Bob and I sat with Silajdzic in the backseat of the SUV and talked about everything under the sun—his time in the United States, his interest in Turkey, even his academic work on Albanians, a subject on which I was able to keep up my end of the discussion. We slowly made our way up to Mount Igman and then down to Sarajevo below, and stopped at the spot where the French armored personnel carrier had fallen off the road. I looked around at what a prosaic place it was; nothing special, as we looked at the scrub pine. The Bosnian leaders did not have much good to say about Frasure, because in trying to get something done, Bob had also talked to the other side. Reflecting on our conversations in Mostar, it looked like we were in for some of the same treatment. That evening we had dinner with Silajdzic at a Sarajevo restaurant where the U.S. ambassador, John Menzies, who had lived for months under Serb shelling, joined us.
Sarajevo was a proud city, one of the great sites of European civilization, a meeting between East and West; in less than thirty minutes one could have walked from the Habsburg Empire to the Ottoman Empire. But now whole parts of it lay in ruins. The old Turkish library was a pile of rubble after a direct hit by Serb artillery. The Hotel Evropa, my favorite place to stay when I visited during the 1970s, also was a ruin. I wondered if it would ever be rebuilt. The Holiday Inn, where I had spent a couple of days the previous January, was shot through by snipers firing automatic weapons from a street known as “sniper alley.” The president’s building, a stately old stone edifice built in a grand Habsburg style, was surrounded by sandbags and barriers. Nothing in the city had been painted in years, and many of the trees that had adorned its boulevards had been cut down for desperately needed firewood. Like a city hit by a natural calamity, it begged the question of whether it was worth rebuilding.
The next morning, an embassy vehicle drove us out to the airport, across the empty runway, still not cleared for aircraft use, and then back onto the dirt road, and finally up to the top of the mountain, where a French helicopter was waiting. We flew down from the mountain, hugging the tops of the trees as we made our way out to the Drina River valley and then the coast to meet up with a small military plane that would catch up to Holbrooke and the rest of the team, now arriving in Belgrade, whom we could debrief about our conversations with the Bosnians.
Owen and I accompanied Holbrooke and the rest of the team back into Sarajevo two days later on the first plane to use the newly opened airport. With the cease-fire implemented, supplies began flowing into the city. As we emerged from the cars in front of the presidential building, a crowd had begun to form and we could hear applause as we made our way inside. By the time we emerged after a lengthy and again disagreeable meeting with Izetbegovic, who was demanding more NATO air action against the Serbs, the crowd outside roared its approval. We all were moved, Holbrooke almost to tears. I told him to wave at them, and he finally did, awkwardly and reluctantly. He knew, as did the rest of us, that there was much to be done before taking any bows.
By the end of October we had secured still another document: Further Agreed Principles. The document was similar in its brevity to the Agreed Principles, but instead of showing how Bosnia would be divided, this one demonstrated how the country would be united by joint institutions, including a collective presidency and a national parliament. The Serbs hated the draft, and the Bosnians were not enthusiastic either (largely because with every document the chance of restarting a bombing campaign receded), but by the time we had brought them all around a table, this time in New York, they had agreed. All that remained was to agree to a cease-fire and head to Wright-Patterson in Ohio, our chosen site for the peace talks.
The story of the Dayton Peace Accords, the cliffhangers, the all-nighters, has been told and retold, most authoritatively by Holbrooke himself in his book To End a War. The endgame in the Bosnian war that took us most of September and October to secure agreement on included the lifting of the siege of Sarajevo and a cease-fire as we got ready to head to peace talks in Dayton. In Dayton itself, we worked out the constitution to allow the agreed principles to be implemented, and finally agreed on a map and a unified Sarajevo.
Dayton had its painful moments. Holbrooke, to everyone’s consternation (especially Warren Christopher, who visited the talks several times), had invited his journalist wife, Kati Marton, to attend the negotiations, often sending her on walks with Haris Silajdzic and other senior interlocutors. And when David Rohde, a U.S. journalist back in Bosnia, had rented a vehicle to head into Bosnian Serb territory to look for mass grave sites, he was arrested by members of a local Bosnian Serb militia unit. We approached Milosevic for help in releasing the journalist, and he made calls back through his security services to find the hapless journalist and return him to Sarajevo. Holbrooke brought Kati to see Milosevic and seek his help in the name of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists.
At one morning staff meeting, after a particularly short night of sleep, Holbrooke mentioned an idea to which I responded, “We’ll put it in Kati’s talking points.” This sarcastic comment earned me a trip to the woodshed. As Holbrooke excoriated me, I did nothing except bite the inside of my cheek, shake my head, and walk out. He was in charge of the talks, and their failure would not be laid at anyone’s doorstep except his own. I respected that fact, but some of his actions were becoming hard to take.
Dayton was Holbrooke’s signature work. One of the greatest diplomats of his time would be known for an agreement among warring factions in a Balkan country no one had ever heard of before or has much since. Yet Holbrooke understood, and had the capacity to make others understand, the importance of what he was doing in a broader context. With Europe and the United States drifting apart, he brought them closer together. With questions emerging about U.S. leadership in the world, he demonstrated it was alive and well. With concepts of universal justice emerging on the international stage, he brought them to the practical world, where they have to live. And to diplomats everywhere, he showed that the profession was also alive and well, and that courageous and driven individuals like Dick Holbrooke could make a huge difference.
An hour before the initialing of the agreement, Holbrooke asked me to make sure all was good with the Serb delegation, which had made the most last-minute concessions. I went over to Milosevic’s suite and asked him how the Serb delegation was holding up.
“Well, I’m very happy,” Milosevic said, “but [the head of the Bosnian Serbs, Momcilo] Krajisnic is not.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“In a coma,” he said with a shrug. “It’s all right, not your problem.”
I told Holbrooke that everything was a go. Krajisnic was not pleased, but Milosevic would initial for the Serb delegation and he acted like he couldn’t care less what the Bosnian Serb leader was thinking. The deal was done. A war that had seen hundreds of thousands of people killed and wounded and millions displaced from their homes was over.
“Then let’s get over to the ceremony,” Holbrooke responded while putting his tie on, fumbling with it in the anticipation of something we had waited so long for.
We walked out excitedly from the building that housed our delegation. “Are we late?” Holbrooke asked as we picked up the pace. The day-in, day-out tension of the last few months wouldn’t allow us to relax. We began to jog the three hundred yards to the building, and then, for no apparent reason, with a hundred yards to go we started sprinting, racing each other until we got to the entrance, exhausted again.
9
“YOUR BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY”
Holbrooke kept on running and soon left the government after Dayton, waiting for another job in the Clinton administration, which finally came when he was named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1999. I remained as the director for the Balkans in the State Department and turned my attention to preparing for my next assignment as the first U.S. ambassador to Macedonia. I began reading everything I could get my hands on about Macedonia, truly an example of what Churchill had once said of the Balkans, that it has produced more hi
story than can be consumed. I started a Slavic language course, the purpose of which was to convert my Serbian into Macedonian, but the consequence of which seemed more that I lost my Serbian without gaining an equal amount of Macedonian. But as the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords got under way, my office and I were pulled into helping the team turn hastily drafted accords into a functioning agreement on the ground, and shepherding visitors.
Since the United States was a major part of the agreement, contributing the largest troop contingent and providing key civilian personnel, soon planeloads of members of Congress and staff delegations began to descend on Bosnia, especially on Tuzla, where most of the U.S. troops were based.
Tuzla is a historic Bosnian town, an industrial city some two hours’ drive north of Sarajevo. Many of its Ottoman Turkish roots are very much exposed in the form of medieval architecture, narrow stone streets, high walls and large mosques and tall minarets. During Ottoman times it was a major producer of salt. It was not far from Serb lines to the east, now renamed the inter-entity boundary line, but unlike Sarajevo, Tuzla had not been damaged during the war. The U.S. chose to make Tuzla the main base for several technical reasons, but primarily because of its long airstrip, a legacy of the Yugoslav air force. I had been there two months before, in January 1996, when President Clinton came for an early visit with the troops and to meet the Bosnian government leadership. During that visit, he sensed the bleakness of the base and its immediate surrounds on the outskirts of the city, recalling for the troops the movie Groundhog Day to express empathy for the boredom they must all be enduring at seeing every day pretty much as the previous. What I saw in January was a military base that was very much a work in progress. It was abuzz with the sound of truckloads of gravel being dumped on the ubiquitous mud that seemed knee-deep everywhere, augmented by a midwinter thaw. The mud was a metaphor for the quagmire that many pundits and opposition politicians believed that our participation in Dayton Peace Accords would become. The administration had assured critics of Dayton that U.S. troops would remain in country for only twelve months (a departure date that would have conveniently coincided with the November 1996 presidential elections), but a quick glance at the buildup in Tuzla made clear that we were planning to stay much longer.
• • •
On March 26, 1996, I was the State Department representative accompanying First Lady Hillary Clinton who was making her own visit to Bosnia. Her plane was filled with an assortment of White House aides for whom adventure travel to places like Bosnia was not something they did every day. She was also accompanied by well-known print and television journalists including Andrea Mitchell, an abundance of U.S. military escorts, lots of security agents, her daughter, Chelsea, and entertainers Sheryl Crow and Sinbad, who had donated their time to come along and entertain the troops at USO shows. The first lady’s primary agenda was to visit the troops, but she also was scheduled to meet with leaders of Bosnia’s emerging civil society, including some of Bosnia’s nascent women’s groups, among which were the widows of the Srebrenica massacre who barely nine months before had staggered across Serbian lines from that eastern enclave, their husbands having been rounded up and executed by Serb paramilitaries.
We overnighted at Ramstein Air Base in Germany and early the next day boarded a C-17 military transport for the final two-hour leg to Bosnia. Having visited there during the war, I didn’t think much about security now that the fighting was over. I was more curious about what the Tuzla base would look like after two months, the first U.S. military presence in Bosnia, and most importantly whether Ambassador John Menzies had been successful in bringing the Bosnian women’s groups onto the base for the meeting with the first lady.
As our descent began, I could feel the g’s associated with a corkscrew landing. Typical of a military flight, there was not the same level of discipline in fastening seat belts as there is in a commercial flight. Despite the turbulence of the landing pattern, people were standing around in the enormous cavern of the aircraft’s hold, excited at the prospect of soon landing in Bosnia. I ventured over to listen to a member of the security detail briefing the first lady and her team on the situation we would likely encounter on the ground. As she did for every briefing she received, she listened attentively, glancing at her reading materials as he talked and talked. I found myself almost rolling my eyes as the briefer went on and on about the possibility of snipers and what the plan of action would be (essentially, making a beeline to the armored vehicles parked nearby). As the briefing continued for what seemed like half an hour, one of the journalists, a little worried, asked me if it was going to be that dangerous. I explained I was not going to contradict the briefer, but, whispering, I told him I seriously doubted we would encounter any such threat. For heaven’s sake, I explained, it was a U.S. military base with thousands of troops, where there had not been a single such incident in the three months they had set up camp. He was relieved, but those more attentively listening to the briefer were not, as they contemplated that soon they could be running for their lives across an open tarmac à la “sniper alley” in Sarajevo.
There of course were no snipers, and as the nervous passengers exited from the rear of the aircraft off an enormous steel ramp that could handle tanks and other tactical vehicles, we were greeted by a group of Bosnian children in colorful native dress. Hope none of them is a sniper, I thought. They presented Mrs. Clinton with bright bouquets of spring flowers that were quickly gathered up by aides while the first lady patted the children on the head. She wanted to spend more time with them, but was urged to keep moving by her security detail, which was bent on getting her to the safety of an armored SUV. The U.S. troops’ commander General Nash was there, as was Ambassador Menzies, and having delivered the women leaders to the community center, we soon began a packed schedule of meetings: first, the Bosnian women’s groups, then soldiers, then a helicopter ride to another base to see more soldiers, a demonstration of remotely guided robots that could inspect potential bombs and booby-traps, a visit to an empty but thoroughly prepared field hospital whose doctors briefed her on their capabilities for handling complex surgeries. Finally, under an enormous green tent, we were treated to a Sinbad comedy monologue and a Sheryl Crow concert that culminated in several of her top hits, including a rendition of “Strong Enough” that she serenaded to the senior enlisted NCO as the soldiers roared their approval. The visit seemed over before it began by the time we made our way back to the airstrip and boarded the C-17 for the flight to Germany. But the threat of snipers seemed to be all most people could remember.
• • •
The U.S. Senate confirmed me as the first ambassador to Macedonia in June 1996. The procedure had gone smoothly even though the Greek-American community had its continued reservations about sending an ambassador to Macedonia. As the Senate was about to clear the nomination, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) placed a hold to protest the administration’s decision to put U.S. troops in Macedonia under the command of the United Nations. It was, so I was told, “nothing personal,” and therefore something the administration could work to have lifted.
The problem with a “hold” is that no one can be sure when the senator will release it. Senator McConnell did not have a record for keeping holds indefinitely, but the reason for the hold took some time to decipher, starting with the fact that at the time Senate rules did not require that a senator acknowledge placing a hold. When it was finally revealed after a few days that McConnell, via one of his staff members, had done it, the State Department’s Congressional Office went into action, first by blaming the victim: me.
“Do you have some problem with Senator McConnell you have not revealed to us?” they asked me.
“Um, not that I am aware of,” I answered, racking my brain to recall whether I had ever met the senator on a congressional delegation and whether I could have done anything to offend him.
My father was in Massachusetts General Hospital with pancreatic cancer fighting for his life. He w
anted to see his son become an ambassador and there was no way of knowing how long McConnell would continue to place his hold. My family and I remained in limbo. We had half the things in our house packed in anticipation of moving, but we had no idea of when or if we would move to Macedonia. Moving to a different country is bad enough in the best of circumstances, but not knowing was not easy on my kids. As one of my daughters said to me during the ordeal, “Dad, I’m very proud of you, but you have ruined my life.”
Three weeks after the nomination was supposed to clear, a deal was struck that involved Senator McConnell lifting his “principled hold” (meaning, nothing personal about me!) in return for the deputy floor leader reading a bloodcurdling speech about the evils of United Nations peacekeeping, followed by a voice vote to approve my nomination. I was in Boston with my dad, now in intensive care with an elaborate oxygen mask and throat tube covering most of his face. He had barely survived an operation on his pancreas, a procedure in which he contracted a life-threatening infection. I leaned over and told him, not knowing if he could hear me. He lifted his right arm off the bed slowly with a clenched fist. Two weeks later his cancer was in remission for what turned out to be two more years.
I arrived in Embassy Skopje, housed in a former nursery school building to which very few ordinary security upgrades had been made. There was no security officer and no marines. It was one of the new embassies that had sprung up like mushrooms after the rains of change washed out both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia five years earlier. There were only a handful of staff members, including just one officer to manage all the political and economic and commercial relations with Macedonia. There were a couple of administrative officers to oversee the myriad tasks associated with transforming a nursery school into a U.S. embassy, and there were consular operations.
I selected a deputy chief of mission from a list given to me by the State Department’s human resources personnel. Paul Jones was in his mid-thirties and had already worked in Latin America, Moscow, and, most recently, Sarajevo. He had wisdom and instincts well beyond his years. I interviewed Paul for what was to be an hourlong meeting. But after hearing him out for a minute, using an old Holbrooke trick I told him, “You’re hired. When can you get out there?”
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