Robert Fowler's Season in Hell

First aired on The Current (3/11/11)

Canadian career diplomat Robert R. Fowler was kidnapped and held for almost five months by a West African affiliate of al-Qaeda -- and lived to tell the tale, in his new book A Season in Hell.

He was in Niger as a special envoy of the United Nations, charged with getting the rebels and government to agree to peace talks. On Dec. 15, 2008, he and his assistant, fellow Canadian diplomat Louis Guay, were abducted. In a recent interview on The Current, Fowler described what happened.

"I wanted to visit a gold mine about 90 kilometres from the capital, Niamey," Fowler told host Anna Maria Tremonti. "The reason I wanted to visit the mine was because if there was going to be a settlement between the government and the rebels, it would have to be 'lubricated' by mining revenues, which were effectively the only revenues in this, the third-poorest country in the world."

As dusk fell, the UN vehicle in which he and his group were travelling was suddenly passed by another truck, which pulled in front and blocked the road. "There were figures in the back of the truck with AK-47s aimed at the face of the driver."

Fowler and Guay were thrown into the back of the truck and driven 56 hours north, into the middle of the Sahara Desert. Thus began a terrifying 130-day ordeal.

"Every moment of every day I thought it could end badly," Fowler said. He feared that they would share the fate of Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and executed by al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. He added that whenever they were taken into a tent to do a video (they filmed several over the course of their captivity), "I would look to see if the carpets that would usually cover the sands in the tent were covered in plastic, because I thought they wouldn't soak their beloved carpets in blood in the middle of the desert."

As difficult as the situation was for Fowler, it also gave him insight into the workings of al-Quaeda. He remarked on the youth of the terrorists who held him, and commented, "I've never met a more focused group of people, let alone young men, in my life." He also saw an irony in the fact that they were equipped with modern, high-tech devices like satellite phones, cellphones and laptops, "and yet their mindset was deeply embedded in the seventh century."

The group's vision, Fowler said, was to turn a huge 7,000-kilometre band of African territory into "one vast, seething Somalia, and in the midst of that anarchy, they hoped to prosecute their vision and their message of one great Islamic caliphate."

Fowler suspects that the government of Niger played a role in his abduction. "I can't prove it, but many people in the region have told me this was the case." The president at the time, Mamadou Tandja, was nearing the end of his term in office, and he was barred from running again. He eventually suspended parliament, and was faced with rebellion.

The rebellion was in the north, far from the capital, but Tandja used it -- and indeed, the kidnapping of the UN officials -- as an excuse to stay in power.

Fowler points out that his abductors had the group's itinerary. "We later learned during our captivity they had been tracking us all day."

Fowler has mixed feelings about how the Department of Foreign Affairs and the RCMP handled the incident. "First of all, the Canadian government and my former colleagues in the Canadian public service got me out. I would be dead if they had not done what they did," he pointed out. "But when I found out how they had treated our families, I was appalled." They did not tell his wife he was alive for 47 days, even though they knew his situation through various sources.

The Canadian government has always insisted it did not pay a ransom. Though Fowler says he has no reason to doubt that, he also assumes that money did change hands. "They [al Qaeda] don't do humanitarian gestures," he said. "So it was going to be about money and/or release of prisoners, and there is a lot of press speculation about both those things. But somebody did [pay a ransom], or we wouldn't be here."

Now, Fowler is just grateful he doesn't suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and is enjoying life. "I happen to be one of the lucky ones," he said.

A Season in Hell

by Robert R. Fowler

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From the publisher:

"For decades, Robert R. Fowler was a dominant force in Canadian foreign affairs. In one heart-stopping minute, all of that changed. On December 14, 2008, Fowler, acting as the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy to Niger, was kidnapped by Al Qaeda, becoming the highest ranked UN official ever held captive. Along with his colleague Louis Guay, Fowler lived, slept and ate with his captors for nearly five months, gaining rare first-hand insight into the motivations of the world's most feared terror group. Fowler's capture, release and subsequent appearances have helped shed new light on foreign policy and security issues as we enter the second decade of the "War on Terror."

A Season in Hell is Fowler's compelling story of his captivity, told in his own words, but it's also a startlingly frank discussion about the state of a world redefined by clashing civilizations"

Read more at HarperCollins Canada.