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 peacekeeping 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 ri
ght 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.”
Ever since his meeting with Ieng Sary in May, he had been lobbying Khmer Rouge officials in Phnom Penh to grant him a return visit to their rural territory. Finally, in August he got his opening after a Cambodian refugee couple, whom UNHCR had just brought back from Thailand, were killed by a group of Khmer Rouge soldiers.14 Although the Khmer Rouge leadership denied involvement in the murders, they tried to counteract the public relations blow by inviting Vieira de Mello back for a visit.
On September 30, 1992, he and Bos retraced the journey they had taken in April. The transformation since their last visit was staggering. An entire town had sprung up, as the Khmer Rouge had made good on their promise to give returning refugees land for rice cultivation and gardening. UNHCR had not yet assisted in the returns, but refugees had started finding their way to the area on their own.
In a meeting with General Ny Korn’s civilian representative, Vieira de Mello spelled out the contents of a “pragmatic package” he hoped the guerrillas could accept. “It has been six months since we were last here,” he told the official. “Many more refugees in the camps would like to come back, but we can’t give them assurances that they should do so unless you open up your territory.” Even if the Khmer Rouge continued to refuse to deal with Akashi at a political level, Vieira de Mello urged that the general allow unhindered access for UNHCR staff, for UNTAC de-miners, and for UN civilian police who would help ensure the safety of returnees. “Time is running out,” Vieira de Mello said.15
The Khmer Rouge official nodded. “The door is open,” he said, adding, “if you come in, start doing something.” He asked for food, medical assistance, and diesel for bulldozers to improve the access road, but he said UN police were unnecessary because the Khmer Rouge would keep returnees safe. UNTAC de-miners would be allowed, but only those “of the right nationality.” Vieira de Mello understood this to mean the Thais, who were the longtime backers of the Khmer Rouge. He had an imperfect deal, but a deal at last.16 “I know that they were using us,” he said later, “but we were using them too.”17
The UN investigated the murder of the two returnees. In October 1992 Son Sen, the commander of the Khmer Rouge forces, wrote to Vieira de Mello denying responsibility. Instead of responding by presenting the UN’s evidence of Khmer Rouge guilt, Vieira de Mello wrote:
Excellency,
I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of your telegram dated 11 October in which you informed me that, according to your investigation, the [Khmer Rouge] was not involved in the alleged murders of two returnees that are said to have occurred in Siem Reap Province on 22 and 23 August. It proves that caution in the handling of and publicity on alleged incidents such as the one mentioned above, without a proper investigation having been conducted, is the correct approach.
Conversely, your message reinforces the request I made in my letter to you of 3 September, as repeated in my message of 16 September, that UNHCR/ UNTAC Repatriation Component, in particular, be granted access to the village in order to allow the investigation.
Yours sincerely,
Sergio Vieira de Mello
His unfailing politeness with the Khmer Rouge had earned him their respect—and at times it seemed even their affection. In 1992 Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan sent Vieira de Mello identical New Year’s cards, each bearing a grainy photo of the remains of a majestic twelfth-century temple in Angkor Wat.
McNamara thought his friend was going too far. He believed it would be madness to place civilians back in the custody of mass murderers. At a minimum he believed the UN had a duty to advertise to the refugees the fact that they would be entrusting their fates to the same men who were responsible for two million deaths when they governed Cambodia from 1975 to 1978.
But Vieira de Mello plowed ahead. A November 1992 UNHCR leaflet distributed in Site 8 said nonchalantly: “UNHCR is about to start movements to some new areas where previously UNHCR had no access. Before deciding that it was safe to send you, UNHCR visited these areas a number of times.” The leaflet did not mention that the sites in question would be governed by the Khmer Rouge.18 Reporters who journeyed to Khmer Rouge lands and spoke to returnees found widespread ignorance about the bloody past of local officials.19 “We do not believe the stories about the Khmer Rouge genocide,” Eum Suem, a forty-three-year-old teacher who had spent seven years in a refugee camp, told the New York Times.20 Many, like Eum, had fled the Vietnamese invasion in 1978 and found it more chilling to entertain the idea of settling in land controlled by Hun Sen, whom they still saw as a Vietnamese puppet.
In January 1993 Vieira de Mello bucked the complaints of his peers, whom he wrote off as purists, and for the first time involved UNHCR in returning refugees to a Khmer Rouge-controlled area, known asYeah Ath, or “Grandmother Ath.” On January 13, 1993, UNHCR helped 252 Cambodians in the Site 8 camp move to Yeah Ath, which he considered a pilot return village .21 The Khmer Rouge managed to deliver unmined, fertile land, and the returnees used the UNHCR household kits to build houses, a pagoda, and a small school. UNHCR built a new access road, bridges, and seven wells. In the coming weeks some 2,714 C
ambodians came directly from the border camps, while another 3,729 people made their way to Yeah Ath from other locations. “I do believe,” Vieira de Mello told an interviewer, “that Yeah Ath may be recognized in a few years as having been what I always had in mind: that is, a bridge—a very experimental, social bridge between the [Khmer Rouge] and the rest of the world.”22
Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World Page 14
