Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (9 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 Israelis had initially invaded to push the PLO out of rocket range, but once deep inside Lebanon, they kept going. On June 10 they reached the outskirts of Beirut, from where they encircled the city and cut off PLO exit routes. A week later they laid siege to West Beirut, where some 6,000 PLO fighters were cloistered, causing heavy damage to the town and killing more than 5,000 Lebanese .
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Though he knew he was living through one of the lowest moments in UN history, Vieira de Mello was initially exhilarated. He had never before found himself at the center of such high-stakes political drama. Overnight UN statements made in the sleepy town of Naqoura were suddenly capturing global headlines. Once Annie and the boys had flown back to Europe, he based himself at UNIFIL headquarters full-time.
Vieira de Mello’s main diplomatic task in the weeks after the invasion was convincing the PLO that the UN was not in cahoots with Israel. Leading Palestinian officials pointed to Callaghan’s meeting with Eitan the day of the invasion as evidence of collusion. Arafat accused UNIFIL of helping the Israelis “stab the Palestinians in the back.”
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The Palestinian deputy representative at the UN in New York denounced the entire institution and said, “We feel this action by the United Nations and by the Israeli invading force has dealt a serious blow to the whole concept of peace-keeping and credibility of the UN.”
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The Palestinian deputy representative at the UN in New York denounced the entire institution and said, “We feel this action by the United Nations and by the Israeli invading force has dealt a serious blow to the whole concept of peace-keeping and credibility of the UN.”
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Vieira de Mello defended the UN’s honor. He drafted a cable to PLO leaders on Callaghan’s behalf, angrily pointing the finger back at the Palestinians for provoking the Israeli invasion. In light of their “unwarranted accusations of collaboration,” he reminded them that the Palestinians had infiltrated the UN area, hijacked UN vehicles, and attacked UN personnel. Since the Palestinians had ignored UN warnings and egged on the Israelis, they should “accept full responsibility” for the invasion.
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Although both Callaghan and Vieira de Mello were even angrier with the Israelis, they knew the invaders controlled the area. Callaghan requested that UN officials in NewYork “avoid any open criticism of the Israelis as this will surely be counterproductive.”
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Although both Callaghan and Vieira de Mello were even angrier with the Israelis, they knew the invaders controlled the area. Callaghan requested that UN officials in NewYork “avoid any open criticism of the Israelis as this will surely be counterproductive.”
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As soon as the whirlwind of the initial invasion had passed, the morale of UN peacekeepers—Vieira de Mello included—plummeted. Israel had thumbed its nose at the Security Council resolutions that demanded that Israel stay out of Lebanon, and in the course of invading a neighbor, its forces had trampled on the UN peacekeepers in their way. “We were never going to stop a determined Israeli offensive,” Vieira de Mello wistfully told Goksel, “but do you think we could have made it just a little harder for these bastards? The UN looks pathetic.” The troops serving the UN had been humiliated, but they would return home to their national armed services.Vieira de Mello had come to cherish the UN flag almost as much as he did Brazil’s, and the sting of the invasion would linger.
Callaghan was adamant that, however humiliating it might have felt, peacekeepers had been right not to contest the Israelis. “Soldiers don’t like to be marched through, no matter where they come from,” Callaghan said. “But I am the man answerable for these soldiers’ lives. What if I launch an operation against this invasion and twenty of my soldiers are killed? I do not have a mandate to risk the lives of soldiers equipped for self-defense.” He agreed with Urquhart that lightly armed UN peacekeepers could succeed only if the heavily armed warring parties kept their promises.
After witnessing Callaghan’s sputtering protests on the day of the invasion,Vieira de Mello told colleagues he was sure of one thing: “I will never use the word ‘unacceptable’ again.” There seemed little point in issuing shrill denunciations with nothing more than moral outrage behind them.
UNIFIL had been sent to Lebanon to monitor Israeli troop withdrawals and restore Lebanese sovereignty in the south. Now that Israel had reinvaded and occupied Lebanon outright, Vieira de Mello did not see how UNIFIL could continue. If the blue helmets attempted to remain during a full-scale Israeli occupation, he believed the neutrality of the peacekeepers would end up compromised. “We know that the Americans aren’t going to force Israel out of Lebanon this time,” he told Jean-Claude Aimé, a Haitian UN political officer who worked for the UN in Jerusalem. “Are we to watch Israeli troops mop up?” Aimé favored a UN withdrawal, and Vieira de Mello said he agreed.“If we stay and pretend nothing has happened,” he said, “it’s as if we are condoning their invasion.” He expected the Security Council to shut down the mission, and he began planning his return to Geneva.
Callaghan pointed to the good that the UN mission was doing in humanitarian terms. “Pulling out would mean conceding totally,” he argued. “The local people depend on us. We can’t leave them on their own.” Since UNIFIL had set up base in southern Lebanon in 1978, some 250,000 civilians had returned to the area. The UN peacekeepers supplied water and electricity, maintained a hospital in Naqoura (run by the Swedes), repaired public buildings and roads, and cleared the area of explosive devices. Instead of throwing out used typewriters, photocopiers, desks, or chairs, the UN donated them to local schools. The peacekeepers also staged what became known as “harvest patrols,” escorting Lebanese civilians whose farms or olive plantations were located along the front lines.
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When he was with Callaghan, Vieira de Mello acted as though he agreed with the general. “Sergio never said, ‘I think UNIFIL should withdraw.’ Never,” recalls Callaghan. “And if that was his opinion he would have said so.”
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When he was with Callaghan, Vieira de Mello acted as though he agreed with the general. “Sergio never said, ‘I think UNIFIL should withdraw.’ Never,” recalls Callaghan. “And if that was his opinion he would have said so.”
Irrespective of whether Vieira de Mello was testing out his ideas or simply telling both men what he thought they most wanted to hear, he knew that UNIFIL officers and civilian officials would have little say in what happened next. The powerful countries on the Security Council would decide whether the UN peacekeepers would pack up and go home.
And decide they did. On June 18 the Security Council extended UNI-FIL’s mandate.
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Four years after the blue helmets had been sent in to monitor Israel’s withdrawal, they were now being asked, temporarily, to submit to an Israeli occupation and restrict their role to delivering humanitarian aid. “The Security Council told us to stay,” recalls Goksel, “but they basically told us there was nothing for us to do. The signal we got was, ‘Do what you can to justify your salaries.’ We felt useless. We hid in Naqoura and tried to become invisible. After that, even Sergio didn’t want to go around saying, ‘I’m a UN guy.’”
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Four years after the blue helmets had been sent in to monitor Israel’s withdrawal, they were now being asked, temporarily, to submit to an Israeli occupation and restrict their role to delivering humanitarian aid. “The Security Council told us to stay,” recalls Goksel, “but they basically told us there was nothing for us to do. The signal we got was, ‘Do what you can to justify your salaries.’ We felt useless. We hid in Naqoura and tried to become invisible. After that, even Sergio didn’t want to go around saying, ‘I’m a UN guy.’”
Vieira de Mello repeatedly telephoned UN Headquarters in New York in search of consolation. It was the first time in his life that he was part of something that was being publicly condemned and ridiculed. He insisted on replaying June 6, the day of the invasion, again and again.“Is there something else I could have done?” he askedVirendra Dayal, the UN secretary-general’s chief of staff with whom he had worked in Bangladesh. Dayal tried to soothe his colleague. “Sergio, what could you as a young man have done all by yourself in the face of a massive land, air, and naval invasion?” Dayal wanted him to pass through New York on his way to Brazil for home leave in July. He thought a debriefing might help. But when he reached New York,Vieira de Mello just kept up his second-guessing. “Stop lacerating yourself,” Dayal urged. But his junior colleague was adamant: “We should have made more of a show,” Vieira de Mello said.
However degrading it had been to be part of the UNIFIL mission before the Israeli invasion, it felt far worse afterward. WhenVieira de Mello returned to Lebanon after his leave, he found that Israeli forces were keeping UN officials largely pinned down to the UN base in Naqoura.The Israelis seemed to hope that their invasion would cause the peacekeepers to leave.They closed the Lebanese-Israeli border to UN personnel and vehicles at will, blocking resupply and personnel rotation convoys, and they denied UN personnel flight permission except for rare medical emergencies. The Israeli press suggested that the UN was passing information to Palestinian terrorists about Israeli military positions. In a cable to Urquhart, Callaghan criticized Israel’s “official smear campaign” against UNIFIL and begged UN officials in New York to approach the Israeli delegation so as “to put a firm stop to this sorry state of affairs.”
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Vieira de Mello staged small acts of civil disobedience, refusing to submit requests for travel permits to the Israeli authorities, moving around without escorts, and often sitting in his vehicle at Israeli checkpoints in the hot sun for entire afternoons, refusing to allow the Israelis to search his car. “We are the United Nations,” he would fume, sometimes astonishing Goksel. “Can’t you see the flag? We will not submit to the will of an illegal occupying force.” When he briefed incoming units of peacekeepers, he gave them the same advice he himself would receive from friends before leaving for Iraq in 2003, urging them to avoid close association with the occupiers, so as to maintain the faith of the populace.
After Vieira de Mello received his doctorate in 1974, Robert Misrahi, his adviser, had persuaded him to pursue a “state doctorate,” the highest and most competitive degree offered by the French university system.Vieira de Mello had done so, working intermittently but intensely on what he considered to be his most ambitious philosophical work. The only bright side to the paralysis of the UN mission in Lebanon was that he had time to dive more deeply into his thesis in a region where many of his ideas were being tested. When he corresponded with Misrahi, he lamented the inadequacy of philosophical tools.“Things are much more complicated in practice,” he told his professor. “Philosophical ideas must be applicable on the ground, and the field should be their only judge, their only criteria.”
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When Misrahi visited Israel on personal business, he met with his pupil and applauded his attempts to apply philosophy to his humanitarian and diplomatic work. But he thought Vieira de Mello could not expect mere reason and dialogue to yield conversion when little mutual understanding existed among the factions. “Just going and meeting with the enemy is not enough to establish reciprocal respect,” Misrahi insisted, urging him to take a longer view of human progress. “History is slow,” Misrahi says. “Vieira de Mello thought it could be quick.”
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When Misrahi visited Israel on personal business, he met with his pupil and applauded his attempts to apply philosophy to his humanitarian and diplomatic work. But he thought Vieira de Mello could not expect mere reason and dialogue to yield conversion when little mutual understanding existed among the factions. “Just going and meeting with the enemy is not enough to establish reciprocal respect,” Misrahi insisted, urging him to take a longer view of human progress. “History is slow,” Misrahi says. “Vieira de Mello thought it could be quick.”
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The Israeli invasion had chased the PLO and Yassir Arafat north to Beirut. The Palestinians were encircled. Fearing a massacre and hoping to end the siege peacefully, the United States, France, and Italy decided to deploy a Multinational Force, totally separate from the UN peacekeeping mission that was based in the southern part of the country. In August 1982, 800 U.S. troops, 800 French, and 400 Italians assisted with the evacuation of besieged Palestinian fighters and fanned out to the outskirts of Beirut to protect the sprawling settlements filled with Palestinian refugees.
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After some 15,000 Palestinians and Syrians left West Beirut, Arafat himself made his way to Greece, and then went on to Tunisia.
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After some 15,000 Palestinians and Syrians left West Beirut, Arafat himself made his way to Greece, and then went on to Tunisia.
The Western forces departed almost as quickly as they had arrived, retreating from Beirut on September 10, 1982, under banners of MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
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With their exit the responsibility for ensuring the safety of the remaining half-million Palestinian civilians in Lebanon passed to the Lebanese government, which was weak and divided.When Bashir Gemayel, the newly elected Christian president of Lebanon, was assassinated on September 14, Israeli-backed Christian militia intent on exacting revenge closed in on the Palestinian camps. Speaking from Rome,Yassir Arafat pleaded for the Multinational Force to return: “I ask Italy, France and the United States: What of your promise to protect the inhabitants of Beirut?”
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On September 16, as Israeli soldiers looked on, the militia forces entered the undefended Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. In the two days that followed, in the name of flushing out Palestinian terrorists, the militia murdered more than seven hundred men, women, and children.
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With their exit the responsibility for ensuring the safety of the remaining half-million Palestinian civilians in Lebanon passed to the Lebanese government, which was weak and divided.When Bashir Gemayel, the newly elected Christian president of Lebanon, was assassinated on September 14, Israeli-backed Christian militia intent on exacting revenge closed in on the Palestinian camps. Speaking from Rome,Yassir Arafat pleaded for the Multinational Force to return: “I ask Italy, France and the United States: What of your promise to protect the inhabitants of Beirut?”
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On September 16, as Israeli soldiers looked on, the militia forces entered the undefended Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. In the two days that followed, in the name of flushing out Palestinian terrorists, the militia murdered more than seven hundred men, women, and children.
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On September 20, 1982, largely in response to the massacres, President Ronald Reagan announced his intention to redeploy U.S. Marines to Beirut. “Millions of us have seen pictures of the Palestinian victims of this tragedy,” Reagan said. “There is little that words can add, but there are actions we can and must take.”
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The Western countries that had sent armed contingents in August now offered larger forces: 1,400 American soldiers, 1,400 Italians, and 1,500 French (including 500 who were reassigned from UNIFIL) returned to Lebanon, accompanied by armored vehicles, mortars, and heavy artillery.
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Initially, their presence seemed to calm tensions.
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The Western countries that had sent armed contingents in August now offered larger forces: 1,400 American soldiers, 1,400 Italians, and 1,500 French (including 500 who were reassigned from UNIFIL) returned to Lebanon, accompanied by armored vehicles, mortars, and heavy artillery.
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Initially, their presence seemed to calm tensions.
Israel’s fight, up until that point, had been with the Palestinians. But with their occupation of Lebanon, Israeli forces began to meet new resistance— that of Lebanese Shiites. In January 1983, with the UNIFIL mandate in southern Lebanon up for renewal again, Urquhart flew to Jerusalem and met with the Israelis, whose occupying forces were suffering a growing number of casualties. In his notes on the trip, he wrote that he observed “a genuine desire amongst intelligent Israelis to get out of Lebanon before it overwhelms them.They have certainly bitten off more than they can chew.”
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The Israelis would not withdraw from Lebanon for eighteen years. They would lose 675 soldiers there.
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The Israelis would not withdraw from Lebanon for eighteen years. They would lose 675 soldiers there.
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