The Foreign Service Journal, November 2003

N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 51 Flags flew at half-staff at all 250 U.S. embassies and consulates in 180 countries around the world to honor United Nations diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was assassinated by a truck bomb along with 22 other U.N. staffers on Aug. 19 in Baghdad. It is rare for the U.S. to lower its flag for foreign officials, but Secretary of State Colin Powell ordered this as a tribute to the man he called “a soldier in the cause of peace.” While the U.S. government’s was the most spectacular, there were countless other moving tributes to the 55-year-old Brazilian. At his funeral, a family friend described him as “one of those rare people who shine, not to dazzle but to bring light to the dark- ness.” Of his murderers, one of his two sons said: “No God can encour- age and accept such acts, but by killing our father for what he stood for, they simply made him live on.” Concluded the officiating priest: “Sergio is in front of us, not behind us. He urges us to continue fighting through on the road to peace.” Sergio, as practically everyone called him, was no ordinary U.N. bureaucrat. As he himself described his 34-year career: “My entire life has been a field of land mines.” It includ- ed the hottest of the world’s hot spots: Bangladesh right after its war of inde- pendence from Pakistan, Sudan, Mozambique, Cyprus divided after its civil war, Peru, Lebanon, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, the Congo, Kosovo, and others. Everywhere he strove to bring humanitarian relief, as well as lay the building blocks for the end to civilian strife. His most extraordinary achieve- ment among so many was his most recent: East Timor, the wartorn land that he took control of for the U.N. and successfully guided in less than three years to full independence as the 21st century’s first new nation. After so much turmoil, he was delighted to be appointed High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, where he was looking for- ward to settling down and where the State Department office I directed worked closely with him. But when the U.N. and U.S. went looking for someone acceptable to both to lead the postwar U.N. mission in Iraq, only one name came to everyone’s lips. And so, reluctantly, but always true to his sense of duty and unable to turn down a dangerous challenge, Sergio took a four-month leave of absence and moved to Baghdad. There was a “too good to be true” quality about Sergio. At first blush, some thought him superficial, even frivolous. It is true that he was some- thing of a paradox. His entire adult life was devoted to caring for the most vulnerable human beings on this plan- et, to facing the most hopeless, violent, and hate-filled situations imaginable. But he ended up far from being a pes- simist, or even a dour “do-gooder.” Sergio loved life and grabbed it with both hands. He loved good food, good wine, good tailoring, and good compa- ny. A friend and U.N. colleague even went so far as to tell me that he was “not boring enough” for the HCRC job; that lifelong human rights activists wouldn’t take him seriously because of his dashing manner and dazzling smile. But any lengthy interaction with Sergio soon convinced them otherwise. One need only have seen with what equal respect he treated everyone, from the lowest-positioned to the highest, because it came naturally to him. He possessed that inner grace of being able to absolutely disagree with people without cutting them down personally. He was that rarest of people who suc- ceeded in bringing chivalry and gentle- ness into modern international diplo- macy, in being gallant without being ridiculous. Gallant to the End And gallant he was to the very end. Buried alive under the U.N. head- quarters in Baghdad for nearly four hours and in excruciating pain, he calmly helped direct the rescue efforts over his cell phone, pointing out where his colleagues would be, never focusing on himself. His charis- ma never left him. One of the res- cuers later said that he had no idea who Sergio was, but he spoke with such authority that people naturally A PPRECIATION A S OLDIER IN THE C AUSE OF P EACE Sergio Vieira de Mello 1948 – 2003 B Y T ATIANA C. G FOELLER