Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (87 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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Since the Canal Hotel had been reduced to rubble, Lopes da Silva, Kennedy, and others scouted Baghdad for other properties. The Coalition again offered to house UN staff inside the Green Zone, but Kennedy declined. He and Lopes da Silva soon concluded that it would be easier to fortify the Canal complex and consolidate UN staff there than to find a new, safe space. The Canal was, Kennedy said, “the best solution in a worst case scenario.”
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Containers where UN staff would now work and sleep were flown in from Kuwait and set up on the Canal grounds near the ruins of the hotel. UN staff began to refer to the Canal complex as “Fort Knox.” The Coalition replaced the antiaircraft platoon outside the premises with a reinforced U.S. rifle company. But because UN staff remained concerned about the signal such a partnership sent, the UN went back to reviewing bids from private security firms that might guard the vulnerable premises.
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All of the security precautions that had not been taken—or that had been taken halfheartedly—before August 19 now got full attention. UN security officials in Iraq kept a constant watch on the mission’s staff lists, gathering not only names but blood types, contact details, radio call signs, and cell phone numbers. They created an inventory of available resources: radio and communication equipment; protected vehicles; flak jackets; helmets; Mylar plastic film for the windows; and ballistic blankets that could shield doors, windows, and people. The security staff went about setting up emergency medical facilities, a security operations room, and new external wall barriers at the Canal. They expanded the number of bunkers meant to shelter staff during mortar attacks and pasted luminescent arrows on the ground between the containers to guide staff to the exits in the event that an attack caused darkness or occurred at night.
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Kennedy urged his bosses in New York to appeal to UN member states to replace the lumbering UN transport planes that were so vulnerable to ground fire with military aircraft that could detect and neutralize surface-to-air-missiles.
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In the meantime the UN varied its flight times and stopped publishing its timetable. It also repainted part of its fleet of vehicles from navy and orange back to plain white and removed the UN decals.
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Kennedy urged his bosses in New York to appeal to UN member states to replace the lumbering UN transport planes that were so vulnerable to ground fire with military aircraft that could detect and neutralize surface-to-air-missiles.
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In the meantime the UN varied its flight times and stopped publishing its timetable. It also repainted part of its fleet of vehicles from navy and orange back to plain white and removed the UN decals.
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As the weeks passed, and as insurgents unleashed a wave of fresh attacks against a broad range of Iraqi and international targets, it became clear that the attack on the Canal Hotel had marked a turning point in Iraq’s history. Colonel Mark Calvert, the squadron commander who set up the security cordon on August 19, recalls, “We had a lot of NGO support up until that time, people flooding in wanting to help, bringing capabilities that combat forces don’t have. When that bombing took place, it had a devastating impact on reconstruction and development, which was exactly what the terrorists wanted.” Security unraveled for civilians everywhere. On August 29 a car bomb outside the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf killed ninety-five people, mostly Shiite pilgrims.
On September 2, acting on advice from the Security Management Team in Baghdad, Tun Myat, who ran the UN security department in New York, recommended that the UN in Iraq move to Phase V, the highest security level, and withdraw all its international staff from Baghdad.
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Secretary-General Annan, the only UN official with the authority to order an evacuation of staff, rejected the recommendation, saying it would send the wrong signal to terrorists. On September 13 a ninety-minute gun battle erupted outside the perimeter of the Canal Hotel complex. The staff felt intensely vulnerable, but Annan remained determined to show the UN flag. “We didn’t stay in Iraq to do anything,” recalls one UN official. “We stayed in Iraq to show we were staying.”
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Secretary-General Annan, the only UN official with the authority to order an evacuation of staff, rejected the recommendation, saying it would send the wrong signal to terrorists. On September 13 a ninety-minute gun battle erupted outside the perimeter of the Canal Hotel complex. The staff felt intensely vulnerable, but Annan remained determined to show the UN flag. “We didn’t stay in Iraq to do anything,” recalls one UN official. “We stayed in Iraq to show we were staying.”
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Senior UN staff in New York were naturally caught up in a blame game that intensified with time. All-knowing analysts in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East pointed to the ominous warning signs that Vieira de Mello and other UN officials missed. The consensus view was that the UN had been naïve in viewing itself as untouchable and in failing to appreciate just how hated the organization was in Iraq, owing to sanctions, weapons inspections, and (thanks to Vieira de Mello’s high-profile intermediary role) its association with the Governing Council. Just as people had speculated as to what the Jordanian government had done to earn the ire of the August 7 attackers, everybody seemed to have a theory as to why the UN had been so savagely struck.
UN officials in New York walked around like zombies for a month and then gathered on September 19 for a large commemoration in the giant General Assembly hall. Annan spoke of his “irreplaceable, inimitable, unforgettable friends.” “When we lost them, our Organization also suffered another loss, of a different kind: a loss of innocence for the United Nations,” he said. “We, who have tried from the beginning to serve those targeted by violence and destruction, have become a target ourselves.”
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The August 19 attack, many noted, was the UN’s “9/11.”
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The August 19 attack, many noted, was the UN’s “9/11.”
The day of the memorial service, the UN flag at the Canal Hotel was raised to full mast for the first time since the attack. UN staff in Baghdad were impatient for guidance from headquarters and warned New York: “If the UN is to remain in Iraq, and particularly if it is to re-engage in political affairs, the Organization must assume that it will be the victim of more attacks.”
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At 9 a.m. on September 20 Aquila al-Hashimi, the Shiite Muslim who had helped arrange Vieira de Mello’s meeting with al-Sistani and one of three women on the Governing Council, was ambushed by nine gunmen on a residential street two blocks from her home in western Baghdad. Guarded only by her brothers, who did not wield weapons, she was shot in her abdomen and died five days later. It was the first assassination of a member of Iraq’s Governing Council. Prior to her murder, Iraqi politicians were not given Coalition bodyguards or police escorts, disproportionately endangering independents on the council who did not have their own militias.
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The insurgents were not finished with the UN. On September 22 at 8:04 a.m., a man driving a small gray Opel sedan approached the back gate of the Canal compound, where he was told by Iraqi guards that he would have to park in the dirt lot across the street, where Iraqi UN staff and the guards themselves parked. In accordance with the UN’s post-August 19 heightened security screening procedures, an Iraqi guard approached the Opel and asked the driver to open his trunk. When he did, the driver detonated two sets of explosives—one in the trunk and one that he was wearing as a belt. The blast blew the car in half, killing the Iraqi guard and the bomber instantly and injuring nineteen others. Iraqi guards complained that they were wearing bull’s-eyes, being forced to guard buildings without training, weapons, or flak jackets, while well-fortified American soldiers avoided such hazards. “We are just like human shields for the Americans,” said Haider Mansour al-Saadi, twenty-two, a guard who received shrapnel wounds to his hand and leg in the blast.
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The attack that killed Vieira de Mello and twenty-one others the month before had occurred at the end of the day. Amid the frenetic focus on rescue and identification, the UN Security Management Team in Baghdad had not had the chance to recommend a full staff withdrawal before Annan had announced that the UN was staying. But this second attack on the UN occurred in the morning, Iraq time. By the time senior staff in New York reached their offices, the security team had already cabled New York with the “unanimous recommendation” that the secretary-general declare Phase V for all of Iraq.
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Aware that local staff were often forgotten in New York, the security staff stressed that “the security and safety of national and international staff members must be considered on par.”
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Aware that local staff were often forgotten in New York, the security staff stressed that “the security and safety of national and international staff members must be considered on par.”
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Annan, however, ignored the advice of his Iraq team and that of his senior staff (all but one of whom voted to evacuate Iraq), and again rejected the recommendation to pull out. The staff in Baghdad were incredulous.
The insurgent attacks on soft targets (which only began with the bombs at the Jordanian embassy and the UN) continued. On September 25 the hotel housing the staff of NBC News was hit, a sign that the media had become a target.Two days later three projectile rockets were fired at the Rashid Hotel inside the Green Zone.This marked the first time a civilian target inside the Green Zone had been hit. On October 9 a Spanish diplomat was assassinated. On October 12 the Baghdad Hotel, which housed American contractors and Governing Council members, was bombed, killing eight and wounding thirty-eight. On October 14 the Turkish embassy was struck. On October 26 the Rashid Hotel, where U.S. deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz was staying at the time, was hit again, killing one and wounding fifteen. And on October 27, the first day of Ramadan, in a devastating coordinated assault, four bombs were detonated simultaneously, including one at the Baghdad headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which killed thirty-four and wounded two hundred.Three days later, after the Red Cross announced it was leaving, Annan finally declared Phase V, and all UN international staff were at last withdrawn from Baghdad.
The secretary-general launched two investigations into staff safety and security surrounding the Canal Hotel attacks. The first, chaired by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, produced a short report nine weeks after August 19. The second, chaired by Gerald Walzer, the former deputy high commissioner for refugees who had been the one to give Vieira de Mello a flak jacket as his going-away present from UNHCR, yielded a 150-page report, with six volumes of supporting documents, and was delivered to Annan on March 3, 2004. After receiving the Walzer report, which described the UN security system as “dysfunctional,” the secretary-general called for the resignation of Tun Myat, the UN security coordinator, who complied. Additionally, the UN took disciplinary action against Paul Aghadjanian, the chief administrative officer, and Pa Momodou Sinyan, the building manager, who had failed to ensure that the windows were coated with Mylar or that the concrete wall was completed. Since Lopes da Silva had been the designated security official, Annan demoted him, stripping him of his assistant secretary-general rank and barring him from taking UN posts with security functions.
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Louise Fréchette, the deputy secretary-general who had chaired the Iraq Steering Group in New York where security was discussed, offered her resignation to Annan, but he refused it.
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Louise Fréchette, the deputy secretary-general who had chaired the Iraq Steering Group in New York where security was discussed, offered her resignation to Annan, but he refused it.
UN staff and bomb survivors felt let down by the secretary-general. At no time did he delve into the UN’s more fundamental failings on Iraq—failings that had far broader implications for the future of the organization than the absence of blast-proof plastic sheeting for the windows. Why had Annan so eagerly accepted the Security Council’s summons to go to Iraq? Why did he send his finest staff to enforce an almost nonexistent mandate? Why, after the attack, had he chosen to keep UN staff in harm’s way, even though they were not performing vital tasks? What would it take for the UN secretary-general, in fact, to learn to say no to powerful countries?
Friends and family of those attacked on August 19 speculated that Annan found the Iraq experience so searing that he could not face it. Many thought he and Fréchette had staged a phony resignation scene even though they had no intention of instituting accountability at the highest levels. Some were furious that Annan himself did not step down. They blamed him for allowing junior staff to take the fall for what were above all leadership failures. “If you were in the room with Kofi Annan, with Iqbal Riza [his chief of staff], and with Tun Myat,” notes one UN official, “you wouldn’t see Tun Myat as responsible for anything.”
And the heavyweight countries on the Security Council seemed to care no more about UN staff in the aftermath of the bomb than they had in May when they sent the UN to Iraq in the first place. When Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, was murdered in February 2005, the UN Security Council leaped to commission an investigation into his murder that cost around $50 million per year. But when it came to the murder of UN staff, the Security Council seemed indifferent. As the violence in Iraq escalated, the memory of the UN attack faded.
Gil Loescher, the only person who survived the meeting in Vieira de Mello’s office, was flown to Landstuhl, Germany, and given a 25 percent chance of making it. Building upon Andre Valentine’s primitive but lifesaving sawing procedure, the doctors in Germany amputated both of Loescher’s legs above the knee. On September 2 Loescher regained enough consciousness to begin mouthing words and asking about the pain in his legs. But only in late September, more than a month after the attack, did he realize he had been permanently handicapped. “Now, I have no knees, right?” he asked his daughter.
For more than a year after the attack, tiny shards of glass would work themselves free from his skin.
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His face was badly scarred, and he initially had no use of his right hand, but he made remarkable progress, reacquiring the use of his hand and mastering computer-assisted prosthetic legs. He returned to the book he had been writing on protracted refugee crises, and in 2006 he managed to travel to the northern Thai border to interview Burmese refugees. In one of the camps, he made a special point of trying to visit an out-of-the-way care center for disabled refugees run by Handicap International. But after wheeling himself across the camp, he found that the facility had been built atop a steep mud bank that his wheelchair could not ascend. Resigned to turning back, he suddenly saw five Burmese faces peering down at him from the top of the bank. The Burmese, each of whom had a wooden prosthetic leg, made their way down the bank, raised Loescher’s wheelchair onto their shoulders, and carried him up the hill.
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His face was badly scarred, and he initially had no use of his right hand, but he made remarkable progress, reacquiring the use of his hand and mastering computer-assisted prosthetic legs. He returned to the book he had been writing on protracted refugee crises, and in 2006 he managed to travel to the northern Thai border to interview Burmese refugees. In one of the camps, he made a special point of trying to visit an out-of-the-way care center for disabled refugees run by Handicap International. But after wheeling himself across the camp, he found that the facility had been built atop a steep mud bank that his wheelchair could not ascend. Resigned to turning back, he suddenly saw five Burmese faces peering down at him from the top of the bank. The Burmese, each of whom had a wooden prosthetic leg, made their way down the bank, raised Loescher’s wheelchair onto their shoulders, and carried him up the hill.
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