Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (66 page)

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Authors: Samantha Power

BOOK: Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World
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A week later Bremer announced his second fatal move: the disbanding of the Iraqi army. More than 400,000 Iraqi soldiers and officers, only some of whom were actually loyal to the previous regime and most of whom had families to support, were let go.
36
Bremer justified the move on the grounds that he was only formalizing a dissolution that had already occurred spontaneously. But in a matter of days the CPA had dissolved the two primary instruments for governing the country. The seeds for Iraq’s implosion had been planted.
 
 
RETURN TO THE UN
 
 
Although security in Iraq had begun to deteriorate, even U.S. critics still saw the Coalition invasion as a military success. None of the calamities that the French, Germans, and Russians had forecast in Iraq had yet materialized. Flush with their victory and eager to cement it by receiving the international blessing denied them before the war, U.S. officials returned to the UN Security Council in New York to try to get a resolution passed that would legitimize U.S. and British rule. One official at the French mission recalls the American attitude: “They said, ‘We told you it would take one month to topple Saddam, and we’ve done as we said.’” European governments had many reasons to want a fresh UN resolution passed in the war’s aftermath: They wanted to mend fences with the Americans; to ensure that their companies were not shut out of the postwar reconstruction and oil contracts; to signal their support for a democratic and stable Iraq; to bind the Americans to the Geneva Conventions by forcing them to acknowledge that, under international law, they were technically occupiers (not “liberators”); and to try to give the UN (which they trusted more than they trusted the Americans) a significant role in shaping the new Iraq.
 
 
Whatever Europe’s aspirations, U.S. diplomats largely dictated the terms of the new Security Council resolution. After three weeks of negotiations the countries that had opposed the war back in March agreed to recognize the United States as the occupying authority in Iraq, which many interpreted as a belated show of UN support for the American and British invasion. While the UN resolution did oblige the occupiers to abide by the Geneva Conventions, the resolution effectively superseded the traditional legal rules of occupation by giving the Americans and British the right to choose Iraq’s political leadership and transform Iraq’s legal, political, and economic structures.
37
It also called on other UN member states to contribute personnel, equipment, and other resources to the Coalition’s effort.
 
 
In advance of the resolution’s passage, one diplomat noted how radical the resolution was. “The Security Council would be legitimizing the occupation of the territory and state functions of one member by a group of other members,” he said. “That has never happened before.”
38
“Occupation was a goldmine,” recalls a U.S. official. “The UN and the Europeans wanted us to accept our responsibilities as occupying powers, and by doing so, we got things we never thought we’d get through the Council: oil revenues, day-to-day functioning of ministries, power over the armed forces.We were thrilled. We hadn’t found a way to legally get at Iraqi oil until the UN led us there. It was a dream come true for the Pentagon. The Europeans didn’t really understand what we were getting out of the resolution. It was only much later that they went, ‘Fuck, we voted for this thing?’ ”
 
 
The one aspect of the resolution that the Europeans could point to as a U.S. concession was the appointment of a UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq who would play a role in setting up an “Iraqi interim administration.” Still, even this UN envoy was made subservient to the Coalition. He had none of the powers of Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy to Afghanistan who had helped select that country’s first president. Annan’s advisers were split on whom he should choose to fill the limited role. Several of them believed that he should send a junior official, a person whose rank was more commensurate with the minimal responsibilities that the Coalition seemed willing to offer the UN.“Are the Americans actually going to create a space for us to play a political role,” Under-Secretary-General Prendergast asked, “or are they intent on doing everything themselves and just appropriating the UN decal?” He urged Annan to select an Arabic speaker. “If a mob comes toward you, and you don’t understand what they’re saying, you can’t even read the road signs in the place, you’re going to be in trouble,” he argued. The British, who still hoped the UN could play a truly vital role in Iraq, urged Annan to appoint a high-profile UN envoy. Annan told Jeremy Greenstock, the British ambassador to the UN, that he was considering appointing the former president of Costa Rica. Greenstock shook his head and advised, “We are really talking about Sergio.”
 
 
“SERGIO WILL FIX IT”
 
 
Greenstock and others close to Annan believed that if the secretary-general did not send somebody of Vieira de Mello’s stature, the United States would walk all over the UN. Vieira de Mello was not an Arabic speaker, but he brought enough hands-on technical expertise to compensate. “It is very strongly in the Secretary-General’s and the UN’s own interest to have as effective and credible a representative as possible,” an aide to Annan wrote in an internal memo, “one who can interact authoritatively with the Coalition representatives on the ground, and demonstrate to the broader international community what a UN representative can add to such a process.” Although the Americans preferred Vieira de Mello, the aide wrote, this should not deter Annan from appointing him. Rather, the secretary-general should take heed of the fact that from an Iraqi perspective Vieira de Mello was the best man for the job.
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Annan was not yet persuaded. He was leaning toward appointing Kamel Morjane, the Arabic-speaking senior UNHCR official who then held the post that Vieira de Mello had once held at UNHCR, that of assistant high commissioner for refugees. But on May 16 Morjane read a
New York Times
story by Elizabeth Becker, who quoted a senior diplomat on the Security Council saying that Vieira de Mello was “the man Washington wants.” The two friends met in Geneva’s Old Town for Sunday morning coffee, and Morjane told him, “Sergio, be careful. Even if you end up having to go to Iraq, this kind of publicity is not good for you. If the interveners are endorsing you, you will be seen as their tool.” Vieira de Mello agreed. “I know,” he said. “Kamel, if you are my friend, you will tell everyone you know that I don’t want to go.”
 
 
Vieira de Mello was torn. He took seriously the line in his contract that required him to serve wherever the secretary-general sent him. He also made no secret of missing the action. In Geneva he spent his days restructuring his office, meeting with diplomats, giving speeches on the centrality of human rights, and making recommendations to his small teams in the field. It was a desk job. He felt removed from Iraq, one of the most wrenching geopolitical crises of his lifetime. Although he had long ago stopped admitting his aspiration to become secretary-general, he must have known that his stock would rise significantly if he helped stabilize Iraq. He also knew that he was the best man for a bad mission and could, without arrogance, observe that he had more experience managing postconflict transitions than any other person in the UN system. He could tap these skills to serve the Iraqi people, who had suffered enough.
 
 
But for all the obvious appeal, a great deal held him back. He was just settling into his new job, and if he ran off to Iraq, the already-suspicious human rights community would pounce. He had just turned fifty-five and had finally begun to focus on his personal life. On May 16, the same day the Becker story appeared, Annie and he had appeared before a divorce tribunal. A year and a half after he first filed for a legal split, the judge ordered the division of the family property, giving Annie the house in Massongy and requiring Vieira de Mello to pay a substantial monthly stipend.
 
 
As the days passed and the countries on the Security Council refined the text of the resolution,Vieira de Mello saw that the odds that he would be summoned were increasing. So he took matters into his own hands: He telephoned Iqbal Riza, Annan’s chief of staff. “Iqbal, if my name comes up on lists for Iraq, please take it off,” he said. “I can’t go to Iraq. I need to finish my divorce. I can’t send that signal to the human rights community. And I didn’t believe in this war.” Riza told him that he understood and would oblige. In Vieira de Mello’s mind, the matter was settled.The day of his court appearance, Peter Galbraith, his colleague in East Timor and an expert on the Iraqi Kurds, sent him an e-mail offering to brief him on Iraq, and he wrote back, urging Galbraith not to believe what he read in the press, and stressing, “Hope not to need your briefing.”
40
When Steven Erlanger of the
New York Times
inquired, he wrote back, “I can’t seriously drop my current (eight-month-old) job and go off on another adventure. Moreover, the mandate, as far as I can tell, does not look right to me.”
41
 
 
Riza told Morjane that he was on the short list for the job. Unlike Vieira de Mello, Morjane had close ties to his home government, Tunisia, and owing to the political sensitivities of an Arab national taking up a post in occupied Iraq, he would have to clear any such appointment with his president. “Going to Iraq for the UN would not be like going to Australia or Peru,” Morjane recalls. He quietly made arrangements to fly home to see President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali two days later.
 
 
On Sunday, May 18, Vieira de Mello went jogging around Lake Geneva with his assistant Jonathan Prentice. After the run, they sat in the grass to stretch, and Prentice urged his boss to face the inevitable, saying, “Sergio, it is going to happen.” But Vieira de Mello remained convinced that he would not be asked. “I really don’t think it will,” he said. “I’ve made it clear to the secretary-general that I don’t want to go.” The next day, he had lunch with his secretary, Carole Ray, who asked him to confirm the rumors that he was headed to Baghdad. “Carole, my dear, I’ve been in this job for eight months. What are the governments that backed me going to think if I bugger off to Iraq? So if you are counting on being part of another mission, forget it.” As the two got up to leave the UN cafeteria, however, he conceded, “If the old man tells me that I have to go, then I have no choice.”
 
 
Initially, when Secretary Powell pressed Annan to appoint Vieira de Mello, the secretary-general declined. “Sergio has a job,” Annan said. “And it is an important job which he has just started.” But Powell kept calling, and the British too kept up the chorus. Even though Annan was being pressured by the very two countries that had bypassed the Security Council to begin with, he did not feel as though he had many options.“If the U.S. secretary of state comes to say to you, ’We want Mr. Jones,’” says one UN official close to Annan, “your reasons for saying no better be more compelling than ‘He has a job’ or ‘He’s tired’ or ‘He needs to finalize his divorce.’ ”
 
 
Annan today insists that Vieira de Mello changed his mind about going to Iraq. “The Americans had gotten to him,” he recalls. But Vieira de Mello’s last official word on his possible appointment had been his phone call to Riza requesting that his name be taken off the short list. Contrary to Annan’s claim, senior Bush administration officials did not reach out to him directly. He never spoke with the president after their first meeting.
42
Only Kevin Moley, the U.S. ambassador in Geneva, paid him a visit. “It was ‘Hey, Sergio, we’d very much like you to do this,’” Moley remembers, “but it wasn’t anything more than that.” The Bush administration was conscious of the risks of exerting too much pressure. “It’s the kiss of death to be the U.S. candidate,” says Moley. “If Sergio was to go to Iraq, we wanted him to be seen as legitimate.”
 
 
On Wednesday, May 21, Vieira de Mello’s day at the Palais Wilson was packed with meetings, including a late-afternoon gathering with a dozen interns. One of his senior advisers tried to get him to cancel the session, but he refused. “Don’t take them off the agenda,” he said. “They work here for free. They deserve my time.” Much as Thomas Jamieson had enjoyed taking him out for long lunches three decades earlier, he now found it relaxing to chat with students and young human rights devotees. When Ray tried to end the meeting after twenty-five minutes, he demurred. “Give me a little more time,” he said. Fifteen minutes later, when Ray returned and said Annan wanted to speak to him, he reluctantly rose from the table and walked out with her. “Was that a lie?” he asked. But he was in fact connected to Headquarters, and Annan asked him to fly to New York the next day. Vieira de Mello hung up the phone and turned to Ray. "I think they are going to ask me to Iraq,” he said. “Can I count on you to come for three months?”
 
 
Having explicitly asked to be taken off the list, something he had never done before in his career, he was frustrated that the UN system had such a thin layer of talent at the top that he was always the one whose life was disrupted. Others, like his Indian colleague Under-Secretary-General Shashi Tharoor, seemed to glide up through the UN ranks without ever serving in a hardship post. “If this is such an important job,” he asked Prentice, “why the hell don’t they ever send Shashi? Why is it always me?” He telephoned Morjane, who was flying to Tunisia to speak with his president. “Kamel, the SG called me last night. I leave today for New York. If they put pressure on me and I can’t refuse, I’ll tell them I’ll do it for three months and you will succeed me.”

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