Since June, Sir Laurie Bristow has been our man in Kabul. Now the British ambassador is our man at Kabul airport who has become the hero of the hour for hundreds of Brits, dependents and Afghans now struggling to get away as the new Taliban regime tightens its grip.
The ambassador is reported to have been overseeing the processing of documents and visas. Sleeves rolled up, he has been signing and pushing the papers through himself, supervising a team of his own diplomats and young soldiers.
Sir Laurie is a diplomat’s diplomat of the modern sort – a diplomat who has managed to keep in the shadows yet who has had many exotic postings. He has been involved in security in Turkey, became ambassador to Azerbaijan, and from 2007 to 2010 was ambassador to Moscow in some of the “really difficult years” with Putin, as a colleague put it.
“I know nothing but good about him,” says Sir Rodric Braithwaite, himself a distinguished British ambassador in Moscow, and author of “Afghantsy” about the Russians in Afghanistan, an acclaimed bestseller. “He had no illusions about Putin, but had a deep knowledge of and sympathy for the Russian people.
“Some Russian acquaintances, brave people who until recently were writing and publishing in Moscow, tell me he’s the best ambassador we’ve ever had there.”
“He is really tough, and brave,” another friend explains, who was in Moscow at the time. “He did two tours, as deputy, then ambassador. He had to deal with the whole Litvinienko crisis.
“He may look like an accountant, but he does empathy with a quirky sense of humour. And he is, really, really bright.”
The only mild criticism comes from a somewhat snooty NGO director who claimed: “His Russian wasn’t all that fluent, and he continued to take lessons.” That can happen to any of us, I am sure. Bristow also learned Turkish when on mission there.
Much of his career has been focused on eastern and south-east Europe, the Balkans and Caucasus. A hint of something else is given in his educational details. After Colchester Royal Grammar School, he studied at Cambridge, going on to complete a rather esoteric PhD on “Ezra Pound and Public Performance” at the university. This was followed up with an MBA at the Open University.
What brought him to Kabul only two months ago? He seems to be on a rescue mission in more ways than one. He was sent in to Kabul as the Taliban offensive was beginning to cut through the north and close on the key centres like Kandahar and Herat. The Foreign Office seems to have been caught flat-footed – with very little prepared for an emergency exit visa programme and rescuing vulnerable employees and NGOs. “It’s pretty clear they needed him because he is so tough and bright,” says the friend from Moscow days. “He has been under absolutely no illusion what we have got with the Taliban – he’s a super realist.”
This is now the subject of recrimination within Whitehall with officials, some at the highest level, accusing the diplomats of serious incompetence and negligence.
Laurie Bristow, the quiet father of two, is on the other hand a symbol of decency and humanity, and quick and original thinking. It was reported before the weekend that he would follow ex-President Ashraf Ghani and the American Chargé by helicopter and plane out of Kabul. Getting to the airport on Sunday, he said he would stay to help manage the UK’s exodus programme for a long as he could – with rumours that he was preparing to stick around to 11 September, the ill-chosen time limit by the senescent Joe Biden. At the same time 300 extra UK troops were ordered in, and the Embassy said it hope to process at least 5,000 visa requests.
So the captain has stayed on the bridge and stuck with his ship, crew and country – all done with rare understated humanity. A former colleague said he was particularly moved by his ability to respond to requests he made about an Afghan friend in Herat.
“Yes, he gets it. He really does do empathy,” says the Moscow friend.
