To End a War

by Richard Holbrooke

  Our preparations were complete. We drove directly to Andrews and boarded an Air Force plane for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

  * At the end of the program, Evans accurately summarized my views:

  Ambassador Holbrooke was very hardheaded on casualties, Christiane. To me at least, he indicated that, if they get what they want from the three parties, there may not be many casualties. He wouldn’t say there wouldn’t be any, but, Christiane, he really emphasized an aspect of this that may be getting overlooked a little bit here, that the casualties and the body bags, despite Sir Michael Rose’s prediction, may not be as bad as everybody here is afraid they will be.

  * It was unusual for the nation’s top military officer not to have gone to one of the service academies, but it was also true of two of Shalikashvili’s three immediate predecessors, General Powell, an ROTC student at City College of New York, and General John Vessey, who won a battlefield commission on the Anzio beach during World War II.

  * Two years after the conference, the walkway was formally dedicated and named the Wright-Patterson Peace Walk.

  BOOK THREE

  DAYTON

  (November 1–21, 1995)

  Now sits expectation in the air.

  —SHAKESPEARE, Henry V

  CHAPTER 16

  Going in Circles

  The most gifted man can observe, still more can record, only the series of his own impressions; his observations, therefore,… must be successive, while the things done were often simultaneous…. Actual events are nowise so simply related to each other as parent and offspring are; every single event is the offspring not of one, but of all other events, prior or contemporaneous, and will in its turn combine with all others to give birth to new; it is an ever-living, ever-working Chaos of Being, wherein shape after shape bodies itself forth from innumerable elements. And this Chaos … is what the historian will depict, and scientifically gauge, we may say, by threading it with single lines of a few [inches] in length!

  —THOMAS CARLYLE

  DAYTON. THE WORD CONJURES UP INTENSE memories: the peace agreement that lasted thirty-seven minutes; our main gathering place, Packy’s All-Sports Bar; midnight shrimp and steak dinners with Milosevic; the barren parking lot that separated the buildings where we lived; our cramped quarters, the lack of privacy; the effort of our European colleagues to adjust to diplomacy far removed, geographically and stylistically, from what they were used to; tennis matches with a surprisingly agile Tudjman; the emotional visit of the families of our lost colleagues; “napkin diplomacy” in the Officers’ Club; dinner with Izetbegovic and Milosevic under the wing of a B-2 bomber; long walks with Silajdzic in the bitter cold; Krajisnik slamming his fist against a map of Sarajevo; Milosevic singing “Tenderly” with the pianist at the Officers’ Club; the family of an imprisoned American journalist pleading his case; Izetbegovic refusing to touch his food during a meal with Milosevic; the stunning breakthrough on Sarajevo; the unforgettable final hours and our ultimatum; Silajdzic bursting into my room, shouting “You’ve ruined everything!”; Kati finding Milosevic waiting in a snowy parking lot outside my room; Tudjman emotionally telling Warren Christopher to “get peace now”; and Washington—waiting and worrying …

  We thought we were ready. But nothing had prepared us for the pressure we encountered within the compound at Wright-Patterson. We estimated the conference would last fifteen to seventeen days; surely it would be impossible to keep three Presidents and hundreds of other people cooped up much longer. But twenty-one days later, on the last morning inside the high wire fence, we were facing defeat, with only twenty minutes left before we closed down the negotiations.

  “Dayton.” Since November 21, 1995, “Dayton” has entered the language as shorthand for a certain type of diplomacy—the Big Bang approach to negotiations: lock everyone up until they reach agreement. A “Dayton” has been seriously suggested for Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Kashmir, the Mideast, and other festering problems.

  Those considering other Daytons should proceed with caution. It is a high-wire act without a safety net. Much work must precede the plunge into such an all-or-nothing environment. The site must be just right. The goals must be clearly defined. A single host nation must be in firm control, but it is high risk for the host, whose prestige is on the line. The consequences of failure are great. But when the conditions are right, a Dayton can produce dramatic results.

  The translators’ booths in the two large conference rooms came to symbolize for me the stupidity of the war. Our system had six language channels on the headsets. The first three were for English, French, and Russian.* Channel 4 was for translation into Bosnian, 5 into Croatian, and 6 into Serbian. This puzzled outsiders, since the same language, with minor differences, was spoken throughout the region. The answer came when one looked at the translation booths a few feet from our table. Each participant from the Balkans could choose his or her channel of preference—but one interpreter translated for channels 4, 5, and 6. When I noted this absurdity to Sacirbey, he said that “Serbo-Croatian” no longer existed—or, perhaps, had never existed. Nationalistic leaders were aggressively developing distinctive vocabularies for each ethnic group. Language, which had once helped unify Yugoslavia, was now another vehicle through which people were being driven apart.

  Our goals were ambitious: first, to turn the sixty-day cease-fire into a permanent peace and, second, to gain agreement for a multiethnic state. Many observers believed these were impossible goals. Whatever we did, critics said, Bosnia would eventually divide into three parts, after which the Croat and Serb portions of Bosnia would join their neighboring “motherlands.” We could not ignore the possibility that this might eventually happen. But not at Dayton—and not under American leadership. We would not legitimize Serb aggression or encourage Croat annexation. Furthermore, such an outcome might unleash a new round of ethnic and border conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe.

  To reach our goal required agreements on many issues: eastern Slavonia, the Federation, a constitutional framework, elections, a three-person presidency, a national assembly, freedom of movement and the right of refugees to return to their homes, compliance with the International War Crimes Tribunal, and an international police force. Finally, we would face our most contentious task: determining the internal boundaries of Bosnia, those between the Serb portion of Bosnia and the Croat-Muslim Federation.

  Our governing principle for this daunting agenda was simple: what we didn’t get at Dayton we would never get later, so we would try to put everything on paper rather than settling for the sort of short and vague (and ultimately ignored) agreements that had been the products of all previous peace efforts. Better a high benchmark than a weak compromise. Despite the difficulties that implementation was to encounter, this approach proved to be correct. Any lesser goal at Dayton would have resulted in larger problems later. While some people criticized us for trying to do too much at Dayton, my main regret is that we did not attempt more.

  The Compound. The size and diversity of Wright-Patterson impressed the participants. We wanted them to see this physical symbol of American power. But the small inner compound where we lived and negotiated was a different story. We placed the American, Bosnian, Croat, and combined Serbian-Bosnian Serb delegations in the four nondescript visiting officers’ quarters that faced each other around a drab rectangular parking lot. The Europeans occupied a fifth building off the quad, but only thirty feet away. To emphasize Europe’s co-chairmanship of the conference, we gave Carl Bildt a VIP suite directly above mine in the American building. The Bosnians were to our left, the Croatians to the right, and the Serbians and the Bosnian Serbs directly opposite us. The ground-floor windows of my rooms looked straight into those of Milosevic across the parking lot, about sixty yards away, thus allowing us to see if he was in his suite. The buildings were adequate, but hardly elegant. Our rooms were small, sound carried through the thin walls, and the corridor was only a
bout six feet wide. During a preview tour of the facilities for journalists before the talks began, someone compared them to college dormitories. Sacirbey thought they looked like a Motel 6.

  These were true “proximity” talks; we could walk from President to President in about a minute. On some days we would visit each President in his quarters a half-dozen times. Our days (and nights) became a blur of unscheduled meetings.

  Dayton. There was also a real Dayton out there, a charming small Ohio city, famous as the birthplace of the Wright Brothers. Its citizens energized us from the outset. Unlike the population of, say, New York, Geneva, or Washington, which would scarcely notice another conference, Daytonians were proud to be part of history. Large signs at the commercial airport hailed Dayton as the “temporary center of international peace.” The local newspapers and television stations covered the story from every angle, drawing the people deeper into the proceedings. When we ventured into a restaurant or a shopping center downtown, people crowded around, saying that they were praying for us. Warren Christopher was given at least one standing ovation in a restaurant. Families on the air base placed “candles of peace” in their front windows, and people gathered in peace vigils outside the base. One day they formed a “peace chain,” although it was not large enough to surround the sprawling eight-thousand-acre base.

  Ohio’s famous ethnic diversity was also on display. We did everything possible to emphasize the fact that in the American heartland people from every part of southeastern Europe lived together in peace, their competition restricted to softball games, church rivalries, and the occasional barroom fight. Once, as Milosevic and I were taking a walk, about one hundred Albanian Americans came to the outer fence of Wright-Patterson with megaphones to plead the case for Kosovo. I suggested we walk over to chat with them, but he refused, saying testily that they were obviously being paid by a foreign power, and that Kosovo was an “internal” problem, a position with which I strongly disagreed.

  Our team arrived in Dayton on October 31, in time to greet the Balkan delegations. The wind whipped across the airstrip at Wright-Patterson and there was a cold, light drizzle—weather we would soon become used to. Shortly after 6:00 P.M. on October 31, Milosevic arrived, proclaiming his confidence that a peace agreement would emerge from Dayton. Then, on an American military plane, came Izetbegovic, withdrawn and apprehensive, calling for “peace with justice.” Finally Tudjman landed, proud and haughty. From the outset, he wanted to show he had finally become more important than his longtime rivals, and that he was in Dayton only to regain eastern Slavonia. We agreed he would stay for two days, go back to Zagreb for the opening of the new parliament, and then return.

  I accompanied each President to his quarters, then returned to the airstrip to wait for the next arrival. Tudjman and Izetbegovic went directly to bed, but Milosevic, ever the night owl, was restless as usual, and asked to tour the grounds. I took him, naturally, to Packy’s All-Sports Bar.

  Packy’s was Wright-Patterson’s answer to the United Nations Delegates Lounge, and a lot more fun. Pictures of Bob Hope—for whom the Hope Conference Center was named—entertaining American troops in four wars covered the walls. Four giant television screens, tuned to CNN and various all-sports channels, dominated the main room. Each table had its own small speaker, which could tune to any of the four channels, so the room usually resounded with overlapping broadcast sounds. On nights when the Chicago Bulls played, the Croats gathered to cheer their hero, Toni Kukoc; the Serbs waited to cheer Vlade Divac, then with the Los Angeles Lakers.

  When Milosevic and I arrived on that first evening, Haris Silajdzic was sitting with Chris Hill. I went over to their table, but Milosevic pointedly held back, shaking Silajdzic’s hand brusquely and then turning away to chat with people at other tables. Watching Milosevic turn on the charm, Warren Christopher later observed that had fate dealt him a different birthplace and education, he would have been a successful politician in a democratic system.

  The waitress serving Milosevic was a pleasant woman who had no idea that she was serving one of the most reviled people in the world. “What’s your name?” he asked her. “Where are you from?” Charmed by the attention, she told us she was Vicky. In Milosevic’s excellent but accented English, she became “Waitress Wicky.” Whenever he came to Packy’s, he would ask her to serve him. A local legend was born, and a year later, during the first-anniversary celebrations at Wright-Patterson, I was served by Waitress Wicky herself, now a proud part of the Dayton story.

  Milosevic was seething about the press, especially a profile of him by Roger Cohen in The New York Times that morning. “It is unbelievable,” the Serb leader said, “that such shit can be printed.” He singled out the references to his parents—his father, “an Orthodox priest who had committed suicide when his son was 4,” and his mother, “a schoolteacher who committed suicide several years later.”

  “Why do they print such stupid things,” he asked, neither confirming nor denying their accuracy. “How can you permit it?” Milosevic complained that some of the information in Cohen’s article came from within our delegation. This was true, although unintentional, and I made no effort to deny it.

  DAY ONE: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1

  “The eyes of the world are on Dayton, Ohio,” Warren Christopher said on his arrival at 9:00 A.M. As we drove to the “quad,” I warned Christopher that all three sides had hardened their positions in anticipation of the opening bell. This was to be expected at the beginning of such an event. More discouraging was the disarray within the Bosnian delegation and the dissension between the Croatians and the Bosnians over the Federation.

  Christopher and I met with each President privately, reviewing once more the ground rules that we had presented to the parties almost a month earlier. The most important rule, of course, was that no one should talk to the press. Carl Bildt had agreed to our proposal that State Department Spokesman Nick Burns would be the only authorized spokesman on Dayton, and he would brief the world from Washington. We did not even have a press briefing officer in Dayton.

  Each President made his priority clear in these initial meetings. For Tudjman, of course, it was eastern Slavonia; he did not even mention Bosnia. We told him eastern Slavonia could be settled only within the framework of a larger agreement. For Milosevic, it was sanctions. Christopher offered a slight change in the American position: we would agree to suspension of the sanctions upon initialing an agreement, instead of waiting for its formal signing. This was significant because we anticipated that about a month would elapse between initialing in Dayton and signing at a formal ceremony. This small change in our position would give Milosevic more incentive to reach agreement in Dayton, and simultaneously relieve some of the strain within the Contact Group over the sanctions issue.

  Izetbegovic and Silajdzic told Christopher again that we had to renegotiate the Federation agreement before the start of serious territorial discussions with the Serbs. We had already agreed to this, even though it would delay us. The Federation was indeed weak, and no peace with the Serbs would work unless Croat-Muslim tensions, especially in Mostar, were contained. I asked the number-two man in the German delegation, Michael Steiner—the most knowledgeable and tenacious of the Europeans working on Bosnia—to lead the Federation negotiations, along with Dan Serwer, our tenacious Federation special envoy.

  With our calls completed, Christopher and I walked the hundred yards to the Hope Center for lunch with the Contact Group. Handling them at Dayton would be a problem. They could, of course, meet whenever they wished with the Balkan leaders. But the real negotiations, with the exception of Steiner’s Federation efforts, would be conducted by the United States. “Some of you,” Christopher said at lunch in an effort to prepare them for some frustration, “may not be happy with every aspect of the negotiations, but we are all pursuing the same result together. Let us not lose sight of that.”

  Finally it was time to begin. The opening event was planned for maxim
um symbolic value: a public face-to-face meeting among the three Presidents, the first in more than two years, and the first ever under American auspices. In the B-29 Superfortress Room (each room at the Hope Convention Center carried the name of a military plane)* hundreds of journalists waited behind ropes.

  Every detail had been choreographed carefully by Donilon, Burns, and myself. Christopher and I entered first. Tudjman, Izetbegovic, and Milosevic came next, escorted by Galbraith, Menzies, and Perina to their seats at a small round table—a duplicate of the one we had used in Geneva and New York. Then came the most hotly debated and closely watched moment of the day—the handshake among the three men. Christopher and some of his staff feared that they might refuse, embarrassing us in full view of the world’s press. I felt a handshake was essential as a symbolic act before we disappeared from public view. After some discussion, we decided to stage a handshake, but when the critical instant arrived, there was, in the words of The New York Times, an “awkward” pause. After a moment Christopher rose and asked the three Presidents to shake hands. The photographs—almost the last that would come out of Dayton for three weeks—sent the right signal around the world: the three Presidents were finally in one room and talking, however hesitantly, to one another.

  “We are here to give Bosnia and Herzegovina a chance to be a country at peace, not a killing field,” Christopher said. He laid out four conditions for a settlement: Bosnia had to remain a state with “a single international personality”; a settlement must take into account “the special history and significance” of Sarajevo; human rights must be respected and those responsible for atrocities be brought to account; and, finally, eastern Slavonia must be resolved. When Christopher had finished his remarks, we adjourned immediately, without letting the warring Presidents make public statements. Nick Burns took a heavy assault from several reporters who understandably wanted more than a short and well-staged public event. But that would have started us off on a contentious note, and we had enough problems already.