Chasing the Flame: One Man's Fight to Save the World Paperback – Illustrated, December 2, 2008

Samantha Powers is the author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (2013. She’s a journalist who reported from the Bosnian War, a Human Rights advocate, a former foreign policy aide to President Obama, and a former US representative to the United Nations. At present, she’s a professor at Harvard’s JFK School of Government.Chasing the Flame is Powers’ biography of Sergio de Mello, who was the UN’s leading diplomat for protection of refugees and civilians. He served the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for his first 25 years at the UN, and then served UN Secretary-General, Kofi Anan, often as his special representative. In these jobs, he labored on a bloody laundry list of humanitarian emergencies, in Lebanon, Bangladesh, Cyprus, Cambodia, Rwanda, the Congo, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, and finally Iraq.He was not an office activist, his style was to serve in the field, to meet with refugees and frightened civilians, and to build a network of friends, informants, and counterparts for negotiation, He was courageous, driving into the Cambodian jungle, charming hardened Khmer Rouge killers, and winning agreement on the return of refugees. In Bosnia he drove into the besieged Muslim enclave of Gorazde to check on Serb adherence to a cease-fire. It’s hard to survive such a succession of risky assignments. He died in August 2003 when an al Qaeda bomb struck UN headquarters in Baghdad, collapsing his office during a meeting.De Mello was in some ways the action movie image of the diplomat, multi-lingual, handsome, always dashingly-dressed and, able to charm even hardened killers --a talent that outraged some humanitarians. His main flaw was his neglect for his family, a common fault of traveling personnel. He saw himself as a Latin lover. He was a womanizer who didn’t stabilize until his early 50s, which were the final years of his life. Reading about his personal life, I wondered whether his talent in charming violent men arose from attentive study of seduction.Powers’ book is written in a clear and flowing style, it’s easy to follow despite the complex historical subject matter. The value of the book is in its review of dramatic humanitarian crises that darkened the late 20th century. In the end, the book is about what to do. Sergio de Mello was a do-gooder and enormously talented, but for the most part he failed to save refugees or conjure peace. If he couldn’t do it, how can we?Sergio did not completely fail, and his small victories have moral value. He probably saved some lives in Cambodia by helping refugees return safely. Moreover he was able to resettle a couple hundred oppressed Vietnamese Montagnards in North Carolina. His efforts to oversee the transition to independence in East Timor saved lives during militia massacres there.Anyone who plans to go into humanitarian or development operations should read this book, because it poses the key questions. Should humanitarians negotiate with the guilty, so as to help refugees? Sergio negotiated with Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia, Interahamwe (genocidal militia) a leaders on the Congolese border with Rwanda, and with Radovic and Mladic in Bosnia.Another key question concerns UN peacekeeping. De Mello was angered by the Israeli decision to roll right over UN peacekeeping troops during their 1982 invasion of Lebanon. (That war was a catastrophe from every point of view. I wish I could tell him that the Israelis punished themselves by triggering a conflict with Lebanese Shi’a that created Hezbollah and drew in Iran.)The basic question in Lebanon, and also in Rwanda and the Congo was: can UN peacekeeping troops really protect civilians, or even themselves? The last 50 years have shown the answer is almost always ‘no’! I don’t see the justification for risking the lives of UN peacekeepers when they haven’t the weapons, artillery, air support, and logistics chains to protect civilians. The main result of sending UN troops is to further demoralize local populations.Over the years I’ve come to understand that the weakness of the UN peacekeeping and peacemaking lies only partly in its paralyzing bureaucracy. Furthermore, it’s not a bad people problem. The underlying weakness is the refusal of the UN Security Counsel members to support the institution. Instead, the members use the UN as a dumping ground for conflicts and problems that don’t concern their most vital national interests.A final fundamental question is: should the UN remain strictly neutral in a humanitarian crisis? De Mello started as a believer in UN neutrality but came to believe that, as a practical matter, the UN had to ally itself with the world’s powers. It was, ironically and unfortunately, the appearance of UN assistance to the US occupation of Iraq that drew the terrorist attack the killed him.In Powers A Problem from Hell, she argues that military intervention is the effective way to stop a genocide. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence of that. Has any military power been persuaded to intervene with sufficient force to stop genocides? The Dayton Agreement of 1995 may be an example. But the agreement was imposed by NATO rather than UN forces. The lesson is perhaps that hope lies over the long-term in the construction of regional peacekeeping forces.Positive lessons do emerge from this close account of de Mello’s career. Chief among these is the value of working in the field, rather than at headquarters. I agree. I’ve met impressive UN staff at field offices of UNHCR, UNICEF, and WFP. The final lesson lies at the core of diplomacy, the value of making people feel listened to and feel appreciated, and above all the dignity of ordinary people. I’ve heard this preached at aid and humanitarian agencies, but rarely respected. Time for shock-training for ex-pat staff.

I finished this book over a month ago. It it is unusual for me to take thirty days to review a book. However, this book continues to ricochet through my being.Admittedly, Samantha's last book, The Pulitzer Prize winning "A Problem From Hell - America in an Age of Genocide" occupies a prominent place in my personal library. Chasing The Flame - Sergio Vieira De Mello And The Fight To Save The World" has earned the space next to her former book.Once I began, I couldn't put Chasing The Flame down. Power has a literary and researcher's skill that that is unequivocally unique. The documentation and sheer magnitude of the effort are mind-boggling. Why? Why, one may ask would someone take the 4 years it took to write this story?For me, versus many other reviewers, the lessons of Vieira de Mello's life and the most poignant aspects of the book are NOT the failures and demise of the U.N.Contradictions - the human experience is one inhabited by contradictions. Some of those contradictions are self-initiated and self-imposed. Others are systemic and emanate from socio-economic, social structural inequities that evidence themselves throughout human history. Our response to these contradictions (as individuals, groups, organizations and government entities of all types) is particularly poignant. Vieira de Mello's life and career are evidence of that. This book is not an end to the discussion of issues it covers...it's a chronicle of a whole host of issues we can and must begin to discuss and act upon.The human capacity for evil - Once again, Power chronicles this truth. I remain distressed at the ongoing capacity we as a species have for ignoring human atrocity and our penchant for "standing by" and/or failing to respond immediately and adequately to these situations as they arise --- as well as our penchant to ignore the conditions that continue to spawn them.The United Nations - I am unequivocally convinced that the charter of the U.N. has been bastardized into a current state that has diluted the essential capabilities that the world currently requires from it. It's not the UN's fault. Frankly, it's ours and the member governments that comprise it. I am also hopeful that a restoration/re-engineering of the U.N. (long overdue) newly empowered and FULLY funded has the unrealized potential to prevent and address vastly more effectively the human suffering that is thriving all around our planet.(with prognostications of it's ever increasing frequency and depth of seriousness).The face and being of anger seems to have a myriad of revitalized and new expressions of both form and substance here on Earth today. As stated by Jean-Salim Kanaan, a French-Egyptian political officer stationed in Iraq: " And God knows how much harm angry people can do."(p.436). We seem to have a tendency that has evolved with NGO's where we avoid the angry people (particularly the one's who are armed and inflicting death and destruction on innocent people). Vieira de Mello's life is evidence of an approach to the contrary. He sought out these people and spoke directly to them --- unarmed. Power's work has substantive implications for the urgent genesis of a new approach by the U.S. and others to foreign policy and international diplomacy.Another incredibly poignant truth that we must revisit that emanated from the life of Vieria de Mello is captured in the following: "Although Vieira de Mello became an explicit advocate for human rights late in his career, he had lobbied on behalf of human beings for decades.After his death, the quality of his that was most often admired was his regard for individuals. His colleagues took note of how surprisingly rare it was, even in the world of humanitarianism, to find and official who actually looked out for human beings, one by one, as he or she encountered them." (p.530). This attribute of Vieira de Mello's life is pregnant with meaning for the individual citizen of planet Earth today. Imagine what might be possible if people began to act upon the quote above and actively begin to seek out the rescue of orphaned children, refugees etc. who require a new chance at life via removal from the hell of their current life conditions? --- 1@aTime. Perhaps we're being encouraged by Vieira de Mello's life to consider new ways of living --- I'm speaking to those who have a home, resources, seats at the kitchen table and a refrigerator with food in it. In a world where the delta between the haves and have-nots is becoming increasingly wider, the individual with resources continues to be ensconced comfortably with increasing social distance from the suffering that inhabits this planet. Vieira de Mello's life story begs the questions: "What can (must) I do? How can I help? Can I become a part of the solution?"Vieira de Mello's statement that, "We live in fearful times and fear is a bad advisor" (p. 364) is a clarion call to a reawakening from the darkness of the nightmare that has cast it's pall over all of us, particularly during the past eight years. Hope and dreaming of new possibilities always sheds the light that destroys fear. However, it must be accompanied by new, risky, courageous forms of action that Vieria de Mello's life demonstrates for us all."Humanitarian crises are always political crises" (p. 219) is a truth revealed throughout the life of Vieira de Mello. Again, a wholesale readjustment in the thought processes and actions of governments and our approach to human rights atrocities (and their prevention) continues to be a tremendous challenge, yet an opportunity, during this, the 21st century.For all those who are trumpeting their excitement over the possibility of a forthcoming movie about this book --- I remain reluctant. There is simply no substitute for reading this superbly crafted literary art form. Samantha Power has dedicated her life to bringing us Pulitzer Prize caliber insights into the plight of human rights atrocities that continue to decimate this planet....now chronicling the amazing life of one of the foremost participants in the amelioration of this devastating reality - Vieira de Mello's Chasing The Flame deserves the same serious Pulitzer consideration as well.I was changed by this book. You will be too. Buy it, Savor it. Ponder it. Get involved. Speak out. We can change this world. Together.Bill Dahl