Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (92 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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When Vieira de Mello landed in Iraq in June 2003, it was probably already too late to save the country from the savagery of its internal fissures and from the blunders made by its occupiers. But if there was any person who—drawing upon the wisdom amassed in a lifetime of trial and error—might have found a way to build common cause among foes, or at least to mitigate human suffering, it was he. But for him to have been helpful, the Americans in Iraq would have had to acknowledge that they needed help.They did not.
When he joined the UN back in 1969, similarly, it was probably already too late to save the organization from the interstate rivalries that, in different forms, had cursed the institution from the start. But if there was anyone who could have wrung from the UN whatever reform and promise it could muster, it was he. But if he was to have fixed the UN, the leading member states within it, and especially the United States, would have had to truly wish to see its transformation.
When President George W. Bush declared repeatedly in 2001 and 2002, “Either you are with us or you are against us,” he was wrong. Hundreds of millions of citizens of the world may not have been
with
the United States as such, but they were not against America either. Yet, like much of Bush’s rhetoric, this description of an imagined dichotomy quickly spawned policies that gave rise to a real one. Bush’s self-fulfilling doctrine ensured that those who were treated as enemies of the United States became enemies of the United States. And the terrorists too embraced this totalizing logic. In their summons to jihad, they said, in effect, “If you are not with us in our struggle against the United States, you are against us, and we will destroy you.”
with
the United States as such, but they were not against America either. Yet, like much of Bush’s rhetoric, this description of an imagined dichotomy quickly spawned policies that gave rise to a real one. Bush’s self-fulfilling doctrine ensured that those who were treated as enemies of the United States became enemies of the United States. And the terrorists too embraced this totalizing logic. In their summons to jihad, they said, in effect, “If you are not with us in our struggle against the United States, you are against us, and we will destroy you.”
Vieira de Mello was born in 1948, just as the post-World War II order was taking shape. He died in 2003, just as the battle lines in the twenty-first century’s first major struggle were being drawn. His end could not have been more tragic. Just when he was poised to be most useful—to the United States, to Iraq, to the world—he was killed. And on August 19, after the bomb went off, as he was pinned in the rubble, he found himself in the same impossibly vulnerable position as those whose fates he had championed during his career. When he realized he had miraculously survived the blast, he must have expected that professional soldiers from the most sophisticated military in history would find a way to extract him from the debris. But as his life seeped slowly out of him, there must have been a moment—hopefully not a long one—when he realized he was every bit as helpless in his time of need as millions of victims had been before him. He died under the Canal Hotel’s rubble—buried beneath the weight of the United Nations itself.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In one sense, this book was easier to write than the last one. Of the some four-hundred people I contacted for interviews, people who knew Sergio—even those who had only met him once—were left with such strong feelings about him that they generally rushed to share their recollections. No matter where they were around the world, I rarely had to write or phone twice to set up a meeting or a call. Many of the interviews gave way to long phone calls, which in turn gave rise to long meals, which occasionally gave rise to what I hope will be lifelong friendships. Even though Sergio himself never got the chance to make full use of his “box of possibilities” to create a lasting UN “A team,” I had the privilege of spending time with the remarkable people he attracted and often mentored. My research was also greatly facilitated by officials at UNHCR in Geneva and at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York who granted me access to their classified files. It was easier than it should have been to walk in the shoes of a man who could no longer offer guidance.
From a personal standpoint, though, this book posed greater challenges than its predecessor. When I wrote
“A Problem from Hell,”
I was a law student, a part-time journalist, and an adjunct lecturer at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.While my friends, family, and I had high hopes for that book, most of us had low expectations.The advantage of writing a book nobody was waiting for was that I had few competing professional opportunities or concerns. Because of the surprisingly warm reception to
“A Problem from Hell,”
though, writing
Chasing the Flame
proved more difficult. I researched and wrote the book while teaching full-time at the Kennedy School, working with my colleagues to try to build a permanent antigenocide constituency, and, since 2005, offering whatever help I could to Barack Obama, the person whose rigor and compassion bear the closest resemblance to Sergio’s that I have ever seen. Since I compressed what could have been a decadelong book project into four years, something had to give, and unfortunately, what gave was what is most important to me: my time with friends and family. So I would like here to acknowledge those who have supported me through this long slog, themselves overlooking a solipsism that I seem disturbingly prone to during these all-consuming ventures.
“A Problem from Hell,”
I was a law student, a part-time journalist, and an adjunct lecturer at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.While my friends, family, and I had high hopes for that book, most of us had low expectations.The advantage of writing a book nobody was waiting for was that I had few competing professional opportunities or concerns. Because of the surprisingly warm reception to
“A Problem from Hell,”
though, writing
Chasing the Flame
proved more difficult. I researched and wrote the book while teaching full-time at the Kennedy School, working with my colleagues to try to build a permanent antigenocide constituency, and, since 2005, offering whatever help I could to Barack Obama, the person whose rigor and compassion bear the closest resemblance to Sergio’s that I have ever seen. Since I compressed what could have been a decadelong book project into four years, something had to give, and unfortunately, what gave was what is most important to me: my time with friends and family. So I would like here to acknowledge those who have supported me through this long slog, themselves overlooking a solipsism that I seem disturbingly prone to during these all-consuming ventures.
First, I must thank those who aided the creation of this book. There would be no book at all if not for Cullen Murphy, who, while still the editor of the
Atlantic Monthly,
proposed that I write a magazine profile of Sergio. Every book’s quality turns on the inventiveness or significance of the question behind it, and Cullen is the person who chose a question I would not have come up with on my own. My friends Philip Gourevitch and George Packer launched me by donating the transcripts of lengthy interviews they conducted with Sergio shortly before he died. A remarkable number of people offered to read drafts, perhaps unaware that I would take them up on their offers and inflict a messy manuscript on them. Those who suffered most were the early readers, who pretended to overlook the grave flaws in substance and style, engaging critically with every paragraph as if I were just a few snappier transitions away from completion: Jamshid Anvar; Omar Bakhet; Nader Mousavizadeh; Carina Perelli; Carole Ray; Strobe Talbott; Oliver Ulich; my stalwart life policy advisers Richard Holbrooke and Jonathan Moore (who, along with his wife, Katie, introduced me to Sergio back in 1994); novelist Nick Papandreaou, who stages an essential return for every painful book cycle; Chuck Cohen, who never leaves; and my wild and brilliant aunt and uncle in Waterville, Ireland: Patricia and Derry Gibson. Salman Ahmed, Jeff Davie, Helena Fraser, Peter Galbraith, James Lynch, Jon Randal, and Ghassan Salamé reviewed parts of the book for accuracy. Others commented critically on more developed but still ugly full drafts: John Gomperts, Richard Goodwin, Michael Ignatieff, Georgeanne Macguire, Fabienne Morisset, Cullen Murphy, Izumi Nakamitsu-Lennartsson, Laura Pitter, John Schumann, and Diederik Vanhoogstraten. Jonathan Prentice and Fabrizio Hochschild were transatlantic partners in this endeavor, offering intense feedback as well as vital friendship. I tried to take to heart every comment, but any remaining mistakes or oversights are my own. In Brazil Antonio Vieira de Mello, André Simões, Sonia Vieira de Mello, and the epic Gilda Vieira de Mello took a generous leap of faith in inviting me into their close-knit family, sharing memories, letters, and photos. Despite the rawness of the loss and the pain of recalling Iraq, Carolina Larriera did the same, contributing invaluably to my understanding of the man and his mission. Leon Wieseltier stepped in, as he always does, to provide advice when it mattered most. My colleague Sarah Sewall at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy offered constant moral support and creative push-back. She then salvaged the book’s final months, loaning me the indefatigable Meghan Frederico to join me in the all-nighters needed to fact-check an unwieldy tome. Robin Trangsrud arranged my travel and provided support for my courses. Daniel Camos-i-Duarella drew on his French, Spanish, and Portuguese to help me get to the bottom of mysteries that had persisted into the book’s final days. And Sarah Stanlick and Nahreen Ghazarian (thanks to Swanee Hunt) arrived at the center in time to help shepherd the book through publication.
Atlantic Monthly,
proposed that I write a magazine profile of Sergio. Every book’s quality turns on the inventiveness or significance of the question behind it, and Cullen is the person who chose a question I would not have come up with on my own. My friends Philip Gourevitch and George Packer launched me by donating the transcripts of lengthy interviews they conducted with Sergio shortly before he died. A remarkable number of people offered to read drafts, perhaps unaware that I would take them up on their offers and inflict a messy manuscript on them. Those who suffered most were the early readers, who pretended to overlook the grave flaws in substance and style, engaging critically with every paragraph as if I were just a few snappier transitions away from completion: Jamshid Anvar; Omar Bakhet; Nader Mousavizadeh; Carina Perelli; Carole Ray; Strobe Talbott; Oliver Ulich; my stalwart life policy advisers Richard Holbrooke and Jonathan Moore (who, along with his wife, Katie, introduced me to Sergio back in 1994); novelist Nick Papandreaou, who stages an essential return for every painful book cycle; Chuck Cohen, who never leaves; and my wild and brilliant aunt and uncle in Waterville, Ireland: Patricia and Derry Gibson. Salman Ahmed, Jeff Davie, Helena Fraser, Peter Galbraith, James Lynch, Jon Randal, and Ghassan Salamé reviewed parts of the book for accuracy. Others commented critically on more developed but still ugly full drafts: John Gomperts, Richard Goodwin, Michael Ignatieff, Georgeanne Macguire, Fabienne Morisset, Cullen Murphy, Izumi Nakamitsu-Lennartsson, Laura Pitter, John Schumann, and Diederik Vanhoogstraten. Jonathan Prentice and Fabrizio Hochschild were transatlantic partners in this endeavor, offering intense feedback as well as vital friendship. I tried to take to heart every comment, but any remaining mistakes or oversights are my own. In Brazil Antonio Vieira de Mello, André Simões, Sonia Vieira de Mello, and the epic Gilda Vieira de Mello took a generous leap of faith in inviting me into their close-knit family, sharing memories, letters, and photos. Despite the rawness of the loss and the pain of recalling Iraq, Carolina Larriera did the same, contributing invaluably to my understanding of the man and his mission. Leon Wieseltier stepped in, as he always does, to provide advice when it mattered most. My colleague Sarah Sewall at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy offered constant moral support and creative push-back. She then salvaged the book’s final months, loaning me the indefatigable Meghan Frederico to join me in the all-nighters needed to fact-check an unwieldy tome. Robin Trangsrud arranged my travel and provided support for my courses. Daniel Camos-i-Duarella drew on his French, Spanish, and Portuguese to help me get to the bottom of mysteries that had persisted into the book’s final days. And Sarah Stanlick and Nahreen Ghazarian (thanks to Swanee Hunt) arrived at the center in time to help shepherd the book through publication.
Michel Thieren, a medical doctor with the World Health Organization, deserves singular thanks. After he read
“A Problem from Hell,”
he e-mailed me, a stranger, and announced that he intended to find the book a French publisher. After he spent two years unsuccessfully hawking the book door-to-door in France, he asked to see
Chasing the Flame
in its roughest state and delivered sixty pages of intensive micro and macro comments. Moreover, he tracked down Sergio’s professors at the Sorbonne, sneaked me into the UN antechambers so that I could photocopy documents leaked to me by others, and delivered cheering phone calls and e-mails, tracking every deadline as if it were his own.
“A Problem from Hell,”
he e-mailed me, a stranger, and announced that he intended to find the book a French publisher. After he spent two years unsuccessfully hawking the book door-to-door in France, he asked to see
Chasing the Flame
in its roughest state and delivered sixty pages of intensive micro and macro comments. Moreover, he tracked down Sergio’s professors at the Sorbonne, sneaked me into the UN antechambers so that I could photocopy documents leaked to me by others, and delivered cheering phone calls and e-mails, tracking every deadline as if it were his own.
Six months after starting the book I met Terry George, the director of
Hotel Rwanda.
When I tried to persuade Terry to make a movie about Raphael Lem-kin, the coiner of the word “genocide,” his eyes glazed over. But as soon as I mentioned this project, he lit up. I have no doubt that Terry will make a superb film out of Sergio’s life, but in the meantime I have been blessed to have him as a collaborator. Moviemakers are notorious for ruining books, but my long conversations with Terry have improved this one.Whenever I found myself heading down some East Timorese garden path, it was Terry who would pull me back. “But what is the universal story here, the tale that does not depend on time or place?” he would ask. “Think about it this way: ‘Once upon a time, there was a kingdom. And in that kingdom, there was a good, flawed knight named Sergio. He had a sword, and he had a shield ...’” I also benefitted from talking with Greg Barker, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker, who is making a documentary about the Canal Hotel attack on August 19, 2003. Meredith Blake, who did so much to make
An Inconvenient Truth
inconveniently relevant for so many, has taken on the difficult task of determining how to maximize the social impact of these endeavors (see ). She is backed by Randy Newcomb and the incomparable Pam Omidyar, who is doing more than anybody else I know—in Sergio’s words—to “invent the future.”
Hotel Rwanda.
When I tried to persuade Terry to make a movie about Raphael Lem-kin, the coiner of the word “genocide,” his eyes glazed over. But as soon as I mentioned this project, he lit up. I have no doubt that Terry will make a superb film out of Sergio’s life, but in the meantime I have been blessed to have him as a collaborator. Moviemakers are notorious for ruining books, but my long conversations with Terry have improved this one.Whenever I found myself heading down some East Timorese garden path, it was Terry who would pull me back. “But what is the universal story here, the tale that does not depend on time or place?” he would ask. “Think about it this way: ‘Once upon a time, there was a kingdom. And in that kingdom, there was a good, flawed knight named Sergio. He had a sword, and he had a shield ...’” I also benefitted from talking with Greg Barker, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker, who is making a documentary about the Canal Hotel attack on August 19, 2003. Meredith Blake, who did so much to make
An Inconvenient Truth
inconveniently relevant for so many, has taken on the difficult task of determining how to maximize the social impact of these endeavors (see ). She is backed by Randy Newcomb and the incomparable Pam Omidyar, who is doing more than anybody else I know—in Sergio’s words—to “invent the future.”
Team Obama’s John Favreau, Mark Lippert, Dennis McDonough, and Ben Rhodes offered daily infusions of conviction and banter while Obama himself always found a way to supply impeccably timed moral support despite having a few other things on his plate.
I am blessed to have close friends whom I see and talk to less than I would like, but whose voices roam about in my head regardless: Amy Bach, Steven Bourke, Allan Buchman, Holly Burkhalter, Gillian Caldwell, Greg Carr, Chuck Cohen, Lenor Cohen, Emma Daly, Joy DeMenil, Sharon Dolovich, Mano Felciano, Debbie Fine, Jody Freeman, Danna Harman, Oren Harman, Michele Horgan, George Timothy Horry, Anna Husarska, Peter Jukes, Kate Lowenstein, Martha Minow, Jonathan Moore, Charlotte Morgan, Julian Mulvey, Azar Nafisi, Luis Moreno Ocampo, David Pressman, Lee Siegel, Alexis Sinduhije, Stacy Sullivan, Jim Tipton, Zain Verjee, and Miro Weinberger. Curt Wood, my neighbor and friend, kept my house from falling down while I was away and occasionally when I was working obliviously inside. Cass Sunstein stepped in to offer improbable care, delivering what amounted to the clutch ninth-inning, game-seven RBI. One baritone voice will stay with me forever: that of the late, great David Halberstam, who ordered me to banish lunch and to remember that we have the greatest job on earth.
They say it’s a bad idea to mix friendship and business, but I don’t know what I would do if my editor,Vanessa Mobley, and my agent, Sarah Chalfant, were not also dear friends. They are the best in their respective businesses and they make my work better, while also enduring one impossibly demanding writer. In the final stretch Lindsay Whalen and Bruce Giffords at The Penguin Press demonstrated infinite patience as they worked overtime to get every precious detail correct.Thanks also to David Remnick and Daniel Zalewski at
The New Yorker,
who launched Sergio by showcasing his Iraq experience.
The New Yorker,
who launched Sergio by showcasing his Iraq experience.
At the heart of my A team is my former assistant Hillary Schrenell. Hillary was a recent college graduate when she joined the Carr Center as an intern in 2003. Over the following four years she morphed into a scrupulous administrator, a relentless researcher, a photo finder, a merciless editor, and a true friend. I have never known anyone else who cares more than I do about finding the unfindable source, who agonizes over word choices as if the future of the planet depended on linguistic precision, and whose ruthless perfectionism forced me to get my game up on these pages in order to withstand her gleaming scalpel and satisfy her loving eye. I’m not sure I know anybody else who combines such exceptional intellect with such unrelenting conscientiousness. The world needs more Hillarys.
And then there are the friends who kept me daily company: Doris Kearns Goodwin and Richard Goodwin, standard-setting historians and beloved confidantes; David Rohde and Elizabeth Rubin, brave and indefatigable reporters who care enough about their friendships to nurture them from Kandahar; Sayres Rudy, who understands everything, always; Michal Safdie and Moshe Safdie, who have altogether changed what my eyes see in the world; and Elliot Thomson, the wonder twin who has taught me to savor the trajectory of even the pitches we throw straight into the dirt.
Back in 1993 in the Balkans, Laura Pitter patiently introduced this novice reporter to the concept of the “nut graph,” and she has offered me a most uncomplicated friendship since. A public defender in the Bronx, she infuses those who know her with calmness and goodness. And John Prendergast, a friend whom I can hardly believe I’ve only known since 2004, lived and breathed this book with me, calling every single day at midnight, insisting on speaking when all I wanted to do was turn off the phones, and making me feel unequivocally accompanied throughout. As the telephone bills from Darfur, the Philippines, Uganda, and countless other places attest, geography was no barrier for long wending discussions on the Royals’ “resurgent” farm system, the aims of the latest
janjaweed
offensive, or, inevitably, the most deeply personal subjects of life and love. It is no exaggeration to say that every time I might have been daunted by a reportorial, geopolitical, or personal minefield before me, John shrugged, picked me up on his shoulders, and carried me through to the other side.
janjaweed
offensive, or, inevitably, the most deeply personal subjects of life and love. It is no exaggeration to say that every time I might have been daunted by a reportorial, geopolitical, or personal minefield before me, John shrugged, picked me up on his shoulders, and carried me through to the other side.
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