RICHARD HOLBROOKE, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, died on Monday night, three days after he was taken to hospital with a torn aorta. He was 69 years old.
Mr Holbrooke’s death occurred in the week of a long-awaited Afghan policy review, to which he contributed. His passing complicates President Barack Obama’s attempts to stabilise “Af-Pak”, a term coined by Holbrooke, who believed the Afghan and Pakistani crises had to be treated in tandem.
With great difficulty, Mr Holbrooke tried to strengthen the civilian governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He believed the deployment of development aid and civilian officials to be as necessary as troop increases.
In the last assignment of a diplomatic career spanning half a century, Mr Holbrooke wrestled huge obstacles: government corruption; the opium trade; rigged elections; Pakistani nuclear weapons; the presence of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden; and the mercurial character of the Afghan president Hamid Karzai. Mr Karzai was sometimes so angered by Mr Holbrooke’s abrasive manner that he refused to see him.
Mr Holbrooke was the only member of the Obama administration to have known Vietnam, where he served as a junior diplomat. The New Yorkerlast year quoted his view that Afghanistan was "worse than the Nam".
His last words, to the Pakistani surgeon who operated on him for 21 hours, were, “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”
Mr Obama called Mr Holbrooke “a true giant of American foreign policy who has made America stronger, safer, and more respected”. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton called him “the consummate diplomat, able to stare down dictators and stand up for America’s interests and values even under the most difficult circumstances”.
Mr Holbrooke twice served as an assistant secretary of state – for Asia under Jimmy Carter and for Europe under Bill Clinton – and was US ambassador to Germany and to the United Nations. But the post he wanted most eluded him. As Mrs Clinton’s foreign policy adviser during her 2008 presidential campaign, he hoped to become secretary of state if she won. Instead, she got the top diplomatic job and chose Holbrooke as “Af-Pak” representative.
Mr Holbrooke was the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany and Poland. He served every Democratic president since John F Kennedy, leaving government during Republican administrations to work as a writer, commentator and investment banker.
In 1995, Mr Holbrooke negotiated an end to the Bosnian war, after up to 200,000 people had been killed in the former Yugoslav republic. It was his greatest diplomatic achievement. He tried and failed to prevent the Kosovo war four years later.
Following the horror of the Srebrenica massacre in the summer of 1995, Mr Holbrooke spent three months shuttling between the Croatian and Bosnian presidents, Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic, and the Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, with whom he drank cognac late into the night.
When criticised for talking to Milosevic, who later stood trial for war crimes in The Hague, Mr Holbrooke said he had no qualms about “negotiating with people who do immoral things” because “if you can prevent the deaths of people still alive, you’re not doing a disservice to those already killed”.
A larger-than-life figure, he slept little, seemed to live on aircraft and was notoriously vain. “He’s the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met. But maybe he’s the right guy for the job,” Vice-President Joe Biden said when Mrs Clinton proposed Mr Holbrooke for the “Af-Pak” job, according to Bob Woodward.
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger once remarked, “If Richard calls you and asks you for something, just say yes. If you say no, you’ll eventually get to yes, but the journey will be very painful.”