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Authors: Samantha Power
Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (65 page)
BOOK: Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World
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For all of their differences with Washington, Annan, Vieira de Mello, and other senior UN officials were actually in full agreement with the Bush administration that the UN should not run Iraq. In a March 21 memo, Annan’s top advisers argued that the UN should “resist and discourage” notions of a UN transitional administration, which would vastly exceed the UN’s capacity. In 2000 Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Algerian foreign minister, had released a highly touted report in which he culled the lessons of UN political and peacekeeping operations of the previous decade and concluded that the UN Secretariat needed to learn to “say no” to unachievable mandates. As Vieira de Mello had experienced firsthand in Bosnia and Kosovo, the UN too often took the fall for the wrongheaded decisions of the countries on the Security Council. When asked by a reporter whether the UN would be willing to run an Iraqi administration similar to those in East Timor and Kosovo, Annan replied, “Iraq is not East Timor and Iraq is not Kosovo. There are trained personnel, there is a reasonably effective civil service, there are engineers and others who can play a role in their own country.... Iraqis have to be responsible for their political future, and to control their own natural resources.”
13
13
As the speculation about the postwar phase began to heat up, Vieira de Mello began to wonder whether he might get pulled into the fray. His job in Geneva was frustrating him. In an e-mail to Peter Galbraith, he noted that he was still struggling to define his role, which was “not easy after three decades of operational, high-adrenaline stuff.”
14
He complained to a journalist that a “succession of appointments, of meetings, of trips, deprive me of my freedom.”
15
When Fabrizio Hochschild, his special assistant in Kosovo and East Timor, visited him in his plush new office, several times the size of his prior quarters, Hochschild brought his two-year-old son, Adam, who began playing in Vieira de Mello’s swirling desk chair. As the two friends got caught up, Adam suddenly began wailing at the top of his lungs. Hochschild did all he could to console him, but the boy cried on as if in agony. The high commissioner quipped, “At least someone knows how I feel.”
14
He complained to a journalist that a “succession of appointments, of meetings, of trips, deprive me of my freedom.”
15
When Fabrizio Hochschild, his special assistant in Kosovo and East Timor, visited him in his plush new office, several times the size of his prior quarters, Hochschild brought his two-year-old son, Adam, who began playing in Vieira de Mello’s swirling desk chair. As the two friends got caught up, Adam suddenly began wailing at the top of his lungs. Hochschild did all he could to console him, but the boy cried on as if in agony. The high commissioner quipped, “At least someone knows how I feel.”
In March 2003, shortly after he met with Bush, Vieira de Mello traveled to Brussels, where his friend Omar Bakhet was working. Bakhet set up a meeting with Romano Prodi, then president of the European Commission, but in the middle of their discussion, Prodi drifted to sleep. Leaving the meeting, Vieira de Mello erupted. “Fuck, Omar, this is what we are doing with our lives, putting up with this kind of garbage. He wouldn’t dare do that if I represented a Western country.” Bakhet tried to make light of the incident. “How do you think I feel, Sergio? This is my life here. Normally I bring blankets to meetings.” But his friend did not laugh. Bakhet recalls,“I felt like the flame in Sergio was dying slowly inside him.”
Still, although office life had never suited him and he felt removed from the “action” on Iraq, Vieira de Mello was committed to finishing what he had started. He was planning a politically delicate trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories for the fall, and he was ready to use the political capital he had amassed in capitals throughout his career to elevate the profile of his office and of human rights. He was also determined to complete his divorce. When his name began to appear in the press as a possible candidate to be UN envoy in Iraq, he played it down. The April 1 edition of
Development News,
a World Bank publication, quoted a London
Times
article saying that the Americans saw him as their candidate. He forwarded the link to Larriera. “Here starts the speculation,” he wrote. “I must have serious enemies in the UK for someone to say this of me!”
16
Since he had only just arrived in Geneva to take up the post of human rights commissioner, he did not think Annan would even consider removing him. A few days later he e-mailed Larriera an invitation that had been sent to him from the mayor of Geneva, who on June 7 would be hosting a reception in order to open five hundred bottles of wine. “Some good news,” he wrote her. “Let’s go!”
17
Development News,
a World Bank publication, quoted a London
Times
article saying that the Americans saw him as their candidate. He forwarded the link to Larriera. “Here starts the speculation,” he wrote. “I must have serious enemies in the UK for someone to say this of me!”
16
Since he had only just arrived in Geneva to take up the post of human rights commissioner, he did not think Annan would even consider removing him. A few days later he e-mailed Larriera an invitation that had been sent to him from the mayor of Geneva, who on June 7 would be hosting a reception in order to open five hundred bottles of wine. “Some good news,” he wrote her. “Let’s go!”
17
On April 9, a U.S. Marine tank helped topple the towering statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square, Baghdad.The mood on the thirty-eighth floor at UN Headquarters, where most people had opposed the war, was not celebratory. One of the few UN officials who had backed the invasion was sickened. “They couldn’t step back, even for one day, to rejoice in the end of Saddam’s tyranny,” the official recalls. The Americans were triumphant. On May 1, 2003, President Bush made his infamous proclamation in front of a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
18
At a town hall meeting at a U.S. base in Qatar, an army officer asked Rumsfeld whether he had been “bombarded with apologetic phone calls” from his “doom and gloom” critics. Amid much laughter and applause, Rumsfeld responded: “There were a lot of hand-wringers around, weren’t there? You know, during World War II, I think Winston Churchill was talking about the Battle of Britain, and he said, ‘Never have so many owed so much to so few.’ A humorist in Washington the other day sent me a note paraphrasing that, and he said, ‘Never have so many been so wrong about so much.’ But I would never say that.”
19
18
At a town hall meeting at a U.S. base in Qatar, an army officer asked Rumsfeld whether he had been “bombarded with apologetic phone calls” from his “doom and gloom” critics. Amid much laughter and applause, Rumsfeld responded: “There were a lot of hand-wringers around, weren’t there? You know, during World War II, I think Winston Churchill was talking about the Battle of Britain, and he said, ‘Never have so many owed so much to so few.’ A humorist in Washington the other day sent me a note paraphrasing that, and he said, ‘Never have so many been so wrong about so much.’ But I would never say that.”
19
Vieira de Mello hoped that the smugness of American decision-makers would be matched by competence on the ground. Battlefield success did not automatically translate into long-term stability, as the United States was already learning in Afghanistan. He was all too aware of how quickly progress could be reversed. As retired Marine general Anthony Zinni, former head of U.S. Central Command, said later, referring to the swift U.S. success in the initial conventional war in Iraq: “Ohio State beat Slippery Rock sixty-two to nothing. No shit.”
20
Whether the American and British invasion would prove a lasting success would turn on whether the Americans could provide physical and economic security for Iraqis. And in this regard Vieira de Mello took note of the fact that nobody he had talked to at the UN, in Europe, or in the Bush administration seemed to be able to answer an essential question: After Saddam was defeated, who would run Iraq?
20
Whether the American and British invasion would prove a lasting success would turn on whether the Americans could provide physical and economic security for Iraqis. And in this regard Vieira de Mello took note of the fact that nobody he had talked to at the UN, in Europe, or in the Bush administration seemed to be able to answer an essential question: After Saddam was defeated, who would run Iraq?
Administration officials had initially suggested that an Iraqi interim authority (split between Iraqi exiles and those who had stayed in Iraq and suffered under Saddam) would be chosen as soon as Coalition troops secured the country.
21
After a summit meeting with Prime Minister Blair in April, President Bush said, “I hear a lot of talk here about how we’re going to impose this leader or that leader. Forget it. From day one, we have said the Iraqi people are capable of running their own country . . . It is a cynical world that says it’s impossible for the Iraqis to run themselves.”
22
After his meeting with Bush in March, Vieira de Mello had met with National Security Adviser Rice, who told him that Washington hoped “very soon to identify technocrats who can help run the country.” She had insisted that people who claimed that President Bush intended to appoint a military governor “do not know what they are taking about,” adding, “We have no desire to be in Iraq longer than necessary.”
23
Publicly, she said, “If Afghanistan is any guide, the people themselves will tell you, well, that person has been a leader.”
24
As late as mid-May the Bush administration still imagined having a transitional Iraqi government composed of Iraqi exiles and internals in place by the end of the month.
25
21
After a summit meeting with Prime Minister Blair in April, President Bush said, “I hear a lot of talk here about how we’re going to impose this leader or that leader. Forget it. From day one, we have said the Iraqi people are capable of running their own country . . . It is a cynical world that says it’s impossible for the Iraqis to run themselves.”
22
After his meeting with Bush in March, Vieira de Mello had met with National Security Adviser Rice, who told him that Washington hoped “very soon to identify technocrats who can help run the country.” She had insisted that people who claimed that President Bush intended to appoint a military governor “do not know what they are taking about,” adding, “We have no desire to be in Iraq longer than necessary.”
23
Publicly, she said, “If Afghanistan is any guide, the people themselves will tell you, well, that person has been a leader.”
24
As late as mid-May the Bush administration still imagined having a transitional Iraqi government composed of Iraqi exiles and internals in place by the end of the month.
25
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
BOOK: Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World
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