Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (8 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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Powerless to deter violence, Vieira de Mello tried to do what he did best: learn. As a boy, he had been obsessed with naval warfare and had harbored dreams of joining the Brazilian armed forces. “If I hadn’t become a humanitarian,” he liked to joke, “I would have become an admiral.” Although he detested the Brazilian military regime, he never looked down upon the military as an institution, which often surprised some of his anti-war progressive colleagues in Geneva. In his early months in Lebanon, he spent nearly as much time asking General Callaghan questions on military matters as he did dispensing political advice. “It took him a while to understand the nuances associated with military people,” recalls Callaghan. “He had to get oriented around rankings, structures, equipment, deployments, communication systems, and the camaraderie that the military brings to a job.” He pressed Callaghan for tales of previous peacekeeping missions. Callaghan, an animated Irish storyteller, was eager to oblige the impatient young man. “He wanted to do the job today and now,” Callaghan recalls. “He didn’t appreciate that in this kind of situation you have to learn to count to ten as well.”
Vieira de Mello went out on foot on back trails, and he joined motorized patrols along key highways and into Lebanese villages. He knew that UNIFIL soldiers were stuck in the middle of a conflict where all the parties were more committed to their aims than the peacekeepers serving temporarily under a UN flag would ever be to theirs.“This is their land and their war,” Vieira de Mello told Goksel. “Of course they are going to outmaneuver us.”
Any single Western military force would have had its hands full stabilizing southern Lebanon, but the mishmash of countries that constituted UNIFIL was particularly disadvantaged. Callaghan’s forces came from all over the world and were of wildly different quality. In 1945 the key founders of the UN—the United States, the U.K., and the Soviet Union—had hoped that governments would place forces on standby that the Security Council could call upon when one UN member state threatened to invade another. But after the establishment of the UN, those same major powers, along with most UN member states, insisted that they needed to keep their forces on call to meet national crises as they arose, and no standby force was ever assembled. Brian Urquhart, a highly respected British intelligence officer during World War II, had been with the UN since its founding, advising each of its secretaries-general and setting up what was then a small office for peacekeeping operations at UN Headquarters. When in 1978 the Security Council had called for monitors and peacekeepers for Lebanon, Urquhart had, as usual, raised troops on the fly.
12
He borrowed units from existing UN missions elsewhere in the world, relocating an Iranian rifle company from the small observer mission in the Golan Heights and a Swedish rifle company from the UN squad in the Suez Canal zone. France, Nepal, and Norway volunteered contingents, as did Fiji, Ireland, Nigeria, and Senegal, but the forces trickled in, arriving from different entry points.
12
He borrowed units from existing UN missions elsewhere in the world, relocating an Iranian rifle company from the small observer mission in the Golan Heights and a Swedish rifle company from the UN squad in the Suez Canal zone. France, Nepal, and Norway volunteered contingents, as did Fiji, Ireland, Nigeria, and Senegal, but the forces trickled in, arriving from different entry points.
“You don’t have any say in who you get,” Callaghan said. “It’s an advantage to be multinational because you can bring to bear the political support of all the different nations. But from a military point of view, if you had a choice, this would not be the way you would go about planning and running an operation.” UNIFIL relied on fifty-three different types of vehicles—from German, Austrian, British, French, and Scandinavian manufacturers, which made it almost impossible for the vehicles to be maintained because of the vast array of spare parts needed.
13
Vieira de Mello would pick up a phrase that would become a mantra in future peacekeeping missions:“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
13
Vieira de Mello would pick up a phrase that would become a mantra in future peacekeeping missions:“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Most soldiers who were asked to become neutral peacekeepers had been trained in their national armies as war fighters. They often had difficulty adjusting to being inserted into volatile environments in which they were told to maintain neutrality and to use force only in self-defense. The commander of UNIFIL’s French parachute battalion constantly referred to the rival armed factions as “the enemy.” When Urquhart traveled from UN Headquarters in New York to southern Lebanon, he had to take the officer aside to explain that, unlike a soldier fighting under his national flag, a peacekeeper had no “enemies.” He had only “a series of difficult and sometimes homicidal clients.”
14
14
Vieira de Mello had never seen the UN operate with so little clout. While working as a humanitarian for UNHCR in Bangladesh, Sudan, Cyprus, and Mozambique, he had found it frustrating merely to address the symptoms of violence—feeding and sheltering refugees in exile or preparing to welcome them home—while doing nothing to stop the violence or redress the insecurity that had caused people to flee their homes in the first place. But at least as an aid worker he had generally been able to bring tangible succor to those in need. Because he and other humanitarians were unarmed, they did not raise expectations among civilians who, when they saw UN soldiers, expected them to fight back against their attackers.
UNIFIL headquarters had been established in Naqoura, a desolate Lebanese village on a bluff overlooking the sea just two miles north of the Israeli border. When the UN had first arrived in 1978, the village had only two permanent buildings—a border customs house and an old Turkish cemetery—but it had since turned into a lively beach town that catered to the foreign soldiers and civilians.
15
Most evenings Vieira de Mello drove across the border to the Israeli town of Nahariya, where he lived with Annie and their two young sons. Because Palestinian Katyusha rockets sometimes landed near Nahariya, Annie grew practiced at bringing Laurent and Adrien into the local bomb shelter. Vieira de Mello remained in close contact with his mother, Gilda, who was in a state of such perpetual anxiety about her son’s safety that she developed acute insomnia, a condition that would not abate even after he left the Middle East.
15
Most evenings Vieira de Mello drove across the border to the Israeli town of Nahariya, where he lived with Annie and their two young sons. Because Palestinian Katyusha rockets sometimes landed near Nahariya, Annie grew practiced at bringing Laurent and Adrien into the local bomb shelter. Vieira de Mello remained in close contact with his mother, Gilda, who was in a state of such perpetual anxiety about her son’s safety that she developed acute insomnia, a condition that would not abate even after he left the Middle East.
When he first began traveling from southern Lebanon to Beirut, which still experienced violent flare-ups despite the truce in the civil war, he too was skittish. Once, while he was attending a meeting with the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, the sound of a heavy exchange of fire drew near. Unsure of what was occurring in this, his first live combat zone, he passed a note to Samir Sanbar, a UN colleague based in Beirut.“Are we finished?” his note read. “Is this our end?” Sanbar assured him that they were not in immediate danger, and the meeting concluded uneventfully. “At the start Sergio was new to war,” recalls Sanbar. “After a few more trips to Beirut, he learned that gunfire was as natural a background noise as the sound of passing cars.”
On most of his trips to the Lebanese capital, Vieira de Mello stopped into Western embassies to urge the Irish, Dutch, French, and other diplomatic staff to persuade their governments to extend or expand their troop contributions to UNIFIL. He had a sense of foreboding and knew reinforcements were needed. Vieira de Mello also made a point of stopping in to see Ryan Crocker, the thirty-two-year-old head of the political section at the U.S. embassy and a fluent Arabic speaker. The two men would cross paths again in 2003 in Iraq, where Crocker would serve as a senior administrator in Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority.
7
Vieira de Mello immediately won over the U.S. diplomat by telling him, “People say you know your way around. I could really use your help.” As Crocker remembers,“Nothing quite succeeds so well as carefully constructed flattery. He had me.”
7
Vieira de Mello immediately won over the U.S. diplomat by telling him, “People say you know your way around. I could really use your help.” As Crocker remembers,“Nothing quite succeeds so well as carefully constructed flattery. He had me.”
In fact, each man had something to offer the other. U.S. diplomats, unlike their European counterparts, were prohibited from making contact with terrorist groups. Thus Crocker came to rely on Vieira de Mello for his insights into the PLO and other armed groups. He also valued his read on southern Lebanon. “I was wild with jealousy that he could talk to people I couldn’t,” Crocker recalls. “Whenever I thought, ‘Oh my God, are we falling off the edge here?’ or ‘What does this mean?’ he’d be the guy to bounce things off of.”
In February 1982, sensing mounting Israeli hostility toward the PLO,Vieira de Mello met with Yassir Arafat in Beirut and warned him that if he did not remove PLO fighters from the UN area, the Israelis would likely take matters into their own hands.
16
Abu Walid, Arafat’s chief of staff, gave his “word of honor” that “not one single violation” of the cease-fire was the fault of the PLO.
17
Met with such lies,Vieira de Mello knew the UN’s efforts at mediation were hopeless.
16
Abu Walid, Arafat’s chief of staff, gave his “word of honor” that “not one single violation” of the cease-fire was the fault of the PLO.
17
Met with such lies,Vieira de Mello knew the UN’s efforts at mediation were hopeless.
UN officials and Western governments began to fear a second, all-out Israeli invasion. In April 1982 Urquhart, in New York, wrote to General Callaghan in Lebanon: “There is great concern in virtually all quarters here tonight about immediate future Israeli intentions. We have no firm facts to go on but I felt you should be aware of mood here.”
18
The two men drew up contingency plans. They agreed that since the Security Council had neither equipped nor mandated the peacekeepers to make war, the blue helmets would stand aside in the event of an Israeli attack. Urquhart was so firm a believer that peacekeepers should avoid using force that when asked once why UN soldiers did not fight back, he said: “Jesus Christ is universally remembered after 2,000 years, but the same cannot be said about his contemporaries who did
not
turn the other cheek.”
19
All UN units in southern Lebanon were informed that the Israelis might soon launch “an airborne, airmobile, amphibious or ground operation, or a combination of these.” In the event of an invasion, Callaghan cabled his troops, the UN radio code signal would be “RUBICON.”
20
18
The two men drew up contingency plans. They agreed that since the Security Council had neither equipped nor mandated the peacekeepers to make war, the blue helmets would stand aside in the event of an Israeli attack. Urquhart was so firm a believer that peacekeepers should avoid using force that when asked once why UN soldiers did not fight back, he said: “Jesus Christ is universally remembered after 2,000 years, but the same cannot be said about his contemporaries who did
not
turn the other cheek.”
19
All UN units in southern Lebanon were informed that the Israelis might soon launch “an airborne, airmobile, amphibious or ground operation, or a combination of these.” In the event of an invasion, Callaghan cabled his troops, the UN radio code signal would be “RUBICON.”
20
The tenuous cease-fire was falling apart and the propaganda war was escalating. On April 21 Israel launched massive air raids against PLO targets in southern Lebanon. It did the same on May 9, and PLO fighters in Tyre fired rockets into northern Israel for the first time in nearly a year. UNIFIL’s chief medical officer in Naqoura began to investigate hospital facilities in Israel, Lebanon, and Cyprus in the event that the UN took mass casualties in a new war.
21
21
On June 3, 1982, a gunman with the Abu Nidal organization, which the Israelis accused of being linked to the PLO, shot Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, outside the Dorchester Hotel in London.
22
On the morning of June 6, General Rafael Eitan, the chief of staff of the Israeli army, summoned Callaghan to Zefat in Israel, some twenty miles from UNIFIL headquarters.Vieira de Mello accompanied his boss and took notes. As soon as the UN team sat down, Eitan told Callaghan that the Israeli army was about to “initiate an operation” to ensure that PLO artillery would no longer reach Israel. Eitan said he “expected” that UN troops would not interfere with the Israeli advance.
23
22
On the morning of June 6, General Rafael Eitan, the chief of staff of the Israeli army, summoned Callaghan to Zefat in Israel, some twenty miles from UNIFIL headquarters.Vieira de Mello accompanied his boss and took notes. As soon as the UN team sat down, Eitan told Callaghan that the Israeli army was about to “initiate an operation” to ensure that PLO artillery would no longer reach Israel. Eitan said he “expected” that UN troops would not interfere with the Israeli advance.
23
Callaghan was enraged both by the invasion and by Eitan’s ploy to pull him away from the UN base just as the attack was being staged. “Israel’s behavior is totally unacceptable!” the Irish general exclaimed. Eitan was unmoved. “Our sole targets are the terrorists,” he said. “We shall accomplish our mission as assigned to us by our government.” He told Callaghan that UN resolutions were “a political matter for politicians to deal with,” and that twenty-eight minutes hence Israel would embark on its military operation.
24
Callaghan knew that he had to alert his troops immediately. Out of radio range, he had no choice but to deliver the coded message—RUBICON—on an Israeli army phone.
25
And remarkably the real humiliation had not yet begun.
24
Callaghan knew that he had to alert his troops immediately. Out of radio range, he had no choice but to deliver the coded message—RUBICON—on an Israeli army phone.
25
And remarkably the real humiliation had not yet begun.
At 11:00 a.m. Israel launched Operation Peace in Galilee and reinvaded Lebanon. It attacked with some 90,000 troops in 1,200 tanks and 4,000 armored vehicles, backed by aircraft and offshore naval units. Israeli troops poured into the country across a flimsy wire fence at the border, and they cut through UN lines—“like a warm knife through butter,” as Urquhart later described it.
The invasion did not come as a shock. In recent days all UN personnel had heard the sonic boom of Israeli war planes overhead and had seen the Israeli fleet line up in hostile formation off the coast.Vieira de Mello’s mind raced to Annie and their two sons, who were nearby. When he got back to Naqoura and reached her on the telephone, she was frantic with worry. “Sergio, I have never seen so many tanks in my life. The street is packed with them. What is going on?” He said, “They’re coming here.” He assured her that the Israelis would not dare to target the UN itself, but he told her to take the boys to the nearby shelter, where they would be safe in the event that the Palestinians fired their rockets from Tyre. He told her that as soon as Israeli troops allowed UN officials to cross into northern Israel, he would evacuate them back to France, which he did within several days.
UNIFIL peacekeepers were armed only with light defensive weapons, and one Norwegian soldier was killed by shrapnel the day of the invasion. Most got out of the way of the Israeli assault.
26
However, a few mounted resistance. On the coastal road leading north to Tyre, Dutch soldiers planted iron beams in front of an Israeli tank column, ruining the tracks of two oncoming tanks. Elsewhere a French sergeant armed only with a pistol stopped an Israeli tank as it rounded a curve.Thinking the tank was traveling alone, the peacekeeper told the Israeli driver that he had no business entering the UN zone. The tank driver pointed to the curve behind him and said, “Well, you might stop me, but there are 149 tanks just like this one behind me. What are you going to do about them?”
26
However, a few mounted resistance. On the coastal road leading north to Tyre, Dutch soldiers planted iron beams in front of an Israeli tank column, ruining the tracks of two oncoming tanks. Elsewhere a French sergeant armed only with a pistol stopped an Israeli tank as it rounded a curve.Thinking the tank was traveling alone, the peacekeeper told the Israeli driver that he had no business entering the UN zone. The tank driver pointed to the curve behind him and said, “Well, you might stop me, but there are 149 tanks just like this one behind me. What are you going to do about them?”
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