I know Lakhdar Brahimi slightly, and it grieves me to see him having to apologise to the Syrian people for failing to get the Syrian government (he specified) to budge from its starting position in the talks he has been trying to sponsor in Geneva.
He was London ambassador of the Boumedienne government in Algeria and represented it well (he admired Boumedienne's intellect). In the government of Chadli Bendjedid which was formed at a national congress following Boumedienne's death, he became Foreign Minister and I interviewed him again - for the third time I think - in his house in Algiers. I must have seemed very naive to him and he probably wouldn't remember me.
Brahimi isn't an Arab but an upper-class Kabyle from a landowning family. The Kabyles are of Berber ethnicity and have social traditions which are sort of meritocratic and aristocratic at the same time. They aren't particularly religious and have their own written language, Tamazight, which they say predates Arabic script, and their own traditional cosmology which they say predates Islam.
The Boumedienne military regime still rules Algeria. The current president was Brahimi's old boss, being an extremely young foreign minister at the time. But Mr Brahimi has been an international diplomat for years, long gone from Algerian national politics. He is looking worried and old, poor fellow, although I believe he is five or six years younger than I am, a year or two older than the present Algerian president.
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The Syrian mess new