Sex and drugs in hell

The authors of "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures" talk about keeping body and soul together in the killing fields of Cambodia, Somalia and Haiti.J

By Suzy Hansen

Jul 8, 2004 | It's 1993, in Cambodia, and 300 United Nations civilian peacekeepers, journalists and diplomats are having a rooftop party. The young international crowd includes three U.N. workers: Kenneth Cain, a 25-year-old Harvard Law grad; Heidi Postlewait, a 30-year-old social worker who's just left her marriage in New York; and Andrew Thomson, a doctor from New Zealand who has lived in Cambodia for some time. It's not long until the much-heralded free elections, the event that's drawn all three of these aid workers together. But the Khmer Rouge still terrorizes Cambodia, and the optimistic, wide-eyed U.N. workers who volunteered to bring peace know that they're enjoying what might be one last good time. There's lots of drinking, impressive dancing, romantic tension, the possibility of falling into strange beds by morning.

The party is one of a handful of exuberant moments that Cain, Postlewait and Thomson have detailed in their book, "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story From Hell on Earth." It's also one of the reasons a few conservative media outlets have portrayed the book as being what the title signaled it might be: an American bender of sex and drugs and irresponsibility in exotic places. "U.N. missions painted as booze-soaked orgies," the Washington Times' headline trumpeted. "UN beset by sex, drugs, book says," said Canada's National Post. "Sex & Drugs at U.N.," said the New York Post.

"Emergency Sex" does spotlight sex and drugs: Heidi writes of ripping off her boyfriend's clothes immediately after coming under sniper fire in Somalia ("It has to be right now, not in ten minutes, not five ... Emergency sex"). Andrew describes a beloved marijuana cocktail, the Space Shuttle, that he consumed while in Cambodia. Still, the headlines are silly in light of the U.N.'s much graver problems, and misleading in light of the book's obvious intentions and accomplishments.

"Emergency Sex" is serious, beautifully composed and aggressively honest. Weaving the authors' three distinct narratives, it's uniquely able to show how various peacekeeping and intervention efforts in the post-Cold War 1990s completely fell apart after Somalia. Heidi and Kenneth were stationed in Somalia when 18 American soldiers were killed and the United States pulled out; Andrew, working in Haiti, watched in despair as the United States abandoned its mission there, too. What followed was a series of catastrophic miscalculations and cowardly acts, by both the U.N. and the U.S., from Africa to Europe, much of which the authors bear witness to on the ground, and afterward, quite literally, in the graves of Rwanda and Srebrenica.

Today, Andrew and Heidi still work for the United Nations, which is now threatening to fire them for publishing their memoir. Kenneth is a writer and was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2000 for a Human Rights Quarterly article on war crimes in Liberia. Salon spoke to all three at a cafe across the street from the U.N., which they heartily slammed. They also discussed what it's like to stand in a grave of 10,000 human bodies, how U.N. peacekeeping soldiers sometimes terrorize the countries they're sent to protect, and, of course, why sex is sometimes the ultimate solace in the field.

Heidi and Andrew, are you being disciplined for writing this book?

Heidi: There hasn't been disciplinary action taken. We got a letter of reprimand that was kind of open-ended. There's so much media attention about us publishing the book and the U.N. potentially firing us that they've backed off on that a little bit. But they're not letting it go.

Andrew: What's very clear is that the galleys have been read at the highest levels of the organization, by people in the inner circles of Mr. Annan. They're the ones who are driving this process. I take these threats really seriously. I don't think it has anything to do with the sex. I don't think these people are hopeless prudes at all. For me, it's everything to do with [the U.N.'s] failures to stop genocide in Rwanda and Srebrenica.

Next Page: "It took getting shot at for me to snap out of the idea that I had stepped into some crazy, hyped-up version of 'M.A.S.H'"

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