Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir (10 page)

“No,” he answered. “Just come to the Op Center.”

It was August 19, 1995, and after months of joint U.S. and European diplomacy, what the international press and other critics were calling “feckless” and “dithering,” a serious, and we hoped decisive, U.S. effort was under way to bring the parties—the Serbs, Bosnian Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats—around a peace plan that had been outlined more than a year earlier by Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States,
countries known collectively as the Contact Group. Violence was escalating over the summer. It started in the spring with successful tactical cooperation between the Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Muslim forces in the Livno Valley (itself a product of U.S. diplomacy some two years before under Ambassador Chuck Redman, which put these two entities together in a “Federation”). It continued with a brutal Bosnian Serb response, culminating in the capture of the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in July. That in turn led to the hunting down and murder of many of its male inhabitants in the forests between Srebrenica and the Bosnian lines near Tuzla. Finally, Croatia’s own “Operation Storm,” a swift and decisive military assault that kicked off on August 1 against the Serb enclave of Krajina, where Serbs had lived for centuries, culminated with the spectacle of long lines of Serb refugees leaving Krajina for the last time, after burning their homes so that Croats could not move into them. Murderous as much of the fighting had been (it usually pitted one side’s military against another’s civilians), the map of Bosnia, which had been 70–80 percent held by the Bosnian Serbs, was beginning to appear more like that envisioned by the Contact Group countries in the summer of 1994, a 51–49 percent split, with the Bosnians and Croats to possess the 51 percent majority share.

Those of us who had worked on Bosnia during the past year welcomed the Bosnian and Croat advances, a payback for all the Serb brutality of the previous three years. The Bosnians began to succeed more on the battlefield due to cooperation with the Croats and a more regular flow of arms despite the UN embargo. But with every success, they became less interested in peace or in cohabitating with the Serbs in an eventual federated state.

Fifty-one percent seemed out of reach only months before, but now it seemed too modest a share given the battlefield advances that had begun to pile up. Moreover, it was increasingly clear that Milosevic was fast losing interest in the fight.

U.S. interests were essentially twofold: 1) protect human rights and
end the conflict by finding a political arrangement acceptable to all the parties on the ground (Serbs, Bosnians, and Croats), and 2) prevent further corrosion of the transatlantic relationship.

Making U.S. policy goals possible would require convergence of U.S. and European aims. That process accelerated in 1995 as Europeans realized that the entire mission of the UN protection force, known as UNPROFOR and led by the French and the British, was becoming untenable and might require evacuation, even under fire.

There was enough concern about a humiliating departure that in July the European Union dispatched a quick reaction force to Bosnia to help protect the mandate of the UN forces.

There had been a growing chorus of complaints and outrage from the international media about the role of the European-led UN forces in Bosnia. The UN was broadly perceived as failing to protect the Bosnian civilian population from attacks by armed groups often instigated by the Bosnian Serb government.

In fact, the UN forces were in Bosnia to enforce a weak, so-called Chapter VI mandate to deliver food, not to take “all necessary means,” the much more robust mandate of the UN Charter to enforce a UN Security Council Resolution and which includes the use of force against any party to the conflict.

The difference between a Chapter VI (peacekeeping) mandate and a Chapter VII (peace-making) mandate was well-known to anyone working from the inside. But it was completely misunderstood by the general public, which could not understand how the international community’s response to genocide and ethnic cleansing could be to send soldiers in traditional UN powder blue helmets and white vehicles (to distinguish the peacekeepers from warring sides) with a mandate that they could not intervene with force or take sides except to protect themselves. The UN forces were taking a beating in the international press, even though, as their British commander tried (not so) patiently (but accurately) to explain, “One doesn’t go to war in white tanks and wearing blue helmets.”

Not all the blue helmets and white tanks were so passive and accepting of the limited rules of engagement. The British UN force commander, General Sir Michael Rose, despite his notoriety with the pro-interventionist international press, was no flower child. He told me of an incident when a Danish unit was attacked by Serb gunmen outside Sarajevo in early 1995. The Danish commander reported to Rose that they had robustly returned fire with seventy-two tank rounds.

“Why seventy-two?” Rose asked.

“That was all we had.”

The failure of the British-led and largely European-composed UN force to go to war with the Bosnian Serbs was often explained in conspiracy circles as a result of historical alignments: the relationships in World War II between the Serbs and the British and especially the French, whose senior leadership could remember the war, meant that the latter were somewhat sympathetic to the Serbs, if not necessarily to their behavior. Meanwhile, the Germans were perceived as much more “pro-Croat,” and their diplomacy (Germany at the time had still not committed troops to any peacekeeping missions) supposedly reflected it.

The dispatch of a European Union rapid reaction force was thus Europe’s effort to recoup an image harmed considerably by participation in a UN mission that looked weak in the eyes of the world. The UN force also began to regroup the small units deployed throughout the country and put them into more defensible redoubts. This would ensure that a decision to employ NATO air strikes would not be thwarted (as in the past) by the threat of hostage taking by Serb militia. A new British force commander, Major General Rupert Smith, was sent to Sarajevo. Smith, a thoroughly professional and no-nonsense general, had no time for public relations and set to work tightening up the security of UNPROFOR and preparing it for even tougher times.

As the situation deteriorated on the ground, the diplomacy in the spring and summer of 1995 was going nowhere. Bob Frasure spent weeks on end in Belgrade trying to bring Milosevic around to supporting the
implementation of the 1994 Contact Group plan. Milosevic, however, continued to insist he could not speak for the Bosnian Serbs, and that any progress on the ground would depend on our direct negotiation with them. Bob sent back cable after cable explaining that there was nothing more that could be accomplished in Belgrade and that he needed to leave.

Unbeknownst to Bob, as far as diplomacy was concerned, he was it. If his mission was determined to be at an end, there would be loud cries. Neither the Europeans nor the U.S. administration was prepared at that point to support a military approach. As long as Bob was in Belgrade, the answer to any suggested new approach was that we had a diplomat in the field working the problem. Bob was ordered to stay.

When Bob was finally allowed to depart (“The lambs of Serbia will not miss me,” he wrote in a telegram from Embassy Belgrade, a sardonic reference to his being force-fed enormous traditional Serb lunches), the Europeans were prepared to launch their new peace mediator, an energetic, tough-minded, and very capable former Swedish prime minister named Carl Bildt. Carl came to Washington for a round of meetings and met Holbrooke and me in the La Chaumiere restaurant, across from the Four Seasons Hotel. He listened as Holbrooke explained the politics of Washington in the late spring of 1995, and how U.S. policy was likely to evolve in the coming months. Holbrooke was aware that if the twenty-thousand-member UNPROFOR force were to be evacuated under deteriorating security conditions, it would be the U.S. military that would take the lead in organizing the departure.

In May 1995, just before the dinner with Carl Bildt, Lieutenant General Dan Christman, the director of the Pentagon’s “J-3,” responsible for U.S. military plans and operations, had come to Holbrooke’s office to outline the UNPROFOR evacuation plan to us. Christman unfurled maps on Holbrooke’s coffee table in his dimly lit office that showed an extraordinarily well-endowed force of some twenty-five thousand U.S. troops that would swoop in wherever UNPROFOR personnel were. For example, a Bangladeshi battalion (the Bang Bat, as it was affectionately
known) was located in northwestern Bosnia and would require assistance in their extraction. Holbrooke and I looked at the map and the accompanying charts detailing the strength of the mission, including the airpower that would be available.

I glanced over at Holbrooke and said to Christman, “My God, General! With that force you could take Belgrade.”

Christman began rolling up the maps and gathering the charts.

“Heck, with this force we could take Moscow.”

I stayed behind with Holbrooke. That briefing had made clear to us what we had been thinking for some time. No matter what, we were going to be militarily involved in Bosnia, so why not do so in a way that enforced a peace agreement rather than simply assisting in a humiliating withdrawal? Early on in the UN deployment, U.S. allies, including the Canadians, had asked for specific assurances that the U.S. military would be available were it necessary to withdraw under fire. We had declined to draft anything (not wanting to be obligated for every unit in Bosnia, or establishing a new practice of providing U.S. guarantees for units on UN deployments), but we knew that a failure to come to the rescue of an ally would be the end of that alliance.

Some months before, the issue of UN extraction had come up during a Contact Group meeting with Milosevic in Belgrade. The British representative made the point that if things got worse the UNPROFOR mission would have to be curtailed. Milosevic shot back that if things got worse the mission would not be able to get out. I interjected at that point that if our allies needed assistance of that kind we would help them.

“And we would help you,” added Milosevic. There were times when Milosevic’s insincerity was just too much. I shook my head and responded directly.

“We wouldn’t need your help. You just need to stay out of the way.” The British and French representatives nodded their approval.

While the public in most Western countries was focused on human rights, the concern within governments was the impact Bosnia was
having on alliance relationships. European elites regarded U.S. reluctance to serve in UNPROFOR as reflecting an unwillingness to accept our role as a great power. We saw UNPROFOR as a flawed and ultimately doomed mission. Moreover, U.S. policy-making circles were beginning to look ahead and contemplate the future of NATO and whether “out of area” missions—and Bosnia was such a mission—could be envisioned for the future.

The summer of 1995 brought new challenges. NATO air strikes in the spring resulted predictably in the taking of UN hostages. Serb militia groups chained UN peacekeepers to a fence in the presence of international media in an effort to humiliate the European powers and dare them to support further NATO air action. In July, the Serbs overran the eastern enclave of Srebrenica in reprisal for ambushes conducted by the tiny force of Bosnian Muslim militia there. Within days, reports began to emerge from refugees streaming into Tuzla that the Serbs had murdered thousands of Muslim men, often in a macabre sport of hunting and chasing them down in the forest. Others were executed and thrown into mass burial pits, the likes of which had not been seen in Europe since World War II. The mass murder was preceded by a filmed encounter between the Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic and the head of the lightly armed Dutch UN unit guarding the Srebrenica safe area, which was incapable of halting what was to happen.

Meanwhile, NATO began to flex its muscles and the alliance members began to come together with the understanding that the future of the alliance, and indeed of the entire transatlantic relationship, was being put to the test. We gathered at a conference in London in July and established the “Gorazde Rules,” designed to expand the scope of NATO air action beyond “pinpricks,” as the press had come to describe the use of NATO airpower, or the symbolic bombings in retaliation for real Serb atrocities.

Amid the deteriorating situation on the ground and the weight of NATO alliance deliberations, Bildt’s mission began to founder as both the Serbs and the Bosnian Muslims made clear they wanted to deal with
an envoy who actually represented the United States, the country whose eventual direct involvement was seen as the guarantor of any peace settlement.

The person they wanted was Holbrooke, but as the winter and spring months had worn on in Washington, “le Bulldozer,” as the French described him, was beginning to amass too many detractors within the bureaucracy. One of the reasons had to do with his penchant for speaking on the record with the press. Holbrooke took the view that “on the record” was far preferable to the Washington practice of providing background material, or “deep background,” by which an unidentified “senior official” is at liberty to think out loud or even predict the future with impunity. It would involve the use of ground rules for each thought conveyed, for example, “now this next point cannot be for attribution to a senior U.S. official, so please make it ‘a senior diplomatic official’ or just ‘a person with direct knowledge of the deliberations.’  ” Worse yet, statements and insights would often be made not for any attribution at all, as if the reporter simply knew the information without any sourcing, such as “Holbrooke is distrusted by a number of senior White House officials.”

Dick Holbrooke told me many times that he preferred speaking on the record so that there would be no question as to who said it and what was said. The trouble with his approach was that it ran contrary to “message management.” On-the-record comments make much more publicity than ones attributed to unnamed sources. He may have had another motive. As an assistant secretary, a rung below undersecretary, two below deputy secretary, and rungs below the secretary and the U.S. representative to the UN, Holbrooke was fast becoming a household name around the world. “What’s he doing on CNN?” was being asked as he became the face of the administration’s foreign policy. And Holbrooke was good at it, so the more he did it, the prouder I—and everyone else in the European Bureau—was to work with him, even if it meant we sometimes got caught in the middle of things.