At the end of July, he took part in the first of what would become several IGCC workshops. Held in Garmisch, Germany, it brought together an impressive group of serving and retired government officials and academics from Middle Eastern countries to discuss the peace process. Though, of course, Zinni had followed these issues when he was CINC at CENTCOM, and discussed them at length with regional leaders, he found himself gaining significant new insights.
And then for the third third--the "putting back" into the people and the institutions that were important to him--Zinni made sure he gave talks and classes at the Marine Corps University at Quantico, and at local high schools whenever the opportunity arose.
The thirds plan allowed Zinni to put some structure into the life of a retired general, but it did not yet solve the problem of filling what was still missing--some way to take positive part in significant events out in the world . . . without butting in. He was ready if he was needed and called.
The call came. And another.
The first, in the summer of 2001, was from his old friend and boss, and now Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage: "Would you be interested in taking on a peace mission in Indonesia?"
This was followed a few weeks later by a second call from another State Department official: "Would you be interested in taking on a peace mission in the Middle East?"
THE WISE MEN
In Indonesia, a bloody dispute had been under way for twenty-five years between the national government and an independence movement in the oil-rich province of Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra. The call from Armitage was an invitation to take part in a mission under the guidance of the Henri Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HDC) in Geneva, Switzerland.
The HDC realized a dream of Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, to establish a humanitarian center devoted to conflict resolution and mediation. It gave special attention to internal conflicts--problems within and not between nations. The latter are normally best handled by international organizations such as the UN or regional collectives of nations, but sovereign states get nervous when international bodies meddle in what they take to be internal affairs--as in the case of rebellions or separatist movements. Such conflicts are probably best resolved by private organizations, which have no agenda and no ulterior interests.
Though Zinni was unfamiliar with Indonesia and its multitude of troubles, and had never heard of Aceh or the HDC, he was eager to take on the mission. This was interesting. It could add a significant new angle of vision to what he already knew about peacemaking and conflict resolution.
Tony Zinni:
I learned long ago that finding new angles in peacemaking really matters, because--paradoxically--each peacemaking situation is unique. No matter how much experience you have, each conflict brings its own unique requirements. You have to develop a process distinctive to it. Sure, you can maybe call on or modify previous experiences, but there are no models, formulas, or formats that will necessarily help you reach your goals.
A lot of people think you can know exactly how to go about the process and become predictive. I learned you can't. You can't take some model off the shelf and hammer it to fit. It doesn't work that way. What happens is this: Gaining more experiences builds up your experience base and your understanding of the possibilities, and that shows you how to combine, mix-match, develop, and modify from past experiences to fit the unique situation you're in. Experience doesn't give you any big answers. It shows you how to be creative.
HE TALKED over the mission at a meeting with Armitage and Karen Brooks, a member of the National Security Council. There he learned that the State Department and the NSC had come up with an innovative idea to create a new element in negotiations: a group of Wise Men--people of significant international stature, senior diplomats and military men--who would stand above the negotiating process and advise all sides.
In tough negotiations, mediators always get dragged into the process. They become viewed as biased by one or both sides, or sometimes become too deeply involved in contentious issues to "step above" the heated exchanges. No matter how hard mediators try to maintain and protect their neutrality and objectivity, both sides transfer fears and hopes onto them, attack them, and blame them. It always happens.
The function of the Wise Men was not to change the process but to back it up. If the mediators were getting hit by stones from all sides, they lived with it, rolled up their sleeves, waded into the mud, and did the dirty work. The Wise Men stood above it all, there to be called on by both sides or by the mediators for advice, recommendations, consultation, or intervention.
The HDC jumped at the idea.
At that point, they had chosen three Wise Men for the Indonesia mission--Surin Pitsuwan, a retired Thai Foreign Minister; Budamir Loncur, a retired Yugoslav Foreign Minister; and Lord Eric Avebury, a Member of the British House of Lords. They now wanted a fourth, an American with military stature--someone with peacekeeping experience, who could handle issues such as how to monitor mechanisms and observers on the ground, and who could talk to the Indonesian military--who everyone thought would be the toughest group to bring into the peace process. Zinni was the obvious choice.
"This is great!" Zinni told Armitage and Brooks. "It's just the kind of thing I want to do." He agreed to take on the mission with State Department support, but only as an unpaid private citizen working with the HDC, thus ensuring his independence.
That set the machinery moving.
State Department briefs followed, detailing the history of the struggle, current intelligence about what was happening on the ground, the state of the negotiations, the U.S. position on the issues, and background on the HDC.
Zinni followed up on that by reading everything he could find on Aceh online and from local bookstores and libraries. He was surprised at the amount of information that was out there:
Indonesia is unique among nations. For one thing, it's big. It spreads across thousands of islands, some of them among the largest in the world, that cover thousands of miles from east to west and many time zones. It's extremely diverse in geography, population, and ethnic identity. In religion it's predominantly Muslim (usually of a moderate kind), but there are also many Buddhists. All of these factors would make the country very difficult to govern; but add to that corruption, dictatorships, all kinds of divisive political issues, and a blanketing atmosphere of turmoil; and further add to that internal struggles with provinces in distant parts of the country--like East Timor (now independent), Papua New Guinea, and Aceh--that want to break away and gain independence; and you have a nation that's never far from catastrophic fission.
In spite of the confusion and diversity, the political scene in Indonesia is surprisingly straightforward--more or less evenly divided between hard-liners and moderates. On the issue of separatism, the moderates wished to end the struggles through peaceful negotiations that would eventually allow areas such as Aceh some freedom and autonomy from the central government. The hard-liners--including much of the military83--would have none of that, and preferred an increased crackdown to end the conflict once and for all. Already, the military and police operations in response to the uprising had turned the beautiful and resource-rich province into a battle zone.
The fight for independence had been led by the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, directed by its government in exile in Stockholm, Sweden. Now an agreement had been reached to conduct negotiations between them and the government, with the HDC as mediator.
The United States had taken a carefully moderate position in these negotiations. That is, it supported a resolution of the problem within the context of the state of Indonesia. In the U.S. view, the independence of Aceh had to be off the table. The U.S. was not going to support a breaking up of that nation. By the same token, they sent a strong message to the Jakarta government: "You've got to do better for the people of Aceh. They are in a special situation and deserve special treatment. You have to find a reasonable way to give them that."
&
nbsp; There were several compelling reasons for the American position; but the most compelling was practical: Indonesia is fragile. The U.S. didn't want to see it fragment, and create a constellation of potentially nonviable states. God knows what could happen if these failed or incapable states started harboring extremist movements.
There was a second, no less practical reason: Independence movements provoked governments to take a hard-line approach, and this almost inevitably ended in bloodshed. If ways could be found to moderate demands for independence, while delivering many of the material benefits that independence promises, and if all this was coupled with moderation of the central government's hard-line approach, then everybody got a win. But getting there involved a lot of ifs.
Zinni was not involved in developing the U.S. government position in the Aceh-Indonesia conflict, nor was it his place to support or oppose it during the negotiations. His place, as he saw it, was to find a road to peace.
When I became involved with the HDC, I was clear up front to all parties in the negotiations: I'm not making judgments here, I'm not here to judge. I'm here to help you resolve this fight peacefully. My government's position is clear; that's what it is. But I am not part of the government in this respect; and it's not my job to come in and sell my government's line. I don't have a line. I don't have a position.
I learned a long time ago that a negotiator has to be nonjudgmental.
Later that year, when I became involved in trying to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, I was immediately hit from both sides to take a position. There was no way I could do that.
Who's more right? The Israelis? The Palestinians? Who has greater justice on their side? Who has suffered more? How can anyone measure these things? And even if you could, how could you shape these measurements into the perfect balance that will result in a peaceful settlement?
As a mediator, you reach peace by finding a position that both sides can agree to and practice on the ground. We'll never get there by trying to determine which side is more righteous or "deserving" than the other. It's important to speak out about unacceptable actions, but your task is to help the parties find a lasting solution that all can live with over time.
So when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked me, "How do you weigh this issue? Where do you put the weight in terms of this situation?," I said:
"I don't do that."
Sharon did not reply. He didn't like the answer.
"I don't make judgments," I continued. "There are things that are unacceptable to me, such as terrorist acts where innocents are killed. I reject that. I condemn those things. But in the process of negotiation, the mediator can't allow himself to be put in a position where he starts to form or make judgments. I am here to facilitate both sides finding a workable solution to this situation. One that they and their children can live with."
Obviously, judgments will inevitably creep into your thinking; but you have to resist them. You have to be really hard on yourself and reject taking any positions that come out of these judgments.
And even when you don't form judgments, you're still going to get hit by both sides.
IN MID-JULY, Zinni flew to Geneva for his introduction to the HDC staff and his first meeting with the Indonesian government and GAM officials.
The Centre was located at a mansion on the lake, Henri Dunant's former home, and was a truly international organization, receiving support from private donations from several countries. Its small staff of about twenty (most of them young) came from all over the world. The director and chief negotiator, Martin Griffiths, was a former foreign service officer in the United Kingdom who had worked with the UN in Africa and elsewhere. Griffiths had a wealth of experience in peacekeeping and diplomatic missions. His deputy, a Canadian named Andrew Marshall, had long experience working with NGOs and the UN in third world nations. Both of these men impressed Zinni.
The HDC had brought in other experts in conflict resolution and negotiation as well, but they had also come up with a really innovative idea: They brought in "civil society" to "speak for the people."
At this point, the government said, "Wait a minute, we speak for the people."
And the GAM said, "No way. We speak for the people."
But the HDC said, "Why not let the people speak for themselves?"
And so they communicated with village leaders, civic leaders, and other prominent people in the community to get their views. What the "people" had to say often shocked everybody. They had a plague-on-both-your-houses attitude: The sentiment often was that neither the government nor GAM had done right by them. This strong sentiment eventually helped bring about an agreement.
When Zinni arrived in Geneva, he learned that the negotiations had proved difficult so far, with both sides feeling that they were expected to give up more than they were getting.
For the government representatives--moderates--it was an extremely high-risk situation. If the special autonomy status they were offering Aceh worked, fine. But if it didn't, or if the negotiations failed, or if the special autonomy offer set a precedent and other provinces demanded a similar status, they knew they had dug themselves into a deep and escape-proof hole.
For the GAM, who had been fighting for independence for decades, special autonomy presented them with a serious crisis. Accepting it meant abandoning their struggle for full independence.
Divided views on these issues within the government and GAM further complicated the negotiations.
Despite the problems and obstacles, Zinni came away from this first meeting greatly encouraged. "This thing can work," he said to himself. "Both sides are sincerely committed to finding a peaceful solution, and the first-rate HDC staff is dogged in its determination to bring that about."
He was ready to plunge back in--when he got another call that changed his life. For the moment, Aceh would have to be put on the back burner . . . though he would return to it later.
THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS
The call came from Assistant Secretary of State Bill Burns, a friend from Zinni's time at CENTCOM, a few weeks after he returned from Geneva. "Could you meet me for lunch to discuss a project that's brewing?" Burns asked. Zinni's answer, of course, was yes.
Tom Clancy: Tony Zinni takes the story the rest of the way.
Burns, an Arabic speaker and Middle East expert, was head of the Near East Affairs Bureau at State. When I was at CENTCOM, he had been U.S. ambassador to Jordan--and one of our finest ambassadors in the region (greatly trusted by King Hussein and later by King Abdullah).
We lunched on August 27, 2001, at a Washington restaurant. There, my friend dropped a bomb: The Bush administration was about to sail against the conventional wisdom and seriously attempt to reengage in the Middle East peace process.
According to that wisdom, the Bush White House wanted to distance themselves from the Mideast snakepit. In 2000, the Clinton administration had failed to bring negotiations at Camp David between Yasser Arafat (the Palestinian leader) and Ehud Barak (the Israeli Prime Minister) to a successful conclusion. They had no desire to repeat that failure . . . or to suffer the resulting disastrous political fallout.
After the Camp David meetings broke down, the situation in the Mideast crashed. Barak lost his job and was replaced by Ariel Sharon; and Clinton failed to get the process back on track during the last days of his presidency. In September 2000, the Second Intifada reignited the cycles of violence that had plagued the region before the series of talks begun in the late '90s had raised expectations.
As Burns and I continued our conversation, I came to understand that the President's position had not in fact greatly changed; he was still understandably cautious. The inspiration for this new initiative, I gathered, was coming from Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, who clearly saw that it was critical for the United States to reengage. He was supported in this initiative by a core of senior people, like Bill Burns, at the State Department.
The Secretary had taken his concerns to the Presid
ent, who had approved cautious and tentative moves at a very low level. (We were then only a few days from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which would change everything.)
In the recent past, the American approach had been to send high-visibility special envoys to mediate between the Israelis and Palestinians, with attendant media attention and inflated expectations. After the collapse of the Clinton-sponsored peace talks, former Senator George Mitchell had traveled to Israel with a political plan, and CIA Director George Tenet had followed with a security plan.
Tenet's aim was to bring the security situation on the ground back to where it was in September 2000, at the beginning of the Second Intifada. The Israelis would pull out of the areas they had occupied since then, they would move checkpoints, and the Palestinian workers would come back into Israel. For their part, the Palestinians would crack down on extremists, make arrests, and confiscate weapons.
Once everything had been restored to the September 2000 position, the two parties could then move forward on Mitchell's more political plan, which was designed to build confidence and move forward on political issues such as freezing the settlements the Israelis had been building on the West Bank and in Gaza. Eventually, they'd return to final status issues, like the status of Jerusalem, the right of return, the final status of the settlements . . . all of the issues on which President Clinton, Barak, and Arafat had locked horns at Camp David.
Both Israelis and Palestinians had "agreed" to these proposals "in principle," but implementing them had gone nowhere. As I was to learn, you could paper the walls with agreements. Getting them implemented on the ground was another matter; both sides disregarded them.
Battle Ready (2004) Page 41
