Sikhs and Jains, Parsis and Jews. The family door was always open, and their home full of visitors dropping by for tea and often staying on for dinner. Hussein and his younger brother Omar were privately educated in a school modeled on Eton, the training ground for Britain’s ruling class, just outside the city. Even now, the SG still used the idioms and slang of the 1940s Raj, an affectation that he carefully, and secretly, cultivated by regularly reading P. G. Wodehouse novels.
Hussein’s comfortable world vanished in the violence of partition in August 1947. Families of mixed religious and ethnic heritage, like his, were often the first targets of extremists from both sides. The Husseins fled to Zurich, Switzerland, where Ahmad had business contacts who helped him obtain residence permits for everyone. Fearing the worst, Ahmad had already sent most of the family’s money out of India. But the bank was gone. So was their house in Delhi, their summer home in the mountains, all their wordly goods, apart from the contents of their suitcases. Worst of all, they lost Omar. He disappeared in the chaos at Delhi Station and was never heard from again. There was a photograph of Omar on Hussein’s desk: a skinny, bright-eyed boy, six years old, with a winning smile. Next to it was a framed half of a postcard of the Taj Mahal that had been torn in two. Even at the age of seven Fareed Hussein had already sensed the coming cataclysm. He had bought the postcard, solemnly torn it into two, and handed one half to Omar on the terrace of their Delhi villa one Sunday morning. The brothers had pledged to keep their halves for life if they were separated.
From Zurich, Hussein and his parents had eventually moved to London, where he studied at the London School of Economics. He worked as an investment banker in Frankfurt and New York, before joining the UN in the early 1990s as finance director of the UN Refugee Agency. His appointment had come out of the blue, as he had no experience with any humanitarian, public policy, or development organizations. But his opponents soon learned that his faux-aristocratic mannerisms hid a ruthless, silken operator. Hussein swiftly moved from finance to the far more glamorous and influential field of policy-making and began his steady ascent up the UN ladder. By the early 1990s he was assistant secretary-general in the Department of Political Affairs. The DPA was the most powerful UN department. It decided everything from which country’s cuisine would be featured in the week’s menu at the staff canteen, to the agenda of the Security Council meeting—which meant the DPA helped shape the superpowers’ response in a crisis. Most DPA officials dealt with a particular region of the world. But Hussein carved out a global role for himself, and quickly made a name as an intermediary between Britain, France, and the United States on one side and Russia and China on the other. Hussein soon became known across the organization for being an arch-conciliator. His prime concern always seemed to be keeping the P5 happy by avoiding anything that might run counter to their aims.
After the Department of Peacekeeping split off from the DPA in 1992, there were fears that the peacekeepers, newly emboldened by their own mini-empire, might take a more robust approach, open fire when threatened or obstructed, and prioritize saving lives over the UN’s fabled neutrality. Which is why the P5 ensured that Hussein, who had no military or peacekeeping experience, was appointed head of the new DPKO. Yugoslavia was ablaze and the Hutu genocidaires were already planning their mass slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda, but Hussein’s primary concern, publicly at least, was to ensure that the neutrality of the UN, which he liked to describe as “sacred,” was not violated. Hussein made much of his personal history, and often referred to his own experience as a refugee in his speeches and articles. Several chapters of his memoir, My
Hussein’s comfortable world vanished in the violence of partition in August 1947. Families of mixed religious and ethnic heritage, like his, were often the first targets of extremists from both sides. The Husseins fled to Zurich, Switzerland, where Ahmad had business contacts who helped him obtain residence permits for everyone. Fearing the worst, Ahmad had already sent most of the family’s money out of India. But the bank was gone. So was their house in Delhi, their summer home in the mountains, all their wordly goods, apart from the contents of their suitcases. Worst of all, they lost Omar. He disappeared in the chaos at Delhi Station and was never heard from again. There was a photograph of Omar on Hussein’s desk: a skinny, bright-eyed boy, six years old, with a winning smile. Next to it was a framed half of a postcard of the Taj Mahal that had been torn in two. Even at the age of seven Fareed Hussein had already sensed the coming cataclysm. He had bought the postcard, solemnly torn it into two, and handed one half to Omar on the terrace of their Delhi villa one Sunday morning. The brothers had pledged to keep their halves for life if they were separated.
From Zurich, Hussein and his parents had eventually moved to London, where he studied at the London School of Economics. He worked as an investment banker in Frankfurt and New York, before joining the UN in the early 1990s as finance director of the UN Refugee Agency. His appointment had come out of the blue, as he had no experience with any humanitarian, public policy, or development organizations. But his opponents soon learned that his faux-aristocratic mannerisms hid a ruthless, silken operator. Hussein swiftly moved from finance to the far more glamorous and influential field of policy-making and began his steady ascent up the UN ladder. By the early 1990s he was assistant secretary-general in the Department of Political Affairs. The DPA was the most powerful UN department. It decided everything from which country’s cuisine would be featured in the week’s menu at the staff canteen, to the agenda of the Security Council meeting—which meant the DPA helped shape the superpowers’ response in a crisis. Most DPA officials dealt with a particular region of the world. But Hussein carved out a global role for himself, and quickly made a name as an intermediary between Britain, France, and the United States on one side and Russia and China on the other. Hussein soon became known across the organization for being an arch-conciliator. His prime concern always seemed to be keeping the P5 happy by avoiding anything that might run counter to their aims.
After the Department of Peacekeeping split off from the DPA in 1992, there were fears that the peacekeepers, newly emboldened by their own mini-empire, might take a more robust approach, open fire when threatened or obstructed, and prioritize saving lives over the UN’s fabled neutrality. Which is why the P5 ensured that Hussein, who had no military or peacekeeping experience, was appointed head of the new DPKO. Yugoslavia was ablaze and the Hutu genocidaires were already planning their mass slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda, but Hussein’s primary concern, publicly at least, was to ensure that the neutrality of the UN, which he liked to describe as “sacred,” was not violated. Hussein made much of his personal history, and often referred to his own experience as a refugee in his speeches and articles. Several chapters of his memoir, My
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