by Kofi Annan
INTERVENTIONS
A Life in War and Peace
KOFI ANNAN
WITH NADER MOUSAVIZADEH
THE PENGUIN PRESS
New York
2012
THE PENGUIN PRESS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2012 by The Penguin Press,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Kofi A. Annan, 2012
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Annan, Kofi A. (Kofi Atta)
Interventions : a life in war and peace / Kofi Annan with Nader Mousavizadeh.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-101-59596-1
1. Annan, Kofi A. (Kofi Atta) 2. World politics—1989- 3. United Nations—Biography. 4. Statesmen—Ghana—Biography. I. Mousavizadeh, Nader. II. Title.
D839.7.A56A3 2012
341.23092--dc23
[B]
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
I dedicate this book to my wife and partner, Nane; my daughter, Ama; my son, Kojo; and my stepdaughter, Nina. I will always be grateful for their love, patience, and support.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface: The Arc of Intervention
Prologue: PEACEKEEPER, PEACEMAKER
Chapter I: INDEPENDENCE: AFRICAN BEGINNINGS
Chapter II: PROMISES TO KEEP: SOMALIA, RWANDA, BOSNIA, AND THE TRIALS OF PEACEKEEPING IN A WORLD OF CIVIL WAR
Chapter III: SOVEREIGNTY AND HUMAN RIGHTS: KOSOVO, EAST TIMOR, DARFUR, AND THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT
Chapter IV: A PEOPLES’ UNITED NATIONS: REFORMING GLOBAL GOVERNANCE AND RESTORING THE RULE OF LAW
Chapter V: THE FATE OF THE CONTINENT: AFRICA’S WARS, AFRICA’S PEACE
Chapter VI: REDEFINING HUMAN SECURITY: THE GLOBAL FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY AND THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Chapter VII: THE WORLD’S FAULT LINE: PEACEMAKING IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Chapter VIII: THE WARS OF 9/11: TERROR, AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ, AND THE UNITED NATIONS AT THE BRINK
Epilogue: DREAMS OF A REALIST
Photographs
Index
Preface
THE ARC OF INTERVENTION
What do we stand for as a global community? What are the responsibilities for our common fate in a world that is simultaneously coming together and coming apart—and how do we exercise those responsibilities? How do we strike the balance between growth and development, equality and opportunity, human rights and human security? And where does the United Nations—an organization founded nearly seventy years ago in San Francisco to prevent another world war—fit into a world transformed by forces of globalization and technology that are not defined by boundaries of nation or ideology?
We stand at the crossroads of a global realignment as momentous as the one faced by the UN’s founders in 1945. While the past quarter century has witnessed an extraordinary escape from poverty on the part of hundreds of millions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the scourges of war, terror, and weapons of mass destruction still remain as present as ever. What has changed is the power of individuals—men and women in every part of the world emboldened by education and rising expectations of a better life in larger freedom—to demand a say in how they are governed, and by whom. The empowerment of the individual—from Tahrir Square to Silicon Valley to Chengdu to Juba—presents an unprecedented opportunity for advancing human dignity. At the same time, this shift is challenging established centers of power—from presidential palaces to corporate executive suites—to restore the breach in public trust that is the condition for the successful development of any just society.
In my four decades of service to the United Nations, I was privileged to work with an extraordinarily committed and talented group of diplomats, development experts, and humanitarians for whom these questions were at the center of all we sought to achieve. It was rarely an easy journey. As often as we succeeded in alleviating suffering or halting a conflict, we found ourselves powerless to do so before far too great a toll had already been taken. As the first secretary-general elected from the ranks of the organization, I came into office with a hard-won appreciation for the limits of our powers, but equally determined that we would not simply give up in the face of setbacks—that we could do better, and would do so in the name of the peoples for whom the Charter of the United Nations was written.
I sought to catalyze action across a wide range of issues—from the struggle against HIV/AIDS to girls’ education, development in Africa to post-tsunami relief work, advancing human rights and the rule of law to insisting that sovereignty must be a matter of both rights and responsibilities. I dedicated my efforts toward achieving a United Nations that would step up rather than stand by; rise to the demands of a new century rather than recoil from them; and be guided by a purpose greater than protecting the interests of states.
This is the arc of intervention that frames my account of the principal challenges facing the international community today. It also reflects my conviction that while humanitarian intervention is a moral and strategic imperative when the alternative is genocide or gross violations of human rights, military action pursued for narrower purposes without global legitimacy or foresight about the consequences—as in the case of Iraq—can be as destructive as the evils it purports to confront. The emerging global convention of a “Responsibility to Protect” was conceived as a universal principle of protecting fundamental human rights—not as a license to make war in the name of peace.
This book appears fifty years after I first joined the United Nations in the World Health Organization’s offices in Geneva—a half century that has seen the United Nations achieve considerable progress on some of the highest aims of its founders, and encountered failures and disappointments that mirror the worst of man’s cruelty to man. My mission as secretary-general was built around a vision of bringing the organization closer to the peoples whom it was founded to serve, and to place each individual’s aspirations for security, development, health, and human rights at the center of everything we did. I reached out to new constituencies among nongovernmental organizations, businesses, and citizens from every continent in order to s
hift our priorities from the United Nations in its conventional form to a more united world—one where every nation and community, faith and organization embraces the responsibilities of global citizenship.
This book tells the story of my mission through the prism of some of the most consequential crises and questions I confronted as secretary-general—and the way they illustrate the wider implications of the challenges facing the global community of nations. By necessity, a measure of selection and priority has been given to those issues that I believe best illuminate the recent history of international affairs, and help provide a path to addressing the coming threats and opportunities facing nations as well as individuals. The book does not, therefore, hew to a strict chronology of events or exhaustively examine every item on the agenda of the United Nations. Rather it addresses each of the key themes of my tenure as illustrated by my engagement with the global leaders at the center of the many conflicts and crises of the past two decades.
This is a personal account of my service to the United Nations and my efforts to address the major diplomatic, development, and humanitarian challenges facing the international community. Throughout this immensely rewarding and challenging journey, my wife, Nane, was a tireless companion. As we traveled together, she visited schools, refugee camps, and people living with HIV/AIDS across the world, thereby grounding our work in the needs of the most vulnerable, as well as supporting the UN’s efforts on women’s empowerment. Little that I achieved over more than four decades of service to the United Nations would have been possible, however, without the professionalism, creativity, and loyalty of the teams I was privileged to lead. During a career that included service with a wide range of UN agencies and offices, I was fortunate to work with a great many dedicated international civil servants and diplomats from around the world.
A number of individuals merit particular mention for their singular contributions to the causes at the center of this book. From my period as head of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, I brought with me to the office of the secretary-general a small circle of close aides, among whom Iqbal Riza, my chef de cabinet, was my most trusted confidant through every significant challenge and success of my time in leadership. Wagaye Assebe, Tasa Delenda, Fred Eckhard, Elisabeth Lindenmayer, Lamin Sise, and Shashi Tharoor complete the group whose resourcefulness and commitment I relied on for more than a decade to advance our agenda.
As secretary-general, I was privileged to call on the leadership skills of a remarkable group of experienced idealists who never wavered from their commitment to the UN’s mission: K. Y. Amoako, Hedi Annabi, Louise Arbour, Alicia Bárcena, Yves Bertholet, Lakhdar Brahimi, Sammy Buo, Patrizio Civili, Joseph Connor, Hans Corell, Antonio Maria Costa, Robert Dann, Álvaro de Soto, Nitin Desai, Michael Doyle, Jan Egeland, Ibrahim Fall, Ahmad Fawzi, Louise Frechette, Ibrahim Gambari, Victor Gbeho, Jean-Marie Guehenno, J. P. Halbwachs, Peter Hansen, Patrick Hayford, Noeleen Heyzer, Abdoulie Janneh, Bruce Jones, Soren Jessen-Petersen, Tuliameni Kalomoh, Georg Kell, Angela King, Rolf Knutsson, Stephen Lewis, Carlos Lopes, Rachel Mayanja, Haile Menkarios, Nicolas Michel, Bernard Miyet, Michael Moller, Edward Mortimer, Nader Mousavizadeh, Jose Antonio Ocampo, Hisham Omayad, Robert Orr, Kieran Prendergast, Terje Roed-Larsen, Gert Rosenthal, John Ruggie, Warren Sach, Jeffrey Sachs, Mohamed Sahnoun, Stephen Stedman, Gillian Sorensen, Danilo Turk, Sergio Vieira de Mello, Marguerita Walstrom, Nadia Younes, and Ralph Zacklin. Among the heads of the UN agencies and programs and other organizations who worked on the front lines of every battle we fought: Carol Bellamy, Catherine Bertini, Hans Blix, Mark Malloch Brown, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Michel Camdessus, Jacques Diouf, Mohamed ElBaradei, Thoraya Obaid, Sadako Ogata, Peter Piot, Mary Robinson, Nafis Sadik, Juan Somavia, Gus Speth, Anna Tibaijuka, Klaus Topfer, Hans Van Kinkle, and James Wolfensohn all played a vital role in renewing our purpose.
Many of these individuals also gave generously of their time to read parts or all of the manuscript, and I am grateful for their comments and insights.
In deciding to cast my memoirs in the broader context of the ideas and practice of global statecraft in the twenty-first century, I asked Nader Mousavizadeh to collaborate with me on an endeavor that would draw on his remarkable understanding of the emerging architecture of international affairs.
Writing a book that seeks to address such a wide range of global issues over such a long period requires the work of many hands. We benefited from the assistance and encouragement of numerous friends and collaborators. One individual among them stands out, without whom this project could not have been completed: Tom Hill, a brilliant and immensely resourceful young scholar from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, devoted countless hours of research and contributed to every aspect of our account. Mats Berdal provided us with his unmatched insights into the perils and possibilities of UN peacekeeping, and Robert Dann offered us his profound understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its wider implications for the Middle East. Simon Chesterman gave us valuable insights into the questions of global governance and the rule of law. Anthony Appiah and Kwame Pianim read the chapter on my early years in Ghana and provided greatly appreciated comments.
Finally, we were privileged to embark on this journey with two preeminent figures in publishing at our side—our agent Andrew Wylie and editor Ann Godoff. Throughout a complex and demanding process, they provided us with a degree of patience, attention to detail, and penetrating literary judgment that any author would be fortunate to have. Any errors or inaccuracies, of course, are solely our responsibility.
It is my hope that this book will leave readers of all generations with a deeper understanding of the forces transforming our world, the calamitous cost of conflict, and the still-great promise of global cooperation in fighting poverty and disease. Above all, I wish for a world in which men and women of every nation achieve a measure of dignity and opportunity in their individual lives that allows each of them to serve others, and to stand up to the forces of injustice and inequality wherever they exist—in other words, to intervene. And so, in the words of the poet,
“to act, that each to-morrow / Find us farther than to-day.”
KOFI ANNAN
Accra and Geneva
May 2012
Prologue
PEACEKEEPER, PEACEMAKER
Kofi, they’ve made an honest man of me,” Colin Powell said, with a huge smile across his face. The relief—and the exhaustion—was palpable. I could not help but smile along with my friend, and wanted to share in his comfort. The U.S. secretary of state had called and asked to come see me in New York six weeks after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and with his typical confidence appeared on the thirty-eighth floor of UN headquarters by himself, with no aides and without the U.S. ambassador at his side. I could only be impressed by the resilience of this man, who had endured so much to argue for a war he clearly did not believe in. “They’ve found the mobile labs, and while we’re not prepared to make the announcement yet, you’ll see the news reports tomorrow.” U.S. forces in Iraq had discovered what they thought were mobile labs for the production of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and Powell was emphatic that this time it was real. The war had been justified; the cause affirmed.
While I did not have any reason to doubt Powell’s sincerity, I was not convinced that this was, in fact, the hard evidence of WMD that U.S. forces with increasing desperation were searching for in Iraq. I had been down this road before—most vividly six months earlier when John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, had asked to see me privately in order to show me some of the evidence that the United States had accumulated about Saddam Hussein’s illicit weapons program.
As Negroponte and the senior CIA officer accompanying him flipped through image after image—explaining in solemn tones the gravity of the evidence—a disturbing pattern emerged: it was all circumstantial. They would show an image of a building from five years ago, a
nd then show another image of the same building two years later, immediately after a U.S. strike, but now rebuilt with a new roof and trucks entering and exiting. One of my aides then remarked: “But this doesn’t really show us anything except that a building was built, then bombed, then rebuilt. How do you know what’s in those buildings? It could be anything!” This was not what Negroponte had expected. As the CIA officer sat silently collecting his images, I asked a few more questions to which they had less than complete answers.
What had been presented to me by Negroponte as a unique opportunity to realize the severity of the threat managed only to do the opposite. As we entered my private office following the meeting, another one of my aides wondered aloud: “Why would they promise such definitive revelations only to bring at best highly circumstantial evidence? Is it because they think we can be convinced so easily, or is it because this is all they have, and that we’re asking the basic questions that they’re avoiding?”
We would soon learn the answer.
After September 11, following an initial outpouring of support for America, a heavy curtain soon fell between America and the rest of the world. To many Americans, and the Bush administration in particular, a global response was eminently justified by the barbarism visited upon the country and two of its greatest cities. For much of the global community in those days—shocking though this seemed to many Americans—the greatest threat to world peace came not from Saddam, but from an enraged and vengeful United States. Tragically, the chaotic, bloody aftermath of the subsequent invasion of Iraq did little to change this perception.
If 9/11 changed the world, the consequences of the Iraq War were of a similarly dramatic magnitude—from the Arab nations, appalled by the mayhem unleashed following the fall of Saddam, to the deep distrust among Security Council members bruised by the torturous negotiations in the run-up to the war to the growing isolation of a United States no longer as feared or respected. What the United States had lost, as a consequence of the invasion, was the benefit of the doubt. This pained me deeply. Throughout my years as secretary-general, I had often found myself in the role of global interpreter, explaining the United States to the world, and the world to the United States. Despite the singular contribution of the United States to the UN’s founding and its mission in the decades that followed, after Iraq, America was too often unwilling to listen, and the world unable to speak its true mind.
