Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World

by Samantha Power

  Jay Garner, a sixty-five-year-old retired U.S. general who was to manage the civilian side of the U.S. postwar presence, did not arrive in Baghdad until April 21, twelve days after Baghdad’s fall. He was told that, in advance of the creation of the new Iraqi government, he would preside over twenty-three ministries—each of which would be headed by an American with Iraqi assistance. These ministries would keep the country running until normalcy returned.The Americans had ambitious but limited objectives. They wanted to remove Saddam Hussein and his henchmen and decapitate the Ba’athist terror apparatus. And in the wake of Saddam’s overthrow, they wanted to see Iraqi institutions up and running “under new management.”

  When Vieira de Mello was administrator in East Timor, he had taken care to live unobtrusively and to shun a dignitary’s siren. By contrast, Garner traveled around in a GMC Suburban, trailed by a convoy of nine Humvees and three security vehicles filled with Coalition troops. Garner did try to convey to Iraqis that they would control their own destiny. Visiting a power station that had been destroyed by vandals, Garner was asked if he was the new ruler of Iraq.“The new ruler of Iraq is an Iraqi,” the American said without elaborating.26 Garner was winging it.The only formal plan he had been given was a twenty-five-page paper, dated April 16, 2003, entitled “A Unified Mission Plan for Post-Hostilities Iraq.” It began: “History will judge the war against Iraq not by the brilliance of its military execution, but by the effectiveness of the post-hostilities activities.”27

  The Coalition’s “post-hostilities” performance did not begin well. Iraq’s infrastructure was far shoddier than U.S. planners had expected. Compounding matters was that, in the days after the fall of Baghdad, Iraqi gangs had carried out widespread looting, gutting seventeen of the twenty-three ministries, burning the Iraqi National Library (destroying more than one million books), stripping hospitals of their equipment and medicines, and smashing and stealing antiquities from the National Museum.28 Secretary Rumsfeld was widely quoted dismissing the significance of the lootings, saying, “Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”29 But images of the U.S. military in Iraq standing by helplessly— failing to declare martial law or impose a curfew—were beamed throughout Iraq, the region, and the world.30 The scenes were not different from those Vieira de Mello had seen in Kosovo when NATO soldiers had refused to prevent Kosovar gunmen from looting Serb villages. But the stakes in Iraq, a country of 27 million in the most volatile region in the world, were far higher.

  In early May, with chaos afoot, President Bush announced that he was replacing Garner with sixty-one-year-old L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer, who had served as ambassador to the Netherlands, ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism, and, more recently, managing director at Kissinger Associates. Henceforth he would head a newly created body called the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).31 On May 8 John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, and Jeremy Greenstock, the British ambassador there, sent a letter to the Security Council in which they spelled out the responsibilities of the CPA. This was the first written word that UN officials received that the American and British invaders—and not Iraqis—were in fact going to govern Iraq and provide for the “responsible administration of the Iraqi financial sector.”32

  Most Iraqis were shocked. “Until the creation of the CPA, we thought we were going to run our own country. That’s what the Americans had been telling us,” recalls Adnan Pachachi, a leading Iraq exile who had served in the 1960s as Iraqi ambassador to the UN. In April Pachachi had attended two large meetings of returning Iraqi exiles and local Iraqis who believed that they were debating the composition of a new Iraqi government. They were thus blindsided by the Bush administration’s decision to make Bremer the effective ruler of the country. On May 19, in response to the indefinite postponement of Iraqi sovereignty, the militant young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr brought some ten thousand protesters to the streets of Baghdad in the largest gathering since the arrival of U.S. forces six weeks before. The crowd denounced Bremer’s announcement that Iraqi self-government would be postponed. “No to foreign administration,” they chanted. “Yes, yes to Islam.”33

  Bremer swept into Iraq as the anti-Garner. If Garner, with his khakis and golf shirts, was deferential and hesitant, Bremer, dressed in his business suits and combat boots, was firm and swift. If Garner went out of his way to insist that as-yet-unidentified “Iraqis” were in charge, Bremer showed instantly that he was. Only he, “the administrator,” had the power to sign laws, which were called “orders.”

  The success of any U.S. administration in Iraq was handicapped by decisions made before Bremer’s time. The Pentagon had decided to attempt to man the “peace” with only 130,000 troops, an impossibility in a country so large.The White House had opted to make the Pentagon the lead agency in the postwar period, thereby sidelining the U.S. government’s only intellectual capital on governance, development, and reconstruction: that of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. And the Iraqi looting rampage that had begun in early April had ravaged basic services and greatly eroded Iraqi confidence in the Coalition.

  But Bremer was also the victim of the orders he issued on arrival. On May 16, only four days after he landed in Baghdad, he issued a fateful edict that would change Iraq forever: He banned Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party and forbade senior party members from participating in public life. While Garner had said he would punish only the leading culprits in the Ba’ath party, Bremer’s order targeted the top four levels of the party, whose numbers ranged between 1 million and 2.5 million. The de-Ba’athification order, which was modeled on the de-Nazification process after World War II, was said to have come from the White House.34 The effect of the measure was immediate. Bureaucrats and technocrats who knew how to operate the ministries of health, transportation, and communications were replaced by “fifth stringers,” in the words of Coalition official Stephen Browning, who attempted to run the ministry of health. “Nobody who was left knew anything.”35 While in World War II the Allies had left most German institutions in place, getting rid of only the most culpable Nazis, Iraq’s core institutions (schools, hospitals, social services, telecommunications, police, courtrooms) were not merely decapitated and left awaiting senior leadership; they were gutted to the point that they could not meet the daily needs of Iraq’s citizens. Low-level Ba’ath party officials were told that they could appeal, but the mechanisms to hear their appeals would not be set up for many months.

  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 internation
al 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.39

  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.” Th
e 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.’ ”