Svenska Dagbladet-Ambassador for countries that don't exist
Svenska Dagbladet
Jenny Nordberg, 21 September 2009
"I couldn't speak one word of Arabic and I had never been to Iraq. But I was send to negotiate laws that would govern the country."
Carne Ross was the British governments most prominent Iraq Expert. He had been schooled for the UN in New York, and he did his best. It was perfectly normal to both discuss and take decisions on the matters of others, Ross soon learned. 80% of the matters that were on the table were about non-state actors who often missed a government and recognized borders. Mostly the matters could even be negotiated by professional diplomats, representing almost all the corners of the world, but the places the diplomats were making decisions about, rarely got the chance to be heard.
A couple of years later Ross left his job, when he understood that even the British government lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He walked out on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London as a free man, with a small idea about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
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