![]() I knew Vieira de Mello died in Iraq, but that fact was merely a BBC soundbyte to me. I confess, had I not been actively engaged in reading Power’s book, which explores three decades of UN conflict-intervention through the narrative lens of Vieira de Mello’s steadfast fieldwork, I wouldn’t have remembered the terms, the names, or the details either. Then, as if I personally knew the Brazilian-born UN lifer sent to Iraq by Kofi Annan to fix it, essentially - this acquired familiarity being the benchmark of good biography - I sadly remarked: “They killed Sergio. ![]() ![]() She must have had at least heard of him, I thought, so I prompted: “Assassinated United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights? Special Representative of the Secretary General in Iraq? Killed in Baghdad in 2003? Truck bomb?”Ī thousand pounds of explosives, personally rigged by al-Qaeda’s Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, blasted the Canal Hotel into abstraction, I said. “You know,” I huffed, hoping she’d snap to recall: Of course! Vieira de Mello! The all-world geopolitical problem-solving badass! Instead, she said something about pancakes. My explanation: I needed to finish reading, for review, Samantha Power’s new 640-page biography of the late international diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello. Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the WorldĪ few months ago, a friend invited me to brunch and I declined.
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