A Season in Hell
Page 34
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is what it is because my editor at HarperCollins Canada, Jim Gifford, was able to conceive what it ought to be and then guide me toward that vision; because my meticulous copy editor, Camilla Blakeley, and rigorous proofreader, Sarah Wight, worked so assiduously with this neophyte author to provide clarity and consistency and focus to the manuscript; and because Noelle Zitzer, HarperCollins’ managing editor, had the compassion and foresight to bring it all together. I thank them for their patience and understanding and consummate professionalism.
Canada’s über-literary agent, Michael Levine of Westwood Creative Artists, has been an enthusiastic supporter and promoter of this project. He shepherded me through the maze and revealed the mysteries of the publishing business with flair and forcefulness. I am grateful for his wise counsel and amazing Rolodex.
Jennifer Pagliaro, a student at Carleton University’s School of Journalism, provided invaluable and generous assistance in producing the maps and plan of Camp Canada at the beginning of the book.
Ken and Odile Calder, my sister Robin Fowler-Anderson, Andrew Cohen, Charlotte Gray, Julie Beatty, Paul Durand, and all four of our daughters devoted huge amounts of time and energy to help me make this book as good as it could be and I am deeply grateful for their invaluable input. All the errors and omissions are very much my own.
Patrick Wilson and Melanie Provost of the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs kindly helped me with my initial research.
While she could not have done it alone, I know in my heart that my wife, Mary, brought me home figuratively and literally. Her love sustained me, and her strength and resolve pulled me through. Not only did she keep the home fires burning and the family strong and united but she went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that everything that could be done was being and would be done to win our freedom. In addition, she suffered the ravages of the two-year gestation of this book and assisted with the preparation of the manuscript in innumerable ways, offering sage advice while challenging everything. I am ever in her debt.
Our girls, Linton, Ruth, Antonia, and Justine, their partners, Rob, Joseph, Wayne, and Angus, and our grandchildren, Grier, Alice, Henry (and now George), proffered unstinting encouragement to Mary and each other through the dark months, and in every possible way did me proud by their love, strength, and resolve. Tony Gollob and Mike Flannery of the RCMP could not have provided more sympathetic and sensitive support to our family.
An enormous effort was mounted by our colleagues and our government to bring us home. There are, however, a handful of individuals whose insight, imagination, diplomatic skills and perseverance made the difference between an enormous effort and a successful one. Janet Graham, then the director general for Africa at DFAIT, extended heart and soul to Mary and Mai up to the point—a few weeks before our release—when she was suddenly posted to Addis Ababa, from where, terminally ill, she returned to Ottawa only a few months later. Her family saw too little of her during our kidnapping and lost her to cancer only a few months after our release. Isabelle Roy, the director of the West and Central African Division at DFAIT, strove mightily to cause African realities to be brought to bear as strategies were developed and deployed.
Ambassador Marc Lortie, Canada’s representative in France, and his wife, Patricia, extended every courtesy to Mary and cemented and sustained the active and touchingly engaged assistance of the French government in the search for effective solutions. Another friend and colleague of long standing, Jacques Bilodeau, was torn out of retirement to undertake repeated rounds of the face-to-face diplomacy that was crucial to our survival, engaging so rapidly as to leave his family and seventy-five invitees to the Bilodeau Réveillon de Nöel without a host.
In Ottawa, Anne Marie Doyle, Charles and Sandra Bassett, and my sister Robin, who showed up when needed from Vancouver, were there for Mary day and night. David Angell had the unenviable task of informing my family, through our youngest daughter, Justine, of my disappearance and kept in close touch with Mary, offering her constant support. So too did a couple of great pals from my days in the Defence department, now retired, Larry Murray and Keith Coulter. Paul Hunter and Jill and Don Sinclair were the best friends and neighbours anybody could hope for.
Kofi Annan extended his shoulder to Mary and offered to engage directly with a view to bringing our nightmare in the Sahara to the earliest possible conclusion, as did Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, and Paul Martin.
Our friends throughout the UN system—including a number of my former colleagues who represented their countries at the United Nations—provided Mary with encouragement and with as much hope as they could muster. My old friend Haile Menkerios recruited me for my ill-fated assignment, and offered Mary unstinting personal support and empathy, as did Niger Desk Officer Gumisai Mutume, who called a couple of times a week to make sure Mary was all right. Jean-Jacques Graisse and Isabelle Lierman guided Mary through the toughest times with fast friendship and vital knowledge.
Two of my oldest friends, Ivor and Elizabeth Roberts, tendered a steady stream of sage and measured advice from Oxford. My pal Ted Johnson supported Mary from Day 1 until the moment of our release, providing carefully modulated legal and communications advice and unflagging friendship, as did his wife, Sharon. From New York, Oscar and Didi Schafer extended generous and unstinting help to Mary in my absence and, following my release, safe havens in many lovely places in which to write. Perrin and Julie Beatty, Philippe and Chantal Lette, Valerie Amos, and Iqbal Riza, as always, were steadfast friends.
There are so many others in Canada and abroad in far-flung places throughout the world (not necessarily the most obvious) who, for all sorts of reasons, might not wish to be named in such a list of Fowler family personal heroes. I am deeply indebted to them and often to their families for their selfless and tireless endeavours on our behalf.
Bob Rae, then the Opposition foreign affairs critic, kept in close touch with Mary throughout our ordeal. He was discreet, sympathetic, wise, and ever accessible.
Prime Minister Harper and Governor General Michaëlle Jean took the time to maintain contact with Mary and Mai, offering them encouragement and every assistance. And so too did an absolutely startling array of the friends with whom we have been blessed, friends of our children, friends of their children and legions of friends we didn’t know we had.
I began my account by stressing the extent to which Louis Guay made this misadventure bearable, indeed, that I doubted I would have had a chance to write it had it not been for him. I must end it the same way. While he bears no responsibility for its creation or its content, this book is very much his as well as mine—a testament to our shared ordeal and enduring friendship.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I owe a debt to each of the following resources and acknowledge their contribution to this book.
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WEBSITES
Africa News1
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www.counterterrorismblog.org
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www.defenceviewpoints.co.uk
Ennahar Online
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European Interagency Security Forum
www.eisf.eu
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www.familysecuritymatters.org
Flashpoint Partners
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Magharebia
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PHOTO CREDITS
The photographs reproduced in the insert pages all appear courtesy of the author, except for those noted below:
Kofi Annan and Robert Fowler at the UN Security Council: Courtesy of the United Nations
Omar One: AQIM video
Mokhtar Belmokhtar: Courtesy of the Government of Mali
Al Jabbar: AQIM video
Imam Abdallah: AQIM video
Abou Isaac: AQIM video
Moussa: AQIM video
Harissa: AQIM video
Day 52 proof-of-life video: Courtesy of The Globe and MailLouis Guay and Robert Fowler wearing “serviettes”: AQIM
Mujahid making phone call: AQIM video
Robert Fowler’s SMS message: Courtesy of the CBC
Edwin Dyer: AQIM video
Michel Germaneau: Courtesy Enminal/Mairie de Marcoussis
Mustapha Chaffi: Courtesy of the Burkinabé Presidency
Baba Ould Cheik: Courtesy of The Globe and Mail
Liberation screenshot: AQIM video
Amadou Toumani Touré et al: AP Photo/Harouna Traore
Robert Fowler and Blaise Compaoré: Courtesy of the Burkinabé Presidency
Mary Fowler receiving Robert’s call:
Courtesy of Charles Bassett
Robert Fowler’s “before” photo: Courtesy of the RCMP
Mary and Mai at Ramstein Air Base: Courtesy of Colonel Tony Battista
A walk in Trier: Courtesy of Colonel Tony Battista
Robert and Louis’s farewell: Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, 2010. Reproduced with the permission of Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, represented by the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
The Fowlers with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: Courtesy of the United Nations
Photographic Insert
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and I confer during the Canadian presidency of the Security Council in February 1999, in Canada’s sixth term (1999–2000).
We left Niamey’s Grand Hotel early on Sunday, 14 December 2008, to visit the Samira Hill gold mine. We hoped to learn how resource revenues might be used to grease the skids of an eventual peace deal.
Around five o’clock in the evening on 14 December, we prepared to board this typically overcrowded ferry to cross the Niger River. Thirty minutes later we were prisoners of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Once aboard the ferry, Louis Guay began chatting up the captain, sailor to sailor. Here he is, fifteen minutes before our capture, in the clothes he would wear twenty-four hours a day until they disintegrated in the course of our captivity.
Omar One, left, was the commander of the AQIM mission whose soldiers kidnapped us from the outskirts of Niamey, the capital of Niger, on the evening of 14 December 2008. He was also the last captor we set eyes on as we left the desert 130 days later.
Mokhtar Belmokhtar, above, was the commander of the AQIM group, or katiba, that captured and held us. We named him “Jack,” as he was one-eyed. The scar across his right eye and cheek, allegedly acquired in Afghanistan, is visible even in this poor photograph.