By Balazs Koranyi
OSLO, April 27 (Reuters) – Robert Mood, the tall,
square-jawed and fair-haired Norwegian general heading the Syria
ceasefire observer mission, appears the archetypal cool Nordic
head who will use an image of impartiality to bridge what he has
called an “abyss of suspicion”.
Mood is a veteran of struggling Middle East truces and knows
Syria well. The stern-looking 54-year-old general weighs his
words carefully and listens attentively. He once warned against
peacekeepers’ acting like “an elephant in a glass house”
His job may be doomed, given mistrust in Syria. But he may
have the chance to achieve more than Sudanese general Mohammed
al-Dabi, who quit a failed Arab League mission in February,
stymied by diplomatic slip-ups and his country’s own poor rights
record.
“He (Mood) is a very firm and very clear in his statements,
he’s very difficult to misunderstand, said Kjell Inge Bjerga,
researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, who
has worked with Mood.
“He has remarkable diplomatic skills, which is unusual for a
general. He has the ability to speak the language of all the
sides.”
While he was in Damascus negotiating the deployment of the
advanced party of monitors with the government earlier this
month, Mood received a text message from his sister.
“Lucky you grew up between an older sister and a younger
sister, you turned out to be useful,” the message said
Mood has tested his skills with multinational forces in
Kosovo, and he is part of a tradition of Norwegian involvement
in Middle East peacekeeping. The country likes to see itself –
and its generals – as above suspicion when it comes to
diplomacy.
“Experience in the Balkans is very powerful experience given
the complexity of that situation,” said Paul Rogers, professor
of Peace Studies at Britain’s University of Bradford.
“And Norway has a reputation as a nation genuinely devoted
to peace. So a Norwegian comes in with added credibility.”
As head of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation
from 2009-2011, which monitors Middle East ceasefires, Mood
often visited Damascus and he is said to already have good
contacts with Syrian military officers.
“I fell in love with Damascus in 2009. I have never been
received with so much warmth,” he told Reuters in an interview
shortly after he was appointed to his new post. He described how
he could walk around the “dark alleys” of Damascus with his wife
and son and feel welcome and safe.
The capital is less safe these days. Seven people were
killed by a suicide bomber in the city centre on Friday, Syria’s
state-run news agency reported.
ELEPHANT IN A GLASS HOUSE
Mood told a Lebanese newspaper, The Daily Star, in 2009 that
his philosophy then as a UN truce monitor was “you don’t come in
like the elephant in the glass house and dictate to the people.
That doesn’t work”.
But his new posting will severely test him. While 300
observers are planned, so far there are only a handful, unarmed
and largely dependent on Syrian authorities for their safety.
With the violence continuing despite an ostensible
ceasefire, fifteen more monitors out of a total advance team of
30 were expected to arrive in Syria by Monday. Despite efforts
to speed up the deployment of the full mission, it is not
expected to get up to strength for several weeks.
Opposition sources and residents say that shelling by
government forces and retribution against local people increase
once observers have left any place they visit.
“It will be a hugely challenging position,” said retired
British Brigadier Ben Barry, who is now land warfare fellow at
London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“It’s not clear from a Security Council resolution what
responsibility there is on the Syrians to facilitate access for
the monitors. We don’t know how much flexibility you will have.”
The failed Arab League mission quickly ran into trouble
earlier in the year, despised by the Syrian opposition who said
it was simply a device to buy more time for President Bashar
al-Assad to try to crush demonstrators and armed rebels.
Things have not got any easier. An advance team for the
present U.N. observer mission were mobbed last week by angry
pro-Assad demonstrators who surrounded their vehicles as gunfire
erupted close by.
Mood, from tiny Krageroe on Norway’s southern coast, joined
the Norwegian army in 1979 and has served from 2005 to 2009 as
the army’s Chief of Staff. He has degrees from Norwegian and
U.S. military colleges.
He told The Daily Star that he had also worked as a U.N.
peace keeper in Lebanon during the 1980s, when the country
immersed in civil war.
Bjerga called him a “pioneer” about peacekeeping in the
Balkans, and others agree that experience was formative.
“He is a laconic, tough commander with a good background in
the Balkans although his conventional warfighting experience
will be limited,” said one European military officer who knows
him.
“When it comes to negotiating with the Syrian authorities he
will be no pushover. He will be robust, determined and pretty
singleminded.”
When first called to Syria, Mood was skiing with his family
in the mountains.
Like many Norwegians, he is keen on sailing and comes across
as something of a renaissance man in interviews, managing to
combine mentions of opera with talk about his work.
“A good opera is all about combining very different elements
into a piece that eventually becomes very impressive,” he told
Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
“It mirrors the team work we often carry out both in the
military and in international work.”
Mood says when got the call asking him to lead the
assessment team: “It was an easy choice to say yes.”
“It’s worth making the effort,” he said about his mission
and international envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan. “The Syrian
people deserve to have an opportunity.”
It also carries immense risks.
“These conditions are more or less the most difficult you
can expect … It is quite a risky career move for Mood,” said
Rogers.
(Additional reporting by Peter Apps in Washington and Louis
Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by
Alistair Scrutton; Editing by Giles Elgood)
