全球十大最苦政治岗位

I couldn’t ignore the email inviting me to meet the person “with the worst job in global politics”. He wasn’t a world leader or a central bank governor. His name is Mohammed Mahdi al-Bayati and he’s the minister for human rights in Iraq. What could be more challenging than that?

我无法忽视那封邀请我与一位从事“全球政界最差工作”的人会面的电子邮件。他不是哪国的领导人或央行行长。他的名字是穆罕默德•马赫迪•巴亚提(Mohammed Mahdi al-Bayati)，他是伊拉克的人权部长。还有哪个工作能比这个更有挑战性呢？

He has to deal on a daily basis with horrific abuses against his people, ranging from killings to beheadings, from enslavement to torture. The government he works for can’t rely on a properly trained army, military capabilities or good neighbours. And while the minister’s experience in the field may be first hand — he was in opposition to a politial opponent of Saddam Hussein and many members of his family had been arrested and tortured — his staff and the security forces fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis ) need training in human rights, and he was in London to ask for help.

巴亚提的日常工作就是处理他的人民所受到的种种可怕虐待，范围从屠杀到斩首，从奴役到酷刑。他所服务的政府既缺乏受过适当训练的军队，也没有能依赖的军事能力或不错的邻国。巴亚提曾反对过萨达姆•侯赛因(Saddam Hussein)的一个政敌，他的多名家人遭到过逮捕和虐待，因此他在人权领域拥有第一手经验，但他的工作人员和安全部队需要接受人权培训来抵抗“伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国”(ISIS)，于是他来到伦敦寻求帮助。

I meet him at a Park Lane hotel and he tells me about the atrocities committed by the jihadis of Isis: the swathes of villages devastated, the churches destroyed, and the more than 3,000 women prisoners from the Yazidi sect taken hostage. “Some of the women were sold for cash, some are being bought by people who give them back to their families, some were made slaves to Isis leaders.”

我在公园径的一家酒店里见到了他，他告诉我ISIS的圣战者犯下的暴行：大片村庄陷入混乱，清真寺被毁，雅兹迪(Yazidi)教派的三千多名妇女被劫持为人质。“有些妇女被卖掉，有些人买下她们后将她们送还给她们的家人，有些妇女沦为ISIS头目的奴隶。”

The discussion takes an even more worrying turn, however, when we talk about why his country is facing this predicament. He absolves the former government of abuses against Iraq’s Sunni minority, which is widely acknowledged to be one of the factors that allowed Isis to thrive, and also dismisses the number of human rights violations committed by Shia militias as “tiny”. I leave the hotel thinking that he will still have the most awful job in the world a year from now.

然而当我们谈到为什么他的国家会面临这种困境时，谈话转向了更令人担忧的方向。他开脱了前任政府对伊拉克逊尼派少数群体的暴行，而这恰是人们广泛认为令ISIS发展壮大的因素之一，他还将什叶派民兵侵犯人权行为的数量斥为“微不足道”。我离开酒店的时候想，一年后他的工作仍将是全世界最可怕的。

I’ve been consulting colleagues in the past week about other examples of thankless political jobs. Here’s the list, including a few that are politically relevant, even if not strictly political.

前段时间我一直在与同事们讨论，还有哪些吃力不讨好的政治工作。以下是我们讨论出来的清单，其中有几个工作即使不是严格意义上的政治工作，但也与政治有关。

1. Walter Gwenigale, Liberia’s health minister, ousted last month, probably to his relief. His country has had the highest death toll from Ebola and he’s been the target of mounting criticism.

1. 利比里亚卫生部部长沃尔特•格韦尼盖尔(Walter Gwenigale)，虽然上月被罢免，但可能是他的解脱。他的国家的埃博拉(Ebola)患者死亡人数是最多的，令他成为众矢之的。

2. Ron Patrick, head of recruitment for the US Central Intelligence Agency. This was never an easy job but the scale of torture revealed in last week’s Senate report now makes it much harder. Imagine the grilling he will be receiving from applicants.

2. 美国中情局(CIA)招聘部门主管罗恩•帕特里克(Ron Patrick)。这本就不是一份容易的工作，但前不久参议院报告所公布的虐囚规模令这份工作更加艰难。可想而知，他将受到求职者怎样的盘问。

3. Lord Hill, Britain’s EU commissioner for financial services. He has to protect the City of London and promote eurozone integration when the UK is increasingly unpopular in Brussels, and might even be plotting its EU exit.

3.英国的欧盟(EU)金融服务专员希尔勋爵(Lord Hill)。英国在布鲁塞尔越来越不受待见，且甚至可能在策划退出欧盟，他却依旧得保护伦敦金融城和促进欧元区一体化。

4. Jonathan Blackman, Argentina’s lawyer in the long-running saga with hedge funds. The partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton has fought Argentina’s corner as it defaulted on debt to holdout creditors — and has had to contend with occasional surprises from his own client.

4.长期与对冲基金抗争的阿根廷律师乔纳森•布莱克曼(Jonathan Blackman)。在阿根廷对“钉子户”债权人违约时，这位佳利律师事务所(Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton)的合伙人一直维护阿根廷的利益，偶尔他还得面对来自他自己客户的“惊喜”。

5. Kim Jong Un’s hair stylist, a job done at great personal risk. The razor sides and high-top style became an export sensation this year after (unconfirmed) reports that North Korean men were ordered to adopt it.

5. 金正恩(Kim Jong Un)的发型师，这是一份需要冒着极大个人危险的工作。有报道称（未经证实）朝鲜男人被命令剪成金正恩头后，这种将两侧头发剃短、头顶梳高的发型造成了出口轰动。

6. Ashraf Ghani, president of Afghanistan. He spent weeks quarreling with a rival over the dubious results of the June presidential election and it took John Kerry, US secretary of state, to broker a deal that secured him the top job. He may soon regret his victory.

6.阿富汗总统阿什拉夫•加尼(Ashraf Ghani)。他与一位竞争对手就6月总统大选的可疑结果争吵了好几个星期，还是在美国国务卿约翰•克里(John Kerry)的促成下达成一项协议才得以保住他的最高职位。他可能很快会后悔自己的胜利。

7. John Kerry, US secretary of state. Hugely powerful job but relentlessly frustrating, particularly over the past year, in which Mr Kerry’s months-long pursuit of Middle East peace collapsed, as did his peace plans for Syria. Not to mention that the biggest global diplomatic crisis, over Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, is at a dead end while Iraq has imploded.

7.美国国务卿约翰•克里。这份工作拥有巨大的权力，但总是令人受挫，特别是在过去的一年，克里对中东和平长达数月的追求宣告失败，而他对叙利亚的和平计划也是如此。更不用提全球最大的外交危机——俄罗斯对乌克兰的干预——陷入僵局，还有伊拉克局面失控。

8. Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy for Syria. His “peace facilitation” job, to which he was appointed in July, is likely to prove as unachievable as the efforts of his predecessors, Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi.

8. 联合国(UN)秘书长叙利亚事务特使斯塔凡•德米斯图拉(Staffan de Mistura)。今年7月他被委以“促进和平”的重任，他很可能无法完成这一任务，就像他的前任科菲•安南(Kofi Annan)和拉赫达尔•卜拉希米(Lakhdar Brahimi)一样。

9. Mystery French scooter driver. Again, not a political appointment but François Hollande’s security guard was a key man in the president’s alleged nocturnal visits to his lover, an actor. The job involved long hours, furtive driving and the arms of the leader of France around his waist.

9. 神秘的法国摩托车司机。这同样不是政治工作，但在弗朗索瓦•奥朗德(François Hollande)夜会他所谓的情人——一位演员时，这位总统的保镖扮演了关键角色。该工作需要长时间守候、鬼鬼祟祟的驾驶，腰间还要环绕着法国领导人的胳膊。