Staffan de Mistura on timing in mediation, as in life and love

[00:00:00.000] - Staffan de Mistura As a mediator, we know that after a certain period, you lose your capacity of surprising with techniques, suggestions, and options. That's the time when it's always good to have someone else to start again and relaunch with new ideas to destabilise the stalemate. [00:00:30.000] - Adam Cooper Welcome to the Mediator's Studio, a podcast about peacemakers, bringing you stories from behind the scenes. I'm your host, Adam Cooper, and I'm in Muscat for a meeting hosted by the Foreign Ministries of Norway and Oman and the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, bringing together leading figures to discuss mediation in the Middle East and North Africa. My guest has served the UN for over half a century, working under four UN Secretary Generals in 21 missions all over the world and with nine UN agencies. The assignments in his early career were mainly humanitarian, he went on to serve in senior political roles, such as the Secretary General's representative in Southern Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and today for Western Sahara, a role he has held since 2021. Staffan de Mistura, welcome to the Mediator's Studio. [00:01:18.560] - Staffan de Mistura Thank you very much. I'm very glad to be here, frankly. [00:01:26.260] - Adam Cooper I would like to begin with your early motivations and formative years. In a way, multilateralism is in your DNA. You had a Swedish mother and an Italian father from Dalmatia, a place disputed by Italy and Yugoslavia in the Second World War, the horrors of which your father witnessed. And as a little boy, as I understand it, you wanted to be a fireman and then a doctor, but your father has other ideas, and you volunteered as an intern with the World Food Programme. And while in Cyprus, at the age of 18, you saw something that changed your life indelibly. Take me to that moment. [00:02:03.880] - Staffan de Mistura Whenever I go back to that moment, I get a little bit emotional because it did change my life. I was 17. I had my own holidays before the final examination on 18. And I was given the opportunity of being a volunteer in Cyprus with the World Food Programme. Cyprus was divided in two as it is, but at that time, it was very tense, it was a conflict environment. I was accompanying the WFP team who was assessing the food requirements. I was just taking notes and a little bit annoyed even by the fact that this was my holiday, and I was supposed to take a holiday with my friends at my age. But instead, I was following this group of very serious people and taking notes. While, suddenly, on the Green Line, dividing, as you know, the two sides, and the UN was there, there were some kids playing football, eight, nine-years old. While I was just looking around, a few metres from me, suddenly, I hear a strange little noise. Poof, not big noise. I see one of the kids, a boy, I remember, I will never forget, probably nine, eight years-old, falling on the ground, dead, with a bullet in his neck, and it was a sniper. [00:03:33.140] - Staffan de Mistura And I couldn't believe my eyes. I had not seen anyone dead and certainly not killed. And killed simply because the two sides were trying to send a signet on each other using civilians. So, I got a very strong level of healthy, I believe, outrage, which is still keeping me going. And try to get specialised and dedicating my professional life to complicating or avoiding that type of consequence. In other words, civilians being victims of war when in the worst-case scenario, it should be only men fighting each other and military men. That stimulated me to apply to WFP once I got my university degree and volunteer to go where, in fact, no one wanted to go, which was the Southern Sudan Civil War. [00:04:31.860] - Adam Cooper I want to ask you about that time in Sudan because you've had that shocking incident. You're channelling that healthy outrage. You begin your humanitarian career and still with the UN, taking food into Sudan by barge, but then you realise that there's a mistake. And so, what was it that happened? [00:04:50.860] - Staffan de Mistura It was the first lesson of my professional life. Imagine you're getting ready, you try to learn more languages, you who then finally are recruited against the fact that you were too young. At that time, no one would pick up in the UN someone of 22. It was the lowest level. And it was offered the only place where no one wanted to go, which was Southern Sudan. And the message I got, which I would like to share, it's always better when you're young to be number three in a mission of three than number 287 in a mission of 1,600. In other words, the field. The field where no one is too big and when you can make a difference or you can learn a difference. So, I was number three. But number three of three was not the last one. And the number two got malaria. So I was asked whether I was willing to accompany and lead a barge operation, going all the way down on the Nile towards Juba, to some villages which were affected by the Civil War, and carrying WFP food, which were thousands and thousands of very good, because being half Swedish, I knew them well, Norwegian sardines. [00:06:12.380] - Staffan de Mistura The trip took a long time. You had bandits, there was malaria, there were strange animals, there was hippos stopping it, the water itself, problem with the engines. Finally, we got there. I started, finally, distributing the tins. And I see they only open one and they don't eat it. And I couldn't believe my eyes. I said, come on, I mean, I've been doing all this. I've been preparing this. And we are here and we are bringing the food. And then the local village, one of them told me, we have a tradition. It's a superstition, but it's a strong one. They used to put, the other tribes or parts of tribes on the other side of the river, they used to put some poison food coming from a meat of poisonous snakes or so on. We learned you never eat anything unless you see the head. The sardines, for God's sake, were all without head. [00:07:14.380] - Adam Cooper I'm sure it wasn't your last lesson in the cultural understanding necessary to work in an unusual environment? [00:07:21.600] - Staffan de Mistura That was the real lesson. Lesson number one, do your homework, which is not only studying the country, but interviewing. There must have been some people in Khartoum before I left, I should have interviewed, coming from the village and say, what is your superstition? What are your food habits? They would have told me, bring anything as long as you bring the head of it. I would have known it. That's lesson one. Lesson two, be creative. It's not only businesspeople who should be creative. Mediators, UN operators, facilitators need to be extremely creative. In that case, out of desperation, because I was really disappointed, I came up with the idea of taking my little loudspeaker, which I've always been carrying with me, and going on the Jeep, and then putting about 1,000 tins, and calling the whole village with the loud speaker and the interpreter, and saying, now you choose three tins, whichever. I want to be chosen by the oldest and the youngest, and I will eat them in front of you. I will do so in every small village of the same tribe. If I'm alive tomorrow, that means they are not poisonous, and it worked. [00:08:40.520] - Staffan de Mistura But I got a stomachache, of course, because I was eating too much proteins in a very hot climate. [00:08:48.740] - Adam Cooper Well, you speak about the creativity needed. Let's speak about that in your current role on Western Sahara. Just to give our listeners some background, it was a Spanish colony until 1975, after which a violent territorial dispute broke out between Morocco and the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi Independence Movement, principally backed by Algeria. The 16-year conflict ended with a UN brokered ceasefire in 1991, the promise of a referendum on independence, which hasn't taken place, and the deployment of a peacekeeping force. The ceasefire broke down in 2020, and a low-intensity conflict has been ongoing since. And in late October, the UN Security Council adopted a new approach to the conflict on Western Sahara in Resolution 2797, giving a renewed mandate to you as the personal envoy to negotiate between the parties. So, you had been appointed in October 2021, and you were stepping into a situation where there have been numerous failed UN-sponsored mediations over the course of several decades. The post had been vacant for two years. What were your first thoughts on being offered the job, and why did you accept knowing that it was a seemingly intractable conflict? [00:10:05.320] - Staffan de Mistura The Secretary-General had tried to find a candidate which was acceptable to both sides, or three sides, or four sides, depending on the point of the view. So, when I was contacted by the Secretary-General, I felt really a duty because there was a perception that it was a fault of the UN to leave that place vacant. It was also because the mission was considered literally impossible since by then, it would have been probably 46 years of attempts to solve it. [00:10:38.020] - Adam Cooper You didn't mind being chosen, in a sense, by a process of elimination? [00:10:42.740] - Staffan de Mistura No, because you've seen all the other were not UN officials. They were very senior foreign officials, foreign ministers, ex-prime ministers, like my predecessor was the ex-president of Germany, or before that, James Baker, Secretary of State who I knew when I was working on Iraq and I respect it. The duty of a UN staff member is then to try to get helping the Secretary-General when he's in trouble. [00:11:14.020] - Adam Cooper So, you have that desire to help, but as you say, you call it Mission Impossible. [00:11:17.800] - Staffan de Mistura Yes. [00:11:18.360] - Adam Cooper So why take on Mission Impossible? [00:11:20.400] - Staffan de Mistura Because I still believe that life history has taught me and all of us that what looks impossible due to new circumstances, new events, can turn and produce an entry point. That's, I think, is a classic syndrome or a characteristic of a mediator, to look for entry points which suddenly can appear. The secret there is to be very quick in picking it up and enlarge it. [00:11:49.910] - Adam Cooper Well, let's talk a bit about that, because one of the things that's changed in the dynamic is the position of the US administration. If we trace it back under the first Trump administration, the US announced that it will recognise Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in exchange for Morocco establishing relations with Israel, part of the wider Abraham Accords, trying to normalise relations between Israel and Arab states in the region. Then much later on, under this current second Trump administration, they've arguably become more engaged. You have the appointment of Massad Boulos as the President's envoy. How did all of that happen? [00:12:31.380] - Staffan de Mistura First of all, the big difference is that when things get stuck, you need a shock therapy. It can be an event, circumstances, which have been happening in other cases, or the energy coming from a major country who gets not only supportive to the UN, they all support the UN, but engaged in supporting it. With the Trump administration's second mandate, the argument, which in my opinion was particularly valid, was that one thing is stopping conflicts, which is clearly an aspiration of President Trump, but it's much easier and perhaps more productive even, preventing that conflict. In a way, this was and is a particularly good example of it. Can be prevented, it should be prevented. [00:13:28.320] - Adam Cooper Maybe just for the listener to understand, you described it as shock therapy. For a conflict that's been frozen for so long, I can understand the impulse for that. But in concrete terms, what does it look like to shake something up? [00:13:41.080] - Staffan de Mistura I give you some examples because I can talk better, easier, not about missions I'm involved in, but more other where I was involved in. I'll give you the classical example to me was Syria, frankly, recently. When I again asked it to be involved on the Syria file, we had had two major, remarkably respectable envoys, Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi. Both of them gave up relatively quickly because none of the parties wanted to actually negotiate. Both wanted to win the war. When they actually decided, the two envoys, to have a conference, that was the end of the mission because they said they come, and then, once there, they started putting conditions and leaving, walking out, and then, you are confronted with it. So, the first advice that was given, don't organise a conference. Create all sorts of geometries variable, different forms of engagements, meetings, encounters. But never put yourself in a position where one or the two sides will say, I'm not staying or I'm not coming unless... Because then you end up into a snowball of preconditions. But the beginning was even more difficult because there was a feeling of depression. The world was getting tired of failures on it. [00:15:14.640] - Staffan de Mistura So, there the secret was finding an entry point. And the entry point was offered by a very good analysis done by the Crisis Group, reminding us that, in fact, Aleppo was on the edge of collapsing from a siege from the government. But Aleppo is important. The world knows about Aleppo, one of the oldest cities in the world inhabited since they were created. And creating around the lip of the myth that we had to intervene from a humanitarian point of view and use a technique called the freeze, not ceasefire, not a truce. Ceasefires, you break. Truce, you need legal involvement. Freeze means reducing. [00:16:05.720] - Adam Cooper I'd like to move on to Syria, take you back to 2014. You're in Capri and the phone rings. It's the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon at the time, and he wants you to be his representative for Syria, a job from which two great mediators, Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi, have both resigned in a matter of months. Take me to that moment and what was running through your head. [00:16:30.000] - Staffan de Mistura I had the best job in the world, actually, being in charge of a foundation in the island of Capri, which is a Swedish-Italian foundation. So, my nature, basically. But I got a call and I said, no, this time no. After 40 years, I think it's time for me to now write my memories and be there. But then the Secretary-General sent me the statistics. How many people had already been killed in Syria and the fact that Lakhdar Brahimi had just left, and then I couldn't sleep that night, and I felt like a medical doctor, which I wanted to be, who is still able to operate with his hands, surgery, but he's going on a holiday skiing. I then checked with my wife who accepted it because she knew I would regret it and accepted the mission. [00:17:27.840] - Adam Cooper By that stage in the conflict, there had been two unsuccessful UN-sponsored conferences on Syria, the Islamic States making gains on the battlefield against the Syrian government and its military allies. So, as you stepped into the role, what did you think was going to be your approach? [00:17:45.740] - Staffan de Mistura The first thing was to avoid the biggest danger for any mediator and for the UN in general. It's not to be creative, not to be perhaps controversial when you defend principles, but being irrelevant. That's the biggest danger. And that's the demotivating element, which then was helping the people to feel depressed. So, the Secretary is finding every month a new idea in order to keep alive the attention on Syria, which was becoming Mission Impossible for everyone. So that's when the Aleppo Initiative took place, which failed, by the way, because both sides wanted to win the war and therefore didn't accept the idea of freezing. And some people criticised us and me by saying, you are proposing something unrealistic. My mission was, I still have to do it. One, it gives the feeling that Aleppo has not been abandoned. If it does work, we may do it leopard skin approach in other places. Second, since it didn't work, because both sides, paradoxically, still wanted to win the war and therefore not even defreeze or freeze the conflict, during two months, I was criticised publicly and privately for trying something very unrealistic. But guess what? During two months, everybody was focusing on Aleppo. [00:19:23.200] - Staffan de Mistura In fact, for more than two years, nothing happened in Aleppo because suddenly the light was there, the focus, the radar had been going on. [00:19:35.520] - Adam Cooper It sounds like you were trying to be relatively daring, take some risks, be creative, be prepared to fail. You've described the experience as being like a punch bag. How did you withstand those punches? Was it just your strength of conviction that you thought, I've got to do something different to what came before me? [00:19:55.460] - Staffan de Mistura Well, yes, because the biggest danger is irrelevance. The second biggest danger is accepting irrelevance. So, trying, you will never be criticised. You will have to take whatever it comes from that, including the fact that at the end of the day, you had a side product or byproduct, or as someone would call collateral effect of having tried, which was attention on Aleppo and the fact that the UN was not giving up on Syria. [00:20:28.180] - Adam Cooper You've also mentioned that in the course of your mandate, that there were some things that you tried which didn't work, but there were two moments of magic, as you put it, where things could move forward. Could you tell us about what they were? [00:20:42.880] - Staffan de Mistura The most important one, which is a lesson, frankly, again, life is like a mosaic of psychology, timing. It's like in personal relations and geopolitical circumstances. So, fly with me to that moment. We are in 2016, we are in the summer. And there was the end of the negotiations on the atomic issue with Iran, where for weeks, Russians, Americans, EU, and others were all involved in discussing the details. The others were the Iranians and the other countries. The result was a deal. That had two effects. The issue there was that President Obama had freed himself from his agenda: "I want to leave with that deal done". And John Kerry, a very decent and proactive person, I must say, and very prepared and motivated, was free, finally, to deal about the issue which at that time was the biggest humanitarian crisis. Now comes the next point. During those weeks, tea, coffee, like mediators do. You start liking each other or having a different position, but I respect your position, you respect mine. Let's have a drink now and talk about life. The Russian Foreign Minister, Lavrov, and the Secretary of State, Kerry. I could see it when I met them. [00:22:19.880] - Staffan de Mistura They did like each other. There was irony, there was complicity, except each of them had their own mandate and position. So that was an element which helps. Second, at that time, the American elections were getting closer. The Russian side was most likely very concerned at that time about the fact that Hillary Clinton was likely or considered likely to win the elections. She had already mentioned that she was going to be tougher, if elected, on the issue of Syria. That was a concern, in my opinion for both Lavrov and President Putin. Why? Because they didn't want to get stuck, as was the case of the Americans and the West, in Afghanistan or in Iraq. They wanted a way out. The next point was, Kerry wanted to come out with having a legacy with President Obama, not having ignored the biggest humanitarian crisis. [00:23:24.600] - Adam Cooper In other words, you have a potential Russian interest, you have a potential US interest, a personal relationship between the two foreign ministers. What's going through your mind of trying to say, okay, how can this be leveraged in some way for the benefit of Syria? [00:23:39.120] - Staffan de Mistura Exactly. There was a plan. The plan was not perfect plan, but very good plan. The plan was to have the Russians agreeing to ground all aircraft from Syria, helicopters and airplanes. Don't forget, most of the bombing was done by barrel bombs using helicopters or airplanes. No big battles of man against man. No, no. The Americans and the Russians would both then focused on Al-Nusra, which was the most proactive group of the opposition, but happened at that time, I repeat, at that time, to be identified and linked to Al-Qaeda, which means 9/11. So, note moral problems of actually both of them hitting it. Outcome: Mossad would not be strong enough to win the war without his aircraft and helicopters. The opposition will not be able to win the war without Al-Nusra. UN bringing humanitarian convoys to the cities besieged. No peace, no war, but no major killing. When you can't win a war, you negotiate. That's when we had the plan number two. But in life, in love, in friendship, in business, and in geopolitics, timing. If you don't jump on that train, where the person that you would probably one day marry, and you saw him or her, and you missed the train, you didn't jump on the train, and you will never do it again. [00:25:19.360] - Staffan de Mistura And the timing was 72 hours of reduction of violence, ceasefire, and then implementation. I was almost dancing on the ground by happiness in that night in Geneva at the Wilson Hotel. But someone in the US, and history will judge that, and someone in Damascus, President al-Assad, were not at all happy because that was meaning a collaboration between the US and Russia, after Ukraine, was an investment that they had made on the opposition, some of the components of the deep state, perhaps. At the same time, there was a hope by al-Assad that the job had not been finished. So, you had a major incident of a bombing of a military camp of Syrian army, two days afterwards, and then three days afterwards, the bombing by most likely Syrian plane of a UN convoy with 22 tracks. The magic was over. The timing had been missed. And I was very sad because the war continued. And Kerry left, Obama left, and there was a totally different atmosphere. [00:26:37.340] - Adam Cooper Briefest windows of opportunity that, unfortunately, didn't last as you hoped it would. One of the other things that I know you tried to do in your time in Syria was about the inclusion of women and the creation of the Women's Advisory Board, formed in late 2015, consisting of 12 Syrian women who you met separately from the official government and opposition delegations. Why did you want to do that? How did you make it a reality? Do you think it made a difference? [00:27:04.180] - Staffan de Mistura It did to me. I felt very much that I was doing exactly what we should do. 51% of the population are women in Syria, in many other parts of the world. Secondly, they were the most reasonable. Some of them were veiled, some of them were not, some were with the opposition, some with the government, but they were reasonable. They were talking about real practical issues to reduce the violence. So, I asked the two delegations, when they came to Geneva at that time, to bring at least 30% of the women to their own delegation. And they show up smartly and notedly, both of them coming with only three and the other one, four women out of 22 members, not 30%. And they were the last ones, and they were not allowed to talk. And it was too for me to do anything because I was already welcoming the delegations in front of the whole UN ambassadors in the General Assembly of Geneva. And I was fuming because they had just taken me by surprise fait accompli. But then, creativity. Okay, you didn't bring them? I will bring them. So, I asked my team to leave some of the chairs, and behind me was women from Syria. [00:28:29.520] - Staffan de Mistura So, they became part of the delegation of the Special Envoy, and they came in the eyes of the two sides, very influential. I was told by the two sides, they're not our women. I said, no, wait a moment. They are Syrian women, and they represent many of you. They started talking to them later because they knew they had their influence on the Envoy, and therefore much more influential than if they had been part of a delegation. [00:28:55.320] - Adam Cooper Can you give me an example of something which you learned as an Envoy listening to them that you didn't get from listening to the parties, whether it's because they were just closer to the reality of what was happening on the ground and something that made you think, okay, I've got to work differently, mediate differently, or just think about this issue differently? [00:29:14.540] - Staffan de Mistura Many, many cases. But the most general comment I would say, they were using common sense. The first thing that parties, when they get stuck into a power game, is preconditions, not common sense. [00:29:30.340] - Adam Cooper What does common sense mean? What did they suggest you do that would be helpful? [00:29:35.180] - Staffan de Mistura While we are negotiating, can't we, meanwhile, bring food and vaccinations to that area? Why should we not? What about at the same time, giving the opportunity for civil society to express their own opinion? Both sides didn't like it because it was wartime. So, these were all elements that I could then acquire by inviting civil society to Geneva to tell me what are the priorities and then use them to challenge the position on the other two or was simply saying, I want to win. I want al-Assad to go. I want them to be terrorists. [00:30:15.720] - Adam Cooper I can tell just from the way you're speaking how invested you are personally in that and everything that you tried to do during your time there. But you did decide eventually to leave. It must have been a very difficult decision. What was it that prompted you to decide, okay, that whether it was the prospects for peace or personal cost involved that you thought, now I've done what I can? [00:30:43.060] - Staffan de Mistura Well, I have to do a little bit of self-examination on that. The first point is that as a mediator, we know that after a certain period, you lose your capacity of surprising with techniques, suggestions, and options. You have said many times no, when things were unacceptable, and you have been in other words, using some of your capital. That's the time when it's always good to have someone else to start again and relaunch with new ideas to destabilise the stalemate. Secondly, I felt that it was very difficult for me to acknowledge the fact that the likelihood was that the war was going to be continuing for much more, having already gone through four years in trying to complicate everything. But then there was the other feeling, perhaps another month, another two months. But that's where I was helped by an NGO who called me, and paradoxically, they were having a special calculation based on extrapolation on Internet and computers and so on, and said, Mr. de Mistura, we are always working on this type of extrapolation. Perhaps you would be interested to know that you should not be too sad about leaving. Because by organising meetings that were useless and by organising convoys that made it or suggesting and pushing for ceasefires, which lasted three months, and giving hope to many people, you actually, instead of 400,000 people, we calculated it could have been 680,000 people killed. [00:32:39.820] - Staffan de Mistura Because during those moments, they were less fighting. During those times, they had to behave. During the ceasefire, there was a ceasefire, and so on. [00:32:47.840] - Adam Cooper That's what gave you comfort, knowing that you had made a difference to the extent that you could during the time you were there. [00:32:53.740] - Staffan de Mistura Because we have to be honest and modest, frankly. I never really stopped a war, but I prevented to. [00:33:00.540] - Adam Cooper If we look at Syria today, I think events have taken many people by surprise. How did you feel when you saw the collapse of the al-Assad dynasty? What do you think the prospects are for peace in Syria now? [00:33:14.000] - Staffan de Mistura They are much better than they've ever been. When you compare, you always have to compare things and they're comparing periods. They are not perfect, but we have to give them a chance. Secondly, even after the Second World War, in Europe, there was a lot of very bad events taking place for those who were associated with supporting the Nazis or the Fascists in France or in Italy. And that was part of a sad, very bad moment, but it was part also what needed in the eyes of some people to be a moment of instability. [00:33:57.660] - Adam Cooper I'd like to maybe step beyond Syria for a moment and ask for some of your broader reflections and lessons learned. Because many of the processes you've taken on haven't always led to the outcomes that you were ideally hoping for in Syria and Afghanistan and Cyprus. You're turning 80 years old. You have kept going throughout it all. Where do you find that motivation from? [00:34:20.800] - Staffan de Mistura I wanted to be a fireman, but then I seriously wanted to be a medical doctor. But then due to the fact that I spoke languages, I had two nationalities, and in my interest in international affairs, why not be doctor of countries? They get sick, too. It can make a difference to many of their citizens if you interfere with things that are going badly, like I discovered in Cyprus. But a doctor never gives up on a patient. A doctor, in the case of advanced Alzheimer or an uncurable cancer, I would not just say goodbye, and you're incurable. Because by giving them hope, comfort, reduction of pain, giving them the feeling that it's worth trying new type of treatments until the very end, perhaps too or after tomorrow, there will be a new medicine. Or if it is ending with a bad end, until the very last minute, you provided hope and comfort. And that has kept me going. And the second one, more important, was the eyes of the victims, those who suffered. Who am I to actually give up consciously, not as the end of a mission, when they, these women in Syria who are refugees in Lebanon were looking at me and say: "you had a ceasefire"? [00:35:51.840] - Staffan de Mistura You know what? With my six children, I'm a widow. I'm going to leave this tent and plant it back on the ruins of my house because I want to believe that there is a future. [00:36:03.500] - Adam Cooper It sounds like you're attempting as a mediator not just to think about this in your relationship with the conflict parties, but remember who you're doing this for, and the survivors and those really who are caught up by the conflict. There must be so many moments over your long career where you've had to look into the eyes of those people who are experiencing war. Are there other moments that spring to mind which for you just brought home the gravity of the situations that you were trying to resolve. [00:36:32.980] - Staffan de Mistura Many times, the siege of Dubrovnik, the moment when Kabul did or were expected to fall after the Mujahidin were surrounding it in Iraq during one or two very tough moments. It's difficult to describe, but I don't know. Have you ever cried out of joy? [00:36:54.860] - Adam Cooper Yes. [00:36:55.320] - Staffan de Mistura Good. Well, that's a very special feeling. I did so on at least two occasions. It was when I could see that the efforts were worth it. So, fly with me, for instance, to Kabul. We are a few days before what was expected to be the end of the Najibullah government. The Mujahidin were surrounding, and the West had decided at that time that Kabul was going to fall. But we decided, myself and two others, to stay because there were 40,000 women there and children of the Mujahidin, by the way, who had been brought in through this scorch-earth approach. They were starving. So, I asked the international community to provide us with a plane and food, because the government of Najibullah was not giving them food. The plane was chartered by WFP but stopped in Islamabad and never took off. Someone had convinced them it was too dangerous. So, I tried again international appeal. [00:38:03.500] - Staffan de Mistura And who replied to me was Ethiopian Airlines. Why? Because in 1984, I had organised Operation San Bernard with airdropping food, saving the villages in Tigray and Wollo. And that airdrop operation did help a lot of people. And they came back to me with an aeroplane who did stop in Islamabad but was not impressed by those who said it was too dangerous. The plane was a civilian plane, no chairs. The hostesses were still on board, full of food. They flew over Kabul and gradually landed. I couldn't believe my eyes. One, that Ethiopia didn't forget and took the risk, and B, that we made it. [00:38:49.620] - Adam Cooper You talk about those moments when you cry with joy. In my case, it was when my son was born, and you talked about family and the implications for family when you're doing this kind of work. I remember an early conversation I had at the beginning of my career with a former UN Envoy, and I was explaining my aspirations in the field and he said, be careful what you wish for, Adam, because all of the fellow SRSGs envoys that he knew had been divorced or had troubled family situations at home. What do you think is the potential family costs of choosing a line of work like this? [00:39:27.520] - Staffan de Mistura It is serious. Even I had to go through a divorce, which I had to accept because it made sense seen from her point of view, the mother of my two daughters, because after four missions and me being available to leave every time and not to a nice place, but a warzone, there was a limit to accepting this type of unpredictability. But the worst price was with my daughters because they were starting to be teenagers. And they were angry with me. And for a very good reason, that they had the age to be able to watch TV and read newspapers. And they saw I was active in war zones. And the argument was, but, papa, you are risking your life, and you are not loving us enough to want to be alive and around for us. That lasted for two or three years. [00:40:27.660] - Adam Cooper Must have been very hard to hear. [00:40:29.010] - Staffan de Mistura Very hard. And very true, valid. But now it's different. They understood it, also because I'm still alive, but they understood the value of it. [00:40:41.700] - Adam Cooper Well, on that note, thank you very much, Staffan de Mistura, for being my guest in the Mediator's Studio. [00:40:47.420] - Staffan de Mistura Thank you. [00:40:48.260] - Adam Cooper That's it for this edition of the Mediator's Studio. To get more episodes as they come out, please subscribe wherever you get your podcast. We always love to hear from you. So, if Staffan's initiative on the inclusion of women in peacemaking has resonated with you, please get in touch via the listener survey in the show notes on our website, or do drop me a message on X at Adam Talks Peace. The Mediator's Studio is an Oslo Forum podcast brought to you by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Our managing editor is Christina Buchhold, and the producer is Chris Gunness. The coordinating editor is Ly Buiduong. Research for this episode was by Oscar Eschenbrenner. Hope you'll join me for the next edition. Until then, from Muscat in Oman, this is Adam Cooper saying goodbye and thank you for listening.