Financial Times | January 2, 2009 Full Story at Financial Times (registration is free)

By James Harkin

Sometime in the late 1980s, a British embassy vehicle was inching its way through the mountains of Balochistan in Pakistan when angry tribesmen barred its path. The tribespeople were in dispute with the government over water rights and when they caught sight in the car of what they assumed was a British diplomat - who happened to be en route to a meeting with the district commissioner - they couldn't resist the idea of seizing him as a bargaining chip. Shortly afterwards the district commissioner's office took a call. "This is Alastair Crooke. I'm afraid I might be a little late," he apologised. "I've been kidnapped."

The district commissioner sent 12 Pakistani troops to retrieve Crooke, but they found him in no hurry to leave. He was, he said, going to stay put until something had been done about the tribesmen's complaints. The soldiers went away, but returned with reinforcements. In the meantime, however, news of the hostage-taking had spread to nearby villages and several thousand tribesmen, many of them armed, had turned up. Still, he refused to budge until his captors had a chance to air their grievances. The diminutive Crooke sat on a rock and read a book until the Balochis were happy for him to leave.

Crooke, who didn't tell me this story himself, plays down the kidnap now, attributing it to bad luck. He is certain of one thing, though - had he walked out of the Balochi village with those 12 Pakistani troops all of them would have been shot. Even if the tale has been embellished over time, it is revealing. Those tribesmen would scarcely have guessed it, but their hostage was not a "proper" diplomat. Working under the diplomatic cover of the British High Commission, he was in fact an agent of MI6, the British secret intelligence service, helping Mujahideen fighters to take on the Soviet army in Afghanistan . . .

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