How a former politician and weapons advisor sees the situation in Iraq
Have you ever been to a dinner party where all the other (German) guests are discussing a specifically German person or event that you have never heard of? Where you look round for a friendly face to explain, but realize as the discussion gets increasingly heated (and your language skills become increasingly strained) that your only option is to put on an “interested” expression and sit this one out? Öffentliches Leben (public life) is the hardest nut to crack when living in a foreign culture. While it may not be desirable to understand every innuendo or know every story—Deutschland sucht den Superstar must belong in this category—there are times when we miss out on truly interesting phenomena, simply because nobody is willing to explain or thinks you may be interested. The former CDU (conservative) politician Jürgen Todenhöfer is one such phenomenon. Todenhöfer, whose recently published book Wer weint schon um Abdul und Tanaya? (roughly translated: Who Will Shed a Tear for Abdul and Tanaya?) is currently making the bestseller lists—you’ve probably seen the book at Hugendubel or Todenhöfer himself being interviewed on TV—is a singular and surprising person and his book is currently a hot topic at dinner tables all over Germany. A lawyer by profession, Todenhöfer began his political career at the age of 28, working as a secretary to a senior CDU politician. He did well in the CDU, working for a time in the department for development aid, where he set himself apart from his colleagues by actually visiting the developing countries to which aid was being given—“you never buy a car without giving it a test drive” he quipped recently by way of an explanation. Then, in the 1980s, Todenhöfer was appointed disarmament expert of his party and became known for his innovative ideas on East/West weapons reduction. In 1980 he also, strangely for a person of his seemingly hawkish political convictions, decided to visit Afghanistan so as to take a close and, it must be said, life-endangering look at the ferocious war of occupation being waged by the Russians against the Afghan people. Todenhöfer was shocked, not only by the carnage within the country, but also by the plight of the thousands of Afghans, trapped in the squalor of refugee camps in Pakistan. Though the politician was able to drum up a lot of public attention and support for a substantial financial-aid package on his return to Germany, the plight of the Afghan people gave him no rest and he made a number of subsequent visits to the country and the neighboring refugee camps. Then, in the late 1980s, Todenhöfer withdrew from politics to concentrate on his job in the upper management of the Burda Publishing group, and his connections to Afghanistan began to fade. With the attacks of 9/11 (his eldest daughter, Valérie, was staying in a hotel a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center on that day), however, and the subsequent war on Afghanistan, Todenhöfer felt compelled to step back into public life and make his voice heard. And it is the visits to Afghanistan and a recent trip to Iraq that provide the core to Wer weint schon um Abdul und Tanaya?. In mid-March Todenhöfer gave a reading from the book, organized by the Literaturhaus in Munich. Together with his 18-year-old daughter, Nathalie, the former politician not only read movingly of the plight of the Afghans and the Iraqis, but explained in layman’s terms why he considers the UN embargo against Iraq to be criminal and the planned war against that country madness. Instead he suggests: “A strategy that · combines toughness with justice, intelligence and magnanimity · rates the law higher than revenge · practices what it preaches” Todenhöfer is no peacenik. Dressed in a smart brown suit, very much an establishment figure, he openly admits to having hoped for a Bush victory at the last US election. Not that this detracts from his arguments, the opposite is true in fact. When Todenhöfer asks: “Are the lives of the 6,000 innocent Afghan civilians killed worth less than those of 3,000 innocent Americans?” or describes the operations performed on Abdul, a young, wounded Afghan, whom he flies to Germany for treatment: (“They peeled the skin from his head like a potato and cut small pieces out of the skin, which was transplanted back onto his burned body”), the reader knows that this is no trite journalistic commentary, but the words of someone who is prepared to look at unpleasant facts and real suffering in an attempt to understand our current dilemma over Iraq and Afghanistan. Seated on the stage, proudly watching his daughter read—while surreptitiously passing her a note telling her to read more slowly, Todenhöfer concludes the evening with the following scenario: On the first day of war Bush finds a letter on the breakfast table, that reads: “Dear Dad. Have decided to join pacifist friends in Iraq. Will be in Bagdad when you read this.”