Tribute by Régis Koetschet
Dear friends,
‘Where is the land of promises?’ asked the writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach as she left Afghanistan, the country she loved so much and where she hoped to find the absolute, the beauty of eternity.
Dear Pierre, (we, his colleagues in the Department, his friends in solidarity associations), you invited us to see the world as a ‘land of promise’, a land of promises, of wonder, of respect.
You have served, from the Ocean to the Gulf, men el muhit ila el khalij, as they say, and even beyond on the Silk Roads, to the ‘centre of the inhabited world’, dear to the emperor Babur.
The desert, the Mediterranean, the Levant, the Orient – legendary lands, as Malraux would say, that call for curiosity and openness, but also high standards and sensitivity, nourished by erudition and culture. Laugh with God, says the Sufi.
Your wisdom was there – you liked to recall the wisdom of the farming communities in the Afghan valleys, skilful at debating and turning over every stone. You understood the complexity of the situations in which you were involved, whether religious, ethnic or ideological. To these analyses you added tenacity and the strength of your convictions.
The goal of the rider of the bouzkachi is ‘the circle of justice’. Your objective has always been to seek peace, dialogue and the promotion of human rights.
Having worked with you, I know that this is a difficult path. That the long view, that of societies, on which lasting relationships can be built, is too often neglected in favour of immediacy, the dangers of which you were well aware.
Where is the land of promise?
You have tirelessly urged us to return to the fundamentals that nurture us. People, especially the most vulnerable, heritage, education, culture – from the libraries of Chinguetti to the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara. Your writing has been with you until recently, and we will read your account of Afghanistan with great emotion.
Ô Civilisation is the magnificent title of a previous work, as if born in the desert. We find you dazzled, fascinated and tormented. Today, the violence of the roads of exile that you travelled at the Cour nationale du droit d’asile (National Court of Asylum) has marred this sand, which you describe as both limpid and sombre.
You are leaving us, dear Pierre, at a time when our ‘Orient of Promises’ is very ill.
I can imagine how trying these wounds have been, from Gaza to Kabul, in addition to your own. The madness of men, the violence of behaviour, the excessiveness of words.
Faced with the ‘darkness, solitude and despair’ of which the poet-philosopher Bahoudine Madjrouh speaks, you may have had your doubts.
But with determination and courage, you preferred to get on your bicycle and consider with Jacques Berque that a cause is never lost. This is the message you leave us. It bears your gentle gaze, your silences, your inner strength. Peace in the Middle East and justice in Afghanistan cannot be lost causes.
We will strive to be faithful to you.
Tribute by Eric Lavertu
Pierre Lafrance, the French ambassador who died on 31 August at the age of 92, was a great diplomat and a discreet scholar, but also a profound humanist and an ardent campaigner for human rights. In the corridors of the Quai d’Orsay, on the benches of universities and research centres, as well as on the premises of the Cour nationale du droit d’asile, where he sat, and in the countries to which he was assigned, the memory of his tall figure will live on.
Born in Tunis at the time of the protectorate, into a family accustomed to the Muslim world (father an administrator in Tunisia, grandfather an engineer on the Suez Canal), Arabic was for him a familiar music that undoubtedly shaped his taste for the Orient. The Ecole Nationale des Langues Orientales (INALCO since 1971) gave him a deeper knowledge of Arabic and, after passing the competitive examination for the Foreign Service in 1964, he found himself in Algeria as a young diplomat witnessing Boumédiène’s coup d’état against Ben Bella.
He was also a spectator of the upheavals in the Muslim world, in Tripoli when the old King Idris was overthrown by the fiery Colonel Gaddafi in 1969, in Afghanistan when Prince Daoud overthrew his cousin King Zaher Shah in 1973, and much later in Pakistan when Benazir Bhutto was deposed in 1996. This expert on the Arab world went on to serve in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and later as ambassador to Mauritania. From 1980 to 1985, as advisor to the Institut du Monde Arabe, which was then under construction, his negotiating skills came in very useful to an establishment that was a unique forum for exchanges between France and Arab countries.
Curiously, it was in the Persian world that this Arabist had his most striking experiences. First in Iran, a country he travelled extensively between 1969 and 1972, at the time of the ‘white revolution’ led by the Shah to modernise the country, and then, fifteen years later, as head of post, when he discovered Khomeini’s Iran, which had replaced the Shah. Iran was at war with Iraq. Paris supported Baghdad, and diplomatic relations with France broke down between July 1987 and June 1988. Pierre Lafrance remained locked up for several months in the French embassy in Tehran and tried to settle the very delicate Franco-Iranian nuclear dispute. The matter was finally resolved in December 1991, when he was appointed head of North Africa and the Middle East at the Quai d’Orsay.
He discovered and loved Afghanistan in 1972. Fascinated by the country, he remained attached to it throughout his life, including during his last diplomatic posting, in Pakistan, then led by Benazir Bhutto. His proximity to Afghanistan allowed him to reconnect with his ‘beloved country’, which was plagued by internal struggles between the Mujahedin, the emergence of the Taliban, whose existence he was one of the first to point out, and the appetites of regional powers. He was the wise man consulted by all those involved in the conflict. In his large office, with its floor covered by an immense Afghan carpet, the discussions between the many and often colourful interlocutors would drag on and on.
In recognition of this long and remarkable career, Pierre Lafrance was elevated to the dignity of Ambassador of France on 9 December 1996, before retiring in August 1997. During his retirement, he never counted the support he gave to associations committed to Afghanistan. An old friend of AFRANE (Amitié franco-afghane) and CEREDAF (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Documentaires sur l’Afghanistan), he was chairman of MADERA (Mission d’aide au Développement des Economies Rurales en Afghanistan), for which he travelled to the field.
However, he never stopped regretting the failure, in 2001, of his mission to save the Buddhas of Bamyan. Dispatched, probably too late, by UNESCO to Kandahar to work with the first Taliban government to protect this universal treasure, he was unable to do anything. In recent months, despite his fatigue, he has been completing a history of Afghanistan, which we hope will be published soon.
Eric Lavertu, President of AFRANE (Amitié Franco-Afghane)