In 2000 he had embraced a new norm first put forth by an independent commission: the “responsibility to protect.” The first responsibility to protect individuals from violence fell to those individuals’ government, but when that government proved unable (in a failing state) or unwilling (in a repressive state) to offer such protection, then the responsibility vested upward to the international community, which had a duty to mobilize the means to stop mass murder. Getting governments to agree to the concept in the abstract, he knew, was the easy part. While every country in the UN would endorse the notion of a “responsibility to protect,” very few would actually prove willing to exercise the responsibility. They wanted civilians to be protected, but they weren’t prepared to put their own soldiers or police in harm’s way to do the protecting. Unarmed relief workers who worked for NGOs were more likely to enter violent areas than were national militaries. What was true while Vieira de Mello was alive is even more true today, as the specter of Iraq hangs over public discussions of foreign engagement, deterring peacekeeping and state-building elsewhere in the world. And for all the talk of globalized threats, very few countries seem prepared to act on Vieira de Mello’s warning that “there is no longer such a thing as distant crisis.”12
One way Vieira de Mello looked out for physical security was to support international tribunals aimed at ending impunity and removing from the streets those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. When he worked strictly as a humanitarian, he had questioned whether legal accountability didn’t simply make perpetrators more determined to fight on. But his view changed in the mid-1990s.The same Vieira de Mello who had tried to convince Washington Post correspondent John Pomfret that countries should just put their pasts behind them and “learn to forget” became a vocal advocate of remembering and punishing. He kept a poster of the most wanted UN war crimes suspects from the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda on his office wall in Geneva and then New York. And after his May 1999 daredevil trip into Kosovo, he insisted on stuffing investigator Frank Dutton’s war crimes evidence in his suitcase in order to ensure that it made it back to The Hague. It was in the Balkans and in the refugee camps of Congo that he acquired his belief that pursuing justice would not lessen the odds of peace, but would, in the long term, advance them. Milošević, the man responsible for the Bosnian war, was treated like a dignitary in 1995 in order to bring the war to an end. But that same Milošević had not lost his taste for ethnic cleansing and massacres, and in 1999 he spearheaded another Serbian offensive in Kosovo. He would stop destabilizing the region only when he was incapacitated. In Africa, as Vieira de Mello walked through the camps where génocidaires were sharpening their knives for future battle, he saw that determined killers would continue to wreak havoc if they were left at large. “It’s a false dichotomy, this peace and justice thing,” he told his colleagues. “No peace is going to last if impunity reigns.” He was not an absolutist. He knew that indictments could sometimes be destabilizing and had to be carefully sequenced, but what mattered was that questions of accountability be addressed with the immediate and long-term interests of victims in mind. Although he was well aware of the Bush administration’s contempt for the International Criminal Court, the normally diplomatic Vieira de Melllo was so committed to the court that he made a point of defending it in his only meeting with President Bush.
Dignity Is the Point
Vieira de Mello’s relationship with human rights evolved in much the same way that his view of justice did, but it took longer.While to the naked eye human rights and humanitarianism seem like versions of a single theme, in disaster zones they were often seen to be rivals. Aid workers who denounced human rights abuses were often denied access to those in need, so they kept quiet in order to keep abusive governments and gunmen from expelling them. At UNHCR, when Vieira de Mello tried to advance the overall, long-term welfare of refugees as a class, he at times proved willing to cut corners on individual rights.
But when he took up his position as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, he started seeing human rights as the vehicle to calm interstate relations. Human rights and international law were under siege from all sides and he started to see that if order was to be preserved globally, international rules would have to become more binding on state and nonstate actors alike. His greatest appreciation of the relevance of human rights to high politics came in Iraq. During the occupation, he stressed repeatedly, the Coalition would have to go out of its way to respect and protect Iraqi human rights; that meant changing its detention policies and checkpoint rules of engagement and also respecting local customs. Whether Iraq transformed itself into a stable state would depend not on its oil resources but on whether Iraqis were able to live with dignity.“I could see him changing every day he was in Baghdad,” recalls Mona Rishmawi, UN human rights officer in Iraq. “Human rights were no longer abstract principles on a page; they were the indispensable bedrocks of a society’s survival.” Vieira de Mello wrestled with the trade-offs inherent in achieving respect for human rights. He saw Iraqis living the tension between liberty and equality, as rich Iraqi exiles used the new freedoms to line their pockets. He saw the dangers that self-determination posed to women’s and minorities’ rights. But whatever the trade-offs, human rights could not be treated as afterthoughts; they had to be central to Iraqi, Coalition, and regional planning. No realistic strategy for stabilizing Iraq or any traumatized country could exclude them.
Although Vieira de Mello became an explicit advocate for human rights late in his career, he had lobbied on behalf of human beings for decades. After his death the quality of his that was most often hailed was his regard for individuals. His colleagues took note of how surprisingly rare it was, even in the world of humanitarianism, to find an official who actually looked out for human beings, one by one, as he or she encountered them. In Lebanon Vieira de Mello paid frequent visits to the relatives of Lebanese wounded or killed by UN fire; in Cambodia he learned the country’s history from UN drivers and translators who had survived the slaughter, and he personally oversaw the resettlement of several hundred Christian Montagnards, unwanted by Vietnam and Cambodia, to North Carolina, where they live to this day; in Bosnia he refused to wear a flak jacket because Sarajevan civilians enjoyed no such luxury, and he helped organize the underground “train” to get civilians out of the besieged Bosnian capital; in Azerbaijan he circled back to find the elderly peasant woman who wished to become a cloud, listening to her as if she held the key to world peace; in Kosovo he insisted on tracking down the Albanian nephew of his cleaning lady, following up with incessant phone calls and faxes to UN staff in Macedonia; in East Timor he invited the parents of Leonard Manning, the first UN peacekeeper killed there, to attend the country’s independence ceremony; and even in Iraq he found time to wire money to the Timorese woman who had cleaned his house so that she might pay for her children’s education. In a thirty-four-year career, he made a trademark of “Sergio letters,” a virtual library of thousands of handwritten letters of greeting, thanks, or commendation, penned to friends and colleagues around the world. He treated junior staff, local staff, and local citizens with respect. He understood that he had the single-handed power to enhance their sense of dignity, and this was a power he used often.
He thought the international system would be far more effective and humane if it too focused on dignity—the dignity of individuals, of communities, and of whole nations. But to enhance dignity, he knew, outside actors had to do something they did not do naturally: probe deeply into the societies they were working in. He was acutely conscious of the fact that the future of the places he worked belonged to the individuals who lived there. Well-meaning foreigners could bring money, political leverage, or technical expertise, but they were there to support local leaders and processes and to build local capacity. He sometimes did this badly, overrelying on his close staff or on local favorites. But wherever he went, he tested his assumptions and sought diverse feedback. He insisted on walking around be
sieged Sarajevo in order to gain a read on the Bosnian “street.” In Congo he knew he would be a less persuasive advocate for a multinational military force if he hadn’t himself talked to the refugees there, so he slipped across the Rwandan border undercover. In East Timor he insisted that the UN director of administration take down the barbed wire around the Governor’s House so that the Timorese would be able to approach and share their complaints. When Timorese representatives told him that they were fed up with working for UN officials who had simply taken the place of Indonesians as their overlords, he listened and changed course, hemorrhaging power as quickly as the UN Security Council would allow him. In Iraq, to his ultimate peril, he opened up the Canal Hotel, dubbing it the “anti-Green Zone” and inviting Iraqis to come and register human rights abuses (past and present) and simply to check their e-mails. If UN officials were to isolate themselves as the Americans were doing, he argued, they would alienate the very citizens they were there to help. And if the Americans didn’t become more sensitive to the dignity they were trampling during their occupation, they would fail.
He offered advice to others who tried state-building: “Be humble,” he told a conference of diplomats and humanitarians in 2002.“Admit your mistakes and your failures as soon as you identify them, and try and learn from them obviously. Be frank and honest with the people you are there to help because only then will you stand a true chance of succeeding, and of your achievements being acknowledged by them, which is more important than the international community.”13 He valued learning languages because they enabled him to connect with people on their terms. It was a sign of respect for their traditions as well as a window into their psyches. He tried to learn Tetum in East Timor and was self-conscious that he did not know Arabic while in Iraq. He thought understanding a nation’s history, pride, and trauma was more important than knowing its literacy rates or trading prospects. He paid careful attention to symbolism. “How many wars could have been avoided by taking care not to create international treaties on the foundation of mistrust and of contempt for nations’ sense of self-esteem?” he asked.14 He came to believe that, whatever their inexperience, Kosovars, Timorese, and Iraqis would be better off governing themselves and learning on the job than getting talked down to by foreigners.
Complexity, Humility, and Patience
In their attempts to prevent conflict, spur economic development, or shore up failing states,Vieira de Mello saw, outsiders had their work cut out for them. Notwithstanding billions of dollars’ worth of investments, none of the places where he worked over the years are fully stable places today. Sudan and Iraq are still marred by savage violence, while Lebanon and Congo remain dysfunctional, fragmented states that suffer waves of deadly fighting. Cambodia is booming economically, but Hun Sen remains in power, intimidating his opposition. Bosnia has not seen fighting since NATO intervened militarily in 1995, but it has lost the spirit of multiethnicity that Vieira de Mello so prized, and its two most high-profile war criminals, Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, remain at large. When it comes to Kosovo, the countries on the Security Council are still divided over whether it should attain full independence, and the interethnic tensions contained since 1999 seem likely to explode if a peaceful resolution is not soon found. East Timor has remained free of Indonesian control, but widespread unemployment and stalled development have resulted in violent riots, causing 150,000 people to flee their homes and requiring the Security Council to redeploy 1,600 international police. The turmoil caused the UN’s critics to point out that even a rare UN success story had faltered.
Vieira de Mello read UN situation reports and cables, as well as wire stories, from all over the world in order to keep up with events in the places he had once worked. He was crestfallen whenever he saw that hard-won progress had been reversed. But he consoled himself by recalling just how broken the places had been to begin with. The roads were not simply unpaved, and the electricity not simply sporadic. In many cases the entire fabric of society had been obliterated, creating indescribably complex problems that international actors would not ameliorate easily—or quickly. Thus the impatient philosopher-humanitarian became more sanguine later in his career, recognizing that anybody who entered a war-torn society had to do so with humility and patience. “We all tend to measure and judge history in the light of our own existence,” he said in one speech. “We have to adopt a more long-term perspective. History is not in a hurry.”15 There might not be early or visible returns on outside investments. Elections might produce ugly outcomes. Corrupt officials might impede reconstruction. Civil unrest might taint the advent of democracy. But whenever donor governments or his own UN staff were tempted to give up in exasperation, he would urge them to ask “Compared to what?” “We know how bad things are today,” he would say, “but we should remind ourselves how bad things have been in the past, and how much worse things can get.” Frustrations tended to boil over when the gap was too great between the expectations of locals and donor governments on the one hand, and the grim, slow-paced sputtering improvements in battered societies on the other. He saw half of his job as “expectation management.”
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.”
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 t
heir 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.
Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World Page 67