MGG Pillai Commentary View

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Paper tigers and an ambassador's memoir

THE FURORE OVER AN ambassador's memoir is creating a scene in London. Sir Christopher Meyers had submitted his draft of DC Confidential, to be vetted, as Sir Jeremy Greenstock's was. Sir Jeremy was head of the British delegation to the UN and took part in the runup to the war in Iraq, and is now in Iraq. It was made clear that Sir Jeremy's account was not what he would write; the book was published with parts removed. But Sir Charles' memoir has hit the ceiling. Not that, apparently, what he said was wrong but that his book contained descriptions of cabinet ministers that would reduce their public view of them. Sir Michael Jay, head of the British foreign service, has taken the unusual stance of telling British ambassadors in a private note that they should not write anything that will damn British policy. The memoir it seems has set back British policy. The British foreign secretary, Mr Jack Straw, has called for Sir Charles' removal as chairman of the Press Protection Council. But his colleagues in the Foreign Office saw nothing wrong with what he wrote. They took bits of Sir Jeremy's book because they said it would damage relations with foreign countries. They did not with Sir Charles' book. Either they have lost, like many in Britain today, confidence in the Labour Government, or they have taken a step further and tie the Labour Government in knots. Even the civil servants could not follow government policies.

In this age of instant communication and 24-hour television, the British cabinet ministers read about them in the Guardian, which published extracts of Sir Charles' memoir. It was only after the publication, that the contents annoyed the politicians. Journalists have fanned the fire. The politicians fell for it. It is now a battle of wits between a fading Labour government and the civil service. The anger with which the memoirs are blamed for affecting foreign policy is a reflection of the uselessness of some Labour Party ministers. But this would not be the last. When the public is brought into the picture with inside events of the past, they have got a liking for it. They are given it than be told the rationale behind a given policy. It also allows the writer to make money and the reader to be vicariously. This is allowed, though only after vetting. The furore over this memoir should be directed to the committee which allowed it for publication. It looks whether it would damage Britain's policy elsewhere. That it would not is clear. The politicians are notoriously thin-skinned. They do not like to be labelled as 'pygmies' or tounge-tied in Washington. The memoir had nothing to do with foreign policy that would damage Britain.

The independent civil service is in Britain, but not in Malaysia. The civil servant will not rise far in Britain if he is politically committed or if he panders to the ruling party. Unlike in Malaysia, they would tell off their ministers. The traffic police would arrest ministers for traffic offences. And the ministers would appear in court, is convicted, and pays the fine. It would never happen in Malaysia unless the government wants to get rid of him from the cabinet but does not know how and hope he would resign. We have a committee to vet books by former civil servants and ministers. Unless the book is written by somebody close to the levers of power, or if the book is on bird watching, it disappears in a block hole and does not see the light of day. Since many manuscripts have disappeared this way, many do not write books in retirement. So while the interest in knowing what happened has remained high, it would be for books written by foreigners. There is another reason for this: Malaysian civil servants and ministers are more at home with foreigners to talk than locals. Mr Lee Kuan Yew's book has reached a wide audience. But no one has written a riposte, because unless he is close to the lever of power in Malaysia, it would disappear in the black hole. So a civil servant or diplomat or minister rarely writes his or her memoir.

There is a lot that can be written about Malaysia's relations with the outside world. And those in the execution can or should write their version of it. These days it is about the pomp and circumstance of the job and little else so that the reader knew little at the beginning as at the end. We do not write books here because it takes a long time, and the returns are often not as much. Money causes many to write books on retirement. So they keep diaries, which are published after they retire. Almost every one in the West keep diaries. There is a restriction on civil servants in most countries, but not as restrictive as it is in Malaysia or Singapore. Reading Malaysian or Singaporean accounts, unless they include their actions against the other or about bilateral spats, makes one feel that all if well and nothing can spoil it. It is much like Iraq after the invasion. The United States and its allies speak as if they are not responsible for the destruction of the land, and operate from their fortress in what is known as the Green Zone. If you believe them, it is a safe place to go to. The secretary-general of the United Nations, after having allowed one of its members to be invaded, now talks of bringing that invaded country into the world. But the UN is the handmaiden of the US. Various figures from the West make a hazardous attempt to come into Baghdad by air, and talk to the press of the improvements made, but the murders, mayhem, and disruption continues. There is no word of that. But this is the report we have come to expect.

The officials are throttled to say nothing about the murders and mayhem, and they would keep quiet in their retirement unless they become activists themselves, as David Kay, the former chief of the WMD in Iraq has done. The television, the media, the government information services is Western inspired, so we get the public relations version of what happens in Iraq. There is little of what happens in the country. Al Jazeera does report what happens in the street, and the mayhem caused by American invasion. But every effort is made to silence Al Jazeera. He who has the information wins the war. But if both sides have the information, they energise their supporters and the divide is wider than ever. We are told after the Amman attacks that most of the 78 per cent Sunnis in Jordan spit at the perpetrators of the American hotels. But those who died are those who wanted to be there. That means well off Arabs, who live in a world of their own and are seen important if they deal with the West. The bulk of Jordan, to these people, are irrelevant. King Abdullah of Jordan is more popular in the West than in his country. So what he says is ignored. The poor people, in the majority, have supported the Baathist Party in Iraq and President Saddam Hussein. They did not change overnight because he is arrested, and his country invaded, by a foreign nation. The United States have gone into war with terror, and terror here means the Muslim world. But it does not understand what the term means, and finding itself in difficulties, gets into dividing the religious and racial factions. It is not between two Iraqi factions, but it is between Sunnis and Shias or between the Iraqi Sunni and the Turkomen, who is Sunni more often than not. But will we hear in memoirs written by those who are there? We might get a sanitized version of what happened there, but little else.

But this is what we get. In future, the political or civil service would be as bland as the public relations of the victor in Iraq. They try to hoodwink the people, and they will be published. If Malaysians want to know of what happened in the past, it would have be memoirs or diaries published by officials or politicians who left the country after the incident. However wrong it is now, it contained a record of what happened then. But history is not written of events, but of the mood. The official memoirs of the participants all add up to it. In Malaysia, there would not be much for a historian to work on. Publishing books even of past events by people now not living here would give the political scientist or the historian some idea of what the feeling was like in those days. We are beginning to get that now, but it is not enough. Sir Charles' memoirs means nothing in the scheme of things, but it would make him richer than he would as a retired British Ambassador in Washington. The furore over his memoirs has damaged British foreign policy because the politicians are thin skinned enough to feel the country's policy can be damaged if they are seen to be paper tigers,

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com