Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (19 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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As the afternoon wore on, mosquitoes began to take aim at the UN visitors. Udo Janz applied roll-on mosquito repellent, and the Khmer Rouge officials at the table pointed to his device with openmouthed wonder. Janz told them that the repellent would keep mosquitoes and malaria away. One of the bolder soldiers grabbed the stick, took a whiff, and exclaimed in Khmer, “Lemon, lemon!” He then did as Janz had done, dispensing the repellent the length of his arm. On his map Thomson had placed an enormous X through the territory they were sitting in because it was known to be laden with malaria-infested mosquitoes. But when he raised the matter, a Khmer Rouge public health official said, “We don’t have malaria here. We cut down all the forests, and the malaria went away.” Thomson did a double take. “You’re trying to tell me that none of you has malaria?” he asked. “Don’t insult me by lying to me.” The Khmer Rouge official grew angry. “What do you know about my country?” he asked. Suddenly Vieira de Mello, the diplomat, broke from his conversation with General Ny Korn and placed himself between the two sparring health professionals.“I think we can all agree that malaria is a serious problem,” he said. “And of course it warrants careful consideration. You two can follow up at a later date.”
 
 
Aid workers and diplomats in war-torn areas often have to weigh offers of hospitality against potentially life-threatening consequences. In the late afternoon a Khmer Rouge soldier suggested that the UN team ward off the heat by taking a swim in the river. “We’re fine,” said Vieira de Mello, on behalf of the others. But the soldiers were insistent. “We don’t have bathing suits,” Vieira de Mello tried. General Ny Korn delivered a stern order in Khmer. Within minutes a Khmer Rouge cadre had returned with sarongs for the UN officials to wear. With trepidation, Vieira de Mello and the others eased themselves into the water, which proved immensely refreshing. The Khmer Rouge soldiers stood beaming on the banks of the river. “You see how clean the river is now,” one shouted. “When the Vietnamese ruled Cambodia, the rivers were filled with body parts and corpses.” The UN swimmers cringed at the thought of what lay beneath them. The young Khmer Rouge soldiers, most of them still teenagers, took special delight in gawking at Bos, the lone woman in the group, as she swam. “She’s torturing these poor lads,” Assadi said to Lynch. “It just isn’t fair.”
 
 
Before dinner the UN visitors heard the sound of gunfire in the distance. Thomson, who had still not relaxed, took it as a bad omen. But his fears were quickly soothed when rifle-wielding Khmer Rouge soldiers entered the camp carrying their bounty: a deer that they had shot for dinner. After the feast, the group retired to simple wooden huts, where they stayed the night sleeping on sheets that still bore the creases from having just been removed from their store wrapping.
 
 
After a final meeting over breakfast the next morning, Vieira de Mello’s UN team parted, retracing its steps. When photos from the trip made the rounds at UN headquarters in Phnom Penh, most UN officials were stunned that their colleagues had dared to make such a trip. Vieira de Mello’s cable to Geneva noted proudly that theirs was “the first official visit by international staff to the Khmer Rouge area.”
3
 
 
Ever since his stint in Lebanon, he had bristled under the label of “humanitarian.” But after his trip into Khmer Rouge territory, he made the case to Akashi that a humanitarian could play a role with profound political importance. If he could use refugee returns to open up a channel of communication to the one warring faction that no one else in the UN could reach, he could be the wedge for other parts of UNTAC to gain access and eventual cooperation. He knew his strategy was risky. The Khmer Rouge could shut down as quickly as they opened up. He wrote to Ogata that rather than trusting General Ny Korn’s assurances, UN officials had to “put this sudden forthcomingness to repeated tests in the weeks to come.”
4
 
 
In fact, the Khmer Rouge “forthcomingness” did not last, as they denied access to UN peacekeepers, de-miners, and public health officials. On May 8, a month after his meeting with General Ny Korn, Vieira de Mello traveled back to forbidden territory to meet with Ieng Sary, the second-most important Khmer Rouge official, in Ieng’s villa. The journey was as adventurous as the first, involving tractors, donkey carts, and Chinese trucks. Again, upon arrival Vieira de Mello bore no signs of the stress. Accompanied by Bos, Assadi, and Lynch, he managed to remain immaculate, even as their vehicle sailed from one deep puddle to another. Lynch and Assadi were covered in mud by the time they arrived.Vieira de Mello, who once again used his wipes to remain spotless, gave his colleagues a once-over on arrival and shook his head. “I’ve wondered this my whole life,” he said, smiling, “but now I finally know what it means to look like shit.”
 
 
Ieng Sary served an even more elaborate meal than General Ny Korn had, complete with French wines and cheeses. Although Ieng spoke through a Khmer-French translator, he frequently corrected the translations.The meeting broke no new ground. Vieira de Mello urged Ieng Sary to use his clout to improve Khmer Rouge cooperation with the UN, and Ieng Sary urged Vieira de Mello to use his clout to strip Hun Sen of his power. Impressed by Ieng’s cultured ways, Vieira de Mello was again flummoxed by the disconnect between the man he met and the crimes for which he was responsible. “When you are drinking Ieng Sary’s cold Thai beer and eating filet mignon like that,” he whispered to Assadi as they departed, “it is easy to forget that the man is a killer.”Whenever Vieira de Mello met with Khmer Rouge officials, he avoided mention of the crimes of the past. As Bos recalls, “Sergio’s focus was always on the future. He was not confrontational and didn’t see the point of asking, ‘How much blood do you have on your hands?’ ”
 
 
TRANSITIONAL AUTHORITY WITHOUT THE AUTHORITY
 
 
Vieira de Mello’s inroads earned him respect from his colleagues, but they did not appear to be changing Khmer Rouge behavior. On May 30, just three weeks after he shared his banquet lunch with Ieng Sary, UNTAC suffered its lowest moment. Akashi and General Sanderson had traveled to the Khmer Rouge self-styled headquarters in the town of Pailin, where they had met with several Khmer Rouge leaders. Afterward, instead of heading back to Phnom Penh, Akashi decided that he would try to exercise the free movement promised the UN by the Paris agreement. Akashi’s convoy drove along a bumpy dirt road until it reached a checkpoint in an area where the Khmer Rouge were known to be smuggling precious gems and timber into Thailand. Two bone-thin Khmer Rouge soldiers manned the single bamboo pole that blocked the road. When Akashi asked the soldiers to lift the pole, they refused.
 
 
Akashi initially acted as though he would not be denied. He angrily demanded that the soldiers go and fetch their commander.
5
But when a more senior Khmer Rouge officer turned up, he too refused to allow the UN to proceed. Akashi did not have a backup plan and simply instructed the UN drivers to turn around. Sanderson, who had thought it ill advised to attempt to penetrate forbidden Khmer Rouge territory in the first place, defended the retreat, noting that a large machine-gun post abutted the checkpoint. But the Cambodian and Western media, who were traveling in tow, exploited the incident to ridicule UN passivity.
 
 
Cambodians had hoped that UN soldiers would enforce the terms of the Paris agreement, but that expectation was slowly giving way to a fear that the UN would bow in the face of resistance from any of the factions. “We are the United Nations Transitional Authority, without the authority,” observed one British peacekeeper.“The Cambodians are contemptuous of us.”
6
Hun Sen’s military attacks on the Khmer Rouge rose steadily from 1992 into 1993, as did the occurrences of banditry in the countryside.
 
 
Akashi and Sanderson had both made it plain that they had no intention of getting their way by using force.This was a clear-cut peace
keeping
mission, and they intended to keep it that way. “Many of our troop-contributing countries were sending their soldiers on their first-ever UN missions,” Sanderson recalls. “Some hadn’t even arrived yet. How many of them would have signed on if the mission had been advertised as ‘Come to Cambodia to make war with the Khmer Rouge!’ ” Akashi blamed the factions for the stalemate—not the UN. “Blithe proponents of ‘enforcement’ seem to overlook the fact that the Vietnamese occupied Cambodia for a decade with 200,000 troops without managing to bring the country fully under their control,” he said .
7
 
 
UN officials were divided on the question of how tough Akashi and Sanderson should get with those who were sabotaging the peace. McNamara thought human rights abuses would continue to increase if Akashi allowed the UN—and, by definition, its principles—to be walked over. “I don’t see the point of having thousands of soldiers and police if one bamboo pole can stop us,” McNamara argued. Sanderson’s deputy, a French general named Michel Loridon, went further, urging UNTAC to “call the Khmer Rouge’s bluff.”
8
Loridon believed a UN mission was no different from any military mission: It demanded risk taking. “It is not a question of troop strength. I have done a lot more with 300 troops than is now being done with 14,000,” Loridon told journalists. If the Khmer Rouge fought back against UN troops, he argued,“one may lose 200 men—and that could include myself—but the Khmer Rouge problem would be solved for good.”
9
Sanderson called Loridon into his office when he saw the press reports.“Did you actually say these things?” Sanderson asked, incredulous. “
Oui, mon général,”
Loridon answered, “but of course my loyalty is to you.”
 
 
Vieira de Mello did not believe that Akashi and Sanderson should have barreled through the bamboo pole. Having spent endless hours meeting with key ambassadors, he knew troop-contributing countries were not prepared to risk their soldiers’ lives to do battle with the genocidal Khmer Rouge. Vieira de Mello deemed Loridon a loose cannon, and for the rest of his career he cautioned against crossing “the Loridon line.”“Give me a few French paratroopers,” Vieira de Mello would say, mimicking Loridon, “and I’ll take care of the Khmer Rouge!” But he agreed with McNamara that the incident made the UN look spineless and that it highlighted Akashi’s weakness as a diplomat. “This is a major loss of face and blow to the credibility of the UN,” he told Bos. “The art of diplomacy is to avoid placing yourself in a position where you can be humiliated.”
 
 
Vieira de Mello got along well with General Sanderson, as he did with most senior military officers. But occasionally tensions flared up between the two men, as Sanderson faulted him for legitimating the Khmer Rouge. “You’re playing right into their hands,” the general said. But Vieira de Mello stood his ground. “Look, I have them cooperating with the UN on something. Nothing else is moving. How else are we going to keep them in the game?”
 
 
Vieira de Mello’s ties with Akashi grew strained. Akashi was obsequious toward influential diplomats in Phnom Penh, but he treated top UN officials within the mission as mere technicians. Vieira de Mello was in constant contact with UNHCR’s field offices throughout the country, and he believed he had his finger nearer the country’s political pulse than Akashi, who interacted mainly with other foreigners in the Cambodian capital.
 
 
On June 15, 1992, just as Akashi departed for a donors’ conference in Tokyo, Vieira de Mello, McNamara, and Reginald Austin, the senior UN official in charge of planning elections, authored a joint memo urging Akashi to adopt a more “participatory” management style and to overhaul UNTAC’s approach to Hun Sen and the Khmer Rouge. Because UNTAC had failed to assert control over Cambodia’s five key ministries, Hun Sen’s faction retained power it was supposed to have surrendered, and it lorded that power over the others. Whatever Akashi’s reluctance to act like a MacArthur-style occupier, the UN directors argued that he needed to take on greater authority himself so that Hun Sen would not continue to dictate events. He also needed to make use of Vieira de Mello’s back channel to the Khmer Rouge.
10
 
 
When Vieira de Mello joined Akashi in Tokyo later in the week, he asked to discuss the memo. But the Japanese diplomat waved off the criticisms. “I was of the feeling that they didn’t have the breadth of information and intelligence that I had,”Akashi recalls.“So I didn’t think they were in the position to join me in decision making.They were a little overambitious, I thought.” Akashi convinced himself that the men took the brush-off in good faith. “They did not have enduring grudges,” he remembers, inaccurately. “They saw I appreciated their work and their ideas but that they were somewhat limited.”
 
 
A DANGEROUS EXPERIMENT
 
 
Vieira de Mello continued to believe that constructive engagement with the Khmer Rouge was the only way to save the faltering Cambodian peace process. In an internal July 1992 memo he instructed UNHCR officials to refrain—“in accordance with their humanitarian and non-political mandate”—from criticizing the Khmer Rouge in the press.
11
In September 1992 he chastised UN official Christophe Peschoux for telling
Le Monde
that the guerrillas were falling apart.
12
He faxed the clipping to Peschoux with a handwritten note: “I need hardly point out that interviews of this kind are most unhelpful and embarrassing, particularly at a time when I am doing my best to keep channels of communication with the [Khmer Rouge] open.”
13
Denunciation and isolation had offered Akashi fleeting satisfaction, but the approach was not sustainable. “By slamming the Khmer Rouge in public, what are we gaining?” Vieira de Mello vented to Assadi. “We’ll be one voice in a million criticizing them. To them we’ll be just another enemy.”

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