fact that it is acting on behalf of others and not just on its own. The reverse is also true. It may become a lightning rod for resentment on the part of the recipient because of the pressure it has

The Mighty World Bank 147 helped to mobilise, particularly if policy changes are made by the recipient but the quid pro quo in aid fails to materialise/2 Bilateral relations between the Bank and India were not always smooth. On one occasion, the president of the Bank wrote privately to the Indian government saying some pleasant things about its performance but adding: 'I have the distinct impression that the potentialities of private enterprise are commonly underestimated in India and that its operations are subjected to unnecessary restrictions ... I see a tendency toward this latter approach in your industrial policy.' India retaliated by leaking portions of the letter to the press, which responded with indignation, declaring that 'India will little tolerate blackmail' and denouncing the 'hidden threat' and 'humiliating conditions.'3 Underlying these arguments were two fundamental differences. The Bank wanted India to encourage the private sector as the best engine of economic growth, while India wanted to emphasize the public sector as the best instrument of social justice; and the Bank encouraged India to lower all forms of protection and open the economy to the discipline of the international market place, whereas India wanted to achieve economic self-sufficiency as a complement to the political independence it had recently won. Neither party was completely dogmatic on these points; the Bank was prepared to work within a socialist framework, and the Indians to listen to and occasionally yield on using Western approaches to management and market research on individual projects. As a general rule, however, the Bank had only modest success in transmitting seminal ideas to India. In my time, the Bank was frustrated in reaching many of its development objectives because much of the Indian economy remained mired in poverty, economic protectionism, and inefficiency. Until very recently the prevailing economic views in India were socialism and autarky and they were difficult to reconcile with the Bank's prevailing market-based, global free-trade philosophy. Although the size and nature of Bank loans to Pakistan were usually less dramatic than those for India, they were always of special interest to me because I had lived in Karachi. There was a strange anomaly about Pakistan: some of the World Bank's ablest economists came from that country; some of the best projects were approved for Pakistan; and the country seemed more open to World Bank ideas than India. And yet Pakistan remained mired in inefficiency and mass poverty. Pakistan was then only half the size it had been when I lived there because the Bengali portion in the east had formed the new country of Bangladesh. Although I had been saddened to see the country break in two, I had

148 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants hoped that the removal of the East-West tensions which I remembered from Suhrawardy's days would enable both Pakistan and Bangladesh to prosper and become democratic. But both countries seemed to be increasingly given to violence and autocratic rule. Moreover, their economies remained sluggish and unreceptive to the ideas and practices that were bringing dynamism to East and Southeast Asia. I wondered if Prime Minister Suhrawardy's private warnings about the selfishness of power-brokers still had any validity. However, this was never discussed at the World Bank board because we were constrained by the Bank's charter to consider only economic criteria. It was only many years later, after both of us had left the institution, that I gained a new perspective about dealing with Pakistan from Moeen Qureshi, who had been the most senior Pakistani executive at the Bank in my time there. He told me a remarkable story. During a visit to Singapore on private business, he was telephoned in the middle of the night and asked if he would agree to become 'Caretaker Prime Minister' of his country for the next few months until it had held its elections and decided on a new government. He knew, of course, that Pakistan was undergoing one of its worst political and economic crises and that normal government activity had been suspended pending the new elections. But he was totally astounded at the request and asked why he had been called when he had not lived in the country for years and had no political involvement whatsoever. 'It is precisely because you are completely neutral and detached as well as having been an outstanding economist and administrator at the World Bank,' was the reply. Moeen replied that he was honoured to have been asked but could not contemplate such an onerous task because he was suffering from cancer and needed to conserve his strength. His caller pleaded with him to call his brother who still lived in Pakistan before giving a final response. He first called his wife and his doctor back in Washington to get their reaction. They both told him that it might be suicidal to take on such a burden in his condition. He then called his brother who convinced him that he was the last hope of his troubled country and should be prepared to sacrifice his health for the cause of bringing economic reform to Pakistan. After all, Moeen had spent much of his career at the Bank trying to do this very thing from the outside, and now he had the opportunity of a lifetime to alleviate the problem from the inside. Against his better judgment, Moeen accepted the challenge on the condition that he be given a free hand to implement economic reforms in cooperation with the World Bank and the IMF.

The Mighty World Bank 149 He plunged in. He began implementing every reform that had been discussed, but mysteriously shelved, over the past years. The economy began to hum because it was being opened up to real competition for the first time. Then the power-brokers who had vested interests in preserving their monopolies, tax havens, and special privileges began to pressure him to stop. When he refused, they used every tactic to oust him, including threats of physical violence. But Moeen was in a strong position. He had been publicly promised a free hand in reforming the economy, his actions were being praised by the world press, and he had nothing to lose. He was even accused of being a bad Muslim and a tool of the Zionists because he had a Jewish wife. That infuriated him because it was biased, unfair, and totally irrelevant to his work. It was also untrue because, although his wife was a central European, she was not Jewish. But he refused to dignify the slur with any response except to say that he intended to stay on the job helping Pakistan until a new government was chosen. There are two sequels to the story. The happy one is that he was able to demonstrate for a few shining months how World Bank-Pakistan cooperation could improve the economy for the benefit of most of the population, and that cancer can be put into total remission by a dedicated man working night and day, if he believes in what he is doing. The unhappy sequel is that it confirmed the stories about the pressure tactics of power-brokers that I had been told so long ago by my old friend Suhrawardy. But it also gave me much more understanding of and sympathy for the problems of World Bank administrators. Many times, what looked like arrogance was simply frustration at how local vested interests prevented them from implementing projects and policies which would benefit everyone but a privileged few.

10

A Controversial Leader: McNamara of the World Bank

Few Americans of the twentieth century have been so admired - and so despised. Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power, viii

No one was neutral about the character of the president of the World Bank. Robert Strange McNamara was one of the best-known and most controversial figures in the United States because of his role as secretary of defense during the first seven years of the tragic Vietnam War. Many liberals portrayed him as largely responsible for the deaths of countless Americans and Vietnamese, even though the heaviest casualties occurred during the last five years of the war after he left his office in February 1968. He was equally reviled by most of the hard-line military for being too soft in his conduct of the war effort. However, columnist Stewart Alsop praised him as the man with 'the highest intelligence quotient of any leading public official in this century.' Jack and Bobby Kennedy esteemed McNamara 'more than any other Cabinet member' and even 'thought of moving in the direction that would get the nomination for Bob McNamara as the Democratic presidential candidate in 1968 to be sure the country was placed in the best possible hands.'1 Soon after McNamara took office at the Bank in 1968, David Halberstam published his best-seller, The Best and the Brightest, with its critical portrayal of McNamara and the other members of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Many World Bank staff read it avidly. I also looked at key passages to study his public image and to see if it conformed to my impressions of the man from close up.

McNamara of the World Bank 151 He was Bob McNamara, taut, controlled, driving - climbing mountains, harnessing generals - the hair slicked down in a way that made him look like a Grant Wood subject. The look was part of the drive: a fat McNamara was as hard to imagine as an uncertain one. The glasses straight and rimless, imposing; you looked at the glasses and kept your distance. He was a man of force, moving, pushing, getting things done ... he was American through and through, with the American drive, the American certitude and conviction. He pushed everyone, particularly himself, to new limits, long hours, working breakfasts, early bedtimes, moderate drinking, no cocktail parties. He was always rational, always the puritan but not a prude ... Time was of the essence, to be rationed and saved; time was not just money, it was, even more important, action, decisions, cost effectiveness, power ... If the body was tense and driven, the mind was mathematical, analytical, bringing order and reason out of chaos. Always reason. And reason supported by facts, by statistics - he could prove his rationality with facts, intimidate others. He was marvellous with charts and statistics ... If at the beginning he seemed to embody many if not most of the era's virtues, at the end of it he seemed to embody its pathos, flaws and tragedy. No one could doubt his good intentions, his ability, his almost ferocious sense of public service, yet something about him bothered many of his colleagues. It was not just Vietnam, but his overall style. It was what made him so effective: the total belief in what he was doing, the willingness to knock down anything that stood in his way, the relentless quality, so that other men, sometimes wiser, more restrained, would be pushed aside. He would, for instance, lie, dissemble ... always for the good of the cause, always for the right reason ... He was, finally, the embodiment of the liberal contradictions of that era, the conflict between the good intentions and the desire to hold and use power.2 I had been impressed and intrigued by the range of his thinking since long before I arrived at the World Bank. He had made a remarkable speech in Montreal in 1966 while still secretary of defense. Here, the head of the American war effort had stressed the crucial importance of economic progress and made the case that peace and stability in the world depended far less on armament levels than on raising standards of life of the poorer two-thirds of the world. In one memorable passage he asserted: There is an irrefutable relationship between violence and economic backwardness ... In a modernising society, security means development. Security is not military hardware - though it may include it. Security is not military force -

152 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants though it may involve it. Security is not traditional military activity, though it may encompass it. Security is development. Without development there can be no security. A developing nation that does not in fact develop simply can not remain secure.3

There were mixed feelings within the World Bank about McNamara's performance in that institution, even though he had increased its size and scope enormously. When he took office in 1968 the Bank was lending about one billion dollars a year. When he left in 1981, lending had grown to $12 billion annually and the Bank was supervising over sixteen hundred projects with a total value of $100 billion in more than one hundred countries. To the traditional projects he had added innovative loans to benefit small farmers and the urban poor as well as money for oil and gas production. He renewed lending to controversial countries such as Indonesia and Egypt and he brought the People's Republic of China into the Bank. The old hands preferred the stately pace of preparing a few handcrafted conventional projects annually and disliked his rapid expansion of the Bank's size, the speed at which they were pushed to deliver projects, and his venture into new and unconventional fields, especially the attack on urban poverty. Some of the middle-rank staff were inspired to work for such a creative manager and towering intellect; others became tense at having to manufacture more and more projects and the figures to justify them. Most leaders of poor borrowing countries, after initial misgivings about his Vietnam past, had become staunch admirers of his drive to make the Bank a dynamic instrument for the alleviation of world poverty. I knew his fame and had met him once with the president of CIDA, Paul Gerin-Lajoie and once with the Canadian minister of finance, John Turner. The latter was recognized by McNamara as a power-broker both in his own right and because he was a personal friend of United States Treasury Secretary Bill Simon. John Turner was also chairman of a Bank-sponsored ministerial committee. John Turner was good enough to take me to McNamara and say he wanted the Bank president to know that I was Turner's personal emissary as well as the official representative of the Canadian government. Turner knew McNamara liked to deal at the top level and his personal endorsement would help me do my job. That was a good start, but I was apprehensive about my future relations with this formidable enigma.

McNamara of the World Bank 153 In our next private encounter he told me bluntly that my job was to ensure Canadian support for the Bank. I retorted that my job was to promote Canada's interests and his job was to run the Bank in such a way that I would be able to recommend Canadian support for it. Thus, our first exchange was testy but he seemed to respect me for standing my ground. Our next private exchange was even frostier. I happened to meet him in the hall of the Bank, in discussion with the vice president for administration. It was the Christmas season and McNamara was pointing at the festive decorations. 'What do you think?' he asked. 'My view is that these should all come down. They do not convey a proper atmosphere of serious work and they might offend some of our nonChristian staff.' I replied jovially: 'Nonsense. They should stay up. The decorations reflect a happy festival which contributes to staff morale. No one will be offended. Besides, Mr McNamara, do you want to be remembered as the "Grinch who stole Christmas"?' Mr McNamara had no idea what I was talking about, did not understand why I was being flippant and, even when I explained the popular children's story about the Grinch, was not amused. Gradually I won his confidence by working hard to make informed and generally constructive comments at board meetings. He was such a compulsive worker himself that he noted those executive directors who tried to emulate his work ethic. None of us matched his output but a few of us tried harder than others. He then tested me by asking me to chair committees. I accepted all assignments cheerfully but once asked him why he was asking me to take on another committee when I already chaired three others (while most directors were under-employed). He responded: T have always found that if you want a job done properly, you give it to the busiest man in sight.' At first I was puzzled by his autocratic style with the board. It became clear to me that he decided in advance of each meeting what results he expected from it. He tolerated requests for further information and background explanations of the rationale of each proposal, but did not accept any substantive amendments once the formal proposal was submitted to the board. He tried to ascertain in advance every executive director's attitude towards each proposal and to head off every reservation. If these reservations threatened to take the form of a vote in opposition to a loan proposal, he would often withdraw it from the board before a vote was taken. He did not like to see negative votes recorded in the minutes and seemed to take it as a reflection on his

154 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants judgment and management. He would, of course, tolerate some debate on policy matters and unlimited factual questioning, but would not accept an amended version of his proposal going forward for execution. It was either his proposal or nothing. On one occasion, I questioned the wisdom of some point he proposed to include in his speech to the annual meeting of the Governors of the Bank. He became very agitated and replied that, while I was entitled to my views, he regarded this report as his personal prerogative as president. If the board wanted to draft its own report it could do so but, if the board tried to censure his report, he would resign. These high-handed tactics surprised me because I had assumed that, as a former cabinet minister, he would be accustomed to the give and take of politics and the art of working out a compromise to accommodate differing viewpoints, as happens in the United States Congress or the Canadian Parliament. I was wrong. He had not been a politician who had to win an election and serve in Congress; under the American system he had been an appointed cabinet secretary and was answerable only to the president. His other positions had been as an army officer and as president of Ford Motors. His whole experience had been in authoritarian structures, not democratic ones (although he served democratically elected presidents). His attitude towards Bank staff was similar. Once he decided on a course, he would not deviate and would not tolerate staff members who were sloppy in their thinking or vacillating in their pursuit of the agreed objective. He did not make a formal proposal until it had been meticulously researched by the best experts and until he personally was convinced that it represented the most rational and efficient approach to the problem. Yet, in apparent paradox, he permitted some prominent staff members to publicly question Bank policy on some key issues, such as the optimal approach to addressing poverty alleviation. In McNamara's mind, however, there was no real paradox. Bank intellectuals were permitted to air the internal debate within the Bank on poverty policy because the president had not yet determined what the final policy should be. It was a way of soliciting input from the development community before the Bank took a final decision. The most prominent of these doubting Thomas intellectuals was Mahbub ul Haq, an old acquaintance from my days in Pakistan who would later go on to become Pakistani minister of finance for a time and then principal author of the controversial United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI). As an alter-

McNamara of the World Bank 155 native to the old method of ranking countries' progress by their wealth (as expressed in gross national product), the HDI combined three components - life expectancy at birth, educational attainment, and adjusted real income - in order to compare how well citizens of various countries achieve basic human capabilities. This index regularly rates Canada at or near the top. This Canadian rating was a tribute to Mahbub's objectivity because he had found Canadian immigration officers to be the most racially biased in the world. He dreaded visiting Canada because he claimed he was always treated with suspicion at the border because of the colour of his skin. I could not believe his accusation and offered to accompany him from Washington to Ottawa on one occasion, saying that I would not travel on my Canadian passport but on a World Bank travel document like his and go up to the immigration officer with him. To my horror, I was waved through courteously and he was detained for detailed questioning for no reason. When I tried to speak in support of Mahbub, I was told to go away and not interfere with immigration officers doing their duty to ensure that no undesirables entered Canada. I was outraged at this conduct. And I remain indignant because I have been told since by other members of visible minorities that, while most immigration officers are unbiased, some discriminate more often than any Anglo-Saxon can ever imagine. I gradually came to appreciate that McNamara was not opposed to new ideas and discussion per se. Quite the contrary, he was very open to using good ideas from whatever source before he took a decision. His approach to any problem was always to marshal the best minds to work on the best relevant data, in order to produce the most efficient solution in the shortest possible time. But the last part of the formula 'in the shortest possible time' - was a critical element. He was a man in a hurry and prided himself on being an efficient manager of time as well as of physical and human resources. He could not afford to wait for endless debate. He had set numerical goals and the Bank must drive forward to meet them. It was essential to move ahead as soon as one could make a rational decision. His solutions did not have to be perfect; they had to be the best possible within a reasonable time period. Instead of trying to change his autocratic style at the formal board meetings, I decided to change tactics and to concentrate on contributing my ideas in informal sessions before McNamara's decision was etched in stone. I would have preferred McNamara to be more democratic but at least he was attentive and informed at board discussions, unlike his succes-

156 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants sor as president. Indeed, I was awed by McNamara's ability to handle meetings and his prodigious capacity to master endless facts, to conceptualize and articulate solutions to complex problems, and to drive forward to implement them. He was the most skilled chairman of a meeting I have ever seen; he was able to steer the comments of participants into productive channels without appearing heavy-handed and to act as a buffer between the board members and the staff through the subtle way he interpreted questions and answers. He had tremendous selfconfidence. No financial impediment ever deterred him. I once questioned going ahead on a project because we were risking $50 million. He scoffed: 'Do not bother me with petty details. What is a small risk compared to the possibility that the Bank will succeed with this project?' He proposed budgets that were breath-taking in their boldness and magnitude. They were not always politically realistic but were always carefully justified to achieve the maximum development results. He never doubted that his proposals and his budgets were right, provided he had been given the correct facts by his staff. In my view, his selfassurance and drive were not animated so much by ego as by a profound conviction that he should use his ability and power for the good of his cause. Once it had been to defend American strategic interests; now it was to reduce absolute poverty all over the world. He was passionately committed to reducing poverty but he was not sentimental about it. For him, 'absolute poverty' was defined precisely in terms of per capita income, not subjectively in terms of human suffering. To reach McNamara, it was essential to make your case in quantitative terms; he could not relate to imprecise and mushy appeals. One time Michael Manley, the charismatic leftist prime minister of Jamaica, came to Washington to make a direct appeal to McNamara for more money. As executive director representing Jamaica at the Bank, I accompanied him on the call. Manley expected a sympathetic hearing from the new leader of the fight against poverty. He made an eloquent political appeal to save starving children but did not include any economic analysis. McNamara listened stoically and then questioned him sharply on the economic situation. When Manley was unable to respond with any precision, McNamara ended the meeting with the prime minister and asked me to stay behind. He turned to me in exasperation: 'How can I help people like that who have not done their homework? He did not know a single statistic about his own country!' Thus McNamara came to prefer Edward Seaga, Manley's arch rival and successor as prime minister, because he was a master with figures. But in

McNamara of the World Bank 157 my view, Manley was a far more compassionate human being who cared more about alleviating poverty than the clever but haughty Seaga. McNamara relied on statistics because he had been trained as a business accountant and had successfully developed new accounting methods to bring discipline and control to the bloated and out-of-control United States Defense Department. Control was critical for all his operations. He always wanted to be in control of the facts and to be able to predict the role of decision-makers. One time I was absent from a board meeting and left my alternate executive director from Guyana in charge. No critical matter was expected to come before the board and I had not left any special instructions with my alternate. As soon as I returned, McNamara asked to see me. He was upset: 'Do you know what your alternate said in the board in your absence? Did you authorize his statement, which I found ill-considered and inconsistent with the position you have previously taken in the board? I have respect for your views but I can not run a board in which inexperienced people, like your alternate, make personal statements/ He was uncomfortable with my colleague's West Indian rhetoric laced with emotion, but mostly he disliked the fact that my absence lessened his ability to predict the results of meetings which he wanted to control. I did not share the worry of some Bank critics that McNamara was too close to the American government to be a neutral president of a multilateral organization. Certainly, he was totally American in his speech, outlook, and demeanour, but he had developed a wide world vision from his years as defense secretary dealing with global strategic and military questions. Moreover, he remained very committed to the liberal views of Jack and Bobby Kennedy on the positive role America should play in all international issues. He frequently broke with the Republican administrations during his time at the World Bank over such issues as the entry of the People's Republic of China into the Bank, the wooing of Middle Eastern countries to invest a good portion of their new-found oil wealth in international development, and the rapid expansion of the World Bank financial base. I found him to be particularly far-sighted in pushing for the entry of China to the Bank despite American government reluctance, and in the sensitivity with which he handled his negotiations with China. His vision was amply justified as China quickly became a model development partner of the Bank. Within fi£teen years China had become the Bank's principal borrower. Only once did I find fault with him for being too pro-American. This was a dramatic occasion in 1979 when I led most of the board in repri-

158 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants manding McNamara, his senior vice-president, Ernest Stern (another American) and two senior United States government officials for deciding privately that McNamara should write to an American congressman stating that the Bank would not make further loans to Vietnam. I had some sympathy for McNamara's sensitivities towards Vietnam and the United States Congress, but this private deal could not be tolerated. It compromised the Bank's integrity as an international institution and the board's authority. He did not like it but he accepted the reprimand manfully. Nor did he hold a grudge against me; in fact his respect for me seemed to go up after that incident. Gradually, McNamara began to invite me to a monthly luncheon discussion between the two of us in his private dining room adjoining his office. He was notorious for eating alone and never mixing with staff. We were always served by the same waiter at an austere table set for two with the Spartan menu pre-selected. I felt that the ingredients were selected on the basis of a methodical count of the number of calories, vitamins, and minerals necessary to sustain life rather than to enhance the enjoyment of it. This feeling was supported by the presence of a note-pad and pencil placed beside my plate, in case I missed the point that the purpose of the meeting was intellectual not culinary. The waiter made the mistake of asking whether we would like a glass of sherry. No other choice of drink was offered. McNamara pointedly refused such a frivolous idea but I accepted. I almost never drink sherry at lunch but decided to assert my independence. I am sure that I was instantly marked down as soft and indulgent. McNamara always tried to stick to Bank business at these lunches, sounding me out on likely board reaction to various initiatives he was planning. I tried to raise other topics occasionally and slowly began to see the non-business side of the man. I had volunteered to speak on behalf of the Bank at various American functions (as well as at Canadian and Irish ones). I told him that I hardly ever got hostile questions about the Bank but frequently did about McNamara's role on three controversial topics: Vietnam, the Edsel car, and the TFX aircraft (the multi-purpose Fin fighter that he had tried to get both the airforce and navy to accept in the interests of economy). He responded with some warmth: I do not want to discuss Vietnam beyond saying that I did not take my country into that tragic struggle. I was asked to do a difficult job in establishing civilian control over the military and in prosecuting what was intended to be a limited

McNamara of the World Bank 159 military action. When I could no longer play a useful role at the Defense Department, I left to do something at the Bank that I believed in. It is better that you decline to discuss Vietnam because it is too complex and emotional. But on the other two matters, tell them that I supported the TFX because it's a damn good plane for both the airforce and the navy and I opposed the Edsel car and resent my name being associated with that lemon.

There was some passion behind all that cold rationality! I also was present when telephone calls came from his daughters about personal matters, particularly when his beloved wife Margie was dying, and heard his voice quaver and saw his eyes fill with tears. He confessed to me how intolerant he had been of the debilitating effects of sickness and pain in others because he had no experience of it until he suddenly suffered the terrible discomfort of shingles at the age of sixtyfive (in that stressful year of 1981 when his wife died and he retired from the Bank). I also heard him laugh ruefully about his fabled visual memory: To my intense embarrassment, I once appeared at a White House dinner for the British prime minister in white tie and tails instead of the usual black tie like everyone else. I had insisted on this very formal dress against my wife's firm advice, because I remembered seeing the word 'white' on the invitation. When we checked it after dinner, it said 'White House but black tie!' The perfectionist was human after all. We also travelled together to Ottawa, and that revealed other aspects of his character. I had helped to arrange that he be invited to meet Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet colleagues, to discuss preparations for the annual general meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund which was to be held in Canada for the first time. In addition to the formal calls, the prime minister invited McNamara and me to join several cabinet ministers and himself at a dinner where we could have a broad-ranging and off-the-record talk about international development problems and Canada's role in the world. It was a splendid visit, in both form and content. McNamara was housed at the Rideau Gate State Guest House, which is an historic stone mansion adjacent to the official residences of both the prime minister and the governor general. It is situated on the banks of the Ottawa River, which seems fitting historically because that was the start of the great canoe route for the fur trade which opened up the vast Canadian interior, and also politically because it is the boundary between English and French Canada. The residence also had the right feel of power about it because it displayed so many mementoes of the great world

160 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants figures who had stayed there over the years. As we waited for Mr Trudeau to arrive for dinner, McNamara browsed through the autographed portraits in the sitting room and commented pithily on his personal encounters with several of the pictured leaders, either as secretary of defense or as president of the World Bank. I had expected an objective assessment of their international development records but got a surprisingly subjective reaction to their personalities. The setting was right, but were the cast of characters? McNamara and Trudeau already knew and respected each other's minds and liberal philosophies. But McNamara had not known what to expect of the other Canadian ministers and senior civil servants assembled at the table. Would they be silent in the presence of the prime minister as would happen in many societies? If they spoke would they say only what was politically correct? The Canadians were also a little apprehensive about spending an evening with this forbidding, unsmiling figure associated with the development of weapons systems and the Vietnam War. Canada had been critical of his policy on Vietnam and was not prepared to give unlimited financial support to the World Bank. As it turned out, everyone participated in the dinner conversation because they were all educated, articulate people who were engaged in the social, economic, and political issues of the day. McNamara was amazed at how egalitarian the Canadian ministers were in the presence of the prime minister and how skilled they were in debate. He did not realize that, unlike American cabinet members who are technocrats serving at the pleasure of the president, the Canadians are all parliamentarians in their own right and accustomed to participating in debates. He also did not realize that Trudeau, the intellectual, had assembled a far brighter cabinet than usual. For their part, the Canadians found McNamara much less cold and forbidding in person than they had expected from the media, which was generally hostile to him and which he shunned. Always uneasy and bit shy in public, McNamara was at his best in a controlled situation where he understood and respected the other participants. There was an extraordinarily frank and free-ranging dialogue that evening. The dinner had not been designed to reach decisions, but it ended with a consensus that Canada and the World Bank should work more closely together, because we shared so many international goals and because our leaders now understood each other. Both sides agreed that global security was related to economic progress of the poor countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America and that the wealthy countries

McNamara of the World Bank 161 of North America and Western Europe must organize cost-effective ways to enable those new countries to help themselves. It was further agreed that, in a modernizing society, order and stability are impossible without internal economic development. As development progresses and when people of a nation have organized their own human and natural resources to meet their needs and expectations, then their resistance to disorder and violence will increase. We went on from agreement on these fundamental points to discuss the practicalities of how to make the Toronto annual meeting of the World Bank one of the most successful ever held. When we flew back to Washington together the next day, McNamara remarked on how much he had enjoyed the visit and concluded warmly: 'You know, Canada is the only foreign country where I feel truly at home/ I thought to myself that that revealed how very American this international statesman had remained. The highest praise he could imagine for Canada was not how stimulated he was by its unique qualities, but how pleased he was by its sense of familiarity. Then he did something else which was quintessentially McNamara. He told me that he regularly ran up the stairs to his office on the thirteenth floor of the World Bank building and invited me to join him. It was no surprise to learn that this lean and fit man exercised regularly, but why would he run up those bleak concrete stairs? He explained that it was a far more efficient use of his time than running in a park or working out at a gym and he was unlikely to be bothered by people. I declined his invitation but promised not to tell anyone about his practice, lest his staff lay in wait in the stairwell to talk to their reclusive leader and waste his time! Soon after the Ottawa dinner, McNamara announced his decision to step down from his position because he was approaching the Bank's normal retirement age. It was a difficult thing for him to do because he loved his work and probably could have arranged an extension of his term. But he realized that, after thirteen years as president, he had stayed long enough for the good of the institution. When I was asked to select a farewell gift for him, I probed to find out more about his personality, especially from those close to him. His favourite recreation was hiking and skiing in the mountains. I found that his unrealised dream was to do helicopter skiing in powder snow on the Bugaboos of British Columbia. His choice reading material, when troubled, was the Book of Job (the right stuff for a stern puritan). His preferred artist was the Spanish painter, Joan Miro, whom he knew personally and whose

162 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants works he and his wife collected. He once tried to bring their most cherished Miro to his office without Margie's permission. She marched in to his office in a rage and took it back the next day. The painting was never seen in his office again. When you got to know the family up close, McNamara was very human after all. He talked privately to me about his deepest concerns: the nuclear arms race; racial discrimination (and how Kenneth Kaunda, the president of Zambia and a fellow Presbyterian, had left him without an answer to his question on how American Christians could reconcile their faith with racial bigotry); the importance of the population issue; the moral case for development assistance and the Bank's twofold task of accelerating economic growth and eradicating absolute poverty. He went on to assert his abiding belief that the key to these problems lay in the application of rational thought, through the quantification of problems. He did not dismiss the power of emotion and other irrational elements in motivating people, but believed that a responsible leader must rise above them and apply reason. The purest form of reason was mathematics because it was completely detached from the irrational, the ephemeral, and the irrelevant. So he was constantly striving to base decisions on quantifiable facts, not on political or personal factors. He admitted, under my prodding, that he had not yet been able to find scientific, numerical coefficients for all the irrational elements in Bank projects, but that was simply because he and his colleagues had not worked hard enough on the problem. Ultimately, every problem would be susceptible to a rational solution based on reliable data. As a fellow puritan, I could share most of his values and his personal drive to take pragmatic action. As he once said, 'Moral principles, if they are really sound, are also practical ways to proceed. Social justice is not simply an abstract ideal. It is a sensible way of making life more liveable for everyone.' I did not share his belief in the efficacy of numerical solutions to all complex human problems, and I occasionally questioned his judgment. Nevertheless, I came to admire him greatly for the quality and clarity of his mind, his courage in taking unpopular positions, his leadership skills, and his unparalleled capacity to translate his convictions into effective action. I felt that he was a man of uncommon ability and vision. He had been harshly judged by many of his countrymen for his involvement in the searing experience of Vietnam. On that question, I could make no judgment. But at the World Bank I found him to be an outstanding president.

McNamara of the World Bank 163 At his departure, all of us at the Bank had mixed emotions. McNamara had brought about more growth and policy changes than any other president but had not yet achieved all his goals for the institution. We understood his decision that it was time to go, and yet we sensed that we would never see his like again and were witnessing an historic change at the Bank. And the timing was sad; he was still grieving the loss of his wife, he was in pain from his illness, he was under criticism from the American government for wanting to expand the Bank too quickly, and ambivalent about leaving the institution where he had been most at home. Subsequent events, including the year spent with the new president, convinced me that, when McNamara left, I had witnessed the departure of a great man. I had also seen the end of the most glorious and exciting days of the World Bank and the most personally satisfying assignment of my career. When I bid Bob McNamara farewell on behalf of the board of the Bank, I quoted Chancellor Schmidt of Germany who described him as a 'hard-headed manager, a warm-hearted humanist, and a man whose disciplined mind ranges philosophically far beyond the precise statistics he is so fond of quoting/ I also cited the poet-president of Senegal, Leopold Senghor, who termed him 'a poet in action.' But the one who best captured my feelings about this extraordinary man was Joan Miro whose painting we gave Bob as a parting gift. Miro said he was proud to autograph his work for McNamara, whom he remembered vividly, and to put into his unique composition of colour and poetry the shadows of eagles flying towards the light.

1 1

The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia, 1982-1983

Java's unique charm consists of the constant intrusion of the poetic, the legendary, the fanciful into the midst of reality. Early Dutch traveller

In 1982 I completed my long assignment at the World Bank and was recalled to the Department of External Affairs. It was decided to send me directly out to the field and make me an ambassador for the first time. I was pleased that they sent me to Indonesia, a fascinating country. Nevertheless, I returned to Southeast Asia with mixed feelings. When I had been in Kuala Lumpur in the early 19605, I had been a strong supporter of the new Federation of Malaysia in its struggle to survive against armed confrontation by Indonesia, its huge bullying neighbour. Then Indonesia had seemed to be the enemy - and also an enigma. Why had a country with so many of the same cultural, religious, ethnic, and historical characteristics as Malaysia turned out to be so volatile and hostile? Why was Indonesia, with the third-largest population in Asia, with a breadth as wide as Canada's and with a storehouse of natural resources, so poor in per capita terms and so little known? Why was it so hard to grasp the reality behind a facade which some visitors termed poetry and legend? Of course, Indonesian leadership had changed greatly since I had viewed it, with such concern, across the Straits of Malacca in 1963 and 1964. The flamboyant, left-leaning Sukarno had been replaced as president by General Suharto. With right-wing military backing, the latter gained control of government during the tumultuous period of 1965-8

The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia 165 and remained in power until the momentous events of 1998 forced him to resign. Suharto brought Indonesia political stability and economic progress. He ended the confrontation with Malaysia and took a leading role in establishing the regionally stabilizing and pro-Western Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Canada became an active member of the annual dialogue meetings which were hosted by the foreign ministers of ASEAN for their counterparts in six industrial democracies. Like his predecessor, in some Western circles Suharto was also censured for authoritarian rule, human rights' violations, nepotism, and cronyism. However, whereas Sukarno had been criticized as pro-communist and a poor manager of the economy, Suharto was favourably regarded as pro-Western and pro-economic development (especially by my friends at the World Bank). I went to Indonesia to lead the Canadian embassy team in promoting Canada's interests there. I knew from briefings in Ottawa that we shared a general Western objective of keeping Indonesia stable and nonaggressive, but our main national interests were economic. We had modest two-way trade, which had some potential to expand, and some Canadian investments to protect. The most notable Canadian investment was the large mine owned and operated by International Nickel Company (INCO) at a remote site on the island of Sulawesi. We also had an active CIDA program. On first arriving, I assumed that Indonesia would be an interesting assignment but a not particularly demanding one. I decided to use any spare time to find out more about the fascinating but elusive poetic spirit that made this country so distinctive. Canada-Indonesia Relations Within weeks of my arrival I was plunged into a challenging assignment - to arrange a visit by Prime Minister Trudeau. This would be his first official visit to Southeast Asia and he would be accompanied by a horde of Canadian journalists anxious to file stories criticizing him for leaving home in the midst of a cold winter of political and economic discontent. Was this a necessary trip or a paid holiday? The Indonesians were delighted to welcome him, since they wanted more economic cooperation with Canada. We had technology and some natural resources which they needed and we represented a potential market for some of their products. Politically, too, they were interested in talking to Trudeau, who had assumed the role of world statesman,

166 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants particularly on relations between the rich industrialized countries and the poor developing ones. Indonesia was considering whether to take a more active role on these matters and wanted to sound out this sympathetic international figure. For his part, Trudeau reciprocated Indonesian interests in global economic and political questions. And, despite what the critical journalists said, he was prepared to work hard at everything External Affairs and the embassy recommended. There was only one problem: Trudeau wanted to spend some time learning about Indonesian culture. He told me how fondly he remembered his first visit to Indonesia as a young man. He recalled with poignancy the beauty and charm of the Balinese, particularly the unexpected sight of a young woman combing her long black hair with languid, graceful movements and then adorning it with flowers while she sang softly to herself. He was also intrigued by some of their art. Could I not find a reason for him to visit blissful Bali once more? I replied: 'No, sir. I understand your wishes very well but there is not a single official reason for such a visit. And if we tried to invent one, the press would expose it with relish.' He accepted my advice with a deep sigh of regret. But he was determined to break out of the official strait-jacket in some way. One night when there was nothing on his formal program, he asked Chris Dagg, a Canadian with deep local knowledge, to take him out incognito to see how ordinary Indonesians enjoyed themselves. They evaded his security guards and went to a public park to watch a performance of Wayang Kulit, the age-old puppet theatre. When the Indonesian officials first learned of this escapade, they were upset because he had violated the security rules which were their responsibility and because he had implied that he was bored with their official program. During his farewell call on President Suharto, the latter alluded to the incident. Mr Trudeau handled it well. He apologized for worrying his efficient security guards and assured the president that his only motive was to learn more about Indonesian culture, without imposing further on the time of his gracious hosts. Then he astutely asked the president to interpret the significance of what he had seen. This enabled Suharto to avoid any loss of face from the incident by personally explaining why modern Indonesians are still fascinated by puppet shows depicting the ancient epic poems of the Ramayana and the Mahabhamta. He gave a compelling account of how every dalang (puppeteer) injects his own originality, satire, humour, and social commentary into the pre-

The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia

167

sentation but nevertheless keeps to the basic story. He went on to elucidate how these are also morality plays full of illustrations on how to lead an exemplary life in dealing with the perpetual ebb and flow of the spirits of darkness and light. Thus a small incident that might have been taken amiss served to show Suharto in an unexpectedly sympathetic light and leave him with a sense that Trudeau was genuinely interested in his country. One of my principal tasks was to promote Canadian trade and investment in Indonesia. The goal was tantalizing but elusive. Indonesia seemed to hold potential for Canadian business. Its economy was growing fast and needed many of the goods and technologies which Canada produced, particularly in the sectors of forestry, minerals, railways, air transport, and telecommunications. By the time I arrived, Canadians had experienced one great failure and one great commercial success. The failure had been due to a miscalculation by De Havilland Aircraft of Canada. The Indonesians had come to admire the company's Beavers and Otters, those tough, dextrous little aircraft that could land on the shortest and roughest airstrips. They had been developed for use in the sparsely populated and rugged terrain of the Canadian north but were ideal for flying among Indonesia's many outlying islands. We had given some to the Indonesians under our development assistance program in the early days and they had become quite addicted to these versatile aircraft. Indonesia's technology czar, at that time B.J. Habibie, asked De Havilland to establish a joint venture to produce these aircraft with a few local modifications in Indonesia. This approach was a great coup for us because Habibie had trained with a German aircraft manufacturer and was predisposed to turn to Germany for technology unless another country had an outstanding product. De Havilland turned him down cold. The Canadian firm saw little potential demand for their product in Indonesia and a risk that a local assembly plant would undermine exports from their Canadian plant. Habibie was furious and turned to a European competitor to establish a joint venture and never bought another Canadian plane. He also nursed his grudge against all Canadian products for a long time. Our success story was the INCO plant in Soroako, a remote part of Sulawesi. When INCO decided to mine for nickel in Indonesia in 1968, it was the largest single foreign investment by a Canadian firm anywhere in the world. It was also the most inaccessible and forbidding. Sulawesi was half way around the world from Canada and Soroako

i68 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants was a tiny village with no transportation or communication links to the outside. Sulawesi was also the home of the notorious Bugis pirates and the exotic burial customs of Torajaland. The mine was in territory only recently cleared of rebels and the first INCO prospectors needed Indonesian soldiers to guard them. The five hundred subsistence farmers in the Soroako area were suspicious of foreigners. Faced with this inhospitable setting, INCO made two key policy decisions. First, they hired Chris Dagg to advise them on how to create attractive Indonesian and Canadian communities side by side. Second, they decided to transfer technology so Indonesians could take over the operation eventually. New towns, a hospital, schools, roads, airports, a seaport were built. At one time, nearly ten thousand Indonesians and one thousand expatriates worked there. Perhaps the most important element in INCO's strategy was its stress on training Indonesians. It built primary and secondary schools and a post-secondary technical training centre, with courses for electricians, machinists, carpenters, and drafters and it sent some to Canada for further studies. After a few years, only a handful of foreigners were left in Soroako because local graduates could handle all the local jobs and take their skills to other parts of Indonesia as well. INCO demonstrated how it is possible to win local support, transfer technology to the host country, and make a profit for your shareholders. In my time in Indonesia, the word for foreigner throughout South Sulawesi had a positive connotation and was pronounced 'Canadian.' I was proud of INCO and so was the Indonesian minister of mining and petroleum. Minister Subroto was almost as powerful and influential as our nemesis, B.J. Habibie. Subroto was also the most knowledgable man in Jakarta about Indonesian, and indeed world, petroleum production. He was Indonesia's senior representative to the Organization of Oil Producing Countries (OPEC) and subsequently became the secretary-general of that organization. Ottawa was keen to be kept informed about price and production moves among petroleum producers in those days and so it was important to have good rapport with the Indonesian minister. I had two good entrees with him: the excellent economic and social record of INCO; and the fact that he was an alumnus of McGill University. Although Canada and Indonesia had few historic or economic links, we had two wonderful personal ones: Petroleum Minister Subroto from McGill; and Education Minister Fuad Hassan, a graduate of the University of Toronto.

The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia 169 We could therefore take some satisfaction in one prominent economic success and two good friends at court. But the challenge was how to induce more Canadian traders and investors to look seriously at Indonesia. It was not easy. Indonesia was far away, little known, hard to get to, and, worst of all, had a reputation for corruption. More than one Canadian businessman told me that his firm would not touch Indonesia because of this problem. They were convinced that a foreigner could not do business without indulging in payments that would be considered illegal at home. No Canadian company wanted to break the law or to seek contracts against competitors who would have little hesitation about bribing the decision-makers. One of my most difficult tasks was to advise Canadian companies on how to understand and deal with this awkward aspect of doing business in Indonesia. I advised them not to pay bribes or do anything which would be considered illegal at home but, provided that prerequisite was met, to be ready to spend more than they would in Canada to make the right personal connections. It is simply a fact of doing business in Indonesia that personal connections are often more important than economic criteria in making government and commercial decisions. Having the right contacts is so important that without them it is not worthwhile trying to do business in the East Indies. The need to have these connections and the practice of paying people a fee to arrange them is so pervasive that even the straight-laced World Bank has an 'informal taxation' category in its cost estimates for Indonesian projects. Reactions to Indonesia There was no way to predict how foreigners would react to this exotic land, with its startling array of cultures and its enervating tropical climate. The reactions varied from complete antipathy to warm embrace of the local scene. One of my first duties was to call on the dean of the diplomatic corps, whom I assumed would be very pro-Indonesian because of his long tenure in the country. He was the elderly Soviet ambassador who lived in a large, walled embassy compound in central Jakarta. I anticipated that this would be a very boring call because the Russians were notorious for not revealing to Cold War adversaries anything of interest, either personal or professional. Because of this trait, I had concluded

170 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants foolishly that Russian diplomats should be avoided because their system would make them act like inhuman robots. I could not have been more wrong in this case. He greeted me warmly and soon launched into a remarkably candid cri de coeur: You are from Canada. I love Canada. It was my first posting and I still long to return. I was young and my wife was young and we had our baby daughter with us. We were happy and felt at home in your great open spaces and your invigorating, cool climate. I loved to fish and you had wonderful lakes and streams everywhere. It was heaven. Now, I have been stuck for years in this hot, humid place where there are no fish left. I am old and my wife is old. Our beloved daughter lives far from us in Moscow. I long for our happy days in Canada, so I welcome you as a reminder of my lost happiness.

I was touched by this emotional outburst. After chatting about his favourite spots in Canada, I tried to cheer him up about his current circumstances: 'But surely there are some attractive aspects of your present assignment. They won't leave you here forever and, in the meantime, you have a very convenient set-up which I envy. You have your residence next door to your office and you are surrounded by staff to assist you/ He looked at me sadly and whispered: 'You don't understand our government. I hate this country but my authorities will leave me here until I drop because my long years of servitude in Jakarta mean that the USSR has the advantage of holding the position of dean of the diplomatic corps. My government has no heart.' Then, forgetting his normal caution, he raised his voice and declaimed: 'My friend, you congratulate me for the convenience of living surrounded by my embassy facilities and my officers. But I tell you that, in the name of convenience, I am in prison!' I made a point of trying to see my Russian colleague as often as possible to cheer him up and try to persuade him to see the good side of his Indonesian posting. He never failed to greet me with a bear hug and the booming declaration, 'I still love Canada.' When I left Indonesia, he was still there suffering from the heat and longing for his lost youth in cool Canada. Alas, he never escaped his prison. A year later, while he stood on the airport tarmac greeting an incoming dignitary in his capacity as dean of the diplomatic corps, he dropped dead from sunstroke. But my Russian colleague represented one extreme in his aversion to Indonesia. Far more people fell completely in love with it, including

The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia 171 Canadians from a climate as cool as Russia. One of the most avid infatuations with Indonesia came from an Ottawa boy who had never wanted to leave home. He had been the fiance of Jane Robinson, a girl who lived next door to us in Ottawa. As they discussed the prospect of life together, she insisted that they should travel to, and work in, other parts of the world, particularly Asia. He retorted that he had no interest in other continents; he wanted to stay in Canada and devote himself to helping his own country. The more they talked the more they realized that they might not be suited for each other after all. However, they agreed to sample each other's preferred abodes and lifestyles before making a final decision. The girl took a one-year social service assignment in Newfoundland and he reluctantly volunteered to work with the non-profit organization CUSO in Indonesia for a few months. This experiment changed them both permanently. She is still enjoying her work in St John's. He became bitten by the Indonesia bug during his first assignment in central Java. Then he went to Bali and fell hopelessly in love with that enchanted isle. When I visited him quite a few years later, he had become a virtual Balinese. He lived far from the tourist spots on a quiet beach. He had built himself a Balinese house, ate only indigenous food prepared by a Balinese woman, and dressed in local attire. Although we had mutual friends, he showed only perfunctory interest in them or in Canadian topics generally. His mind and heart seemed totally taken with Bali. Yet I was still unsure whether he had gone completely Balinese until he invited me to use his bathroom. He had designed it to be roofless to permit communication with the spirits of nature even when one was showering or performing other necessary acts; this finally convinced me that he had exchanged his Canadian ways for local ones. A Dislike of Hard Facts I was to begin and end my tour in Indonesia with calls on the president, but most of my time was spent with other levels of the Indonesian government. The bureaucracy was very uneven in its quality. Indonesia had inherited a vast civil service and most of its members were undertrained, underpaid, and ineffective. In theory, the bureaucracy still worked according to Dutch colonial hours (7:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.) but, in practice, most people were part-time workers. Absenteeism was flagrant. Most people of importance had left their office by midday, often to go to another job because it was impossible to live on an official

172 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants salary. The inefficiency of the bureaucracy was exacerbated by the Javanese cultural trait of indirectness. Traditionally, they do not like to deal with hard facts or commit to a definite yes or no. Consequently, the laxity of the bureaucracy feeds on imprecision. By contrast, Indonesia was also blessed with some outstanding government officials at the top. These senior technocrats were highly effective, skilled, and dedicated but terribly over-worked. Several were trained in the West, a few in Canada. I learned, however, that one could not predict how an Indonesian would behave just because he had a Western education. Indeed, I was cautioned that Indonesia is so culturally variegated that it is foolish to generalize about any behavioural traits. A Sumatran, closely related to my old Malay friends, once observed to me: 'Do not be misled just because most of us wear a kris [an ornate dagger, about which more later] as part of our traditional attire. That gives the illusion of similarity. But look more carefully. Not only are the designs different for each island but we wear them in different places. A Sumatran carries his kris and his opinions openly, in front; thus, you can tell if he has been provoked. A Javanese wears his kris hidden behind his back and always smiles politely; that way you will not know you are to be stabbed until it is too late/ My first vivid encounter with Javanese cultural traits came when I tried to deal with an allegation that an Indonesian diplomat in Canada was improperly attempting to influence the award of a CIDA contract in Indonesia. Apparently this man had approached at least one bidder in Canada with the offer to obtain a favourable decision from his authorities in return for the payment of a bribe to himself. This offer had been reported to the Mounted Police, causing the entire contract award process to be suspended indefinitely. No one said anything publicly while the investigation dragged on. CIDA was embarrassed and the Indonesian authorities were annoyed at the unexplained delay. The matter was delicate. Without firm proof, we were making a serious charge against an Indonesian diplomat and implying that we thought that the other officials might be involved (because he could not influence contract decisions all by himself). On the other hand, we looked inefficient and uncooperative in not offering any explanation for our long silence on this urgent project. The matter would be delicate anywhere but it was doubly so in Indonesia. That country was sensitive about its unsavoury international reputation for what Westerners called corruption but what most Indone-

The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia 173 sians regarded as the cost of doing business in a society where connections had always been the main ingredient in consummating commercial deals. The problem was compounded by the Javanese aversion to directness, especially about anything unpleasant. I debated what to do and decided to go straight to the minister concerned. I asked to see him completely alone on a delicate matter; that way the embarrassment would be confined to the man who would ultimately have to take action. Moreover, I thought he would appreciate me clearing the air in Western fashion. He was, after all, a Christian and a graduate of Berkeley. But his reaction was completely Javanese. He heard me out in stony silence with his eyes constantly averted and a pained expression on his face. When I had finished, he did not respond for what seemed like an eternity and then said that he did not wish to detain me longer because he knew I must be tired. He never referred to the matter again but the offending diplomat was quietly withdrawn from Canada. Some senior Indonesians were the complete opposite; outgoing, jovial, and direct. Vice-President Adam Malik was one of my favourites. He had served a long time as foreign minister and had retained his interest in international relations and foreigners. He was also the leading patron of the arts and had an infectious enthusiasm for collecting Chinese ceramics, even though that was currently not the politically correct thing to do. He was once invited to visit Canada in the dead of winter. He called me over to advise him what to wear. I suggested that he dress as he had when he served as ambassador to Moscow. As luck would have it, however, his visit to Ottawa coincided with the most bitterly cold weather that frigid capital had experienced in years. I wondered what he would think of my advice. I soon found out. The entire cabinet and diplomatic corps were summoned to the airport to greet him on his return. There was also a red carpet, a guard of honour, and the press corps awaiting his attention. He greeted his cabinet colleagues hastily, ignored everyone else and made a beeline for me. Shaking his finger at me and trying to hide the twinkle in his eye, he thundered: 'You lied to me. Ottawa is much colder than Moscow.' I seemed to have a penchant for Sumatrans, perhaps because they were related to my old friends in Malaysia. Adam Malik was a Batak from the eastern side of Sumatra. I also met another remarkable group called the Minangkabau from the western side. Their society is based on ancient pagan matrilineal laws mixed with Hindu and Moslem patrilineal customs. The basic unit of government consists of a grouping of all those who have descended from a common female ancestor up to

174 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants the fifth generation. The chief is chosen from the male relatives of the oldest woman of the lineage. The oldest immovable possessions of the group, such as rice fields, houses, and stables, are inherited from the ancestral mother but in practice belong communally to the entire group. The women are the chief cultivators of the soil and control its equitable distribution. The men have no rights over their wives other than to demand they remain faithful. A husband cannot ask his wife to make clothes for him, because that is the duty of his mother and sisters. If he obtains food from his wife, he should pay for it. A man must never mention his wife's name in speaking to her or of her; he should refer to her as little sister. One might think that this unusual society would produce a race of repressed and insecure males but the reverse is true. On a per capita basis, this small community has probably produced the largest number of male over-achievers in the republic. They like to move out of their home territory for long stretches to improve their fortunes. They have a remarkable affinity for commerce and the public service. I was privileged to know several of them, including the minister of the environment, Emil Salim. He had the courage to use a far-sighted CIDA program to help him protect Indonesia's forest heritage against the depredations of powerful vested interests. Another Minang, Hashim Djalal, served as Indonesian ambassador to Canada and also took a leading international role in promoting the Law of the Sea Conferences to protect the marine resources of Indonesia and its neighbours. It seems to be a paradox that the Minangkabau men are so powerless and so traditional in their ancestral villages and yet so enterprising and innovative abroad but I suspect there is cause and effect at work here. My responsibilities for promoting Canada's interests in this far-flung nation occupied most of my time, but they did not capture my fancy. What intrigued me was how to communicate to Canadians - and fellow Westerners generally - the distinctive ethos of this puzzling country; its unfamiliar and yet haunting rhythms and colours for dance, music, and textiles; its bewildering blend of religions; its pervasive belief that the spiritual affects the temporal. Most of all, I was tantalized by how little this country and culture were known to the outside world. China and India remained exotic for Westerners but they were not unknown to the general public; they had been the subjects of countless novels, films, and plays. Indonesia represented the third-largest stream of Asian culture but was a complete blank on almost every Western and Eastern cultural radar screen, ex-

The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia 175 cept in the Netherlands. Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam, though much smaller, were better known. Soon after I arrived, my curiosity was aroused by the strange explanations I was given for two incidents, one involving bamboo and the other a drowning. We proposed cutting down a grove of bamboo in our backyard to make more room for garden parties. Every Indonesian we consulted advised against this action but all gave different explanations, usually muttering about how unhealthy that corner of the garden was. None of the explanations sounded convincing to us. Everyone seemed evasive. Finally, our servants confessed that it was because ghosts or spirits lived in this bamboo grove and did not wish to be disturbed. How did they know this surprising fact? 'Everybody knows. You can sense them, if you are Indonesian. They have been there a long time and will punish anyone who bothers them.' The Bulgarian ambassador disappeared and was presumed drowned in a swimming accident. Against advice, he had gone swimming in notoriously treacherous currents off a beach on the Southern Sea. It was sad, but he had taken a foolish risk. The only puzzle was why his body had not been found. The scientific hypothesis was that the currents had swept the body out to sea. But a popular Indonesian explanation was that this swimming spot was the domain of the Queen of the South Seas. She had once been a human queen who had lived on land but was banished from court after she lost her beauty, due to a magic spell. She had then been invited to become queen of the underwater kingdom of the South Seas. Each year she was allowed to claim a terrestrial man to join her watery court. To many Indonesians, it was obvious that this ambassador had been chosen to join the monarch of the water spirits. Most Indonesians do not see any contradiction between the scientific and spiritual explanations; both are equally valid. Indonesians are not anti-scientific; they simply believe that our Western science only reveals part of the truth which complements their older belief in the spirits which inhabit most things. Like most Westerners, I began by dismissing these other-worldly approaches as unworthy of serious attention. Then I began to notice that some Westerners, who had lived in Indonesia a long time, were afflicted by the Indonesian outlook. The papal nuncio was a Spanish priest of considerable academic distinction. As the official representative of the Roman Catholic Church, he surely would not countenance any of this talk about the Indonesian spirit world. When I called on him, I made the mistake of asking about a beautiful kris which he dis-

176 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants played. The kris is a multi-layered, sinuous, and beautifully tooled dagger which has long been an important symbol of Malay-Indonesian culture. Many of these ceremonial daggers are also believed to have spiritual properties. The one owned by the papal nuncio was unusually ancient and beautiful and he showed it to me with great pride. Then he confided that it had unusual properties. It had its own spirit which would warn its owner of danger by rattling the blade in its scabbard. But this only happened if the spirit of the kris accepted you as its owner. When first given the kris, he had been advised to sleep with it under his pillow. If he slept poorly, it meant the fcn's-spirit had rejected him and he should return the blade. If he slept well, the kris had welcomed him and would always protect him - as long as it were given the place of honour in his home. I did not dare ask him what relative priority he gave to his kris and his crucifix! I was still not convinced that there was anything but superstition to these local ideas. Then a visiting Canadian biologist told me the following story. A group of scientists had been invited to visit the Bogor Agricultural Research Station, near Jakarta, to discuss why some local crops were suddenly being devoured by pests. To the Western scientists, the question was simply whether they should use chemical, biological, or physical means as the most efficient way to destroy the pests. To the Indonesians, the question was quite different. They said: 'Let us back up here. Let us begin by defining what a pest is. In our view, a pest is a creature with a spirit which has lost its harmony with nature and displays that disharmony by eating more than its share of the natural food supply. All creatures have a place on earth. If this "pest" is no longer in symbiosis with nature, it must be unhappy. So, instead of talking about how to destroy it, let us try to discover why its spirit is troubled. If we can make it happy, we will solve the problem/ It seemed to the biologist that the Indonesians had shown more insight into nature than their Western colleagues. I began to see that Indonesians may seem mysterious and inscrutable to us because we do not understand their closeness to nature and their empathy for all its manifestations. My most enduring memory of the blending of the spiritual and the legendary with scientific reality came when we witnessed a total eclipse of the sun. It was 1983 and the eclipse could be viewed best in Indonesia. Scientists flocked there from every corner of the globe. I was scheduled to be in Sulawesi at that time to visit the INCO mine and renew my acquaintance with Chris Dagg. He offered to drive me back across half of Sulawesi, instead of flying, so I could see some of the fascinating

The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia

177

variety of local cultures. It happened that we drove the last stretch immediately before the eclipse. The scene was startling; there was not a single soul to be seen on the normally bustling road. Finally, we saw one young man running in terror and gesturing for us to take cover from the darkening sky. The government had warned the public to avoid staring directly at the eclipse with the naked eye, but this mass hysteria sprang from the ancient legend that all mortals were in great danger whenever heavenly monsters tried to devour the sun. Seeking a Golden Age As a historian, I turned to the past to help me understand this mysterious civilization and explain it to others. Every time I tried to comprehend it, I found that I was only seeing a recent layer of the Indonesian experience. After one peeled away the current nationalist rhetoric engendered by the bitter independence struggle against the Dutch colonial power, one found a layer of positive influence from Dutch rationality and commercial and management skills. Similarly, the religious surface showing the world's largest Muslim country can be cut back to reveal a strong underlay of Hindu and Buddhist culture and, deeper still, a core of pervasive animism and ancestor worship and a genius for syncretizing all the elements. The national motto 'Unity in Diversity/ hints at the tension between the current strength of the nationalist central government and the various centrifugal forces in all the diverse islands which have frequently threatened the harmony of this sprawling archipelago. I wondered if there was a golden age to which all could look back with pride to say that this was the crucible of their common culture? Was there something similar to the great Tang and Sung dynasties in China, or to Asoka and the Guptas and Mughals in India? To me, the obvious parallel in Indonesia's case seemed to be the Majapahit Kingdom, which had reached its apogee during the fourteenth century. Most of the islands which now constitute Indonesia had united under Javanese leadership to defeat a Chinese invasion. They had forged a prosperous country in which all the arts had flourished and had begun to evolve into the subtle and distinctive characteristics which they display today. Why not have an Indonesian write a great epic history around this golden age to engender national pride? How would Indonesians feel about a foreigner, like me, writing a popular version of this epic to enhance international understanding?

178 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants Few Indonesians showed much enthusiasm for this project. They did not need to be reminded of the past to be proud of the present. If foreigners were ignorant of Indonesian culture, that was their problem. And Majapahit was controversial. It had been a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom and Indonesia was now predominantly Islamic; there were few surviving manifestations of Majapahit culture to show people; and the kingdom was remembered bitterly by some as a conquest by East Java, not as a free confederation of all the islands. The latter point was made to me with much eloquence and feeling by the foreign minister, whose Sundanese ancestors had been betrayed and slaughtered at Bubat in 1357 by Majapahit forces. This scholarly professor and Indonesian nationalist could discuss all the current world problems with equanimity, but the memory of that bitter day over six hundred years ago made him curse the memory of Majapahit. This did not seem like a good subject for a foreigner to pursue. Yet I persisted. I read a wonderful manuscript written by a member of the Majapahit court. I found evocative sculpture from the period. I became convinced that both gamelan music and the shadow-puppets that are such pervasive aspects of current Indonesian culture took firm root in that era. And I discovered that, far from being obliterated by the conquering Muslims, the joyous Buddhist-Hindu-animist fusion of art, nature, and religion that once flourished in Majapahit still lives, but in a different place and under a different name. It had quietly moved from Java to Bali and evolved into a timeless version of Majapahit culture; there everyone expresses their pleasure in the endless circle of birth, death, and rebirth through an art form. But how could I overcome the aversion to Majapahit among nonJavanese? The aversion stemmed from the tragedy of Bubat, which emphasized Javanese dominance through guile and force. I wanted to stress the earlier aspect of Majapahit, which achieved peace and prosperity through pan-Indonesian unity, common religious precepts, a blossoming culture, and regional alliances. It seemed to me that there had been a golden age in the fourteenth century, but in its first half not its second. Traditional historians had focused on the latter period because it coincided with the long reign of a handsome and vigorous king named Hayam Wuruk and his wily, expansionist prime minister, Gajah Mada. The historians ignored most of the first fifty years because they covered a series of short reigns by rulers with long, unpronounceable names and murky personalities. There seemed to be no unifying personage in that period.

The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia 179 The more I probed, the more convinced I became that they were mistaken. There had been one wise, subtle, strong, principled, and farsighted leader who had orchestrated the golden age in the first half of the century, but they had missed this key player because it was a woman. In a male-dominated society, even this remarkable queen had had to remain in the background. But her hand was everywhere in the political, religious, and cultural flowering of the era. She had been born outside of Java as Princess Gayatri and had become the wife of one hero-king, the toppler of an evil king, the mother of a ruling queen, and finally the grandmother of Hayam Wuruk. She was also an adept in an esoteric religious cult and a beautiful and talented woman. When she died in 1350, she was deified and also immortalized in the most alluring portrait sculpture to emerge from Indonesia's past.1 With her guiding wisdom gone, the young king and Gajah Mada made mistakes and allowed the tragedy of Bubat to sully the name of her golden age. But nobody shared my enthusiasm to explain Indonesia to foreigners by writing a historical novel about its most fascinating queen. My Canadian colleagues thought it was a complete waste of time because it was unrelated to my career interests and commercially unsaleable. Luckily, I had not told any of them about my earlier infatuation with an Afghan princess or they would have dismissed me as hopelessly romantic. My Indonesian colleagues did not take the idea seriously: ambassadors should stick to diplomatic relations and not try to rewrite Indonesian history. Events in Ottawa shortened my stay in Indonesia, so that I was unable to complete my research on Indonesian history or absorb as much as I would have liked of its culture. I had time for only one last formality. This was a farewell call on President Suharto. The president was a busy man and there were many departing ambassadors, so these calls were firmly restricted to a ten-minute protocol visit. My embassy colleagues stressed that I must use this time to the maximum advantage by putting in a plug for as many Canadian projects as possible. I was dubious that this would be the most effective way to leave the president well-disposed towards Canada but did not know what else to do. To my surprise, the president did not ask about Canada-Indonesia relations but about what interested me most in Indonesia. Perhaps he remembered from Prime Minister Trudeau's visit that Canadians sometimes have a genuine interest in Indonesian culture. I launched into my views on how the history of Majapahit and the continuing relevance of some of its traditions should be better presented and thereby help ex-

180 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants plain modern Indonesia. The president's staff signalled that my ten minutes were up. But Suharto warmed to the subject and waved them away. We talked animatedly for over one hour, throwing his schedule into disarray. When I emerged from the presidential office, my waiting staff were ecstatic. No ambassador had ever been given so much time by the top man on a farewell call. Which Canadian projects had we discussed, that had attracted his attention? They were dumbfounded when I replied that we had spent all our time discussing the history of fourteenthcentury Java. They concluded that the president and I had lost all sense of how a head of state and an ambassador should behave. I thought they were wrong. I believed that the president would remember Canada more warmly because of our talk and I knew that he had encouraged me to tell one fascinating aspect of Indonesia's story to the world.

12

An Iconoclast in China:

Beijing, 1987-1989

China is so much greater in everyone's eyes than it will ever be. Wang Gungwu, Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong

After my tour as ambassador in Indonesia, I had returned to Ottawa for four years to serve at External Affairs' headquarters as assistant deputy minister for Asia and the Pacific. This gave me the pleasure of serving as a senior advisor to Joe Clark, who was one of Canada's ablest and most conscientious foreign ministers. I also accompanied him on several trips to Asia. He was unfairly underrated by the media but not by professional diplomats in Canada and abroad who admired his clear mind, hard work, and ability to get the most out of his staff. We also liked his modesty, fair-mindedness, and fundamental decency. Given my relatively senior position in the department, I finally had some real choice in where I was sent on my posting in 1987. I asked to be assigned to China and planned to go with my new wife, Monica. My reasons for requesting China were that it was an important country to Canada and a fascinating country to me, personally. I was not, however, in love with China. Emotionally, I was far more drawn to India because it was democratic, federal, and operated under the rule of law and because its culture and history were more familiar to me. On the contrary, China beguiled me in a perverse way. Everyone else seemed to be smitten with the glamour of China; I wanted to take the measure of this totally alien land and see if I could retain some objectivity about it. Indeed, I approached it as an iconoclast, ready to demolish some cherished myths about the fabled Middle Kingdom.

182 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants Since Canada had established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1970, three of our ambassadors had been committed Sinophiles (having grown up in China), one had been an ardent anti-communist who hated China, and the last had been a Japanologist biding his time waiting for another posting to Tokyo. I could never be either as knowledgeable or as scathing as my predecessors had been about China. I wanted to be the most balanced in my assessment of it. That seemed a plausible objective, sitting in Ottawa. But, as I began a short crash course in Chinese history and language, I suddenly had serious doubts about the ability of a novice such as myself to comprehend the complex enigma that is China. My faith in the ability of a non-Sinologue to cope was restored soon after I took up my new post in Beijing in October of 1987.1 was invited to join a small luncheon club of friendly Western and Asian ambassadors that met monthly to discuss China. I attended two meetings and said very little as I listened in awe to the erudition of my colleagues. Most of the discussion was speculation on what would happen at the forthcoming Thirteenth Party Congress, the most important Chinese Communist Party gathering in a decade. The American ambassador was the chairman of our next meeting to consider the significance of the congress, after it was held. He telephoned me to make the following request: 'Earl, I would like to ask you to present the paper to our next meeting, assessing the historic importance of the Party Congress for the future of China.' I was astounded! 'I am flattered to receive this request/ I responded, "but completely puzzled. Why would you ask the new kid on the block when you have so many experts to draw on who have spent most of their lives studying China?' His reply left me amused but pleased: "Because the longer one studies China the more complex and confused it appears. The only hope we have of seeing this question with any sense of perspective is through the unblinkered vision of a clear-eyed newcomer/ In seeking to be balanced about China, I think I was reacting to the rose-coloured view of the Middle Kingdom which prevailed in Canada in the mid-igSos. China was in fashion. It seemed as though every Canadian politician, businessman, and journalist wanted to visit because it was the topical place. In our society, where fashions change with every whim of the media or shift in the public opinion polls, China was the flavour of the year. China was intriguing and chic because it was ancient and yet modernizing, mysterious but opening to

An Iconoclast in China 183 the West, and communist while inviting to capitalists. In 1987, even a sober Canadian government document wrote glowingly of 'how to capitalize on Canada's fascination with China ... upon the intense, if often romanticized, interest in China in all sectors of Canadian society ... The enthusiasm in Canada about China reflects an admiration for Chinese cultural achievements, Chinese actual and potential geopolitical strength and its significance for Canadian exports.' In short, Canadians were emotionally drawn to China - they were infatuated by it. My own personal suspicion, however, was that this infatuation contained at least three major flaws: China did not deserve this uncritical Canadian adulation (because most of its glorious culture was derived from its past, not from its current political masters); China did not reciprocate it (because Canada was too unimportant strategically and economically); and our emotion prevented us from formulating a China policy based on realistic Canadian goals. My aim was to test this thesis by living there and to achieve a more balanced Canadian approach. Of course, I had no idea how dramatically the events of June 1989 would change the popular view of China. China Trade The driving force behind much of the international interest in China was the prospect of expanding trade. This was an old story. The fabled riches of Cathay had inspired traders to seek silk cloth for the luxuryloving matrons of the ancient Roman Empire. Marco Polo's family twice made the incredible overland voyage from Venice to medieval China, not because they had any intention of writing the world's most famous travel book, but because they sought wealth through the China trade. Silk, and then spices, later lured mariners to venture both east and west to discover a short sea route to the shores of China. In the process, both the East Indies and the New World were discovered by Europeans. This somewhat diverted their all-consuming trade interest in China, but it would resurface several times, most recently in our generation. Evidence of the original China motivation for early exploration remains in many place names, such as the Lachine rapids in Quebec and China Bay in British Columbia. One of the motives for building Canada's transcontinental railway was to provide the fastest trade route to China. In the early days, Vancouver was the hub of an exciting annual race to get the latest silks and teas from China to London. In order to beat the competition whose ships sailed to London via the Indian Ocean and the

184 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants Cape of Good Hope, some sleek and fast vessels sailed in the opposite direction to Vancouver. There, special CPR 'silk trains' were waiting to speed the precious cargo along top priority tracks to Montreal, where it was transferred onto other ships for London. Most years the Vancouver route won the profitable race. That trade was the origin of the famous CPR liners fittingly named Empress of China and Empress of Japan and of Vancouver's ongoing fascination with the Orient. Interest in the China trade had waned since the war with Japan and the takeover of China by the Communists in 1949. It revived slowly with the first wheat deal between Canada and China in 1961, the establishment of diplomatic relations between Canada and China in 1970, and the new open-door policy of Deng Xiaoping in 1979. By 1988, my first full year in China, Canadian exports had reached a record high of $2.6 billion; to wheat had been added fertilizers, metals, forest products, chemical plants, aircraft, computers and telecommunication, power generation, mining, oil and gas equipment. It meant that China had suddenly become our fourth-largest export market. So the promotion of trade was a major preoccupation for me, as ambassador. This was partly because the complementary nature of the two economies meant that there was great potential for expanding trade between China and Canada. It also reflected the fact that government officers, like diplomats, play a much bigger role in promoting trade with China than they do with most countries, where the business community usually is the major player. In China, no business deals occur without the approval of some level (or more likely, multiple levels) of the Chinese government. That meant that we, their Canadian government counterparts, had to work hard to keep Chinese officials informed about Canadian business opportunities and on which deals we were willing to put the government's imprimatur because they would benefit the Canadian economy. This suited me. I was happy to devote most of my time to working with my team of trade commissioners in promoting something as tangible as Canada's business interests. How did that trade promotion effort manifest itself? In many ways: briefing business people on China's economic, political, and social realities as well as on commercial opportunities, arranging for visits by trade delegations in both directions, gathering and disseminating trade intelligence about market conditions and the activities of our competitors, facilitating meetings with key Chinese decision-makers, advising on when and how our exporters might be eligible for Canadian government financial assistance, and seeking redress when Canadian traders

An Iconoclast in China 185 and investors were unfairly treated. And of course, my wife and I attended and hosted countless banquets designed to enable potential business partners from very different cultures to understand and become comfortable with each other through that favourite Chinese activity, the ingesting of good food and drink in pleasant company. Contrary to popular belief, diplomats do not spend all their time enjoying themselves at elegant and pointless soirees. I tried to limit my attendance at official functions to those that would serve a Canadian government purpose. Indeed, anyone who thinks that the social side of diplomatic life must all be great fun should try attending endless banquets, sometimes eating exotic food that one finds appalling but must pretend to enjoy, being forced to swallow dreadful liquor as part of insincere toasts, and making desperate efforts to keep the conversation going with boring strangers. Moreover, you must do that night after night after night, when you want nothing more than to stay at home and have a bowl of comforting soup with your wife. But in any event, socializing was only part of the work. Mostly we gathered information, and advised on business opportunities, tactics, strategies, and policies. Sometimes we had to intervene directly to protect Canadian interests. We had been pleased to play a part in promoting the export of Holstein-Friesian cattle from Canada. These wonderful dairy cattle had deservedly won a worldwide reputation for productivity and quality, but they were expensive and it had been hard to convince the Chinese that they were worth the price. We used the CIDA program to introduce the cattle free of charge to model farms where we could demonstrate how productive they would be when kept under the right conditions. Soon after the CIDA shipments began, Canadian farmers began exporting cattle commercially to China, in a parallel program. Then a strange thing happened; all the free CIDA cattle passed the health tests at the Chinese port of entry but about one-third of the commercial cattle were found to be diseased. The latter were taken away by the Chinese authorities who told the Canadian exporters that they would not be paid for them because they were unhealthy. Allegedly these diseased cattle were destroyed, but we suspected that they were sent directly to the black market where everyone made a handsome profit except the Canadians. Although I was outraged that Canadian farmers were being cheated, we could not prove the shady dealings. If we accused the Chinese officials of dishonesty, we would make them permanent enemies. Most Canadian officials thought that we should not link the CIDA and com-

i86 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants mercial shipments because they were handled by different departments and that would only confuse both programs. I decided to take two remedial actions. First, we sent the Chinese chief inspector for health of animals to Canada to see for herself how meticulously cattle were tested immediately before being shipped under controlled conditions and asked her if she could suggest any additional test or any improvement in the controls which had satisfied every other country in the world. One minor change was then made at her suggestion (we thought it was to save face for China). Second, we proposed to ship the CIDA and commercial cattle together and said that any diseased cattle would be deducted from the number being given to China rather than from those being sold. Miraculously, the number of diseased cattle dropped to zero. Micro-Projects in Minority Regions One of our many surprises in China was to discover how many nonChinese minority people lived there. Somehow, I had always thought of China as populated almost entirely by Han people, known to the outside world as ethnic Chinese. It was a revelation to me to learn that China contains fifty-five different minority groups totalling approximately eighty-four million people. My wife and I had the opportunity to travel to their remote homelands and meet some of them, always accompanied by some embassy staff and our Chinese hosts, of course. Most of this exotic travel was done on behalf of CIDA. Unlike trade promotion work, which tended to be in the big cities, CIDA concentrated on the poorer regions of China, often in rural backwaters. Our first extensive trip was in Gansu Province, far inland on the upper reaches of the Yellow River at the outer edge of the Chinese heartland. Near its western border stands the famous Jade Gate which was the traditional entry point into China for visitors entering on the Silk Road - the welcome sign that their long and hazardous journey was over. For Chinese travellers to the West, the writing on the gate warned them that they were leaving civilization! Gansu had also played another role in Chinese history: it had been a barometer of economic and artistic well-being. In the great millennium stretching from approximately 600 A.D. to 1600 A.D., Gansu had been a green and prosperous land and a treasure house of caves filled with religious painting and sculpture. In the following centuries, the forests were burned in warfare, the hills eroded of all vegetation, and the art buried and forgotten. Gansu had become one of China's poorest provinces.

An Iconoclast in China 187 We Canadians offered to work with our Chinese colleagues in alleviating that poverty. Our approach was in complete contrast to that of the World Bank, which provided billions of dollars in loans for massive, meticulously researched long-term projects. The CIDA approach was different: it offered grants - not loans (where every project had to be designed to generate a profit) - and only modest amounts of money but aimed for quicker results. My favourite CIDA program was called the 'Canada Fund/ It was very small in size but was administered at the discretion of the embassy itself without any prior approval from distant, bureaucratic Ottawa. It enabled us, who were on the spot, to approve a few thousand dollars for hands-on assistance which would bring quick results for people in need. In Gansu we selected a couple of particularly poor counties to work with. We did very basic things like helping to give women gainful employment and access to money of their own. We paid for low-key, simple programs that taught them how to weave cloth and market it, raise rabbits and sell the meat and skins, and plant bushes that would grow fruit in the arid, denuded soil. To see whether our help was making any difference to its intended recipients, we travelled to remote towns and villages over back roads in dusty Land Rovers and stayed at rudimentary lodgings. We drove to such remote areas that once we left behind all marked roads and took off across trackless steppes inhabited only by free-ranging yaks and the occasional Tibetan herder. Our Gansu guides became totally lost and we eventually navigated by using an atlas and compass both bought in Canada. Later, flash floods washed out the road over a normally dry river in front of us and we had to be rescued by a tractor. This backcountry travel was fine with me; I wanted to see the real China, not the glamorous tourist sites. Our arrival at a school would give rise to impromptu lessons from the teachers to their pupils on how to find Canada on the map and how to say a few phrases in English. The crowded classrooms were pitifully bare of any facilities or even adequate desks, but the spirit of teachers and pupils was remarkably buoyant. It was hot, dusty, and uncomfortable in Gansu but very satisfying to see at first hand how a few dollars wisely spent can begin to transform people's lives and give them hope. In our adopted counties, local people even composed a song along the following lines: Tf bad times come, do not worry; the Canadians will help us, in a hurry.' Many of the poor people with whom we worked were members of minority races. They were Chinese citizens but had different customs, distinctive names, costumes, diets, and often different religions. There was no overt discrimination against them; indeed, the Chinese constitu-

i88 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants tion is explicit in recognizing their right to be respected as minorities. Yet often they ended up near the bottom of the income scale and rarely had the same opportunities for economic advancement as their Han compatriots, partly because they lived in remote rural areas, far from the big cities with the best educational facilities and the widest choice of employment prospects. In Gansu there were three racial groups whom we encountered often. The Hui were a quiet group who had Chinese facial features and tended to blend into the Chinese majority except for their Muslim religion and the distinctive beards and white caps of their menfolk and the coloured head coverings of their women. In contrast, another Muslim group called Uygurs were an assertively non-Chinese, Turkic-speaking minority of six million who looked and acted like Turks or Pakistanis; indeed, in their bazaars I felt that I was back in Pakistan. Lastly, there were the equally distinct Tibetans, following their unique brand of Buddhism centred around monasteries. In Gansu these minorities seemed to live in harmony with the Han majority and the provincial authorities cooperated in directing Canadian assistance to those in greatest need regardless of their ethnic origin. Subsequently my wife and I visited other fascinating minorities in the southernmost province of Yunnan and came away with similar feelings that the Chinese authorities were doing their best, within their limited financial means, to work with the minorities to meet local needs. At first glance China appeared to be a model of racial tolerance and slow but cooperative economic development among all these minorities living happily side by side with the Han majority. Later I visited other provinces in the far west which were the real heartlands of the Uygurs and Tibetans. There, it gradually unfolded that the story of relations between the majority Han and the minority races was more complicated than it appeared on the surface. Xinjiang is a vast province consisting of pine-studded mountains and isolated agricultural oases dotted around the perimeter of one of the world's most forbidding deserts, the Taklamakan - which in the Uygur language literally means 'enter and never return.' Xinjiang has long been the homeland of the sturdy and fiercely independent Uygurs. For centuries they controlled the most difficult section of the silk road, and also supplied horses to the Chinese. Uygur-Chinese relations were excellent as long they had a mainly trading relationship and not one of direct political dominance by China. During the past century the Muslim Uygurs have periodically mounted small armed revolts against Chinese rule.

An Iconoclast in China 189 When we visited the fabled, medieval city of Kashgar, we asked our Chinese guides to take us to the Muslim market and holy places. We were informed that these places were unsafe for non-Uygurs and we should stay safely in the Chinese quarter. Of course, we decided to ignore this advice and go everywhere in town on our own. We were made very welcome by the Uygurs, but our Chinese guides stayed behind in the hotel with their compatriots. In Tibet, relations between the Han and the minorities were even more strained than in Xinjiang. In early 1989 Tibet was placed under martial law after anti-Chinese demonstrations broke out during a procession by Buddhist monks in Lhasa. A small group of us from the Canadian embassy were the first foreigners allowed to enter Tibet after martial law ended in 1990. This happened because we came bearing gifts of Canadian aid. These were small projects which had been negotiated before martial law was imposed, but the symbolism of foreigners coming to help Tibetans rather than to criticize martial law was important to China. The Chinese told us that, contrary to propaganda which we might have heard in the outside world, they had rescued the Tibetans from a feudal theocracy which had impoverished most Tibetans. Now the Chinese government was working with educated modern Tibetans to bring economic development to that backward region. We said that Canadians did not want to debate history or politics but wanted to implement our long-delayed projects, provided we were allowed to talk to monks and other local Tibetans to assure ourselves that the projects would go to help people in need. Our projects were modest and aimed directly at improving the health of Tibetans, not their Chinese overlords. Our goals were: to provide safe drinking water to a mountain village; to improve local diets by teaching people to grow and eat vegetables; and to train local health workers. We were allowed to have very open discussions with the Tibetan mayor of Lhasa and the Tibetan director of health, but these meetings were not conclusive on the question of whether our aid would benefit Tibetans because these individuals had been coopted by the Chinese into their government system. We were still suspicious about the heavy hand of the Chinese military whom we saw displaying their firepower daily. My suspicions increased during a visit to the Potala Palace (the former residence of the Dalai Lama) when the monk escorting me was unable to answer any of my questions about the Buddhist symbols we saw around us. Finally, a Tibetan guide whispered in my

190 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants ear: 'He can't answer because he is not a Tibetan monk. He is only dressed to look like one. He is really a Chinese from the Security Police.' With great reluctance, the Chinese authorities finally allowed us to visit three monasteries, so that we could speak directly to monks. The visits to monasteries in Lhasa were disappointing. The buildings were impressive but few monks were present and we were only allowed to speak to them in the presence of Chinese officials. We felt that the comments of the monks were stilted and not frank. Finally we were taken to the site of the great monastery of Ganden on the side of a mountain some seventy kilometres from Lhasa. We were shocked at what we saw. The buildings were in ruins and the only sign of life was two elderly gentlemen who appeared to be monks but were introduced as the chairman and vice-chairman of the local Tibet-China Friendship Society. The conversation in the presence of our Chinese handlers was desultory and uninformative. Then the vice-chairman asked if anybody would like to walk around the mountain with him as a sign of respect to the Buddha. One of my embassy officers, a Tibetan guide, and I accepted but the Chinese all declined, saying it was a silly superstitious custom and we might miss lunch and the post-lunch rest period by doing so. Thus, the non-Chinese began to walk around the mountain together. The air was thin at that height and the path rocky and steep in places so we walked slowly but the old man leaped ahead of us like a mountain goat, foraging for roots and berries while he waited for us. He quickly introduced himself as a real monk who had been forced to adopt a patriotic title when the soldiers had come to take away all the young monks for demonstrating in favour of Tibetan autonomy. He showed us where the army had pitched their tents until twenty-four hours ago, when they were ordered to leave in order to make the place look presentable for visiting foreigners. He explained that the buildings had not been smashed recently but during the Cultural Revolution and never properly repaired. We asked him whom we could trust and what we should do about our small aid projects. He replied that the Tibetan health director was a very good man who had decided he could do more for his people by working with the Chinese on health issues than protesting about political and religious issues. We should follow the director's advice, help local people, and avoid taking sides in politics. He was sure that the Buddha would smile on us as we tried to help poor people.

An Iconoclast in China

191

These experiences were salutary for me. It was important to understand how immensely ancient and complicated China is. Few problems are ever as simple as they appear on the surface. China is like a vast tapestry made up of many variegated strands and interlinked patterns of race, geography, economics, religion, history, personal relationships, and politics. Moreover, it is not only the surface pattern which one must study but the fact that there are layers upon layers which are hidden from the view of most foreigners. I came away feeling that we had done the right thing by experimenting with a few small projects in Tibet but that we had much more studying to do and many more local contacts to make before we could acquire a better understanding of this strange and distant culture. I did not conclude that we should concentrate all our efforts on small poverty alleviation projects in poor regions like Gansu and Tibet, even though they are personally the most satisfying. It is tempting to do only hands-on poverty projects because of the direct human contact with beneficiaries who are obviously in great need. But after all my years with CIDA, the OECD, and the World Bank, I knew that mounting a myriad of micro-projects is not necessarily the most rational way to promote national economic development. Not only are such projects too labour-intensive for it to be feasible to administer many of them, but they are incapable of dealing with some types of problems. They need to be complemented by big and medium-size projects of long duration to deal with institutional changes, the introduction of technical training and tertiary educational facilities, and the construction of large infrastructure projects to improve transportation, communication, power, and sanitation facilities. The challenge of economic development is not just alleviating poverty in one locality; it is establishing a sound and balanced economic and social system in the wider community which will provide all its inhabitants with opportunities to lead productive lives. This requires first and foremost a huge commitment and investment by the host authorities. Without that, no bilateral or multilateral agency can do much to help. Modern China clearly has made a major commitment to improve the economic well-being of its citizens, whatever we may think of its neglect of their democratic and human rights. Thus, it is the sort of economic development partner with which Canada, the World Bank, and other international agencies like to work. And China's needs are so huge and varied that it can usefully absorb assistance of many types

192 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants from many sources. My rational self understood the need for a range of programs; but in truth my heart remained with the micro-projects for the poor in the remote regions of China. Life in a Fish Bowl Professionally, China was endlessly fascinating; but personally, it was not always enjoyable for Monica and me because we were enclosed in a fish bowl, like exotic specimens being isolated and observed. Privacy, in the Western sense, is virtually unknown in China. Children are not supposed to have any secrets from their parents and citizens should have no secrets from the omniscient state. In modern China, traditional Confucian teachings that one's primary role is to fulfil obligations to one's family and community (rather than to think of oneself as an individual with rights) are reinforced by the communist obsession with secrecy and information control. The most odious manifestation of that is the ubiquitous neighbourhood committee, composed mainly of elderly women appointed to report any deviant behaviour in their district to the party. Their reports cover all visitors, all quarrels, all incorrect political comments, all pregnancies, indeed anything that the old busybodies find suspect. With this domestic background in mind, it is not surprising that Communist China tries to control the lives of foreign ambassadors. In my time there, China used four main methods to do this: providing your local staff and forcing them to report on you; installing listening devices in your living quarters; posting a guard at the entrance to your home and office; and insisting that all calls on Chinese citizens be cleared in advance with the authorities. The staff of an embassy normally consists of both Canadian civil servants who are assigned abroad for a fixed term and locally engaged staff who are living in the host country. A few of the latter may be Canadian or third-country nationals who are residing there, but most will be nationals of the host country. They are invaluable because of their local knowledge and their long-term service (unlike the Canadian staff who normally move every two to four years). In Beijing, however, no embassies are permitted to hire Chinese staff directly, either for the office or their homes. We could only ask a Chinese government agency to provide us with staff for positions which we designated. Essentially, we paid that agency for their services. They were agency staff, not ours, and owed their loyalty to their Chinese employer. They were all rou-

An Iconoclast in China 193 tinely required to spy on our activities and report back regularly to their Chinese masters. Naturally, we did not allow them to deal with any matters that were confidential or to enter restricted areas of the embassy. It was a totally unsatisfactory situation for both us and our Chinese staff, but we had no choice because our notoriously tight-fisted Department of External Affairs would not allow us to pay more than Chinese wages for most of our routine clerical, administrative, and household work. We found it ironic that only the communist embassies in Beijing paid the extra cost of bringing all their own clerical, cleaning, and cooking staff to China. They did so because they fully realized how much pressure the Chinese staff would be under to spy on them. Despite this dreadful system, we gradually developed real affection for some of our Chinese staff. We found most of them to be basically honest people who were caught in a system which required them to make reports on us. We came to accept that their reporting was only nominal in most cases and that, in any event, we had nothing to hide. After we got to know each other well, a few of them even joked with us about their problem of us doing nothing suspicious on which they could report. The listening devices were a standing joke among diplomats. Although the practice has since been relaxed as more housing has become available, when we first arrived in Beijing all diplomats were assigned housing by the Chinese authorities in two quarters of the city reserved for foreigners. There was no choice; you had to go where the Chinese government told you to live or stay in an expensive hotel. Thus, it was easy for Chinese intelligence agents to install and maintain listening devices in the same way as their colleagues in Eastern Europe. Diplomats used to exchange stories about finding these devices or hearing them emit squeals at unlikely times. We thought it was all exaggerated until my wife and I had an innocuous discussion late one evening in our apartment with the Portuguese ambassador and his wife. They lived one floor below us in the same apartment block. Conversing in French, my wife asked her neighbour whether the Chinese responsible for managing our building looked after polishing the Portuguese brass plate regularly in the lobby. We had wondered whether there was a deep significance in the fact that the adjacent Canadian plate was never shined. Did this reveal a Chinese political preference for Portugal over Canada? She laughed and replied that her butler did this polishing and Monica said she would, in due course, ask ours to do the same. First thing next morning, to her surprise, Monica discovered our butler stand-

194 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants ing on a stool busily shining our plate. When she asked why he had suddenly decided to do this after a year of neglect, our servant only smiled and said he had just had an inspiration. Every embassy office and ambassadorial residence had a uniformed Chinese guard stationed outside twenty-four hours a day. This service was ostensibly there for our protection. The only flaws in that argument were that China is one of the safest countries in the world and the guards never stopped any Caucasians, only people with Chinese faces. This was a matter of annoyance to us. Chinese-Canadians were routinely stopped and questioned. Moreover, we did not want to discourage Chinese citizens from seeking information about Canada. But the guards did not always succeed in preventing contact between the two nationalities. The most extraordinary case involved an official Canadian translator and a Tibetan monk. The translator's name was Jean Duval. He was a language genius based in Ottawa who accompanied most important official Canadian visitors to China. Not only had he mastered the nuances of colloquial Mandarin Chinese but several regional languages as well. When he visited a remote Tibetan monastery, the monks were so dumbfounded by this foreigner who spoke their language fluently that they concluded he must be a reincarnation of a Tibetan soul. They expressed determination to keep in touch with him. The monks thought he was based at the Canadian embassy in Beijing because most of the visiting group came from there. They did not realize that Jean lived in Canada, a country so remote they could not imagine it. Approximately one year later, the monks decided to re-establish contact with Jean and sent a young acolyte to Beijing to find him and deliver a jar of rancid yak butter; this would be vital for a Tibetan soul to mix with his food and with which to light prayer lamps. After his long trip to Beijing, the young monk was turned away by the Chinese guard at the gate of the embassy. He was dirty, dishevelled, and had no official paper permitting him to talk to Canadians. Discouraged and unsure what to do next, he went to the Lama Temple in Beijing to pray for divine guidance. By the strangest of coincidences, Jean had just returned to Beijing to accompany Minister Pat Carney on an official visit. She had a one-hour gap in her program and asked Jean what they could do to amuse themselves during that break. There were a hundred possibilities but, for some unfathomable reason, Jean suggested the Lama Temple. Of course, the monk looked up from his prayers to see that they had been answered. Either sheer coincidence or divine interven-

An Iconoclast in China 195 tion had finally managed to break through the fish bowl. And we kept the yak butter in the embassy refrigerator to prove it! One of the other unique features of life for foreign diplomats in Beijing was the requirement that all contact with Chinese officials had to be authorized in advance. Ostensibly, this is to respect protocol: in their view, an ambassador should be greeted by officials of an appropriate rank. I disliked this because Canadians are not very rank-conscious and it prevented spontaneous human contact. So I tried to change the system by suggesting we invite Chinese colleagues from the ministry we dealt with most regularly to play some recreational games with us. My rationale was that we might relax together after hours and get to know each other better. Their response was cool and suspicious, taking the form of a series of questions: Meeting after hours is out of the question but would Canadians agree to play during the morning? We do not play your games, so what did you have in mind? Would we play on Chinese or Canadian premises? Would there be food and drink supplied and by whom? Would there be prizes? This was becoming far more structured than I had in mind but we soldiered on. We agreed to play table tennis and badminton (games at which the Chinese excel), at their preferred time, on Chinese premises, but we would supply Canadian food and drink on our premises. We had not originally thought of prizes, as the games were intended to be friendly and uncompetitive but we would provide some modest prizes if they insisted. On that basis, they agreed to set up a joint committee to plan the games which would be held in one month's time. The delay was requested to give them time to structure the matches in accordance with protocol so that the ambassador began by playing the most senior Chinese official and so on down the line of precedence. (Subsequently we learned that the other reason for delay was to give them time to practise.) What had started out as an informal gesture was taking on all the trappings of the Olympics. Finally, the great sporting day arrived. We expected to be soundly beaten in every match but hoped to acquit ourselves honourably so that they would invite us back for a rematch at which we might introduce a Canadian game or two. Space was limited at the gym, so the plan was that those who were not playing at the moment would be designated as umpires for the ongoing matches. At the end of the morning we would go to the embassy for lunch and the award of prizes. The games went better than expected. The atmosphere was relaxed and we managed to

196 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants win a few matches. I was particularly pleased that my strong partner and I won the badminton doubles championship after a hard-fought contest. So we were completely shocked when a Chinese spokesman came to us with a long face and said they would not be able to attend lunch after all. We demanded an explanation. It was hard to extract the real reason for their about-face but finally it came out: 'We cannot attend lunch because that is when the prizes will be given. None of us can accept prizes because you, the ambassador, have won a prize and our senior man did not win one. He has lost face and, therefore, we all have too/ Summoning all my years of diplomatic training, I responded: 'Oh, but you have been misinformed. Your vice-minister has won the highest prize which is awarded to the person who was the best umpire of the games.' A broad smile creased the face of our Chinese friend: 'In that case, we shall join you for lunch with great pleasure. And we shall be happy to share other occasions like this in future with our Canadian friends who understand how to play international games so well/ Unfortunately, those good intentions were uttered just before the great Tiananmen crisis, which was to disrupt cordial relations between our two countries for a long time. We hated the communist system which isolated us from normal human contact with the Chinese people. It was the only time in my long career that I had been unable to mix freely and make friends with local residents. And this was particularly frustrating in this fascinating society, where one longed to learn more about how individuals were coping with the intrusion of new political, economic, aesthetic, and ethical doctrines into the great culture which they had inherited from their ancestors. I missed the company of a local business pal like Jamshed Katrak of Pakistan, a civil servant colleague like Jack deSilva of Malaysia, or a friendly political leader like Adam Malik of Indonesia to help me understand the local scene. And it was clear that the Chinese we met officially were every bit as interesting personalities as we had met elsewhere; they were often warm, engaging, and quite personal in their conversations at formal banquets. They asked and answered questions about children, hobbies, health, travel, favourite foods, history, art, films and writers, in the same way as people everywhere. The problem was that we could never see them again except for an official reason and rarely as a couple; so they remained remote acquaintances, not friends. One partial exception to this rule was He Kang, the minister of agriculture, and his wife. He was the first Chinese minister I met because

An Iconoclast in China 197 the Canadian minister of agriculture arrived in China the day after I did and we became involved in a round of reciprocal banquets. And the pattern continued during my whole posting in China because Canada and China regularly exchanged visits connected with agriculture. This was quite appropriate for two countries whose modern relations began when Canada dared to sell wheat to hungry China back in 1960 when most of the Western world regarded 'Communist China' as some sort of international pariah. That tradition of mutually beneficial Sino-Canadian trade and scientific exchange in agriculture has continued to flourish whatever the ups and downs of political relations. Minister He Kang typified this friendly apolitical relationship. He was no Communist Party ideologue but a pragmatic agricultural scientist and a gentleman. For years he had been director of the Agricultural Research Centre on Hainan Island, where he had achieved national fame by demonstrating that China could cultivate badly needed rubber. But he was more than a scientist and minister; he was an engaging personality. He and his wife liked to participate in lively conversation on a whole host of topics far beyond agriculture. They were interested in good food, history, music, and calligraphy. And they could discuss a range of international as well as national subjects with urbanity and good humour. They were the very opposite of the sour, one-track-minded party functionaries who never offered an original thought on any subject. He Kang and his wife seemed to personify the old-fashioned Chinese sophistication and civility that for centuries had marked a traditional scholar-official and his wife. And they comforted us in our belief that outside our fish bowl were wonderful Chinese people whom we would enjoy knowing personally if we were allowed. It was many years later that I learned from a mutual Chinese friend just how remarkable - and how traditionally Chinese - this couple were. It seems that He Kang came from a very good family which had produced generations of scholar-officials. As a young man, he fell in love with the daughter of a similar family but his parents decided that he should marry the daughter of a third family from the same class. He resisted his parents' wishes for two years because he and the first young lady were deeply in love. Eventually, as a good filial son in a Confucian society, he married the lady chosen by his father. He remained totally faithful to his wife (the one we knew) and they raised two attractive children. He Kang and his wife were widely regarded as a perfect couple. Madame He Kang was always very polite to her husband's first girlfriend and sometimes invited her to their home for tea. The lady never

198 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants married but devoted herself to agricultural science and eventually migrated to the United States where she achieved some distinction in her field. After we left China, He Kang fell ill and his wife died. In her will, she asked her eldest son to undertake an important task for her. He was to go to the United States and find the other lady and ask her to give up her fine position there and return to China to marry her first love, who was sick and needed her. And this eminent agricultural scholar did resign her position and come back to China to marry He Kang - fifty years after they first fell in love. I find that story touching on a human level and reassuring about the continuity of traditional Chinese values and relationships underneath the rigid system imposed by the party. Lastly, we were helped to see beyond the confines of our diplomatic fish bowl by my sister Joan and her husband Morley. They made their first trip away from North America and Hawaii to visit us in China. They were apprehensive about visiting such an exotic country and intended to stay only a short time. They had two great advantages over us: they were unencumbered by official restrictions on their travel; and they brought the fresh eyes and warm hearts of unseasoned world travellers. They were able to discover the wonderful qualities of the ordinary Chinese people which had been obscured for us by the screens of security and official rhetoric. Joan and Morley fell in love with China and stayed there until the events of June 1989 forced them to leave and then they came back for more. Their enthusiasm helped us to discover the attractions of eternal China, behind the communist facade.

13

Tiananmen Crisis: China, 1989-1990

Tens of thousands of enraged people were streaming toward Tiananmen Square ... The men wore shorts and sandals. Some of the women carried purses. A few people even brought their children ... Then I saw that the soldiers had knelt into a shooting position and were taking aim. As the people ran, the soldiers fired into their backs. More than a dozen bodies lay on the ground ... For the rest of the morning, and throughout the afternoon, this scene repeated itself again and again. In all, I recorded eight long murderous volleys. Jan Wong's eyewitness account of events on 4 June 1989, in Red China Blues

This book of memoirs was inspired by my experiences during the Tiananmen crisis and it is fitting that I should devote a chapter to it. It was the most dramatic event of my career. I was in the eye of a storm while all the world was watching it, first in fascination and then in horror. Rather than retell in detail the widely reported main story of the interaction among students, the people of Beijing, the Chinese leaders, and the various units of the armed forces, I shall concentrate on the role of three groups: the Canadians, the media, and our Chinese acquaintances. But first I should set the stage by recalling briefly the sequence of events, as seen through the eyes of a Canadian diplomat. The early months of 1989 were characterized by excitement and bemused optimism as the embassy coped with streams of official visitors, planned ambitious programs to promote Canadian interests, and analysed China's uneven lurches, stimulated by experiment and frustrated by inflation, towards modernization and reform. It was fascinat-

200 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants ing to see the ancient Celestial Empire changing in many respects cities and farms prospering, a new wave of art and cinema, and lively public debate on economic reform - but remaining implacably opposed to democracy and political freedom. As China watchers, we were expecting some student demonstrations. In the prevailing official mood of moderate tolerance for debate on nonpolitical subjects, the students were openly planning some protests. They were grumbling about poor living conditions on the campus, nepotism among the children of senior party leaders, and the austerity measures which had suddenly been imposed on the public to deal with inflation and an over-heated economy. Everyone was anticipating student demonstrations on 4 May, the anniversary of the famous student movement in 1919. However, no one expected them to get out of hand. Unexpectedly, the timing and emotional intensity changed on 15 April with the death of Hu Yaobang, the one party leader whom the students regarded as honest and sympathetic. He had been in semi-disgrace since he had sided with the students when they had rallied in Shanghai a few years earlier. The students seized the occasion to try a dress rehearsal of their planned 4 May rally. They were amazed and thrilled at the huge outpouring of public support which the Hu Yaobang memorial demonstration received. They decided, first, to continue the demonstration until 4 May, and then to extend it until the Gorbachev visit on 15 May, because it would attract the international media. Finally, the demonstration took on a life of its own and the divided student leaders could not decide when to end it. For fifty days we were caught in alternating waves of discouragement and euphoria as thundering warnings from party elders were followed by unbelievable displays of mass support. I believe that, in the early stages, a few senior party leaders were sympathetic to some of the student demands and alarmed by the degree of popular support for the students. These leaders advocated making a few quick concessions and establishing a mechanism for resolving the other issues peacefully. The original student-demonstrators were, after all, the children of the elite. Some were hot-headed and some were rude, but they were not trying to overthrow the regime. Originally they were only asking for improved conditions on their campuses and less corruption and nepotism in government - three goals which even the party pretended to favour. Gradually they became bolder and asked for the resignation of unpopular leaders and for more democracy, but at no time did they advocate the downfall of the Communist Party. They

Tiananmen Crisis 201 only called for its reform. Right to the bitter end they frequently sang "The Internationale.' However, some party elders were adamantly opposed to any concessions because they could not be seen to lose face by giving in to public pressure. Some were probably concerned that the students were being used by a faction within the party to gain power, as had happened during the decade-long chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Those memories were particularly vivid for Deng himself because he, his family, and friends had suffered terribly at the hands of student mobs. A few party elders were suspicious that a sinister 'black hand' of domestic and foreign enemies was manipulating the students. Others could not decide what to do. The longer the party leaders dithered, the more the students brandished increasingly provocative banners and encouraged others to join them in protest. We were surprised to see officers of government departments whom we knew and some of our own Chinese staff on the square. The duration and magnitude of these popular demonstrations were unprecedented, but still the atmosphere seemed less confrontational than holiday-like. Then the tone changed in late April with a harsh editorial in the People's Daily, condemning the demonstrations as a "planned conspiracy' and suggesting that their continuation might lead to arrest and prosecution. It was clear to us at the embassy that the demonstrators had been firmly warned and knew they were expected to make a strategic retreat. When public support waned momentarily, the students came up with the brilliant ploy of a hunger strike. This technique has frequently been used in other parts of the world but was virtually unknown in China, where food has been an obsession down the ages. The hunger strike changed the mood from a kind of irreverent carnival atmosphere to one of deadly earnestness. Government officials, factory workers, and ordinary people poured onto the streets, and medical volunteers ministered to the weakened hunger strikers. Meanwhile, party factions and army commanders manoeuvred in the shadows. The die were cast for a serious confrontation when the students ignored not only the People's Daily warning but also the subsequent imposition of martial law on 20 May. They went further and invited others, including organized workers, to join them on the square. It was that step that probably decided the wavering party leaders to use force. There was a tradition of some tolerance for peaceful student protests but worker group agitation was completely unacceptable. If that grew, it could undermine the whole authority of the party.

2O2 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants In the early evening of 3 June, my wife and I drove in our own car (not the official car with the Canadian flag) to join other Canadians whose flat overlooked a massive confrontation, still peaceful, between citizens and the army. We had to thread our way through little back streets to get there because the main streets had been barricaded by the people of each neighbourhood pulling buses and trucks across each intersection to discourage the movement of army vehicles. From the flat the scene was surreal. Thousands of soldiers in battle gear were being lectured by civilians of all ages as they sat sweltering in their trucks which could not move because of the massed humanity in front of them. About 11:30 p.m. we started home but found our way blocked by another confrontation. After a few tense moments in this melee of soldiers and citizenry, we flashed a 'V sign to show our support for the demonstrators and were waved through with smiles. Occasionally, it seemed like a street carnival; nevertheless, the tension was heavy because the army was humiliated and no one knew what would happen next. We all hoped that people power would triumph, as in the Philippines, but we feared that the modern Emperor of China would, like his predecessors, use violence to preserve his rule. The use of armed force to repress dissent had a long and sad history in the Middle Kingdom. Intellectuals recalled the haunting words of Li Po, China's great eighthcentury poet, alluding to the use of imperial brutality: After the tears had been exhausted, then the blood flowed, And only silence remained ...

The next day brought tragedy and crisis. We had been back home for a couple of hours' sleep when the sound of sustained gunfire awoke us. Just then, one of my officers reported on his mobile radio: 'Army tanks have just broken through the barricades and are moving towards Tiananmen Square shooting on the crowd as they go.' This seemed totally unreal to me, living some distance from the action. So I peered out the window. To my amazement, at that moment two tanks came roaring down our peaceful street in the middle of the night. From the balcony I saw a reddish glow in the sky above Tiananmen Square. I realized, with a sick feeling, that this came from fires burning at and near the square. Soon we heard the first ambulance bring wounded to a small hospital immediately behind us and then watched other ambu-

Tiananmen Crisis 203 lances careen in over the next eighteen hours. The days of hope and chaotic idealism were over: the reality of bloody repression was on our doorstep. The Canadians After 4 June, our focus shifted from the national drama to the urgent problem of how to protect the approximately five hundred Canadian citizens in China. Many of them in northern and western China were in highly unstable and sometimes dangerous environments. Our first priority was to get the Canadian students out of the Beijing universities. We feared that the campuses would be attacked at any moment because they were the hotbeds of discontent. So we sent convoys draped in Canadian flags through army lines to rescue our students and bring them to embassy homes for shelter. We felt relieved when we had accomplished that risky task, until we learned that several students had already returned to the campus because they had left their favourite rock music behind. Probably they also wanted to say good-bye to friends. Our second priority was to provide transportation out of China for all other Canadians who wanted to leave. There was no direct threat to foreigners; this was an internal quarrel. But there had already been considerable random violence and more seemed possible. Most of our staff had their apartments threatened by tank cannons and had to flee their homes for the embassy compound in the middle of the night. A few Chinese troops fired at foreign homes, lodging a dozen mean-looking shells in some Canadian homes and hitting just below our own window ledge. It looked even worse on TV at home in Canada and everyone back there was demanding that we find and evacuate all the Canadians immediately, regardless of whether they were in any danger or not. That demand created several problems: many Canadians had never told us how they could be contacted in China; several did not want to leave; the airports were jammed with panicky people; there was little public transportation; gasoline was scarce; and most scheduled flights were cancelled indefinitely. We solved the main problem by arranging special flights, mainly from Canadian Airlines (which had been flying into Beijing and Shanghai regularly) and from a Hong Kong-based company for smaller airports. The Chinese refused to let any embassy bring in military transports despite a joint demarche I organized with my American, British, and Australian colleagues. The four ambassadors' cars were the first to

2O4 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants venture through army lines after the massacre, so our staffs outdid themselves in bedecking the vehicles in flags to discourage triggerhappy troops from shooting at us. When the four of us arrived in the Foreign Ministry compound, we jovially compared notes on whose car was the best decorated. All four cars had flags on all sides as well as back and front but mine won the prize because it was the only one with a flag draped over the roof! Indeed, the Canadian embassy won the evacuation prize as well. We were the first to get everyone out and we had the most calm and orderly crowd at the airport. We gathered most of our people at nearby hotels and were the only embassy to house some evacuees in tents on our grounds. We arranged our own bus convoys from the embassy to the airport in order to provide protection and save scarce fuel. Most local Canadians were patient and sensible (as distinct from their relatives at home). We used the telephone and portable radios constantly and effectively. So the logistical aspects went well and we were commended by Ottawa for our efforts. But an evacuation is emotionally wrenching. The evacuees have to pack and leave on very short notice, be restricted to minimal luggage, and leave family, friends, and pets behind for an indefinite period with little or no chance for farewells. Children do not understand why their fathers must stay behind. Everyone is anxious as to whether soldiers will let their convoy pass to the airport and then allow their flight to leave. Indeed, the worst moment of the Beijing evacuation was when, after a whole day of waiting and the passengers had finally boarded the plane, Chinese officials insisted on coming down the aisles for a last inspection of documents. We breathed a sigh of relief and satisfaction when the last evacuation flight departed. Only then did we realize that there were only twenty of us left to run the embassy in a hostile environment. It felt a bit eerie to be alone in a city virtually denuded of foreigners and inhabited by a frightened local populace controlled at every intersection by young, nervous, gun-wielding soldiers. It was especially lonely for my wife Monica, as almost all foreign wives had obeyed the order to leave. She had decided not to leave with the others because she had no dependent children to care for nor family obligations back home and because she felt she could be useful to the Canadian team in Beijing. My male lieutenants and I thought her offer to stay and help us was quite endearing but wondered how she would

Tiananmen Crisis 205 cope in this crisis? While she had a natural aptitude for languages and social graces, we were labouring under a male delusion that all women and children should be put in the lifeboats in an emergency. We thought we needed steady, undemonstrative, male hands at the tiller in this storm. In the event, Monica quickly demonstrated that under her surface charm was hidden a base of steel, as well as a remarkable capacity to adapt and organize under difficult circumstances. It must be admitted that I had misjudged the proper balance for our emergency team. Every member of the embassy was ready to stay behind despite the danger. I chose seventeen men and three women (including Monica) to remain. The women proved to be the most versatile members of the group and we should have had more of them and fewer men. There were a few anxious times: when troops fired randomly at foreign homes and offices; when we had to walk by jittery armed soldiers in the deserted and dimly-lit streets after working late; when we were warned that two armies would soon start fighting each other in the city; and when we thought the embassy might be stormed. For the most part however, we were too busy to feel frightened. We had to find and advise more than five hundred Canadians spread all around China, respond to incessant telephone calls day and night from relatives and the media in Canada, and interpret the fast-moving political and military events for headquarters. Lastly, we had to feed and comfort the pets left behind: one large dog, one parrot, two turtles, and three cats. A visitor suggested that this gave us all the ingredients for a good Hunan feast. We never contemplated that step however - even when the parrot began to sound as if it had become one of the cats! The Media For a heady ten days, we saw the unprecedented spectacle of Chinese television giving factual uncensored news reports about the demonstrations in Beijing. Such a phenomenon had never been witnessed before in Chinese history. We marvelled at the courage and professional integrity of the Chinese newscasters who dared to tell the truth. We also speculated on why the government permitted honest reporting and concluded that it reflected total disarray among party leaders on what propaganda line to disseminate. Then the fist of the party censor came down hard and the Chinese newscasters were forced to read blatant

206 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants lies. To their credit, the newscasters who had smiled straight into the camera during the ten days of truth now removed their smiles and lowered their eyes to show that they were forced to read a prepared text. For the most part, of course, we relied on foreign correspondents for objective reporting. I have great respect and affection for most of the foreign journalists who were stationed in China. We were fortunate in knowing well the Globe and Mail, CTV, and CBC journalists who lived in Beijing in our time. We also got to know other Western journalists, particularly the Reuters and BBC representatives who worked in our building. These journalists were all good and conscientious professionals. They had a very tough job to do in China, where the government runs a police state and manages the news. They worked extraordinarily hard to transmit to their audience the sustained and complex story of the Tiananmen crisis. They did a far better job of it than the hordes of transient journalists who rushed in to cover the Gorbachev visit and the last few weeks of the crisis. Yet I believe that most Western, and especially American, television coverage did not provide its public with an objective, coherent, and comprehensive report on the complex nature of the issues at stake in a very different culture than that of its viewers. Television succeeded brilliantly in engaging the public emotionally but failed to do so intellectually. Who can ever forget the sequence in which one unarmed man stopped a tank and clambered up on it to talk to the driver? But no TV journalist ever followed up to do an interpretative piece on the significance of the remarkable bravery of the lone man or the restraint of the tank driver or what happened to them subsequently. This is because the medium demands short, photogenic time bytes. These considerations require reporters to stress the confrontational issues and the action sequences. So the Tiananmen drama was portrayed in millions of Western TV screens as a simplistic contest between the forces of youth, democracy, and progress against age, authoritarianism, and regression. The comparison was made with the recent triumph of 'flower power' in the Philippines. Therefore, the public was conditioned to expect the good guys to win. In the embassy, we shared the reporters' emotional empathy with the students but we reported that the crisis must be interpreted in Chinese terms and the outlook was grim: the students had been warned to leave the square or face forceful removal, army units were being massed around the capital, and neither the senior leaders nor the army intended to lose face.

Tiananmen Crisis 207 But American TV and radio, more than other Western media, played an even more important role than to over-simplify the crisis for the Western public: I believe it encouraged the Chinese students to be more defiant than they would otherwise have been. The students had a few common grievances and a few self-appointed spokespersons, but they had no unified leadership structure to take decisions, no clearly-defined goals, and no strategy. What sustained them was domestic and international applause for their ability to dramatize public discontent with a government which was increasingly seen as corrupt and uncaring. Thus, second only to the support of the Beijing crowds, they loved their heady role as international media stars. They played to the cameras, believing these would protect them from harm. For me, the key question was: why did the students ignore the unmistakable warnings from the party and become increasingly provocative? For a few weeks, this could be explained by their perception that the party and the army were divided and irresolute. But this reasoning became invalid, in Chinese terms, after martial law was declared. Virtually all Chinese realized that it would be unthinkable for the party and the army to lose face in front of the whole world by failing to clear the symbolic main square in the capital city. Even the most democratic government in the world would not allow the principal square in its capital city to be taken over by unauthorized crowds for weeks on end. And this was an authoritarian government with millenniums of tradition asserting that leaders must exercise power or lose it. In my view, the two most objective and insightful descriptions of the Tiananmen crisis have been written by Canadians. At the beginning of this chapter, I quoted from Jan Wong's book Red China Blues, which contains the most vivid and detailed account of the events visible on Tiananmen Square on the bloody day of 4 June. The best analysis of the student-media relationship was written by two other Canadians, Scott Simmie and Bob Nixon, in their book Tiananmen Square, published in 1989: The students wanted the world to hear and see what was taking place in Beijing. Hundreds of journalists were in town for the Sino-Soviet summit; many had arrived early to cover the democracy movement. The students quickly became astute at the public relations game. They chanted with increased vigour when the cameras appeared and knew when to flash a quick 'V for victory in the direction of the lenses. Many of those who spoke English would eagerly approach reporters and answer their questions. There was no interference by

208 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants authorities; it seemed like nothing could touch them. This false sense of political invincibility would later become a serious liability ... the students came to regard themselves as an omnipotent opposition party.1

In my view, the student leaders ignored all the Chinese warnings because they were mesmerized by their support from the local public and the American media, and especially the Voice of America radio broadcasts, which encouraged the students to be bold. These told them that they were international heroes and that the world was watching them and expecting them to win. The students concluded that, if the world was on their side, they were inviolable. The clearest evidence of that self-delusion was their construction of the giant statue of a slightly modified Goddess of Liberty. By the end of May most students and the general public were becoming weary of the stalemate in the square. Even international media interest and support was waning. Then the student leaders hit on the idea of constructing a Chinese version of the Statue of Liberty. Its American inspiration was obvious. There is nothing remotely comparable in Chinese tradition. It was a blatant ploy to improve their TV ratings and it infuriated Chinese leaders. The statue was one of the first things crushed by the tanks. Chinese Colleagues The Chinese we knew best were alumni of Canadian institutions, our own staff, a few intellectuals and artists, and government officials. In discussing them, I shall give no names because China continues to be a police state with a long memory and a penchant for punishing people who talk to foreigners, even long after the event. In the middle of the strange twilight zone between the imposition of martial law on 20 May and the massacre on 4 June, we held a reception at the embassy for all Chinese students and experts recently returned from Canada. We had invited them to this social function long before the trouble started and did not know whether any would attend because such a gathering might be considered illegal and because public transportation had stopped functioning. We were surprised and touched when two hundred appeared, many after walking miles and at the risk of being detained by the authorities. It was an unforgettable atmosphere of nervous excitement mixed with happiness, hope, and fear. People embraced, exchanged stories, and photographed each other with Canadians and Canadian symbols, as if to draw strength from their associa-

Tiananmen Crisis 209 tion with free and stable Canada. A few anxiously sought help to leave China urgently. They all wanted to know what the outside world, and particularly Canadians, had said about events in Beijing. I read them messages of support from the prime minister and Joe Clark. These were so popular that we had to arrange for a hasty printing of several hundred copies which they took back to the square and the campuses. We did not know the views of our Chinese staff members until after the massacre. They were agitated but uncommunicative during the preceding weeks. This was totally in keeping with the strange relationship with our staff which had been foisted on us by the Chinese system, which required our local staff to work for a Chinese work unit and spy on us. Nevertheless, we had become quite fond of some of our staff and wondered how they were reacting to the local drama. We found out on the morning of 5 June, the day after the massacre. I called in all the staff. They looked completely distraught. I said that I realized recent events must have put a difficult strain on their lives. I sympathized with all whose relatives and friends had been injured or were missing. I added that many of them would probably like to be with their families at this time and therefore I would excuse all of them from work for the next few days. I expected them to file out quietly and keep their opinions to themselves. Instead, many of them stood up in front of all their colleagues and made emotional statements condemning the massacre. One in particular was eloquent about how he had supported the party and the People's Liberation Army all his life because he believed they supported the Chinese people against fascists. 'Yesterday I saw with my own eyes that they do not care about the people. They care only for their own power. They killed ordinary people in cold blood. They are worse than the fascists. Worse than Chiang Kaishek!' I was very affected by the strength of their feelings and by their unprecedented willingness to speak critically and openly. I remembered how neighbour had denounced neighbour and even children had betrayed parents during the Cultural Revolution and shuddered at what might happen to these people for their moment of candour. Weeks later, a few of them came to me quietly and said that they would soon be forced to have group sessions in which they would be expected to report on any anti-party actions or criticisms by themselves or their colleagues during the crisis. As virtually all of them had indulged in some criticism, they had decided to stick together and all say they had heard nothing and said nothing. But there was a problem: my driver

2io A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants was preparing to denounce them all for anti-party actions. Would I please find an excuse to fire him? I was delighted to agree because I wanted to protect them from party spying and because he was a terrible driver! My most vivid memory of artists and intellectuals was a dinner we gave for twelve of them in the spring of 1989, just before martial law was imposed. They included an editor, a journalist, a party reformer, a TV producer, a poet, and a novelist. Political ideas, concepts of freedom, social justice, and reform played against a backdrop of traditional Chinese thinking and current politico-economic realities. They debated the relative effect of traditional Chinese culture, party thinking, and foreign ideas and technology on the changing scene in China. They talked about a potential renaissance in literature, in painting, and in theatre. They were enthusiastic about the unprecedented encouragement for artistic expression from our friends the minister and viceminister of culture (one a writer and the other an actor) but worried by the criticisms from party elders. The mix of ideas and idealism was headier than the wine that night. We glowed with the thought of what China would be like if such people were allowed to participate in a democratic government. Within a month every one of them had fled the country or was in hiding. Lastly, there were my Chinese diplomatic colleagues. They were trained to promote their country's interests overseas through studying about and communicating with foreign government representatives. They had a vested interest in keeping open the lines of communication with us, especially in this time of crisis when all the normal non-diplomatic contacts had stopped. When emotions impair judgment and rational thought processes, the best hope of taking a long-term perspective comes from fellow professionals who share similar training and forms of expression and who understand each others' objectives. When I was recalled to Canada to report to cabinet and Parliament on the dramatic events of the Beijing spring, I lunched privately with my opposite number, the Chinese ambassador to Canada. We were old friends who had known one other before we assumed our positions in each other's country and his family had a long record of scholarly interest in Western culture. We talked quietly and sadly about the deterioration in China-Canada relations which we had both worked so hard to foster. There was no recrimination about recent events; we concentrated on how we could keep channels open in the present strained circumstances and work towards a long-term reconciliation.

Tiananmen Crisis 211 On my return to China ten days later, the Chinese vice foreign minister responsible for relations with the Americas and Oceania offered to arrange a private dinner for me and himself with the Chinese prime minister's official press spokesman. This man was detested by the Western media and by some Chinese intellectuals because he appeared to be the official apologist for the tragedy of Tiananmen. I could not meet him publicly because it might look as though Canada was condoning the massacre, but it might be helpful to meet privately and exchange views. It turned out to be a frank and useful exchange, not only giving me an insight into genuine Chinese puzzlement at why they were so strongly condemned by foreigners for an event which they considered purely internal, but also allowing me to suggest ways to alleviate some Western criticism (such as releasing names of prisoners and bringing to trial those who had broken a law and releasing the rest). Perhaps the most poignant memory was another private dinner virtually all significant transactions in China involve eating - with the venerable former Chinese ambassador to Canada. He and his tiny wife were veterans of the Long March, that defining period in the history of Chinese communism. My wife and I had befriended them in Ottawa and had given them a private farewell dinner (which rarely happened in that over-busy capital). At our home he had recounted, with disarming candour, how he had dealt with the Soviet file in the Foreign Ministry for years and grown to hate the Russians for their bullying and duplicity. It had been difficult for him, as a dedicated communist, to accept the realization that he could trust Canadian capitalists more than his Soviet comrades. After he returned to China, he retired from the ministry and became a key member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Upper Chamber of the Chinese 'Parliament.' We had seen each other infrequently since I arrived in China but now he suddenly asked to dine privately with me and my Canadian deputy. He said that he would bring only his young assistant. He chose a discreet restaurant tucked into the red walls of Zhongnanhai where all the top leaders live and work (one had to have the right connections to eat there). He would transmit any message I wished to his leaders but he wanted me to know the following: The unexpected ostracism of China by the Western world is forcing a debate among Chinese leaders on how to respond if it continues for a lengthy period. One group advocates a retreat into the isolationism and self-reliance that turned people like myself into Communist zealots during the revolution and early

212 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants years of the People's Republic. They realize that it would set back Chinese economic growth and international cooperation, but believe that a return to the spirit of Yan'an [the Communist revolutionary base in the mountains between 1936 and 1945] would toughen the fibre of the people who have grown soft. Others believe that it is better for our economic progress and for international peace to continue cooperation with the West. But for the latter group to succeed, they will soon need some signs from the West that we are not to be treated as international criminals indefinitely. Canada has a long record of friendship for China. I hope you can help.

When he had finished speaking, his young assistant whispered quietly: "My generation does not want to go back to Yan'an. We want to be part of the modern world.' I stayed in China for another sixteen months after the Tiananmen tragedy, trying to prepare the way for a return to some kind of modus vivendi between Canada and China. It was a discouraging time. There were no high-level visits in any direction. Most Canadian politicians, the general public, and the media were totally alienated by their sudden discovery that China's leaders did not respect Western definitions of human rights. The fact that this had also been the case when they were smitten by China was immaterial: history and logic had no relevance here. This was an affair of the heart. Canadians had wanted to believe that China was unique and that the two countries shared a special affection for each other. They were hurt and bitter when they saw on their TV screens that their illusions were false. I had little success in bringing objectivity and national self-interest to bear on the relationship, except with Foreign Minister Joe Clark himself. At least, I felt I could take some professional pride in managing a difficult posting in a competent and detached manner. Most people who deal with China are either attracted or repelled by it; few remain neutral. I still thought that I could leave this complex country as a detached observer without it casting its spell on me. During this quiet period, I decided to visit parts of China that had a longstanding connection with Canada in order to keep the doors open for the future when relations normalized. In most places my visit was welcomed. In Chongqing, the dynamic wartime capital in Western China which was twinned with Toronto, I had very good talks with mayor Xiao Yang. This man knew and liked Canadians well from the several reciprocal visits in which he had participated. He pressed me to inform

Tiananmen Crisis 213 Canadians, and his friends in Toronto in particular, that no student had been shot or coerced in his city. He had gone to meet with students and others and promised to do his best to address all their grievances. Canadians should not be misled by the media into believing that all parts of China had been in turbulence. He also still expressed admiration for deposed leader Zhao Ziyang because of his agricultural reforms and his willingness to meet with the students in Beijing. The mayor was clearly a man of action and not afraid to say unpopular things. I found him immensely likeable. After I completed the normal formal call on the mayor of Chongqing, I ended by regretting that we did not have longer to talk. He took me up on my comment. 'If you are willing to be unconventional, I invite you and your wife to join me tomorrow when I eat at the popular food stalls on the street. That is where I meet the people every week. You will be able to hear what we discuss and you can ask me about the issues that come up.' Of course I cheerfully changed my schedule to accept his offer and was amazed to see a rough and ready form of street democracy being practised by this unusual mayor. Energetic, loquacious, and gregarious, he had all the qualities of a successful Western politician. Later he rose to be governor of his province, the most populous in China. I had a very different reception at the big industrial city of Wuhan. None of the usual contacts would see me. I was shuffled off to see minor flunkies or snubbed entirely. In the face of this puzzling behaviour, we tried to return to Beijing but things got worse. No one would confirm a return flight for me, my wife, my sister, or my accompanying local staff member. Finally, my wife and sister were allowed to leave but only after spending hours at the airport. At last, an official who had long contacts with Canada took us aside and whispered that everyone was embarrassed to treat me this way but orders had come from the very top that I was to be snubbed in reprisal for Canadian criticism of the events at Tiananmen Square. Moreover, no one was to admit to me that the local students had earlier blocked all traffic on the main bridge in Wuhan for over twenty-four hours in sympathy with their colleagues in Beijing. But what did he mean by 'orders from the very top'? Surely, no senior person could have bothered to order anything so petty as disrupting my schedule. The demeaning treatment was annoying but of no real consequence in the greater scheme of things. Just before I was finally allowed to take my return flight, the same friend admitted that

214 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants the orders had come directly from the president of China. The latter was also the party boss of Wuhan and controlled everything there in minute detail. At first I was flabbergasted but then a shiver of pleasure went through me. In his own perverse way, the president was sending me the same signal as the mayor of Chongqing: that senior Chinese cared about the views of Canada. Some were worried about us misinterpreting their actions and others were annoyed that we dared to criticize them. But at least they were not indifferent. That boded well for the future of our bilateral relations. It also made me realize two things. First, I had been deluding myself that I had remained neutral about China. I did care a great deal about this complex and frustrating, but immensely important, country and its relations with Canada. I had developed a loathing for many aspects of China's political system but a deep affection for its diverse and wonderful people. Second, it made me reflect on the onus placed on diplomats to do our job carefully. It was our task to send and receive messages across international barriers - political, economic, and cultural. I could not let personal pique interfere with my duty to interpret the significance of Chinese actions. We were in the midst of a serious crisis in Canada-China relations in which most important players on both sides were glaring at each other. It was doubly important that diplomats like me did our work professionally because we had been trained to assess international events and to interpret cross-cultural signals, even one as murky as the president of China bothering to harass my visit to his home town.

14

An Unloved Leader:

Premier Li Peng of China

Down with Li Peng! Down with Li Peng! Student chant on Tiananmen Square, May/June 1989

In all my years of meeting political leaders, there is only one premier about whom I have never heard a kindly word - Li Peng of China. Moreover, I have only rarely seen him display any human warmth or feeling. His face seems permanently set in an icy smile conveying arrogance, boredom, and unhappiness. He seems devoid of any people skills, a curious deficiency for a politician. It is true that I have heard him referred to as a competent engineer and electric power expert and as someone sympathetic to environmental concerns, but that hardly balances the widespread disdain in which he has been held in China and abroad ever since the Tiananmen tragedy. A popular joke among Chinese students in 1989 was: 'Why were judges giving dissidents a twenty-year term for calling Li Peng an idiot but only five years for insulting other leaders? Because the penalties were five years for insulting a state leader and fifteen years for revealing a state secret/ It would be easy to dismiss this unpopular man as a political liability, except for the fact that objectively he has done rather well in running the administration of a huge and complex government during a very difficult decade. It is also manifestly unfair to place all the blame on Li for a collective decision by the Politburo on mishandling the student demonstrations. So, despite my personal distaste for the man, I began to pay more attention to him to see if I could solve the enigma of how this pariah retained his power. The answer seemed to involve the na-

2i 6 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants ture of the Chinese power structure, his own political shrewdness, and the quiet role of three women. More on each below. My last official call before leaving my ambassadorial post in Beijing was on Premier Li Peng. He had asked to see several departing ambassadors as a group. In June 1989 I had hated him for his role in ordering troops to shoot spectators in and around Tiananmen Square, but he was the Chinese head of government and I had to observe protocol and call on him. He gave us all a little speech about the need to promote international understanding in these difficult times. Then he singled me out and asked when Canada was going to normalize relations with China after the Tiananmen events. I replied that he would have to be patient. Then I added: "The Canadian people have long cared deeply about China and the wound of recent events will take more time to heal.' To my surprise, he flushed, turned on his heel, and snarled at me: 'You take all the time you want. We don't need you!' At that moment I realized that none of us were as emotionally detached as we thought ourselves to be. My response was too heartfelt to have been uttered by the iconoclast which I fancied myself to be about China. Even aloof and haughty Li Peng was clearly emotional about Canada. The Canada-China relationship had more depth to it than I had realized. It would eventually recover from this latest crisis and be a positive factor for both countries. It also made me curious about what sort of a human being was hidden behind the mask of Li Peng's unsmiling face and averted eyes. Normally he seemed to have no curiosity whatsoever about the people he met and never wanted anyone to look into his soul. This was the first time I had ever seen him display emotion. The second time would be much later. Hitherto I had seen him several times but only in a perfunctory way. He had visited Canada when I was still assistant deputy minister for Asia in Ottawa and he was vice-premier with a special interest in electric power generation. Everyone was impressed by him in that capacity because this was his field of academic specialization and Canada had relevant projects to show him and engineering skills and equipment to sell him. He was most impressed by his trip to the giant James Bay Hydro Power project, an engineering marvel. He showed a lively interest in every aspect of the project. He asked excellent questions and retained facts impressively. But no one ever saw him smile. The next time I saw him was after he had been elevated to the position of premier and I had recently arrived in Beijing as ambassador. China had mounted a trade fair for companies in the power sector. I

Premier Li Peng of China 217 went to the opening to show my support for the Canadian exhibitors and the premier also attended the opening. I was pleased that he visited the Canadian booths and made a point of telling me that he remembered his visit to Canada and probably knew more about James Bay than I did. That was encouraging for Canadian business prospects but, on a personal level, I was still disconcerted by his limp handshake, averted gaze, and haughty visage. No other political leader I had ever met had displayed so little interest in communicating with people. Why would China put a good engineer, who had a passion for dams and power lines, at the head of the People's government? Gradually, as I struggled with this question, it dawned on me that I was labouring under a misapprehension about the role of premier. Unlike most other countries where the premier has to be a 'people person' to cultivate public support and stay in power, China considers the incumbent of that position to be the chief administrator, not the top politician. His job is to be a technocratic boss who directs other technocratic ministers in carrying out their assigned tasks. Unlike Chairman Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping, who were leaders of the Communist Party, the prime minister does not define ideology nor inspire the masses to do great deeds for the nation. As such, he does not need to have a personality, only administrative capacity and loyalty to the party. One of the first things the new Communist government of China did in 1949 was to reject the old system of competitive examinations for entry into the bureaucracy and to substitute a revolutionary set of criteria: virtue, ability, and seniority. And these were interpreted as follows: virtue equalled political loyalty and reliability to the party; ability was equated with the capacity to mobilize people for political tasks; and seniority referred to when a person had joined the party. These criteria had been invaluable in selecting comrades to fight a guerrilla war but were of questionable relevance in running a country. Nevertheless, they were continued with only minor modification until 1987. Then a pragmatic reformer and recently appointed head of the party, Zhao Ziyang, decided to modernize the bureaucracy. He used the Thirteenth Party Congress to introduce a radical proposal to distinguish between those who make political policy and those who implement it, and to have the latter once again be selected through open, equal, and competitive examinations. Many party members hated him for it but he won my undying admiration. The process by which Zhao and Li were thrust into their high positions also explains why there are often such strange mismatches between personality and high office in China. In 1986 Deng was still the

218 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants uncrowned emperor of China but feeling his age and anxious to put in place a team which would carry on his ideas for economic reform and political conservatism. He had chosen a balanced team: a sprightly intellectual named Hu Yaobang to be party secretary; Zhao Ziyang, a proven administrator, to be premier in charge of carrying out the government program; and Li Peng, the engineer, to be in charge of power, water, and education. Then Hu, the idea man, stumbled in handling student protests in Shanghai and had to be replaced. In desperation, Deng moved up Zhao and Li to be party secretary and premier respectively although both preferred to stay in their old jobs for which they were well qualified. That new, poorly matched pair was in charge when the Tiananmen protests began, ironically touched off by the funeral of Hu Yaobang. So it gradually became clear to me that China had a system which selected leaders on the basis of party loyalty, effectiveness in handling the masses, and personal connections - but not personal magnetism. Nevertheless, the sour, emotionless Li Peng still stood out in marked contrast to the other rather colourful Chinese leaders I met. Deng Xiaoping has been one of the most influential leaders in Chinese history. Despite being purged twice, he fought back to take the lead in ending the disastrous Cultural Revolution and healing its wounds, in outlawing the cult of personality (which had prevented Mao Zedong from hearing the truth about China's disasters), and in implementing the policies of economic reform and opening to the outside world which have made the Chinese economy so dynamic over the past decade. It must also be said that he resolutely opposed any move towards political democracy and respect for human rights. His mixed legacy has been discussed endlessly by other authors and I can add little except a comment on his personality, which is rarely discussed. On the few occasions when I saw him, he radiated energy and curiosity about his surroundings and interlocutors. It was as if his short stature and deafness in one ear made him compensate for those deficiencies by the agility and quickness with which he deployed all his other faculties. His eyes were always darting about the room, his smile was quick to react to any clever sally, and his mind seemed to be always racing ahead. The first time I saw Deng was when I accompanied Prime Minister Mulroney during his visit to China in 1986. Mulroney had prepared carefully for his call on the legendary Deng. He opened with a rhetorical flourish: 'It seems to me that our countries have the opposite prob-

Premier Li Peng of China 219 lems. Canada has too much land and too few people, while China has too little arable land and too many people/ Mulroney intended that to be simply a catchy opening line on which to build a more elaborate presentation but Deng did not let him get away with it. He had an unbeatable method of stopping his guest's conversation: he noisily cleared his throat and spat full force at a brass spittoon a couple of feet to his side. When a startled Mulroney paused to recover his composure, Deng leaped into the oratorical fray. 1 entirely agree with your point about the different land to people ratios in the two countries. The point is, what can we do about it? We both have a problem. I offer you a solution. I will give you as many people as you wish. How many would you like - fifty million? one hundred million? or two hundred million?' By the time I arrived in China, Deng had given up all his official titles. Although everyone knew that he was still the emperor in all but name, he had chosen his protege, Zhao Ziyang, to be secretary-general of the party. Zhao did not have the quick eyes and clever repartee of Deng, but he had a mobile face and an inquisitive, open mind. He surrounded himself with bright young reform-minded intellectuals. He always seemed to be ready to examine a new idea from anywhere in the world to see if it had applicability to China. Early in his career he had proven himself to be a courageous innovator, pragmatist, and realist in altering agricultural policies in order to stimulate production by peasant families - and in adapting and explaining party ideology, after the fact, to fit the new policies. He had also taken the unpopular step of pressing party officials to stop second-guessing government administrators and to gel: in touch with the needs and aspirations of the ordinary people. I also found out that he had a sly sense of humour when I called on him in one of the ornate halls within the heavily-guarded precincts of Zhongnanhai. This had been a seat of power in China since the Ming dynasty. I asked Zhao if he could tell me a bit about the history of this splendid building. He explained that it had been the Audience Hall in which the emperor had received returning generals to reward them for their victories. 'And where do you think the defeated generals were received?' he asked mischievously. "Ah, that was a different matter/ added Zhao with a smile: 'they were led to the back gate of the Palace and given a piece of silk with which to hang themselves. Of course, they did things differently in those days!' Another impressive leader was Zhu Rongji, who was mayor of Shanghai when I went to China. He was subsequently promoted, first to

22O A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants executive vice-premier in charge of reforming the national economy and then to premier. I was struck by his grasp of issues, his candour, and his action-oriented style both during my long talk with him and in his subsequent handling of events in Shanghai during the Tiananmen crisis. He understood the strengths and weaknesses of the market economy better than any leader in China, including the importance of developing a mature banking sector to facilitate the working of the market. When I challenged him to explain why China was limiting the number of foreign banks which could open in Shanghai, he looked me straight in the eye and said candidly: 'Because my colleagues in Beijing do not yet understand the importance of the matter for China's economic reform.' But Zhu was more than a good economist; he was a good civic leader as well. He told me that he had investigated the purchases made by a typical Shanghai family for its weekly shopping basket and personally watched what was happening to the costs of those critical consumer items. When Shanghai students were starting to demonstrate in support of their colleagues in Beijing, he spoke to them directly, promised to address any reasonable complaints, and argued that no one would benefit if they became disorderly and forced the army to intervene. His approach worked; Shanghai, the traditional site of protests, was almost entirely free of serious disturbances during the entire Tiananmen crisis. All Westerners are impressed by Zhu Rongji, but I was cautioned that he has some critics in China because he is too efficient, too intent on getting practical results, and not careful enough to cultivate relationships and reciprocal favours in the traditional Chinese way. General Yang Shangkun was another power-broker. He was an old ally of Deng Xiaoping, a senior army general, a key member of the Politburo, chairman of the Military Commission, and for a time the president of China. Henry Kissinger always sought him out when he visited China. I had travelled with General Yang in Canada before I was posted to China. We had many senior Chinese visitors in those days, but his visit stood out because it was clear that the local Chinese diplomats in Canada were terrified of him. They usually surprised us by how relaxed they were about visiting dignitaries, but not in this case. The Chinese went over each detail of his visit with care to ensure that every aspect went like clockwork. It was as if their careers depended on the success of this visit. So I expected to encounter a tyrant and bully, but found him quite disarming in his unpretentious conversation with me, as we travelled between calls on Canadian dignitaries.

Premier Li Peng of China 221 His only title at the time was chairman of the Military Commission. We knew that he was likely to become president of China soon but could not give him full protocol honours until he was formally proclaimed as head of state. Ottawa played the protocol game according to the rules: polite welcome but no red carpet treatment. The province of Ontario, on the other hand, played the game intuitively and skilfully. The premier, David Peterson, had recently been well received in China and was anxious to reciprocate, so he ordered full honours for General Yang. I travelled with the general from Ottawa airport (where no one saw us off) to Toronto, where we were met by the provincial chief of protocol on a red carpet and dozens of little Chinese-Canadian girls smiling and throwing flowers. Then we were whisked to downtown Toronto by Ontario Provincial Police motorcycle escort to the hotel where General Yang was scheduled to speak. David Peterson bounded out on yet another red carpet to meet the general as his car roared up to the curbside, and they walked arm in arm inside to the applause of the crowd. Then the premier gave the general an outrageously flattering introduction. The general replied modestly, as a polite Chinese is trained to do, saying that he did not deserve such accolades because he was 'only a simple soldier trying to do his duty/ But as I watched, I could see General Yang's chest swell with pride to receive such recognition in a foreign land. When his Canadian tour ended, I asked the general which Canadian city he had liked best. He replied that each had its attractions but 'the place I really related to was Toronto because that is where they understand power.' On another occasion I asked General Yang the secret of his vigorous health and energy at the age of eighty plus. He paused, took the question seriously, and gave me the following response: 'There are three elements. First is a healthy balanced diet. I believe that simple Chinese food gives me that with its emphasis on rice and vegetables. Second is regular exercise - not strenuous or complicated workouts requiring machines but a regular routine which can be performed anywhere at any age. Third is regular sleep. The key to that is never trying to sleep with unfinished business on your mind. Never try to sleep on a problem; deal with it at once. Take whatever action you have to during the day and sleep contentedly knowing that you have done your best during the day.' When analysed it constitutes a set of home-spun homilies that are almost universal. And yet I was somehow touched that he would spell out his daily routine with such sincerity. I believed that he did not just preach this advice but actually practised it regularly. I also

222 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants found that it was a wonderful attention-getter in China to be able to say, 'President Yang Shangkun once confided in me his three rules for health and longevity but I am only at liberty to divulge the first one!' The clearest picture I retain of the contrasting personalities among the top leaders was a little vignette played out in the Great Hall of the People. This ugly, modern monument to the Communist dynasty was situated across Tiananmen Square from the beautiful old Palace Quarters of the Emperors in which I had met Zhao Ziyang. This huge barn of a building, without any redeeming architectural grace in a city teeming with it, had been thrown up in one year in order to serve as administrative and legislative centre for the new Communist regime. It was also used to receive and dine visiting dignitaries. On this occasion Premier Li Peng was giving his opening report to the legislature on the accomplishments of his government during the past year. All communists seem to be obsessed with production figures but the premier was outdoing himself this time as he droned on and on. The other party leaders were in full view on the raised dais in front of the members of the People's Congress and the invited diplomats. Several leaders seemed bored and restless during Li Peng's speech, particularly Deng. So this chain-smoker lit up a cigarette. A few aides became agitated because there were signs all over the hall that this was National No Smoking Week. They fussed about visibly but no one dared to speak to the Senior Leader. Finally, someone spoke to Zhao Ziyang, the only leader deemed approachable on such a delicate matter. Zhao smiled, got up, and strolled over for a chat with the great man. By now the half of the audience which had not fallen asleep from Li Peng's speech was watching this little drama. We saw Zhao point to the no smoking signs. Both men smiled. Deng good-naturedly butted his cigarette with a shrug to the audience, and after a decent interval, sauntered over to a side aisle where no signs were visible and resumed smoking his cigarette. Meanwhile General Yang looked as if he would rather be out solving problems than sitting there, and the humourless Li Peng droned on for another forty-five minutes. Of course, most Chinese did not think of Li Peng as a passionless bore; quite the contrary, they remembered him vividly for his rough treatment of the student demonstrators in June 1989. It was Li Peng who refused to accept a petition from the students when they first assembled in Tiananmen Square and only later had an abrasive meeting with them. It was Li Peng personally who read out the Martial Law Declaration on 19 May. It was Li Peng who stood by coldly and indif-

Premier Li Peng of China 223 ferently while Zhao Ziyang visited the hunger strikers in hospital and, almost in tears, showed his sympathy for their cause and pleaded with them to leave the square for their own safety. It was also Li Peng who voted for a hard line against the students and for the ouster of Zhao, the moderate party secretary. And for those actions I believe that he deserves criticism and unpopularity. But it is far too simplistic to blame Li Peng for all the troubles. The mistakes were made, not by Li Peng alone but by several politicians, the feuding students themselves, and some foreigners. It is convenient for many people to blame Li Peng for all the ills of China because he is so easy to dislike - but it is inaccurate. So we are left with the puzzle of how a person with such an unpleasant reputation has made it to the top and stayed there for a long time. Partly of course it was his own shrewdness, toughness, and party connections. From the beginning he has used the Communist Party as his stairway to power. For example, he studied at the Moscow Power Institute for seven years, where he worked hard to achieve an excellent academic record. But he worked equally diligently for the party in serving as chairman of the All China Students Association. But that is not the whole explanation. I believe that he has been helped greatly by three women. The first was his own mother when he was a fatherless child. His father was a genuine revolutionary martyr, a senior party official who was caught, tortured, and killed in 1931 by Chiang Kaishek's secret police in the early days of the Communist Party struggle. His mother took him to the party redoubt in Yan'an. He attended school there from 1941 to 1948 at the Yan'an Institute of Natural Sciences, the Yan'an Middle School, and the School of Industry. During that long period his mother made it a regular practice to take her only son to call on all the party leaders regularly and to call them all uncle and auntie. Thus, he was known to all of them as 'our little Li.' Secondly, he was nominally adopted by the childless Zhou Enlai and his wife, Deng Yingchao, as a gesture of support for the son of a martyr. Zhou had been one of Mao's key lieutenants in the early years before and after the Long March, was named premier of China upon the formation of the People's Republic, and remained in that position until his death in 1976. The patronage of the powerful and much admired Zhou Enlai was invaluable for Li, but the premier was too busy to give the boy much careful supervision. According to personal accounts, it was Zhou's wife who gave Li Peng the personal advice and introductions he needed to enhance his academic and Communist Party career over many

224 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants years. Continuing to nurture his treasured image as the adopted son of Zhou Enlai and Deng Yingchao, Li Peng used their former villa, called West Flower Pavilion, as his venue for many official meetings. Lastly, there has been the role of Li's own wife, Zhu Lin. Little is know of her background except that she was born in Shanghai in 1933 and graduated from Harbin Foreign Languages Institute. She started her career in 1950 as a translator and then worked for many years as a senior economist in the power industry. Official Chinese publications are always lean on personal details, but one may infer from this information that she probably was a Russian translator and this fact, plus her work in the power ministry, would have given her two reasons to meet and have common interests with Li Peng, who spoke Russian and worked in the same ministry from 1955 to 1983. It is possible they met when he was studying at the Moscow Power Institute from 1948 to 1955 and she was a young Russian translator for a visiting Chinese delegation. He is five years older than she. It is known that in 1955 he made a desperate appeal to his protectress, Madame Zhou Enlai, to arrange for his return to China despite Russian requests that he stay in Moscow. This request to return is usually attributed to his patriotism and party zeal, but I wonder if it did not have a more compelling personal reason. Of course, no Chinese publication would ever dream of commenting on Zhu Lin's personality, but I have noticed her quiet and positive role in softening her husband's image in recent years. A successful career woman in addition to being the mother of their three children, she has become better known since her husband became premier. At a time when Li Peng suffered from a universally bad foreign press, she took the unprecedented step, for a Chinese wife, of giving a background interview to a few selected journalists. She asserted that the press had presented a totally false picture of her husband as some kind of cold and unfeeling monster; on the contrary, he was a sensitive and thoughtful person, a kind husband who often helped her with the cooking at home, and a good father who used to play with his children and help with their school lessons. When Li was forced to take six months sick leave because of a heart condition, Zhu Lin was regularly at his side as a solicitous wife. After his convalescence under her care, he began to soften his hard-edged line on both economic and political reform. For example, whereas previously he would utterly reject any hint of China evolving into a Western-style democracy and stop his comments there, now he would go on

Premier Li Peng of China 225 to add a positive note: 'We will develop our democracy to suit China's natural conditions.' But all of the foregoing was second-hand information; I had no direct evidence of Zhu Lin's positive role until I was involved in the exchange of visits between the prime ministers of China and Canada and their wives. The first event was the famous 1994 Team Canada visit to China led by Jean Chretien and including nine provincial premiers, two territorial leaders, and two cabinet ministers. I had become involved in this visit after I had retired from the Foreign Service and become executive vice-president of the Canada China Business Council (CCBC) which was co-sponsoring part of the visit. Madame Aline Chretien's presence meant that Madame Zhu Lin appeared at all functions and we got to see her in person. She was a small, attractive lady, with an alert face, formally dressed in unusually stylish Chinese silks (in contrast to her husband, who was in Western dress). At the dinner given by the Chinese premier for the Chretiens, I happened to sit beside Premier Li's personal physician. I commented that I had expected him to be seated closer to the premier as the latter had so recently suffered his heart problems. 'I am not worried about any stress tonight,' the doctor replied, 'because Zhu Lin is here. The premier always relaxes when she is near him.' And indeed, I had never seen Li Peng in such a good mood. He even managed a wan smile for the gregarious Chretiens at his dinner. But that was not the end of it. Under current Chinese protocol, a visiting foreign premier will be hosted once by Li Peng, who will then send one of his senior ministers to represent him at the reciprocal banquet given by the visitor. But on this occasion, Li Peng astounded everyone by deciding, at the last minute, that he and his wife would attend the return banquet which was hosted jointly by the Chretiens and the CCBC. Suddenly, all senior Chinese and Canadians in Beijing decided that they wanted to beg, buy, or steal an invitation to this banquet, even though the tickets cost US$2OO. The number of attendees rose to sixteen hundred. This caused us huge problems of logistics, protocol, and security. It was the largest foreign banquet ever held in Beijing and the premier's security guards were apprehensive. We expected him to be tense, particularly as businessmen are not great respecters of protocol. Some even approached the head table to have their pictures taken with the two premiers and their wives. The security guards prepared to intervene but the Chretiens signalled that they were unperturbed and

226 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants the Lis followed suit. Zhu Lin smiled and Premier Li followed with a rare full smile at this unusual atmosphere of friendliness and easy conviviality. A year later, in November 1995, Premier Li and his wife paid a reciprocal visit to Canada and again I helped with the arrangements on behalf of the Canada China Business Council. Premier Li was very worried about a hostile reception from Canadian demonstrators protesting against his human rights record and we had to keep him protected inside our meeting site in Montreal. But we managed to reassure the Chinese. Li Peng and Zhu Lin not only attended a huge ChretienCCBC dinner for the second year in a row, but the premier also agreed to pose for an official photograph with the business community the next morning. Li Peng and Jean Chretien were scheduled to appear without their wives for the official group picture as soon as the business executives were assembled in front of the photographer. But, again unexpectedly, Premier Li's wife appeared with him. She then smiled at Chretien and explained to him that her husband had decided to say a few spontaneous words of encouragement to Canadian business executives interested in China. The audience was flattered. Premier Li then began to speak. As he paused to wait for the translation after each paragraph, I noticed him glance at Zhu Lin. She smiled and prompted him with a few whispered words each time. It was a good speech and, when he was applauded by this Canadian crowd, he gave his third smile. This was a sure sign that, at last, he felt at ease with Canadians. But for me it was equally important to see first-hand evidence of the strong supporting role of Zhu Lin. Thus, I could now put in place the last piece to solve the puzzle of how the unpopular Li Peng has held power so long. And that is important because, in the world of diplomacy, one must not be guided by media characterizations or personal likes and dislikes, but by a shrewd assessment of each leader's strengths and weaknesses and what makes them tick. In Li Peng's case, I could now confirm that there are at least three factors: his own political shrewdness, the quiet role of the women closest to him, and the nature of the Chinese political system. That a long-term premier has been politically astute is hardly surprising. The other two factors are less self-evident, however. It is salutary to recall the important influence of a politician's wife. Such influence is exercised even in China, where the wife's role is so hidden from the public gaze, although in complete contrast to North America, where the Mar-

Premier Li Peng of China 227 garet Trudeaus and Hillary Rodham Clintons are exposed to merciless scrutiny by the media. We now know that Mao Zedong's last wife played a powerful role that was self-aggrandizing and poisonous to everyone who stood in her way, but the outside world only learned that after her fall. In Zhu Lin's case, her role seems to be entirely positive and supportive of her husband. Equally opaque to foreigners is the nature of the Chinese power structure. Personal popularity does not seem to be an important attribute for the premier of China. The premier is the senior administrator of the government bureaucracy; he is not the chairman of the party or the emperor. Li Peng has courted the party elders since he was the orphaned child of a party martyr hiding in the caves of Yan'an. That is the only popularity which counts in this system. It is noteworthy, however, that rule by a council of elders is a giant step forwards from the dreadful last decade of Mao Zedong. During the Cultural Revolution, this isolated and senile leader abused his god-like status with the adoring masses and the total power given him by the party. He used his unfettered power to throw his country into turmoil in order to test a mad theory. To understand the phenomenon of Li Peng we should not judge him by Western standards but in the light of Chinese history. In this perspective, we see that he has been a key member of the leadership team which healed China's wounds after the madness of the Cultural Revolution, reformed Chinese agriculture, opened China to the outside world, introduced a modified market system, and doubled the income of every Chinese in a decade. It is certainly true that these leaders did not introduce democracy and Western-style human rights and were brutal with demonstrators, but that is completely consistent with the record of every other Chinese regime. Li has a lot to answer for his actions in 1989 and remains unloved by the Chinese public and reviled as the butcher of Beijing by the Western media. But nowadays, several years after the event, it appears that he is no longer regarded in China as the main villain of the Tiananmen tragedy. Rather, he is now seen by many Chinese as a willing accomplice of the party elders who thrust him forward to do their dirty work. Li Peng is not an engaging leader like the warm and gregarious premiers of Pakistan and Malaysia whom I had known earlier. Until his retirement as premier in 1998, he was an able chief executive of the largest government machinery the world has ever known, but he had no personal magnetism whatsoever. Perhaps that is why Deng Xiaoping

228 A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants chose him. After their bitter experience with a charismatic leader like Mao, Deng and his cronies were absolutely determined to abolish the cult of personality. What better way to ensure this than to put the premier's position in the hands of a man of ice who is incapable of ever rousing the masses?

Epilogue

When I joined External Affairs, I was worried that I would have to do things which would make me look silly back in Saskatchewan, like kissing women's hands and wearing tails and striped pants. In my first year in Ottawa I was invited to my first diplomatic reception by the French ambassador and his wife. I asked my office mates what was expected. A colleague from Quebec advised me with a straight face that I would have to rent striped pants and a long-tailed coat from some head waiter and learn to bow deeply and kiss the hand of the ambassador's wife. I was appalled and apparently betrayed my feelings. My colleague relented in his teasing and assured me that I would not have to rent striped trousers until I had become a lot more senior in the service, but I would have to kiss the lady's hand. I was still suspicious of his advice and my prairie soul was deeply opposed to kissing anyone's hand. So I sought a second opinion from my landlord, Morris Levy. He seemed worldly wise and had operated in several cultures. He was a Central European Jew happily married to an Irish Catholic and had lived in several European capitals and in Egypt before moving to Ottawa, where he now prospered as an eccentric scientist. He pondered my question before delivering the following advice: 'When it comes to kissing women, one must make a basic choice. Either they are worth kissing enthusiastically on the mouth or cheeks or they are not worth kissing at all. Forget hand-kissing.' As I waited anxiously in the receiving line at the French embassy, I watched carefully what others were doing. Some kissed the hand of the hostess, others simply shook it but no one kissed her enthusiastically. I decided to follow Morris Levy's advice and my own prairie instincts and avoid handkissing. I have done so ever since.

230 Epilogue I did eventually have to relent on striped trousers. As I became more senior, I had to attend functions where grey striped pants, a long morning coat, grey vest and tie were the official uniform. So I bought a complete outfit but never quite overcame the feeling that it was pretentious and symbolic of the foppish side of diplomacy. Like most Canadian Foreign Service officers, I thought of myself as a civil servant working for Canada abroad, not as a member of a privileged class wearing fancy clothes. My attitude towards appropriate trouser wear was resolved forever on a trip with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. I accompanied him on an official trip to Japan, China, and South Korea. We flew in a large government aircraft which was specially configured so that the prime minister and his wife were in the forward cabin, government officials like myself were in the middle cabin, and the large press corps were in the aft cabin. The trip involved a lot of work for us civil servants and a lot of jousting with the staff of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). We career officials were determined to use the trip to promote Canada's interests; the PMO were anxious to enhance Brian Mulroney's media coverage and political appeal. We civil servants felt that we were experts on Asia and the PMO staff were totally out of their depth. The PMO were certain that they knew what made good copy back in Canada and they regarded the sensibilities of the Asians as irrelevant. The result was constant tension and frequent miscues between the civil servants and the PMO. But I had nothing but praise for the prime minister himself. He worked extremely hard, was charming to everyone, took advice from both sides, and achieved a pretty good result. At the end of the trip we were all exhausted. Soon after the aircraft took off from our last Asian capital en route for Canada, the prime minister came back to our cabin to thank the civil servants personally for a job well done and told us we could now relax and enjoy a welldeserved sleep. I did just that and, as is my habit, undid my belt and the top button of my trousers to make myself more comfortable. I quickly fell into a deep sleep. A short while later, I was roused from my semicomatose state by hearing a familiar deep voice say: 'Earl will know the answer.' It was the prime minister who had wandered back into our cabin to get the answer to a factual question about Korea which Mila had just posed to him. A few people in our cabin were still awake but no one knew the answer. Mr Mulroney had then turned to me in the semi-darkness without realizing that I was sound asleep with my trousers undone. On hearing his unmistakable voice, I roused myself and

Epilogue 231 instinctively stood quickly upright as a mark of respect. Of course, my trousers fell part way down. In a more formal country with rigid protocol this would have been a terribly embarrassing incident for both parties. But in egalitarian Canada, it was treated as a joke. Everybody roared with laughter and the prime minister advised me in mirth that answering questions with my pants down was above and beyond the call of duty and I should go right back to sleep! I would never again worry unduly about whether I was wearing the right trousers for a diplomatic function; it was enough that I had my ordinary pants buttoned up and my sense of humour in place. I have tried to follow that advice ever since both in my diplomatic career and in my retelling of it in these pages. In my experience, a sense of humour is indispensable to survival in diplomatic life because it enables one to retain a healthy perspective for example, to distinguish between those protocol rules which are necessary for managing civilized intercourse among national representatives and those which are simply pompous and absurd. Moreover, anyone who has to live in countries dominated by a zealous political or religious dogma soon learns that the ability to enjoy the amusing side of life is a rare and precious gift. One of the things I hate most about the blind faith of either a communist or a Muslim fundamentalist is that the true believer has absolutely no tolerance for humour. I suspect that they fear the wise words of the Earl of Shaftesbury: Twas the saying of an ancient sage that humour was the only test of gravity and gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery was suspicious/ One thing I find heartening about the human spirit is that after years of methodical political indoctrination in China and stern religious teaching in Pakistan, so many people of those countries have retained a wonderful sense of humour. When I speak of the importance of humour, I do not mean the ability to communicate facetiousness as an entertainer; I mean the quiet capacity to perceive and appreciate what is comic or droll or absurd or pretentious in everyday life. The best humour is neither cruel nor crude; it is an irreverent commentary on the endless paradoxes in the human experience. It is from that perspective that I have tried to preserve a sense of humour in writing these pages. The foregoing personal recollections were not intended to be funny but to inform and occasionally amuse the reader. These memoirs do not purport to be a critique of the Canadian Foreign Service or a history of postwar Canadian foreign policy. They do

232 Epilogue not deal with the serious social problems inherent in such a career: the stress on children repeatedly uprooted from friends, familiar school systems, and cultural settings; the problems of alcoholism or exotic disease for some; and the strain on marriages. All these problems have been largely ignored by the Department of External Affairs (now called Foreign Affairs and International Trade) which, in my time, never had a sensitive or sensible personnel policy and was notorious for its indifference to the social, psychological, and physical welfare of its employees. No one should ever contemplate joining the Department of External Affairs under the illusion that they can expect support from a sensitive and compassionate employer. The only attractions are to work on interesting problems with intellectually stimulating colleagues and to serve one's country abroad. Nor do these tales give a balanced account of work in the Foreign Service. Memoirs are always selective. One likes to recall the incidents that were pleasant, amusing, or stimulating. One glosses over the majority of time spent on routine or unpleasant things. I have devoted few pages to that half of my career which was spent in Ottawa because there is little that is unique about my experiences there. But, in recent years, time in Ottawa has been the most important for ambitious Foreign Service officers. That is where the power game is played and it is based on pleasing ministers and top civil servants rather than advancing Canada's interests abroad or, Heaven forfend, working in unhealthy places where one might get sick or be spat upon. Some recent deputy ministers of external affairs had spent little or no time on foreign assignments before they were appointed. I have dealt only tangentially with the changing nature of the Foreign Service. In my lifetime, I have seen its role and importance affected in major ways by improved methods of travel and communication, by Canada's changing priorities, and by the lowered esteem in which the whole civil service is held by politicians and the public. I am nostalgic about the passing of the old days when we were sent on monthlong steamer trips to remote assignments and told that, although we would receive the occasional message from headquarters, basically we should use our own judgment in looking after Canada's interests. Those days seem fanciful to modern diplomats who know that no significant capital city is more than twenty-four hours' flight from any other one and only seconds away by telephone, fax, e-mail, and international television.

Epilogue 233 Similarly, I recall fondly my early years when Canada's proclaimed priorities were helping the Western alliance maintain international peace and stability and promoting international economic development and social justice. Now they seem to be reduced to scrounging contracts for politically connected exporters and photo 'opps' for ministers. But I must be realistic and objective. Modern telecommunications and insecure ministers have rendered the old-style Foreign Service obsolete and it must adapt. It no longer needs romantic generalists with a taste for adventure: it needs computer-literate technocrats, trade negotiators, and media spin doctors. What does trouble me is the recent denigration of the whole civil service by politicians and the media. Diplomats have been figures of ridicule and envy in every country and every age because their objectives and their lifestyle are so remote from everyday experience. It is an occupational hazard that we diplomats will never be understood, much less appreciated. Until recently, however, we Canadians could take some comfort from the belief that our image would improve if only the public realized that we were simply civil servants working abroad. We believed strongly that the civil service was an honourable career dedicated to serving the public and making a positive contribution to the commonweal. For generations, the ideal of serving one's country has attracted some of the best and brightest Canadians. In recent years the whole civil service has been singled out, quite unfairly, for criticism as a bloated bureaucracy indifferent to public concerns and a principal source of Canada's deep-seated debt and economic problems. I hope that this is a temporary phenomenon because, if it continues, it will discourage the dedicated and high-minded from serving their country either at home or abroad. What I miss most are the days when ministers trustingly turned to civil servants for advice on 'what is good for the country' instead of the prevailing mood where politicians make bureaucrats the scapegoats for their declining party fortunes. It is not just the Canadian government which has changed over the past thirty-seven years; so has the nature of the Canada-Asia relationship. When I was first sent to Asia, Canada was economically strong, technologically advanced, politically united, and confidently led. We had a sense of national well-being and a willingness to help build a more just world society. Asia was weak and poor by comparison and still recovering from war, a colonial mentality, and isolation from the mainstreams of international economic and technological progress. Now

234 Epilogue the roles are reversed in many cases. I am happy to see several Asian countries reassert their rightful place as important players on the world stage. This is a reflection of their great civilizations, cultural values, and strong work ethics. And I am proud to have played a minor part in nurturing their links with Canada. But I am saddened to see Canada's relative decline in world importance, our missed opportunities in Asia and our frequent inability to recognise that the Asians are no longer in awe of us. Quite the reverse. Many Asians now feel ambivalent about a Canada which has so many physical and human assets but has lost its sense of national and international purpose in petty internal bickering. The dramatic increase in Asian economic power over the past forty years, and its sudden plunge into crisis in 1997-8, presents Canada with new opportunities and challenges. While the current crisis reveals serious problems in several countries, it would be a mistake to dismiss Asia as permanently weakened. I believe that most East Asian nations will soon recover and emerge with stronger economies and institutions than heretofore. The record will be uneven; Indonesia's healing process will be slow and painful, but China's economy will continue growing and may become the world's second most powerful economy within twenty years. These changes will not threaten the Canadian economy if we make positive adjustments, but I worry that the most fundamental challenge will be our complacency. We number 350 million people in the three nations of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Asia's population is already in excess of three billion and growing rapidly. For most of this century, that imbalance in population has been offset by a difference in the pace of economic development. Canada had enormous natural resources, technological advantages, and a Protestant work ethic. It has given many Canadians the dangerous illusion that we are invulnerable and do not have to adapt to the challenge from the resurgent and more numerous Asians who have developed innovative technologies, a neo-Confucian work ethic, and a sense of national purpose. But I do not want to end my epilogue on these sour notes. Nostalgia for selective aspects of the past is the hallmark of old and bitter men. I would prefer to be an objective historian and to conclude with some reflections on a different theme. In my time at the University of Toronto, the dean of Canadian historians and the best writer among them was Donald Creighton. I was impressed by one of his aphorisms and would like to recall it now to as a point of departure for some concluding thoughts: T think that an historian's chief interest is in character and in circumstance. His concern is to discover the hopes, fears, anticipations and intentions of the individuals and nations he is writing about.'

Epilogue 235 I found the interplay between character and circumstance to be a recurring theme as I witnessed the profound ways in which a changing international environment affected Canadians in the postwar years. As a diplomat who specialized in Asia and economic development, I enjoyed an unusual vantage point from which to observe and reflect on these epic changes. I saw circumstances alter dramatically under the impact of powerful forces: changing demand and supply in international markets, new technologies which revolutionized agricultural and industrial production, communication, transportation, and life expectancy, a population explosion, a globalization of business interests, and the impact of religious, social, and political ideas like nationalism and tribalism, religious fundamentalism, totalitarianism of the left and right, and a neo-Confucian work and business ethic. Lastly, with the resurgence of Asian self-confidence, there has been a marked diffusion of international political and economic power in contrast to the early postwar years when the United States dominated the scene but was trapped in a wasteful Cold War struggle and Canada briefly enjoyed an unusual degree of international affluence and influence. These great movements are fascinating but impersonal. For me, however, the emphasis was always on observing how they were affected by the character of individual leaders. Even if one accepts that these historic forces are inexorable, I believe that their impact can be affected by people of character. Some of the leaders I saw at first hand were able to take these great streams of history and harness, guide, divert, or temporarily block them in areas under their influence. I think first of foreign leaders such as John F. Kennedy, H.S. Suhrawardy of Pakistan, Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia, Robert McNamara of the World Bank, Deng Xiaoping of China, and others of the same stature I met briefly from Japan, India, Bangladesh, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. As I have indicated in the foregoing chapters, I liked some of them personally but I did not admire all of them. Not many shared Canadian views of democracy and human rights, but each one bettered the lives of those under their care in some tangible way. They did not meekly accept the tides of history; they struggled to mould them. John Kennedy inspired a whole generation to turn away from selfish individualism and fear of communism to idealistic service for their country and the exploration of new frontiers. H.S. Suhrawardy battled against religious fundamentalism, sectarian prejudice, and army rule. Tunku Abdul Rahman freed and united a country rent by ethnic and class divisions and revolution. Robert McNamara convinced the world that endemic poverty should and could be sharply reduced in Asia, Africa, and Latin

236 Epilogue America through the rational use of development finance. Although Deng Xiao Ping and Li Peng sometimes abused human rights, they injected pragmatism and economic sense into a huge land that was stricken by political madness and they gave the Chinese people relative prosperity. But one should not just focus on foreign leaders. I can also cite Canadians who made a difference internationally. Pearson, Diefenbaker, Trudeau, Clark, and Mulroney and some of the Foreign Service officers who worked with them all made real and positive impacts on international affairs in some sphere. Pearson was a major architect of the expanded United Nations, of international peacekeeping, and of systematic financial support from the industrialized Northern countries for the poor Southern ones. Trudeau expanded that notion and promoted international dialogue and concern for social justice on North-South issues. Diefenbaker, Clark, and Mulroney were leaders in the long, victorious struggle to end official racial discrimination in South Africa. The pursuit of positive foreign policy objectives has never been a matter of partisan debate in postwar Canada. Indeed, each ruling party has successfully built on the international achievements of its predecessor. Canadians not only protected their own bilateral interests effectively but were major contributors to building up a network of international institutions where all countries could pursue the goals of establishing rules-based regimes for maximizing international trade and promoting social justice and sustainable development. I was always very proud to serve Canada overseas and considered that our leaders frequently did a better job of promoting our international interests than they did our domestic ones. It may seem strange that an Asianist would put as much stress on personal character as on circumstance in the historical equation. Most Asians tend to be fatalistic about the inexorable circumstances that shape their destiny. But, although I admire much about Asia, I have never accepted all aspects of its thinking. I am not a fatalist but have remained a prairie optimist - a descendant of people who believed they could tame a forbidding wilderness with their own hands and make it bloom. Towards the end of my stay in Beijing, I attended a formal banquet in my honour at the Great Hall of the People. As I sat in that huge monument to an alien revolution in a strange country, I thought to myself that I had come a long way since leaving Saskatchewan on my quest to become a history teacher. I was even enjoying all the food which kept

Epilogue 237 coming, each dish more exotic than the last. In China I had long ago learned never to ask what I was ingesting, just to concentrate on the conversation and not even think about the food. My host observed me smiling to myself. 'I am delighted to see you enjoying your food/ he said to me solicitously. 'Most foreigners do not appreciate that dish. But roast dog is delicious and is particularly beneficial for someone of your advanced years/ My host meant to be courteous and complimentary: I had shown good taste in enjoying a Chinese delicacy and his reference to old age was a sign of respect. I received a different inner message, however. When an ageing son of the prairies starts enjoying roast dog in the Great Hall of the People, he has been away from home too long! External Affairs had given me a fine career for more than three decades, but the Foreign Service was changing and so was I. It was time to retire, return to Western Canada, and restore my roots. Soon after that dinner, I returned home and asked to be assigned to a university in Western Canada prior to retirement from the Canadian Foreign Service exactly thirty-seven years after entering it. I then joined the David Lam Centre for International Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver as an adjunct professor. This centre is dedicated to improving two-way communication between Canada and East Asia. This position has given me a comfortable eyrie from which to survey Asian-Canadian relations with lofty detachment and, at my discretion, swoop down and involve myself in them. It has also given me the time and the congenial environment in which to do some writing. After so many years of brainwashing by the department to express myself in a balanced, cautious, anonymous, and soulless way on paper, it is a distinct pleasure to write what I damn well please.

This page intentionally left blank

Notes

Prologue i Personally, I prefer the old spelling, Peking. It has much more historical and literary resonance than Beijing, which was introduced by the communist authorities. However, in the interests of political correctness, I will use the new spelling in my text. Chapter i: A Prairie Puritan 1 Encouraging and inspiring me at the time was my superior and friend, the provincial archivist, Lewis Thomas, an outstanding historian of Western Canada. He was doing all the things to which I aspired. 2 As quoted in The Middle of Nowhere, edited by Dennis Gruending (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1996), 187. 3 E.R. Mainguy, as quoted in J.F.C. Wright, Saskatchewan: The History of a Province (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1955), 251. 4 Hugh MacLennan, Seven Rivers of Canada (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1967), 126-7, 134Chapter 2: A Neophyte at External 1 Charles Ritchie, Diplomatic Passport (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1981), 52. 2 Lester B. Pearson, Mike: The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Lester B. Pearson, Vol. 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 134. 3 Ibid., 134-5.

240

Notes

Chapter 3: Getting Hooked on the Foreign Service: Pakistan i The senior diplomat accredited from one Commonwealth country to another is called a high commissioner, not an ambassador, on the theory that the latter term is inappropriate among members of the same Commonwealth family. Why the term high commissioner is thought to be more familial has always been a mystery to me. Chapter 4: Prime Minister Suhrawardy of Pakistan 1 Lawrence Ziring, Bangladesh from Mujib to Ershad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 4-6. 2 Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Columbia University, 1933), 233 n69_ 3 Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight (New Delhi: Vikas, 1976), 218-19. 4 Ziring, Bangladesh, 21. Chapter 7: International Development i Foreign Policy for Canadians: International Development (Ottawa: Department of External Affairs, 1970), 9. Chapter 9: The Mighty World Bank 1 P.W. Jones, World Bank Financing of Education (London: Routledge, 1992), xiv. 2 E.S. Mason and R.E. Asher, The World Bank since Bretton Woods (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1973), 513. 3 Ibid., 372-3. Chapter 10: McNamara of the World Bank 1 Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), 270. 2 David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1969), 215-19. 3 Shapley, Power and Promise, 381.

Notes 241 Chapter 11: The Poetic in the Midst of Reality: Indonesia i 'In this statue, superbly carved and perfectly preserved, the artist has succeeded in creating a perfect fusion of the divine with the human ... and transcendental knowledge with the glitter of the phenomenal world from which it has freed itself. There is no other Javanese statue that argues in such a visually convincing manner in favour of the thesis of portrait sculpture, in which gods have human faces and royalty wear divine attributes.' The Sculpture of Indonesia (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1990), 160. Chapter 13: Tiananmen Crisis i Scott Simmic and Bob Nixon, Tiananmen Square (Vancouver: Douglas and Mclntyre, 1989), 90.

This page intentionally left blank

Index

Abdullah, Sheikh, 32-3 Afghanistan, 110- 12 agriculture (farms), 6- 7, 31, 39, 58-9, 105-6, 185 ,196- 8 American influence, 99 ,128, 132, 135, 141- 3, 151, 157, 182, 203, 206- 7 Australia, 63, 67, 70, 85, 203 Awami League, 35, 58 Bangladesh, 29 ,147-8; see also Pakistan, East Wing Beaver aircraft, no, 167 Bengal, 54-7 Berube, Louis, 71 Blackwood, John and Diane, 53 Borghese, Elena, 122- 3, 125- 7 Boudreault, Georgette, 16-17 British influence, 6, 41-2, 63 -6, 70, 73-4, 79 , 84, 87, 99 ,139, 203 Burma, 73-6 Cadieux, Marcel, 17-18 Canada China Business Council (CCBC), 225-6 Canadian Airlines, 203 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), 72, 206

Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), 92-112, 165, 172, 174, 185-7, 191 Caribbean Development Bank, 99-100 Caribbean (West Indies), 99-101, 1334, 138- 9, 142 Carney, Pat, 194 Charles, Eugenia, 92 ,142 Chiang Kaishek, 209, 223 China (People's Republic of China), xiii-xiv, 63-4, 70, 84, 87, 106, 152, 157, 181-228; Beijing xiii, 181- 2, 193- 5, 199-210, 236-7; Chongqing, 212-14; Gansu Province, 186 - 8; Great Hall of the People, 222, 236- 7; Shanghai, 219- 20; Wuhan, 213-14; Yan'an, 212, 223; see also Tiananmen Square; Tibet Chretien, Jean, 106, 225 CIDA. See Canadian International Development Agency Clark, Joe, 107, 181, 209, 212, 236 Colombo Plan, 109-10 consular work, 36 Creighton, Donald, 234 Communism (Communist Party, CTs), 5, 62- 4, 71, 79- 80, 84- 5, 182, 192, 197-8, 200, 211-12, 217, 222-3

244 Index Crosbie, John, 108 CTV (television network), 142, 206 Dagg, Chris, 166, 168, 176 De Havilland Aircraft of Canada, 167 Deng Xiaoping, 184, 217-18, 220, 222, 227, 236 deSilva, Jack, 78 Development assistance programs, 39, 71- 2, 92- 8, 186-92, 128- 30, 1512; see also CIDA and World Bank Diefenbaker, John, 16, 22-3, 24, 36-7, 39, 236 Djalal, Hashim, 174 Dominica, 92, 101, 142 Drake, Catherine (daughter), 62, 82, 117-19 Drake, David (son), 24, 26, 44, 119- 21 Drake, Gordon (father), 6, 13 Drake, Joan (sister), 10, 12, 198, 213 Drake, Joyce (nee Slater), 12, 49, 51-2, 138 Drake, Margaret (nee Rutherford) (mother), 6, 10 Drake, Monica (nee Cruder), xiv, 138, 181, 193, 204- 5, 213 Dugal, Jeannette, 113 Duval, Jean, 194 External Affairs, Department of, 4, 15- 25, 95, 193, 232, 237; see also Foreign Service External Aid Office (EAO), 94-6; see also Canadian International Development Agency Faguy, Marc, 98 Foreign Policy for Canadians, 92-3 Foreign Service (diplomacy), 3 , 210, 214, 231-3, 237; see also External Affairs

France, 115- 22, 135 G-7 (Group of Seven industrial market economies), 133, 135- 8 Gandhi, Mahatma, 54 -7 Gerin-Lajoie, Paul, 97-8 ,130, 152 Gestrich, Mia, 122-5 Globe and Mail, 206 Green Revolution, 145-6 Grenada, 141-2 Guyana, 139-40, 157 Habibie, B.J., 167-8 Haq, Mahbub ul, 43, 154-5 Hassan, Fuad, 168 Hasselback, Dick, 12 He Kang, 196-8 Herrera, Trinidad, 143-4 Holmes, John, 20 Hopper, David, 128 Hu Yaobang, 200, 218 Ibans, 66 India, 145-7 Indonesia, 62, 64, 87,152, 164-80; Bali, 166 ,171, 178; Java, 164, 177; Majapahit, 177-8; Sabah, 84; Sarawak, 66-7, 84; Sulawesi, 165, 167-8 ,176; Sumatra, 87, 172-3 Indus Waters Treaty, 145 International Development Association, 131 ,133 International Nickel Company (INCO), 165 ,167 Ireland, 133-4 ,138-40 Jamaica, 99-100 ,156 Judd, Dave, 44-5 Jugah, Temenggong, 66-9 Kashgar, 189

Index 245 Kashmir, 31-3, 36-7 Katrak, Jamshed, 45 -6 ,109 Katrak, Perin, 45 -6 Katrak, Sohrab, 45-6 Kaunda, Kenneth, 162 Kelly, Maureen, 7-8 Kennedy, John F., 23- 4 ,150, 157, 235 Khan, Ayub, 37, 59, 61, 145 Kissinger, Henry, 220 kris, 172 ,175- 6 Laurier, Wilfrid, 15-16 Lavallee, Maurice , 96 Lee Kuan Yew, 62, 65 -6, 85 -6 Levy, Morris, 229 Li Peng, 215-28, 236 Li Po, 202 MacEachen, Allan, 106-7 McGaughay, E.A., 82-3 McGill University, 168 MacLennan, Hugh, 14 McNamara, Robert S., 131 ,134, 143, 150-63, 235 Mahathir bin Mohammed, 89-91 Mainguy, Admiral, 13 Malaysia, 62-91, 94; Kuala Lumpur, 62, 66-7, 77, 83; North Borneo (Sabah), 66-7 Malik, Adam, 173 Manila, 142-4 Manley, Michael, 156-7 Mao Zedong, 217, 218, 227 Marcos, Imelda, 142-4 Martin, Paul Sr, 22, 37-8 Mills, Bill and Helen, 44, 53 Minangkabau, 173-4 Miro, Joan, 161-3 Moran, Herb, 30, 35, 59, 60, 95-7 Mulroney, Brian, 218-19, 230, 236 Muslim League, 58

New Zealand, 63, 67-70, 85 Nixon, Bob, 207 Nu, U, 74 O'Hara, Maureen, 139-40 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 103 ,114, 128-30 Pakistan, 25, 26-61, 95 -6, 145-8; Chittagong, 29, 30; Dacca, 30; East Wing, 29-30, 50, 57-61; Karachi, 25-7, 42-7 ,109; Khulna, 30; Mohenjo-daro, 109, no; see also Warsak Dam Pearson, L.B., 19-20, 22, 25, 93 ,132, 236 Penfield, Wilder, 43 Peng Chin, 84-5

People's Daily, 201 Peterson, David, 221 Philippines, 142, 206 Prince Edward Island, 15, 70 Qureshi, Moeen, 148-9 Rahman, Tunku Abdul, 63, 65, 77-91, 235 Razak, Tun Abdul, 65, 80, 86, 88 -9 Regina, 4, 7, 31 ,115 Ritchie, Charles, 15 ,19 Robinson, Basil, 22 Robinson, Jane, 171 Royal Canadian Navy, 70 Russia, 104-5 ,169-70, 211 Rutherford, Will, 13 St Laurent, Louis, 16 ,18 Salim, Emil, 174 Saskatchewan, 3-14 ,16, 115, 127, 229 Schmidt, Chancellor Helmut, 163

246 Index Scott, Motley, 27, 30, 52, 59 Seaga, Edward, 156-7 Senghor, Leopold, 163 Sharp, Mitchell, 93 ,113 Sigvaldason, John and Olga, 48-9, 59 Simmie, Scott, 207 Simon Fraser University, 237 Singapore, 62, 65 - 6, 84, 86 South Africa, 22 Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 165 Southwell, Paul, 100-1 Soviet Union. See Russia Strong, Maurice, 97-8, 129 Subroto, 168 Suez Canal, 27 Suez crisis, 25 Suharto, 164-7, 180 Suhrawardy, H. S., 48-61 ,148 -9, 235 Sukarno, 62, 64, 66, 77-8, 80, 87, 164 Suleiman, Baby, 51 Tan Cheng Lock, 84-5 Tan Siew Sin, 65, 84 Thailand, 73-4 Tiananmen Square, xiii-xiv, 199-214, 216, 220, 222 Tibet, 188-91, 194 Toronto, 221 Toynbee, Arnold J., 25, 40 trade promotion, 39 ,165, 167-9, 183 -6, 216 Trudeau, Pierre, 90, 93, 159-60, 165-7, 236 Turner, John, 152

Underhill, Frank, 4 United Kingdom. See British influence United Nations, 20-2, 25, 31 United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 104, 154 United Nations Human Development Index (HDI), 154-5 United States. See American influence University of Saskatchewan, 3-4, 13 University of Toronto, 3- 4, 168, 234 Uygurs, 188-9 Vancouver, 12, 183-4, 237 Vietnam, 101- 3, 136,150-1, 158 Warsak Dam, 28, 39, 40 West Indies. See Caribbean Westall, Stan, 109 Wheeler, John, 103 Whelan, Eugene, 105 -6 Win, Ne, 74-6 Wong, Jan, 199, 207 World Bank, 109, 131 -63, 187, 191 World Food Council, 106 Xiao Yang, 212 Yang Shangkun, 220-2 Zhao Ziyang, 213, 217-18, 222-3 Zhou Enlai, 223-4 Zhu Lin, 224-7 Zhu Rongji, 219-20 Zoroastrian faith, 46