Tomorrow there will be Apricots: Memoirs of an Australian diplomat in the Arab world

Retired Australian diplomat Robert Bowker is among a group of diplomats, academics, and journalists from various countries whose careers of over 50 years have coincided with my own life journey across the Middle East, Europe and North America.

His memoir that was recently published in Australia, Tomorrow there will be Apricots: an Australian diplomat in the Arab World, does what the best journalists should do – offer readers facts, reveal relevant new details, recount captivating human and cultural encounters, speak truthfully about complex and controversial political issues, and offer some useful conclusions or advice for younger generations.   

Bob Bowker’s book is a must-read for anyone involved in the Middle East, because of the breadth, depth, and honesty of the issues it covers. Its four different strands collectively capture the professional diplomat’s universe and the realities of Middle Eastern societies and politics. Three of the four are routine for such a book; but one – inside accounts of how one western government makes decisions on Israel/Palestine policy – is exceptional. 

"Bob offers evidence-based examples of how important it is to balance the identities, cultures, histories, values, and memories of locals, with the principles, policy aims, and domestic political forces that shape the diplomat’s home country"

His memoir can be categorised into the following parts. Narrative accounts, starting from the age of 21 in 1971, of diverse assignments in the Australian foreign service, including seven in Arab-Asian lands and half a dozen at home, spanning foreign policy, trade, defence and security, and stints at the Australian National University.

Bob's experiences offer good examples of how to learn about new countries and their human and political dynamics (listen a lot, value culture and history, and get out into the provinces).

His narrative of dealing with two really tough emergencies he faced (a bus crash that killed and injured Australians near Cairo, and working to release an Australian who had been unjustly detained in Kenya) combines a thriller and a case study of diplomatic logistics when every minute matters.    

Secondly, Bob offers evidence-based examples of how important it is to balance the identities, cultures, histories, values, and memories of locals, with the principles, policy aims, and domestic political forces that shape the diplomat’s home country.

From his first days abroad, he recounts, he focused on the human and cultural dimensions of the people in the Arab countries where he was posted,  “the human qualities of the region – its humour, warmth, and resilience – rather than its conflict-ridden popular imagery.”

Finally, throughout his review of his professional life, and in a separate section at the end, he analyses a few big issues that still challenge the Arab people (and by extension, also should concern foreign states).

These include achieving equal justice for Palestinians and Israelis; focusing during negotiations on interests that can be identified and managed, rather than beliefs that are fundamentally non-negotiable; and how Arab societies can enjoy effective and humane governments, with pluralism, creativity, and human rights that would allow the fast-growing Arab populations to resolve their worsening economic, social, political and environmental challenges.

Bob concludes correctly that, “None of the current leadership of the major Arab states and Iran have answers to the problems of legitimacy and governance, let alone the growing impact of climate change and other matters beyond their control.” This theme recurs throughout the book, as it should, given its centrality to the Arab predicament that plagues all the non-energy-producing countries.

He says that “the phenomenon of rule by oppression and co-optation, rather than genuine political authority, will further damage their capacity to realize the full potential of their citizens and resources,” presciently adding for good measure that this legacy will expand the possibilities for external interference by neighbours (his examples are Saudi Arabia in Bahrain and the UAE in Yemen and Libya). He also acknowledges that external military interventions in recent decades, “have contributed to making it harder for western countries to make a positive difference in the region.”

Such clarity and honesty recur throughout the book, on topics that are sensitive to both Arabs and foreign officials. This reaches its peak in Bowker’s description of what he calls “the most difficult period of my career from a professional perspective.” He describes in detail when in 1996, after the Labor Party’s election loss and a new Liberal Coalition government headed by John Howard, he fought to defend an established Australian government approach to support Palestinian self-determination and, if they choose, statehood.

"The key lesson, for me at least, was that in the formulation of Middle East policy, including in the Australian context, expert inputs from diplomats, officials and analysts were unlikely to determine policy outcomes"

The episode included “a shouting match” between him and Michael Thawley, the prime minister’s foreign policy adviser, at a major dinner in Melbourne hosted by the Zionist Federation of Australia/United Israel Appeal.

This happened because the speech was amended by the Howard government to downplay the Palestinian statehood option, referring to it as a “possibility”. Bowker tried to stick to the established government position and learned later that direct behind-the-scenes moves by the prime minister resulted in the speech’s reduced commitment to Palestinian rights.

He concluded: “The key lesson, for me at least, was that in the formulation of Middle East policy, including in the Australian context, expert inputs from diplomats, officials and analysts were unlikely to determine policy outcomes (…). Where Israel is concerned, even the best-honed presentations of officials and experts had little chance of shaping outcomes unless they happened to correspond, even fortuitously, with US presidential or Australian prime ministerial instincts.”

Bob spells this out more explicitly towards the end of the book, saying that public policy issues, “are rarely addressed in Canberra on their foreign policy merits: they are primarily issues of domestic political policy in which the views of those who are strongly supportive of Israeli views and concerns vastly outweigh all others.”

Many people around the world have been saying this about most western governments for the half-century that Bowker was at work, so it is refreshing to read factual accounts of this from a practitioner who cared deeply about his country and the Middle East.

The book ends with some powerful reflections and advice on how important it is for Australia to remain consistent with other western countries on principles that many inside the Arab region share, like the importance of the rule of law, promoting participatory democracy and human rights, safeguarding multilateral cooperation – and other noble goals that many Arabs do not see western states applying in practice in their foreign policies.

Bob Bowker’s honest analysis of his experiences in the Australian foreign service has done a service to all Australians, and to those elsewhere who work with or care about the Middle East. His own encounters with policy-making that are sometimes shaped by foreign rather than domestic national interests are valuable in themselves; it is matched by his thorough analysis of the key domestic and regional issues that shape the harsh conditions across the Arab region, and why foreign powers’ military interventions or support for Arab autocrats only make things worse, in most cases.

Rami G Khouri is co-director of the American University of Beirut’s Global Engagement Initiative and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative.

Follow him on Twitter: @ramikhouri