The diplomat who shouldered weight of Syrian war

N Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, an international troubleshooter with decades of experience, refused to lose his professional optimism even though he held one of the toughest diplomatic jobs in the world.

In July 2014, de Mistura got a call from Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general at the time, asking the Italian-swedish aristocrat to become the mediator between Syria’s warring sides.

De Mistura’s predecessor, Algerian politician and UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, threw in the towel after less than two years, while former UN chief Kofi Annan lasted less than a year as the UN Syria envoy.

For more than four years de Mistura laboured through round after round of fruitless negotiations aimed at getting the warring parties to lay down their weapons.

“We will continue asking until we are red in the face, blue in the face for both sides... to stop shelling each other’s area,” de Mistura told reporters about a ceasefire effort earlier this year.

On Wednesday he told the UN Security Council in New York that he would leave the post by the end of November.

He was consumed in past weeks with preventing a bloodbath in Idlib, the last rebel-held region in Syria, engaging in conversations with stakeholders.

In his efforts to put an end to Syria’s seven years of violence, de Mistura, 71, navigated between world powers Russia and the United States; regional players; and the feuding factions within Syria.

With his dapper suits and the 19thcentury-style pince-nez that he recently exchanged for modern eyeglasses, the UN envoy may seem like a man who does not like to get his hands dirty, but he has not shied away from being controversial if needed.

He has been accused by rebels of favouring the government, appeared to anger Syrian President Bashar al Assad when he demanded an end to airstrikes, and he has offered to personally escort extremists out of Aleppo city.

De Mistura was born in Stockholm on January 25, 1947, the state lessson of an exiled Italian marquis and an equally aristocratic Swedish mother.

“I have always heard my father say how difficult it is to live far from your own land,” he has told Italian daily Il Piccolo. “That is why I have nurtured a strong sympathy towards all evacuees, migrants or refugees,” he said.

He attended an elite high school in Rome whose former students include ex-ferrari Chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.

De Mistura says he decided on an international diplomatic career after seeing the death of a 17-year-old by sniper fire in Cyprus, where he was serving as an intern for the UN World Food Programme.

Since the early 1970s, de Mistura has worked in conflict zones including Kosovo, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia for UN agencies.

Prior to his Syria assignment, he was UN special representative for Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011, followed by a stint as a junior Italian foreign minister until 2013.

The UN’S special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, announced on Wednesday that he is stepping down after labouring through round after round of fruitless negotiations aimed at getting the warring parties to lay down their weapons