Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (76 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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The first dramatic sign that Americans were not the only target of the ever-evolving insurgency came on August 7. At 11 a.m. a minivan pulled up outside the gate of the Jordanian embassy, where Iraqis were lining up for visas. The driver got out of the vehicle, crossed the median, and got into another vehicle, which drove off.
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Minutes later the deserted minivan exploded, killing seventeen Iraqis, including five police officers. In the wake of the attack a group of Iraqi men ran into the embassy wreckage and emerged carrying portraits of the former King Hussein of Jordan, which they ripped into bits and threw into the flames. “We don’t need you, Jordan!” one man shouted in Arabic, as he tore up a Jordanian flag.
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Minutes later the deserted minivan exploded, killing seventeen Iraqis, including five police officers. In the wake of the attack a group of Iraqi men ran into the embassy wreckage and emerged carrying portraits of the former King Hussein of Jordan, which they ripped into bits and threw into the flames. “We don’t need you, Jordan!” one man shouted in Arabic, as he tore up a Jordanian flag.
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The force of the blast was so great that a Mercedes parked next to the detonating vehicle was blown onto the roof of a nearby three-story building. A group of children in a nearby house who were watching the Cartoon Network on satellite television emerged into the street when they heard the explosion, only to watch men and women in flames running around helplessly while they burned to death. Scattered body parts, including a severed head, lay by the side of the road.
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No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
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No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The attack on the Jordanian embassy was unprecedented. It was the single deadliest attack in Baghdad to date and the first prominent attack on a “soft target.” Prior to this bomb the insurgents had primarily targeted U.S. military personnel and Iraqis working with them. In UN security and policy meetings the incident was hotly debated. Was this a turning point? Were internationals now seen as fair game? Or was this attack somebody’s private vendetta against Jordan? Salamé, who joined in a UN press briefing after the attack, was asked why the UN had condemned this attack but not others. "Well, this attack appears to be a new kind of attack,” Salamé said. “This is a new form of violence. This is an attack on civilians, and I don’t see who can really applaud this kind of unjustified and unacceptable act of terror.”
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Davie,Vieira de Mello’s military adviser, asked his contacts at the Coalition to share their forensic and intelligence assessments of the bomb, which they promised to do. The FBI, which had only just received the requested bomb-blast equipment, quickly determined the type of bomb used and the way it was detonated. Davie checked back with the Coalition and was told that the intelligence assessment was still in the works. Davie did not find the delay surprising, as the CPA seemed to have limited insight into the nascent insurgency. What Davie did not know was that the FBI intelligence had yielded two utterly conflicting theories.
One theory held that Saddam Hussein’s enemies had struck the Jordanian embassy because Jordan had recently granted asylum to Hussein’s two daughters and their nine children. The daughters had not gone gently into the night.They had appeared on CNN and al-Arabiya shortly after arriving in Amman and praised their father, calling him “tender, very loving.”
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The attack could have been payback against those who had aided the family of the Iraqi dictator.
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The attack could have been payback against those who had aided the family of the Iraqi dictator.
Another view held that Saddam Hussein loyalists had struck the embassy because Jordan had taken the side of the United States in the 1991 Gulf War and had allowed some two thousand U.S. Special Forces to enter Iraq from Jordanian bases during the recent invasion.
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Jordan had also been the only Arab state to send troops to join the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. In the preceding several weeks Saddam Hussein had released four broadcasts, delivered in the style of presidential statements, urging citizens to become “a loaded rifle in the face of the invading foreigner.”
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Jordan could have been targeted as an ally of the invaders. As one U.S. analyst involved in the investigation recalls, “You had incredibly high-powered analytic work being done, in which diametrically opposite conclusions were drawn.”
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Jordan had also been the only Arab state to send troops to join the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. In the preceding several weeks Saddam Hussein had released four broadcasts, delivered in the style of presidential statements, urging citizens to become “a loaded rifle in the face of the invading foreigner.”
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Jordan could have been targeted as an ally of the invaders. As one U.S. analyst involved in the investigation recalls, “You had incredibly high-powered analytic work being done, in which diametrically opposite conclusions were drawn.”
Vieira de Mello phoned his old friend Prince Zeid Raad Zeid al-Hussein, Jordan’s ambassador to the United Nations, who offered a third theory. “We can’t be sure,” said Zeid. “But the rent-a-mob aspect makes it look like Chalabi’s people.” In 1992 Jordan had convicted Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi in absentia and sentenced him to twenty-two years in prison for financial misconduct. The very day of the bomb, Chalabi’s daughter had published an op-ed in the
Wall Street Journal
defending her father and attacking Jordan’s “servile complicity with Saddam.”
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Both Vieira de Mello and Prince Zeid thought it suspicious that, with the Jordanian embassy still smoldering, a group of Iraqis had ignored the injured, entered the compound, and extracted not valuables but portraits of King Hussein, so as to rip them up ostentatiously on television.
Wall Street Journal
defending her father and attacking Jordan’s “servile complicity with Saddam.”
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Both Vieira de Mello and Prince Zeid thought it suspicious that, with the Jordanian embassy still smoldering, a group of Iraqis had ignored the injured, entered the compound, and extracted not valuables but portraits of King Hussein, so as to rip them up ostentatiously on television.
The theory that got the least traction was the one that would prove most likely. August 7 was the fifth anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people.The CPA floated the possibility that behind the Jordanian embassy strike was Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam), a Kurdish terrorist group with ties to al-Qaeda, which was reported to have had a small presence in northern Iraq before the war. General Sanchez said publicly that an al-Qaeda presence in Iraq was “clearly a possibility,” but the Americans then had minimal evidence of their infiltration. The al-Qaeda theory got minimal play.
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Vieira de Mello told the secretary-general he was not yet sure the attack was a turning point. “It just depends on who did it and why,” he told Annan. “This incident alone doesn’t give us enough to go on.” The Bush administration downplayed the event. Larry Di Rita, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said the attack was part of an inevitable “ebb and flow” in violence.
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General Sanchez said the 37,000 U.S. troops in Baghdad would not assume responsibility for guarding embassies. “This is the Iraqi police’s responsibility,” he said.
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Secretary of State Powell said, “Maybe what you want to do is stand back a little bit more and let Iraqis” take over more protection tasks.
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But in Iraq Thomas Fuentes, the American who headed the FBI team, cabled headquarters and requested they send him experienced bomb-blast experts. He expected more attacks on civilian targets.
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Vieira de Mello told the secretary-general he was not yet sure the attack was a turning point. “It just depends on who did it and why,” he told Annan. “This incident alone doesn’t give us enough to go on.” The Bush administration downplayed the event. Larry Di Rita, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said the attack was part of an inevitable “ebb and flow” in violence.
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General Sanchez said the 37,000 U.S. troops in Baghdad would not assume responsibility for guarding embassies. “This is the Iraqi police’s responsibility,” he said.
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Secretary of State Powell said, “Maybe what you want to do is stand back a little bit more and let Iraqis” take over more protection tasks.
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But in Iraq Thomas Fuentes, the American who headed the FBI team, cabled headquarters and requested they send him experienced bomb-blast experts. He expected more attacks on civilian targets.
As Mona Rishmawi was leaving her hotel on the morning of August 12, she saw a stash of leaflets scattered on the ground before her. On inspection she saw that the leaflets bore Osama bin Laden’s picture. Rishmawi thought, “Baghdad and al-Qaeda—these two things don’t match. What a bizarre joke. What are these people doing?” Since President Bush had partly predicated the war on a link between Saddam Hussein and September 11, she wondered whether the Americans had planted the leaflets to justify the invasion. The same day the UN daily security incident summary noted, “The [Coalition Forces] received intelligence reports that hundreds of Islamic militants who fled the country during the war have returned and are planning to conduct major terrorist attacks.”
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On August 12, 2003, Salim Lone, the UN public affairs officer, sent an e-mail to Vieira de Mello describing the mounting fear in the mission after the Jordanian embassy attack. The following day he provided his boss with a list of questions that he might be asked at that day’s press conference, the first he would give in more than six weeks. Among them was: “Is the UN worried it is one of the soft targets?”
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Lone urged security team members to tell the U.S. soldiers to leave. Chergui, who felt the violence escalating, thought Lone’s idea irresponsible. “Don’t come here and say they should go,” he said. “We don’t have anyone else, and if something happens, we will immediately blame the U.S. for not being there.”
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Lone urged security team members to tell the U.S. soldiers to leave. Chergui, who felt the violence escalating, thought Lone’s idea irresponsible. “Don’t come here and say they should go,” he said. “We don’t have anyone else, and if something happens, we will immediately blame the U.S. for not being there.”
Salamé moved freely around Baghdad without concern for the security protocols. But on August 13 a Lebanese journalist brought him small slips of paper that he had found at the scene of an explosion in the commercial Karada district. The papers were colored sky blue, and each was the size of a business card.They had been thrown from a car like confetti after the explosion. “Al-Qaeda” was written on them in Arabic. Salamé was as puzzled as Rishmawi. He went straight to Vieira de Mello. “This is the first time I’ve seen anything like this,” he said.“It could be fake, but it looks serious.” Vieira de Mello showed the papers to his trusted bodyguard Chergui. “Where were these found?” Chergui asked. The three men discussed the papers for a few minutes but didn’t know what to conclude, beyond that they should keep an eye out for further signs of foreign infiltration. It was their first serious conversation about a possible al-Qaeda presence in Iraq. Up to that point the insurgency was widely assumed to be fueled by Iraqis who had been close to Saddam Hussein or who were contesting the American occupation. Chergui was supposed to go on leave the next day, but he told his boss that he would prefer to postpone his departure. The two men were so close that Vieira de Mello maintained an e-mail correspondence with Chergui’s wife, Martine. On August 7 he had e-mailed her asking whether she felt lonely without her husband. Claiming sole responsibility for Chergui’s absence,Vieira de Mello noted that, while Chergui was doing an excellent job, “You have an equal right to him.”
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He insisted that Chergui take leave as he had planned.
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He insisted that Chergui take leave as he had planned.
The UN staff was split between those who expected an attack on the UN and those who could not imagine it. All agreed that security was spinning out of control. “I come from the most violent part of the world,” Marwan Ali recalls, “and I, even I, couldn’t believe that in two or three months things could deteriorate as badly as they had, even though the whole time I was saying things would deteriorate badly.” Most UN staff also agreed that the UN had an image problem throughout the country. Vieira de Mello had come to realize that Resolution 1483, which legitimated the occupation, had been one more factor eroding the UN’s shaky standing.“I think we must be honest to ourselves and recognize there exists, in the minds of many Iraqis, mixed feelings about the record of the United Nations here,” Vieira de Mello told a reporter. “And you can’t expect them to make these fine distinctions between mandates given to the Secretary-General by the Security Council and the role of the Secretariat per se. They lump this all together as any public opinion would do.”
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Bob Turner began chairing a UN advocacy group aimed at improving the UN reputation. “We thought that the negative impression of the UN was going to have a security impact,” he recalls. “We’d be safer if we could improve the standing of the UN.”A few days later a UN staffer in Mosul prepared a paper proposing a UN outreach campaign.“In view of the increased incidents targeting certain UN agencies and NGOs,” the paper said, it was time for the UN to use print, radio, and TV and to network with prominent Iraqi figures to publicize the UN’s humanitarian services and to gain citizens’ “trust.” In attempting to “feed” images to the media, the staffer warned against the “static image of the UN shot in studio” and recommended images that show “we are out there dirtying our hands to serve the population.”
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But Vieira de Mello was sure that, whatever the UN’s sins, Iraqis still saw the organization as preferable to the Coalition. Iraqis he met told him that they hoped for a stronger, not a weaker, UN role. “They see the UN as an independent, reliable, good faith partner,” he assured visitors. “They know the UN has no hidden agenda.” He added, “They see clearly in the United Nations an independent and impartial player that is the only source of international legitimacy.”
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When he had briefed the Security Council in New York, he said that the Iraqi people “unanimously call—including those who are critical, even resentful, over what they perceive to be the United Nations’ past record in their country—for an energetic, center-stage role for the organization.”
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But the trouble with this attitude was that he never disaggregated the "they.” And the Iraqi people were increasingly at odds with one another. More important, the Islamic radicals, who he did not yet know had infiltrated the country, had an agenda all their own.
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When he had briefed the Security Council in New York, he said that the Iraqi people “unanimously call—including those who are critical, even resentful, over what they perceive to be the United Nations’ past record in their country—for an energetic, center-stage role for the organization.”
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But the trouble with this attitude was that he never disaggregated the "they.” And the Iraqi people were increasingly at odds with one another. More important, the Islamic radicals, who he did not yet know had infiltrated the country, had an agenda all their own.
Unusual for him,Vieira de Mello was beginning to feel personally vulnerable. He discussed moving offices with Chergui but feared it would panic staff. “I’d better leave that to my successor,” he said. Chergui decided to look for another space in the building where he could bring his boss in the event of an attack. After rummaging through the Canal, he identified a small storage space filled with folding chairs and tables just off the conference room on the lower level. He resolved to bring Vieira de Mello there in an emergency.
Throughout Baghdad, Coalition forces were getting ever jumpier. On August 12 the Pentagon released its official report effectively exonerating the U.S. military for the April shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, which had killed two journalists and injured three others.
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This followed an incident on July 27 when U.S. troops had killed at least three Iraqis who crossed a military cordon; another on August 8 in which they fatally shot five more Iraqis, including an eight-year-old girl, at a newly erected checkpoint; and a third on August 9, when Coalition soldiers killed two Iraqi policemen whom they mistook for criminals.
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On August 17 Mazen Dana, a forty-three-year-old veteran Palestinian cameraman with Reuters, had received U.S. permission to film the Abu Ghraib prison, which the day before had been the scene of a mortar attack that killed six Iraqis and wounded fifty-nine. U.S. troops outside the prison, perhaps mistaking his television camera with its white microphone for a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher, fired several shots at close range. Dana’s camera recorded a tank heading toward him, the crack of six shots in quick succession, and the tumult of his camera falling to the ground.
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Dana was killed on the spot. Vieira de Mello knew that the time for quiet diplomacy with the Americans had passed; he would have to speak out.
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This followed an incident on July 27 when U.S. troops had killed at least three Iraqis who crossed a military cordon; another on August 8 in which they fatally shot five more Iraqis, including an eight-year-old girl, at a newly erected checkpoint; and a third on August 9, when Coalition soldiers killed two Iraqi policemen whom they mistook for criminals.
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On August 17 Mazen Dana, a forty-three-year-old veteran Palestinian cameraman with Reuters, had received U.S. permission to film the Abu Ghraib prison, which the day before had been the scene of a mortar attack that killed six Iraqis and wounded fifty-nine. U.S. troops outside the prison, perhaps mistaking his television camera with its white microphone for a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher, fired several shots at close range. Dana’s camera recorded a tank heading toward him, the crack of six shots in quick succession, and the tumult of his camera falling to the ground.
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Dana was killed on the spot. Vieira de Mello knew that the time for quiet diplomacy with the Americans had passed; he would have to speak out.
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