Pasha and Vieira de Mello held equal rank as under secretary generals, but their roles were quite distinct. Pasha was there to close down the Oil-for-Food operation, to clean up the remnants of the UN’s controversial past. Vieira de Mello was there to help prepare the country for a better future.
Even as I was placing call after call to the UN bureaucracy to speed up the process of my deployment to Iraq, Al Qaeda was wrapping up plans for the destruction of the UN’s new operation. Exploiting the Pentagon’s failure to control the vast arms caches contained in Saddam’s former military bases, terrorist operatives had acquired a 500-pound Soviet-made bomb. Such a large bomb would have been sufficient to destroy our UN headquarters completely, but to minimize the UN leaders’ chance of survival, the terrorists packed in another 1,500 pounds of high-grade explosives. The truck they used had been purchased through the UN’s Oil-for-Food program the previous year. It had a brown driver’s cabin and a bright-orange cargo container. Many such trucks had been stolen from the government’s fleet during the looting rampage that followed the invasion. An Algerian national named Fahdal Nassim, who had come to Iraq to enlist as a warrior in this new jihad, was chosen as the driver. The only challenge remaining was how to get the truck bomb close enough to the UN building to ensure its destruction.
That part of their job was greatly facilitated by the UN’s deep-seated incompetence in caring for the security of its staff. Pasha’s past performance as UN security coordinator had been lax, owing in part to his double posting as head of the Oil-for-Food program. In May 2002, Kofi Annan finally decided to appoint a full-time head of security. For that job he picked Tun Myat, who had served as Pasha’s humanitarian coordinator in Iraq but had no formal experience as a security manager. The bureaucrat from Myanmar had started his career as an insurance officer for the World Food Program and worked his way up to director of external relations. The press release announcing his appointment as security coordinator sought to boost the man’s credentials in the field of security by saying he had “traveled extensively” in some “hazardous” areas.
Well, so had Angelina Jolie (in her capacity as a goodwill ambassador for UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, the actress actually traveled to more “hazardous” conflict zones than Myat). Myat was no more qualified for the post than countless other humanitarian workers. He had never served as a commander in the police or in the military. And his analysis of the security situation in Iraq was downright disconcerting.
Before the war, I had developed an obsession with the UN’s evacuation plan. Compared with the 1998 campaign, the 2003 war would be a far more protracted and dangerous affair for the humanitarian community, and I did not want to see my friends trapped in Baghdad at the onset of hostilities once again. During the run-up to the war, when I was doing some pro bono work for Christer, I suggested that we make preparations for a common evacuation with the weapons inspectors before the start of hostilities. He agreed and took the matter up with the new UN security coordinator.
“Don’t you worry,” Tun Myat told him. “My friend al-Sahaf will never let anything happen to us.”
Sahaf was the Iraqi information minister at the time of the war, also known as Baghdad Bob. He was the first Iraqi official Pasha and I had met, back in 1997, when he was minister of foreign affairs. At the time, we had feared a bombing campaign was about to start even as we sat in his office.
The thought that any UN official might call this guy a “friend” was absolutely bewildering to me. Had Myat not watched television in 1990, when Saddam took all foreign workers in Iraq hostage? And did he not understand that Saddam’s information minister had no sway over matters of security? In Angelina Jolie’s action films, we at least know who the “bad guys” are. In the very real and dangerous environment that was postwar Iraq, the same could not be said of the UN’s security chief. In fact, under Myat’s leadership, it sometimes appeared as if the U.S.-led coalition was perceived as a graver threat to the UN than elements of the former regime or the terrorists.
When the UN returned to Baghdad in May 2003, the compound was occupied by the U.S. forces’ Second Armored Cavalry Regiment. After a good amount of looting, the coalition decided to secure the premises awaiting the UN’s return. The first thing the security coordinator’s office did was to ask U.S. forces to vacate the building and move to the compound’s “outside perimeter.” Fiercely protective of its office space, the UN also insisted that U.S. forces had no authority to search vehicles or people coming into or out of the complex. Myat thought the job would be done far better by the UN’s old local Iraqi security guards, who, under Saddam, had reported all UN movements to the Iraqi secret service. Most of the UN’s former guards were in fact security agents themselves, handpicked by the Iraqi government.
While Myat felt safer under the protection of Saddam Hussein’s former spies than under that of coalition troops, the staff on the ground were growing increasingly alarmed. As John Burnett, a journalist with National Public Radio, wrote in the New York Times, many UN staff were a lot more worried about their security than the UN security coordinator was:At a barbecue in the parking lot in late June, conversation among United Nations staffers focused on how easy it would be for a determined terrorist to drive a truck into the compound. The heavy steel door that opened onto the street had finally fallen off its hinges, and the entrance to the compound had become an open thoroughfare. The guards at the gate seemed to be more for show than for effectiveness.7
If only they had been just for show. Odds are inside information was passed on to those who commandeered the attack, which coincided with a time when both UN leaders were scheduled to be on the premises.
Fiona Watson, a young British woman who served as Vieira de Mello’s assistant on mission, was particularly worried. Spooky told me she had called colleagues in New York and shared her growing fears. She wanted to come home as soon as possible.
Attacks against humanitarian and diplomatic personnel had increased significantly in recent weeks. On August 7 a car bomb detonated outside the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad, killing eighteen people. On August 10 and 11, security briefings noted that “information became available to the UN security team of an imminent bomb attack in the Canal Road area of Baghdad.” 8 The UN was the only conceivable international target in that zone.
Despite warnings from the coalition that the security environment was “hostile” for humanitarian workers, the UN did not raise the alertness level. Several humanitarian workers from NGOs had been kidnapped, some killed. Yet in the assessment of the UN security coordinator, who completely ignored the warnings from his team in Baghdad, the threat to UN personnel remained “low.” As defined by his written evaluation, the main risk for UN personnel in Iraq was to find themselves in the “wrong place at the wrong time.”
Given the UN’s security posture, one might wonder why the terrorist didn’t simply drive straight through the broken front gate and ram the UN building head-on. But the attack was well planned. The location had been scouted out. And the prime objective of the mission was to target the UN’s top leaders, whose offices faced the back of the building.
Running right behind the UN compound was an access road that led to a training school for hotel workers. A U.S. Avenger platoon had blocked the road for security reasons using a five-ton truck, in part because the road ran in close proximity and parallel to Vieira de Mello’s and Pasha’s offices. In addition, the platoon set up an observation post on the roof of the UN building in order to see any suspicious oncoming vehicles from a distance. The UN leadership felt “uneasy” and “uncomfortable” with this highly visible U.S. presence and asked coalition forces to withdraw their heavy equipment and dismantle the rooftop observation post.
No alternative security measures were requested by the UN. Worried U.S. soldiers later laid down concertina wire on the access road, but the UN requested that it be removed as well. Fearing a diplomatic incident, U.S. forces complied. The access road was therefore unchecked and open
for traffic on August 19, the day Al Qaeda decided to strike.
The driver of the bomb-laden truck advanced slowly at first, until he reached the west side of the UN compound. There, he turned left onto the access road that ran parallel to the UN building. He then cranked up his engine and floored the gas pedal, accelerating down the passageway, sending pebbles flying at office windows that lined his path. If his information was correct, his two principal targets—Pasha and Sergio—would be at their desks. He slammed on the brakes right below their office windows.
Vieira de Mello was meeting with Gilbert Loescher, a professor from the University of Notre Dame and an expert in human rights and refugee issues. They were trying to work out how to help the weakest elements of Iraqi society, many of whom were being forced into exile by religious violence and terror.
They heard the spray of gravel from down below, the sound of screeching tires, the tearing of metal from the truck’s brakes . . . then nothing.
The blast ripped right through the façade, spreading shrapnel and flying glass on the building’s occupants and causing half of the structure to collapse. Buildings located a kilometer away had their windows shattered by the shockwaves. Arriving at the scene shortly after the explosion, Bernard Kerik, the former New York Police Department commissioner, was dumbfounded by the “enormous amount of explosives” used by the bomber and by the precision of the attack.
Twenty-two people died and more than 150 sustained injuries, some very serious. The masonry buckled, leaving Vieira de Mello trapped under rubble several floors down from where his office had been. His legs were crushed under a cement block, and he was treated with morphine to dull the pain. His military adviser kept talking to him, trying to keep him conscious for as long as possible. But the bleeding was heavy, and rescue workers lacked the equipment to dig him out fast enough. For hours, the media reported that he was alive and that he had even spoken on his cellphone. But as the blood slowly drained from his body, Vieira de Mello became unconscious. When he died, so did all hope that the humanitarian community would be able to operate in postwar Iraq.
It was early in the morning in New York when all news channels interrupted their programs to show live footage from the scene. In the past few days, I had banged my head against the UN bureaucracy. My recruitment had been cleared by the interview panel, and if everything had gone according to plan I would have been on the ground in Iraq. Spooky and I were both mad as hell that we hadn’t been able to join Vieira de Mello and Pasha in Baghdad. Spooky was a lot more knowledgeable about Iraq than many of those who had been sent in. He, too, was going ballistic over the slow pace of the bureaucracy. We both suspected interference, perhaps even from our good old foe Cindy, who, after being booted out by Pasha, had finally landed a job at UN Human Resources (of all places). We had no proof that she was delaying our paperwork, but old paranoid reflexes die hard. It would eventually occur to me that the UN’s dysfunctional bureaucracy might have saved my life by preventing me from being at the scene at the time of the bombing.
When I first saw the carnage, I worried about Pasha. I flipped the channels nervously as I scoured the web for information and called everyone I knew at the UN to inquire. Spooky finally got word that Pasha was alive. Miraculously, he had survived with only minor injuries. His decision to step out of his office seconds before the blast had saved him. It had to be the best-timed cigar break of his life.
Fiona Watson, who had grown increasingly fearful in previous days, was killed. Loescher, who was in Vieira de Mello’s office, lost both of his legs and stayed in a coma for days but ultimately survived.
Many of the survivors had pierced eardrums. They could not hear their own voices. Nonetheless, they quickly gathered themselves, sometimes using sign language, and started organizing the rescue as best they could, digging into the rubble with their bare hands and trying to take care of the injured. There was blood everywhere. One hundred yards from the explosion, a pair of severed hands and feet were recovered. It was assumed they belonged to the suicide bomber.
The report following the incident praised the courage of UN staff and U.S. troops alike in reacting to the tragedy. But it also stated that the lack of contingency planning by the United Nations for an attack with a large number of casualties had hurt the rescue mission. There were no organized command posts or points of assembly, no method to track casualties as they left the site either by their own means or by medical evacuation. One female staff member was listed as killed even though she was, in fact, alive. She was left without UN contact or support for several days in an Iraqi hospital. Her family was in mourning when they received a phone call from her a week later, when she was finally able to speak.
Flying glass shards caused most of the injuries and disfigured a good number of people. Back in 2000, Christer had submitted a mission report in which he specifically advised that the UN urgently install anti-fragmentation film on the windows of its Baghdad headquarters. The proposal was ignored by the security coordinator’s office. In 2003 the World Food Program offered to buy anti-fragmentation film for the UN and pay for installation itself. The UN Secretariat declined, saying it would finally procure the anti-fragmentation film on its own. By the time of the blast, the large windows of the UN cafeteria were still unprotected.
Following the attack, Myat declared at a press conference that “never,” in his “wildest dreams or nightmares,” had he imagined that the United Nations could be the target of terrorism. That statement alone should have caused Kofi Annan to pick up his phone and fire him on the spot. Myat refused to resign despite ample calls from UN staff. It took until March of the following year, and the publication of a detailed independent investigation, which found Myat to be “oblivious” and grossly negligent, before Annan finally demanded his security coordinator’s resignation. In other words, UN staff security remained under dangerously incompetent management for another six months after the August 19 attack, which put the UN on Al Qaeda’s official list of targets.
Several Iraqi groups claimed responsibility for the attack, but ultimately, one of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s chief bomb-makers, a man known as Al-Kurdi, was arrested and charged with organizing the operation.
Zarqawi, a Jordanian petty criminal turned terrorist mastermind in the battlefield of Iraq, had leveraged the attacks on the Jordanian Embassy and the UN headquarters to claim leadership of the newly formed Al Qaeda in Iraq umbrella group. In a video acquired by PBS Frontline, he declared, “We destroyed the UN building, the protectors of the Jews, the friends of the oppressors and aggressors. The UN has recognized the Americans as the masters of Iraq. Before that, they gave Palestine as a gift to the Jews so they can rape the land and humiliate our people. Do not forget Bosnia, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Chechnya.”
In Bosnia, the UN had sought to help Muslims. In Afghanistan, the United States had helped free the country of Soviet occupation. The international community had widely condemned the Soviet carpet-bombing of Chechnya. And the UN had long since relegated Israel to the status of a pariah state in the General Assembly. Finally, the UN had opposed the invasion of Iraq. And according to the UN’s communication director in Baghdad, Salim Lone, the UN’s aim was to help “end the occupation” as soon as possible.
But such facts mattered little to terrorists like Zarqawi, for whom any entity that sought to help Iraq rebuild was a fair target. Much to my dismay, however, Zarqawi’s irrational accusations against the UN actually found resonance among a large part of the UN community.
Denis Halliday, then retired, spoke for many of them when he appeared in the media and said that the reason the United Nations had been attacked was that the UN had been in “collusion” with the United States. In his view, the UN had been taken over by the United States and turned into a “dark joke,” a “malignant force” in the eyes of much of the world.9 In his remarks he referenced the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, blaming the United States for using the Security Council to defend Israel unfairly and fomenting additional Ara
b anger at the United Nations. Though expressed differently, these points were in fact very similar to those made by Zarqawi himself.
While Annan and his inner circle initially thought it right to lay at least some blame on the United States (which had refused to let the UN in on its military security briefings in Baghdad), it soon became clear that U.S. forces had offered more protection than the UN had been willing to accept. Still, in the aftermath of the attack, the organization redoubled its efforts to distance itself even further from the United States. Mark Malloch Brown, then the head of the United Nations Development Program, summed up the prevailing lesson the UN had learned after the attack by stating that the organization should seek to “regain its position of neutrality” in the world.
Perhaps there was a case to be made that UN agencies like UNICEF and the World Food Program would benefit from an image of neutrality in certain conflicts. But would neutrality save the United Nations from further harm in Iraq? Would the terrorists really care about the UN’s effort to distance itself from the United States? And would it even be possible, or warranted, for the United Nations to remain neutral in the fight against terrorism?
Backstabbing for Beginners Page 33