In September 1990 Frèdèric Maurice became my assistant at the Directorate of Operations. His keen intelligence, his vast experience of operational matters and his communicative nature, coupled with a sense of constructive criticism, were always of invaluable help. Yet he found that his role as adviser, centred as it was on theory and analysis, was too inactive, too far removed from the decisions which shape the actual course of operations; because of this, every so often he felt the need to take the lead on an assignment in the field. In April 1991, for instance, he went to Iraqi Kurdistan and the Basrah region to assess needs in the aftermath of the Gulf war and launch major relief programmes there; in July 1991 he was in charge of prisoner exchange operations in Slovenia.