Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (47 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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He used the overnight flight to Rome to study Security Council Resolution 1244, which left Kosovo’s final status undefined but gave him far more power than Yasushi Akashi had been given in Cambodia. Akashi had supervised Cambodian ministries; in Kosovo Vieira de Mello would have to build and run them. Somehow, with no money, no valid precedents, and no institutions to draw upon, he would have to determine what law should apply in the province and decide how to collect customs and taxes, what kind of passports should be issued, how to kick-start the economy, whether Yugoslav currency should remain in effect, and what on earth to do with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the ethnic Albanian guerrillas who would be an uncontested armed presence as soon as Serbian police and soldiers had fully withdrawn. Vieira de Mello was the interim administrator. He did not know how long “interim” would last, but he set out to establish a framework for governing the place. His greatest challenge, he knew, would be rapidly mobilizing police, UN staff, and money from New York.
His small UN governing team flew from Rome on to Skopje, Macedonia. When they landed, they proceeded straight to NATO’s temporary headquarters, where the force commander, British lieutenant-general Michael Jackson, was garrisoned. Vieira de Mello told Jackson that his team intended to drive north to Kosovo that very day. Jackson advised against it. “The province has not been secured,” he said. “We haven’t even set up our headquarters yet.”
Vieira de Mello told General Jackson that he was aware of the risks of premature entry. But having traveled around Kosovo while NATO was bombing and Serb paramilitary forces were on the loose, he was not about to be deterred now that a peace deal had been struck. Although the UN Security Council had put the UN in charge of the province, he knew that if he did not quickly establish a UN ground presence, NATO and KLA soldiers would fill the vacuum. Jackson wished him luck, and the two men agreed to hold daily meetings in Kosovo so as to coordinate their separate civilian and military chains of command.
Because the mission had been jerry-rigged in a hurry, Vieira de Mello’s team needed to beg and borrow supplies from aid groups, governments, and other branches of the UN that were already present in the region. They borrowed two vehicles from a Swedish relief organization, communications equipment from the British government’s aid agency, water and fuel from UNHCR, and military rations from NATO. Vieira de Mello felt he was on what he later called “an under-budgeted high school outing.”
3
3
The trip from the Macedonian border to Pristina, the Kosovo capital, was straightforward; the two vehicles simply had to drive forty miles northward. But the scenes around them were anything but normal. Less than three weeks before, when he had driven a portion of the same road, it had been deserted. Now the streets were lined with cheering Kosovar Albanians who had never quite believed that they would be free of Serb tyranny. Most Kosovars were still outside the country in refugee camps in Macedonia and Albania. Those who flocked to greet the UN convoy were mainly those who had hidden inside the province during the NATO bombing campaign. They made the peace sign, threw flowers into the street, and cheered the British prime minister and U.S. president, chanting, “TO-NY, TO-NY” and “CLIN-TON, CLIN-TON.” “This must have been what it felt like for American troops at the end of the Second World War,” Fraser said to a colleague.
Vieira de Mello eyed families walking along the side of the road. They were carrying bundles and appeared to be heading back to their homes. He saw scattered cars piled high with suitcases and appliances. “Once these people start heading home,” he noted, “there’ll be no stopping them.” Yet having toured Kosovo’s charred villages, he knew many would return to find only the ashen remains of their past lives.
After around three hours on the road, as the UN convoy ascended the crest of a hill, he instructed his driver to stop the vehicle. He disembarked with the others and eyed the capital city of Pristina below. As he did, he turned back and looked at the cars that his team had appropriated. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “We have to show people that it is the United Nations, and not Sweden, that is arriving. Who’s got a UN flag?” Somebody produced a royal blue UN flag, around the size of a pillowcase, and tied it to the antenna of Vieira de Mello’s lead vehicle. He looked satisfied, even though the enormous decals of the Swedish flag emblazoned on the side of the cars were far more visible to onlookers.
He had been in a hurry to get to Pristina for another, more juvenile reason. Dennis McNamara, who was managing UNHCR’s operations in the region, was bringing the first UN relief into Kosovo in nearly three months. McNamara had told Vieira de Mello that he intended to be the first UN official to reach the newly liberated capital. Over their radios the two friends had ribbed and taunted each other constantly throughout the afternoon, but McNamara had gone silent, and Vieira de Mello worried that his friend had won the bet.
McNamara had enjoyed a lengthy head start, having departed Skopje in the morning. But he was traveling in a twenty-three-truck convoy that carried 250 tons of supplies, including bottled water, wheat flour, hygienic kits, blankets, plastic sheeting, and 48,000 Meals Ready to Eat.
4
It took most of the day for his unwieldy convoy to snake its way to the UN warehouse on the outskirts of Pristina. Staffan de Mistura, the Italian who on Vieira de Mello’s advice had hired smugglers as “UN consultants” in Bosnia seven years before, was part of McNamara’s convoy. He was unaware that they were part of a race, and it never dawned on him that Vieira de Mello, who had been appointed interim administrator only two days before, could have already reached Kosovo.Yet no sooner had de Mistura disembarked from his truck at the UN warehouse than he heard a familiar voice. “
Benvenuto,
Staffan!” Vieira de Mello said.
4
It took most of the day for his unwieldy convoy to snake its way to the UN warehouse on the outskirts of Pristina. Staffan de Mistura, the Italian who on Vieira de Mello’s advice had hired smugglers as “UN consultants” in Bosnia seven years before, was part of McNamara’s convoy. He was unaware that they were part of a race, and it never dawned on him that Vieira de Mello, who had been appointed interim administrator only two days before, could have already reached Kosovo.Yet no sooner had de Mistura disembarked from his truck at the UN warehouse than he heard a familiar voice. “
Benvenuto,
Staffan!” Vieira de Mello said.
As Vieira de Mello, McNamara, and de Mistura embraced warmly,
20
an elderly Serb who was guarding the gate of the UN warehouse began screaming obscenities and raising his machine gun as if to shoot them if they approached. The man was visibly drunk and so incoherent that he seemed at once harmless and dangerous. Vieira de Mello had been informed that the Serbs had burned down the other large UN warehouse in Kosovo, so he knew the UN needed to hang on to this one.
20
an elderly Serb who was guarding the gate of the UN warehouse began screaming obscenities and raising his machine gun as if to shoot them if they approached. The man was visibly drunk and so incoherent that he seemed at once harmless and dangerous. Vieira de Mello had been informed that the Serbs had burned down the other large UN warehouse in Kosovo, so he knew the UN needed to hang on to this one.
“Staffan, I need a drink,” he said suddenly to de Mistura.
“What you mean, you need a drink?” the Italian asked. It was broad daylight, and there was work to be done.
“Do you have any slivovitz here?” Vieira de Mello pressed.
De Mistura asked the UN interpreters to see what they could find. A few minutes later one of the locals approached with a small bottle of the Balkan spirit. Vieira de Mello approached the angry Serb cautiously and pointed to the bottle. “I would like to drink some slivovitz with you and talk things out,” he said.
The Serb guard looked skeptical, but the Balkan rules of hospitality required him to accept.The men raised their glasses. “
Živeli,
” Vieira de Mello toasted to the baffled Serb in his language. De Mistura was not sure whether he or the Serb guard was in a greater state of shock. But when he saw the guard rest his gun beside his chair and return the toast, he knew who would soon win the battle of wills.
Živeli,
” Vieira de Mello toasted to the baffled Serb in his language. De Mistura was not sure whether he or the Serb guard was in a greater state of shock. But when he saw the guard rest his gun beside his chair and return the toast, he knew who would soon win the battle of wills.
Speaking through a UN interpreter, the Serb began explaining the source of his rage. He had guarded the UN warehouse for almost a year, and the Serbian government had yet to pay him. His friends and relatives had already fled Kosovo, but he had remained in order to collect what was owed to him. Vieira de Mello finished his drink, returned to his vehicle, and dipped into a tin box that he used to store petty cash.When he handed the Serb the several hundred dollars he was owed, the guard pocketed the money, picked up his gun, and walked away. The warehouse belonged to the UN.
Having secured a home for the UN’s humanitarian supplies, Vieira de Mello and the others made their way into town. Pristina was even more deserted than it had been during the war. Most of the Serbs had left, and few ethnic Albanians had yet made it back. As the UN group reached town, they saw that Serb forces were still setting houses aflame.The circumstances reminded him of his arrival in Gorazde five years before. But while in Gorazde the arson had been a sign of the Serbs’ invulnerability, this time it was clearly a last gasp by the departing Serbs—a sign of their relative weakness.
In advance of arriving, they had not lined up a place to stay. Randolph Kent, who was part of the group, remembers the chaos and uncertainty that they felt as they drove aimlessly around Pristina.“Have you ever been on the holiday where you arrive and you say,‘Why the hell didn’t we book a hotel?’ Well, that’s what it was like,” Kent recalls.
As the team stopped at the side of the road to discuss their plans for the rest of the day, they saw another drunken Serb soldier in a militia uniform staggering up the road. They thought little of it, as the sight was becoming familiar. A few minutes later as they drove up the road, however, they saw the same soldier’s body lying facedown. He had been shot—one of four Serbs who were reported killed by the KLA that day.
5
Because it was the Serbs who had maintained order, even if brutal order, their departure was leaving a dangerous vacuum.
5
Because it was the Serbs who had maintained order, even if brutal order, their departure was leaving a dangerous vacuum.
Although he had hardly slept on the transatlantic flight, Vieira de Mello was in a familiar hurry to establish the UN presence. He held a press conference downtown at the Grand Hotel. When he was shown the room where the event was to be held, he eyed the podium. “There’s a NATO flag there,” he told Eduardo Arboleda of UNHCR. “I can’t appear before a NATO flag.” “But, Sergio, people will concentrate on what you are saying,” Arboleda said. “No, I’ll offend the Serbs,” he replied. “They were just bombed by NATO.” Since a UN flag could not be found as a backdrop, Vieira de Mello demanded someone find a light blue sheet, which was procured from housekeeping and hung instead. “For this forlorn group without food, cars, sleeping bags, or a place to stay, to say, ‘We’re here, and we’re the new UN administration!’ seemed preposterous,” recalls Strohmeyer. “There were ten of us and fifty thousand NATO troops.” Yet Vieira de Mello’s self-respect, personal and institutional, made him and the other team members believe that they had an essential role to play.
At the press conference he was asked about the likelihood that ethnic Albanians would carry out revenge attacks against Serbs. Although McNamara had urged him to condemn displacements and revenge killings, Vieira de Mello sent an unfortunately passive signal to the inhabitants of the polarized province. Instead of denouncing the spate of attacks on Serbs, he said, “I believe it is unavoidable that there will be security incidents here and there.”
6
It was late June before he brought Kosovo’s Albanian and Serb leaders together to issue a joint appeal for peace.
6
It was late June before he brought Kosovo’s Albanian and Serb leaders together to issue a joint appeal for peace.
After the press conference McNamara led his friend’s political team to a four-story house that was owned by a Kosovar acquaintance and had been used by UNHCR staff before the bombing. UNHCR had negotiated with the family, who agreed to move into the basement while the UN took over the main house. It would double as UN residence and UN headquarters until Vieira de Mello’s UN transitional administration appropriated a former Serbian government office building for its permanent operations.
Every evening in the hallway outside his bedroom on the top floor, Vieira de Mello would gather his team, which by now included Martin Griffiths, McNamara, Kirsten Young (his assistant), Kent, Hochschild, Fraser, Strohmeyer, and Susan Manual, a spokesperson. Somebody would pull a small bridge table into the center of the landing, and he would plop down a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label and several bars of Lindt and Ritter Sport chocolate. While the others dipped deep into the bottle, Vieira de Mello alternated between leading the discussion of the day’s events and disappearing into his bedroom to place his calls to New York.
Fraser did not enjoy cohabiting in a virtually all-male house without running water.With their disagreeable stomachs, the smell could be unbearable. Her bedroom housed the highly secure UN code-cable machine, and because of the time difference with New York, the machine rang and churned out classified paper faxes all through the night. At one point Fraser grew so exasperated with the machine’s frequent interruptions of her sleep that she unplugged it. When she confessed her crime to Hochschild the following day, he said, “Don’t worry about it. When was the last time you saw something important in a classified UN code cable?”
Despite the unhygienic conditions in the house, Vieira de Mello maintained his reputation for elegance with the disheveled members of his staff. One night after he headed out of the house for a meeting, McNamara, who had had a few drinks, broke into his friend’s room and raided his suitcases. “I’ve found him out,” he shouted out into the hallway. “Come quick!” The officials in Vieira de Mello’s team gathered guiltily beside his bed, where McNamara had laid out the evidence. “This is how he does it, the bastard,” McNamara exclaimed. Inside the case were a dozen identical, spotless, crisply starched and ironed blue button-down shirts.
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