Histories
February 2008: Meeting "M" (Montreux/Switzerland)
In February 2008, I was invited to speak about cybercrime at a “customer summit” held by McAfee Anti-virus in Montreux, Switzerland. Heading the Economic Crime Division of the Council of Europe, we had previously started cooperating with Microsoft in countering cybercrime. I accepted the invitation to further broaden engagement with and possibly funding from the private sector.
And indeed, following my discussions in Montreux with the then chief executive of McAfee, Dave DeWalt, that company launched a cybercrime initiative in October 2008, the Council of Europe subsequently received a financial contribution for capacity building activities and I became a “cybercrime fighter of the year”.
But back to Montreux: The summit was held at a medieval fortress, the Château de Chillon at the shores of Lake Geneva and was preceded by a dinner in this romantic castle.
As I joined for dinner, the organisers were somewhat nervous because they had just learned that their VIP guest had arrived in Montreux earlier than expected. They were wondering where to place and how to entertain her during dinner given that the McAfee leadership was not yet around. I volunteered to be her table neighbour. And this is how I spent an evening with “M”: Dame Stella Rimington.
Until the early 1990s, the identities of the heads of UK’s MI5 and MI6 were kept secret. When in July 1993 the name of the MI5 Director-General was made public, to general surprise, it happened to be a woman, namely, Stella Rimington. This, later on, encouraged the producers of the James-Bond-movies to modernise their characters, and in 1995, Judi Dench took over the role of “M” in Golden Eye.
A pleasant evening followed with Dame Stella sharing stories on how she got into the MI5, the reaction of the media – and of her neighbours panicking – upon her identity becoming public knowledge, and of her post-retirement career writing detective stories. I got a copy of her autobiography (“Open Secret”).
Actually, the fictional “M” of James-Bond would have been heading the external intelligence service MI6 and not the MI5; and so far, MI6 directors general have all been male. But these are details. The next day, Stella Rimington was still introduced to the meeting to the sound of Tina Turner’s “Golden Eye”.
PS: Dame Stella Rimington passed away on 3 August 2025 at the age of 90.
Histories
March 1995: Lunch with the Taliban (Helmand/Afghanistan)
By Spring 1995, the Taliban had consolidated their hold on Southern Afghanistan. They had made the city of Kandahar their HQ and taken over the province of Helmand in the Southwest. Fighting was still going on further north, in Nimroz province.
At the time, I was the deputy head of the regional office for Southwest Asia of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (which later on became UNODC) based in Islamabad, Pakistan. A few months earlier we had completed the first UN survey with data showing for the first time the enormous amount of opium produced in Afghanistan. The vast majority of opium-poppies was grown in Helmand and Nangarhar provinces.
Given the Taliban’s opposition to alcohol – they had started to bulldoze beer bottles – we were wondering what they were up to in terms of opium. So in March 1995, I travelled to Helmand to check.
And yes, the new poppy plants were small but clearly visible and cared for by farmers while Toyota pick-up trucks passed shipping Taliban fighters - dressed in white and equipped with RPGs and AK-47s - to the front line, and with fighter jets flying over the fields towards Nimroz.
The local Taliban leaders then invited me for lunch in the ruins of an administrative building in Lashkargah, the provincial capital. Most of them were former Mujaheddin and had one or more limps missing; everyone was sitting on the ground.
They were happy that I had a beard that was sufficiently long (so as not to be Shiite), that my first name was Alexander (because Alexander the Great got married in Afghanistan some 2320 years ago and plays a prominent role in the mythology of the Pashtun people) and that I was German (“Like us, Germans are Aryans”). They also thought that Germany should support the Taliban because Afghanistan had finished off the Soviet Union leading to German reunification.
When food was served, things became somewhat complicated:
Me: “Many thanks for the bread, but I don’t eat meat”.
Taliban: “Why not? Is it for religious reasons? What is your religion?”
(UN security guidance had been clear: don’t discuss religion with the Taliban!)
After some heated back and forth between them, I finally replied: “I believe in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” .
Not sure they understood but it settled the issue and permitted to finish the lunch in peace...
PS: I had difficult debates with the Taliban in Kandahar and Kabul about education for girls some years later.
Histories
August 1994: Landmines and the "clash of civilizations" (Kandahar/Afghanistan)
In mid-1994, Kandahar City – capital of the province of Kandahar – was basically divided into different sectors, each under the control of a Mujaheddin warlord (“famous commander”) with his militias. The surroundings of the city were controlled by yet other warlords. These militias were fighting against each other in ever changing constellations, with the civilian population in the cross-fire and the city in ruins.
In August 1994, as deputy head of the regional office for Southwest Asia of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) in Islamabad, I travelled to Kandahar to discuss our alternative development activities with local authorities. There had been some tensions over our ongoing opium-cultivation survey. And there were questions over a new movement - the so-called Taliban - that had began to emerge in other parts of Kandahar Province two months earlier.
Together with other UN staff, I spent the night at the UNICEF compound. Given that it was located just opposite the camp of one of the militias, we all slept in cots in the yard of the compound to prevent being buried in the rubble of a building in case it would be hit by rockets fired between militias.
In the cots next to me, some United Nations volunteers from Somalia and Libya discussed an article by Samuel P. Huntington on the “clash of civilizations” that had been published a few months earlier. Huntington posited that the clash of superpowers is replaced by the clash of civilizations: the West will lose its influence; Asiatic cultures will gain in economic, military and political power; there will be destabilisation through Islam; and Americans need to maintain their western identity and protect their culture against non-western societies. (In 1996, Huntington turned his article into a best-selling book). In this setting of Kandahar and Afghanistan with Muslims fighting Muslims, Huntington’s theses seemed particularly absurd.
The next day, when walking along a footpath through an open field outside the city, I was surprised that children coming along stayed strictly on this footpath, did not step onto the gras and came very close to move around me. This is when I learned that the field was heavily mined.
Further outside the city, on the road leading towards Helmand province, a team of Afghan experts working for a UN-funded demining programme was busy removing landmines. I had full admiration for these courageous individuals literally risking their lives every minute of their work to make local communities safer.
A few months after my visit, in November 1994, the Taliban conquered Kandahar city and made it their headquarters. On 7 October 2001, less than one month after “9/11”, US-led forces began to attack Afghanistan. Among the first Afghan victims were four staff of the demining office in Kandahar. It was hit by a missile. Their deaths never made the headlines.
Histories
February 1994: A dinner in Tehran (Iran)
The ongoing execution of political prisoners in Iran and the (unrelated) skirmishes between Iran and Pakistan in January 2024 across their common borders made me recall an episode from 30 years earlier:
In February 1994, I was leading a United Nations mission to prepare a technical assistance project to counter drug trafficking in the border triangle of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. Accompanied by Pakistani and Iranian generals and other officials, we started in Islamabad, proceeded to Balochistan, then across the Iranian border to Sistan-Baluchistan, and – after some adventures – finally to Tehran.
In Tehran, I had to host a dinner for Iranian counterparts. The chief guest sitting opposite me was a man with a black turban. He was introduced as a hojat-ol-eslam who was or had been the prosecutor general of Tehran. After some small talk he asked me out of the blue: “Do I look like a butcher?” I was puzzled: “Why do you ask?” Him: “Everyone calls me the butcher”. He then continued talking about his diet and pre-breakfast morning exercises.
It was only later on that I learned that his nickname was “the butcher of Tehran” because he is considered to be one of the main persons responsible for the execution of thousands of political prisoners in Iran between July and December 1988.
While there has never been justice for the victims of nor accountability for the 1988 massacre, that person is now the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi. And again, political prisoners are being executed in large numbers. Plus ça change …
Postscripts:
- 2024: On 19 May 2024, Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash.
- 2025: Political executions continue in Iran, including via public hangings.
- 2025: There is still no justice for the victims of the 1988 mass executions.