Kofi Annan, the former United
Nations Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who
died on Saturday, will be remembered as a dedicated humanitarian
whose career was tarnished by ugly conflicts that spun out of
control.
Annan was unable to bring peace to Syria and bring to rest
the failures of diplomacy in Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, Cyprus,
Somalia and Iraq, which are likely to drown out the plaudits for
his softly spoken mediation and efforts to eradicate poverty and
AIDS that won him the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize.
Annan was brought up in an ethnically divided culture in his
native Ghana, but one where dialogue was prized and outright
conflict rare. It was a time of optimism and confidence as Ghana
headed for independence from Britain.
"He's driven by the idea of 'don't think no', always looking
for the best outcome," Fred Eckhard, Annan's spokesman during
his time as secretary-general, once told Reuters.
His reputation as a mediator was burnished by his success in
halting a spiralling conflict in Kenya in 2007, when rival
claims to the presidency caused ethnic massacres in which more
than 1,200 died.
Annan put the rivals in a room and told them: "There is only
one Kenya". He helped persuade one of them to accept the post of
prime minister in a joint government. The violence ended.
But earlier in his career, Annan's record was less
successful. He was head of U.N. peacekeeping in 1994, when he
acknowledges he should have done more to help prevent the
slaughter of 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The greatest reproach was that Annan failed to act on a
telegram from the U.N. peacekeeper commander, General Romeo
Dallaire, urging a move against arms caches being built up by
Hutu extremists as they prepared mass murder.
"I believed at that time that I was doing my best," Annan
said years later. "But I realised after the genocide that there
was more that I could and should have done to sound the alarm
and rally support."
In a book scathing about the world's failure to act,
Dallaire had only praise for Annan, describing his "humanism and
dedication to the plight of others".
When his U.N. career ended in 2006, he listed his main
achievements as establishing the concept of a responsibility to
protect civilians when their rulers will not or cannot.
But his tenure was littered with diplomatic disasters.
His worst moments, Annan said, included not being able to
stop the bloodshed in Sudan's Darfur, the oil-for-food debacle
and the Iraq war, after which he lost his voice for months.
The oil-for-food scandal broke in early 2004 when it emerged
that Saddam Hussein had cheated the $64-billion programme
designed to relieve the pain of U.N. sanctions on the Iraqi
people. The sanctions were imposed after Baghdad's troops
invaded Kuwait.
While few U.N. officials were accused of enriching
themselves, the world body was blamed for lax management and not
blowing the whistle on Saddam's tactics. Although Annan was
cleared of wrongdoing, his son Kojo was found to have used U.N.
contacts to his improper advantage.
Then came the most painful event - the bombing of U.N.
headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19, 2003, that killed 22 people
after Annan had decided, at the urging of the United States, to
send senior U.N. staff back to Iraq, including his envoy Sergio
Vieira de Mello, who was among the victims.
"It hit me almost as much as the loss of my twin sister,"
Annan told his last news conference as secretary-general, his
voice choking. Efua Annan died of an illness in 1991.
Annan was also at the helm at the time of the 1995
Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, where insufficient U.N.
peacekeeping forces again failed to stop the killing, and during
a fiasco in Somalia that preceded Rwanda.
His defenders say he tried to get enough troops and the big
power support to make a difference in Bosnia and Rwanda. Critics
argue that he was held back by respect for the limits he had
learned in decades as a U.N. functionary.
At an event in April to mark his 80th birthday, Annan was
defensive about his role in Rwanda, joked wryly about being
mistaken for actor Morgan Freeman after retiring, and decried a
lack of strong leaders to help handle crises.
"We have had difficulties in the past but in some cases
leadership has made a difference," he said, ending on an upbeat
note: "I am a stubborn optimist, I was born an optimist and will
remain an optimist. The moment I lose hope all is lost, I
encourage you to keep hope as well."