To End a War

by Richard Holbrooke

  At our 8:00 A.M. staff meeting, we agreed that while the spirit of the previous evening was encouraging, the parties still seemed to be enjoying themselves too much. We still hoped to end the conference at the end of the following week, but we had no idea how to get there.

  The Weak Police. Even some of the annexes remained a problem with the Europeans. The most important was Annex 11, regarding the international police. Bob Gallucci commuted from Washington to negotiate a deal. NATO continued to refuse to accept any responsibility for arresting people. We could not leave this responsibility solely to the local police, who represented, in all three communities, the worst and most extreme elements. In my view, therefore, it was essential to have a strong international police task force with the authority to arrest people who violated the agreements. The three Balkan Presidents were not opposed to this: since they distrusted one another, they would have accepted an external force to impose compliance with the agreement.

  Regrettably, the problem with the police annex came from within our own ranks, from both NATO and the Europeans. Pauline Neville-Jones, supported by her E.U. colleagues, took the strongest position, saying that British tradition and the legacy of Northern Ireland precluded her government from allowing police officers to make arrests on foreign soil. The connection between Ireland and Bosnia was not clear to us. Supporting the position the JCS had taken in the White House meetings in late October, NATO also opposed giving the international police enforcement power, on the grounds that if they got into trouble the military would have to come to their aid.

  Distressed over the deadlock on the police annex, I called Tom Donilon and told him that to get the annex right, we would have to “foot more of the bill.” Such a commitment, I said, would allow us to insist on a robust police. A day later, Tom called back with bad news. He had discussed the issue with the White House, he said, and, in light of the crisis over the entire federal budget—the Gingrich assault had reached its height and a shutdown of most of the government was imminent—they felt we could put up no more than $50 million. This meant we could not write the rules. Gallucci had to yield, agreeing to an International Police Task Force (IPTF) consisting of advisers and “monitors”—a favorite Euro-word that could mean almost anything. In addition, the IPTF was put under the United Nations, a change from our previous decision not to let the U.N. play any role in implementation. In the final draft of Annex 11, the IPTF was given responsibility for an “assistance program” restricted to:

  (a) monitoring, observing, and inspecting law enforcement activities and facilities; (b) advising law enforcement personnel and forces; (c) training law enforcement personnel.

  Article V of the same annex further limited the IPTF’s effectiveness by imposing on it a convoluted appeal system that did not involve IFOR:

  [In the event of a] failure [by the Parties] to cooperate with the IPTF, the IPTF Commissioner may request that the High Representative take appropriate steps, including calling such failures to the attention of the Parties, convening the Joint Civilian Commission, and consulting with the United Nations, relevant states, and international organizations on further responses.

  I worried about the police annex from the beginning. Even without Washington’s support, I should have fought harder against it, and rejected the compromise with the Europeans. As Clark, who openly disagreed with his own military colleagues on this point, observed, “We are leaving a huge gap in the Bosnia food chain.” Events were to prove him right.

  That afternoon, Clark, Kerrick, Pardew, and I drove across the base to the national intelligence headquarters of the U.S. Air Force to participate, by closed-circuit television, in a two-hour White House meeting. Milosevic was fuming over the continued delays in getting heating oil and gas into Serbia; he thought the dinner with Strobe Talbott had resolved the problem, and he did not understand why we were still blocking fuel for the freezing people of Belgrade. Izetbegovic and Silajdzic had raised the issue again, in effect on Belgrade’s behalf, and urged us to withdraw our “hold” in the U.N. Sanctions Committee on heating fuel for Serbia. Kerrick told the White House the situation was “explosive.”

  As we watched from Dayton the discussion seemed distant and strange. Twenty of the top people in the U.S. government were debating the amount of heating oil and natural gas Belgrade needed during the winter. None of them knew enough to form an opinion, let alone a policy, yet the argument in the Situation Room became intense. Tony Lake, trying futilely to control the meeting, actually banged his head on the oak table in frustration. To break the impasse, Fuerth finally recommended that we offer Serbia significantly less oil and gas than Milosevic had asked for, and, desperate to move on to some other issue, everyone agreed. But after the meeting Lake put another personal hold on the decision so that he could consider its ramifications again.

  The Prince of Darkness. After a week of confusion, the Bosnians finally took a close look at Annex 1-A, the military annex that would govern the role of IFOR. They did not like what they saw. From their point of view, the annex seemed to imply that IFOR would enforce partition rather than create a single state.

  The Bosnians had a point. As Don Kerrick put it in a terse message late that night, “[They] will not accept [Annex 1-A] without change. Surprise is length of time it took Bosnians to recognize [the problem].”

  To deal with Annex 1-A the Bosnians turned for advice to an unusual source—former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, the Prince of Darkness, as he had been called by critics and friends alike during the Reagan Administration. When Washington heard that Perle was advising the Bosnians, reactions ranged from controlled concern (Strobe Talbott) to outright horror (Tony Lake and many of Perle’s former associates at the Pentagon).

  Richard Perle, originally a conservative Democrat, first came to prominence in the 1970s while a foreign policy advisor to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the conservative Democrat from Washington State. Joining the government as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the 1980s under Caspar Weinberger, Perle became the leader of the arms-control hard-liners within the Administration.

  When the Bosnians approached Perle for advice, he called to ask if I had any objection if he came to Dayton. It was an odd situation, rich in irony: Perle had been a vociferous and influential critic of the Clinton Administration’s policies in Bosnia, which he regarded as weak. Only a month earlier he had told a House committee that the American mission in Bosnia was “hopelessly ill-defined.” He had been a supporter of proposals to give the Bosnians enough military equipment and training so they could defend themselves—an idea to which both the Pentagon and the Europeans strongly objected. His rise to public attention had been greatly aided by Strobe Talbott, whose 1984 book, Deadly Gambits, celebrated Perle as one of the leading figures in the shaping of Reagan’s arms-control policy. Our relationship—we had known each other for twenty years—had been strained because we were usually on different sides of the political and ideological fence. Yet, to the surprise of most of my colleagues and the press, I urged Perle to come to Dayton immediately. “Richard, the Bosnians need you desperately,” I said. “They do not know how to read or interpret a military document, and they are completely disorganized.” Perle took the first available plane to Dayton and, with the help of Douglas Feith, a lawyer who had worked for him in the Pentagon, started analyzing the military annex, whose bureaucratic language the Bosnians had been unable to decode. Within a few minutes of his arrival in Dayton, he closeted himself with the Bosnians, showing them the real, often hidden meaning of the jargon in Annex 1-A.

  Well after midnight, Pardew, Clark, Kerrick, and I sat down with Richard Perle in the bleak surroundings of the small conference room next door to my suite. Stale pizza and empty Diet Coke cans littered the room after a day of continuous meetings by others. After listening impatiently to our comments, Perle said he would encourage the Bosnians to put the maximum possible pressure on us to make the role of IFOR stronger. In
its current form, Perle said, he considered Annex 1-A a “pathetic evasion of responsibility by the Pentagon.” He had already begun to identify scores of changes that would strengthen the role of IFOR; I agreed with most of them, but it was not clear how many could be sold to a Washington and NATO bureaucracy that had already gone through a difficult negotiating process and that deeply distrusted Perle. The White House feared he might denounce the Pentagon publicly, which gave him a certain leverage, as long as he did not push it too far. My goal was to use Perle’s presence to improve the military annex while keeping him from criticizing the Administration publicly—another subplot of the increasingly complex proceedings at Dayton.

  Late that evening, Milosevic asked me to come to his room. When I arrived, he said, “This time you must join me in a drink—because your American journalist, Mr. Rohde, will be released in the morning and sent across the border. This was very difficult.”

  DAY EIGHT: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8

  We awoke to learn that David Rohde was safe in Belgrade. His relatives, many of whom had stayed in Dayton, were euphoric, and asked to convey their appreciation to Milosevic. Christopher also sent his thanks to Milosevic. It was interesting to watch Milosevic turn the Rohde affair into a public plus for himself by presenting himself as the problem solver, the indispensable peacemaker.

  President Clinton, Christopher, and I all spoke to Rohde by phone. He said he hoped he had not “screwed up” the negotiations. A few months later, he sent me a gracious handwritten letter of appreciation from Tuzla which concluded,

  I apologize if my detention complicated your efforts in Dayton. The last thing I wanted was to be an obstacle to peace. You made me a priority when you didn’t have to, and I thank you. I saw two survivors here recently. One told me I was a hero. The other told me I was a fool. I think the latter got it right. My family and I cannot thank you enough. I am a very, very lucky person.*

  The Map-at Last. “Intensive U.S.-led face-to-face negotiations begin in earnest Wednesday,” General Kerrick reported to Washington. With progress on the Federation, with political and constitutional discussions moving forward, and with Rohde released, we thought it was time to plunge into the most difficult issue: territory. We called a large meeting of all three sides in the B-29 Room and assembled large maps for discussion.

  The meeting was a disaster. Putting the principal actors together in front of maps brought out the worst in all of them. Milosevic participated only after predicting that it would be either a waste of time or a mess. He sat relatively silent most of the time, enjoying the spectacle, which he knew would strengthen his hand. After a six-hour meeting, we had accomplished nothing, and perhaps even set ourselves back. As Kerrick described the ordeal:

  In scene reminiscent of The Godfather, two families (don Slobo and outcast Serbs; don Izzy and Federation) held truly remarkable six-hour map marathon. Despite hours of heated, yet civil exchanges, absolutely nothing was agreed. Astonishingly, at one moment parties would be glaring across table, screaming, while minutes later they could be seen smiling and joking together over refreshments. Bosnians presented country-wide 60% map proposal—rejected by Serbs. Serbs will present map Thursday. Saga continues.

  Instead of offering an “American map,” we invited each side to make an opening proposal. This approach only widened the differences between the sides. The Federation team was composed of Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, who argued continually with one another. As he had many times before—but never directly to the Bosnian Serb delegation—Izetbegovic demanded a unified Sarajevo. This led to one of the most remarkable scenes of the entire Dayton negotiations: the explosive response of the senior Bosnian Serb at Dayton, Speaker of the Bosnian Serb Assembly Momcilo Krajisnik.

  As everyone who met him noted, Krajisnik had only one long and extraordinarily bushy eyebrow, which spanned his forehead, creating what looked like a permanent dark cloud over his deep-set eyes. Although Krajisnik had not been indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal—and could therefore participate in Dayton—it was hard to distinguish his views from those of his close friend Radovan Karadzic. Milosevic had often said that Krajisnik was “more difficult” than Karadzic, but we had little basis on which to make an independent judgment. Krajisnik had participated in our epic twelve-hour meeting outside Belgrade on September 13–14, but had said little.

  He and Izetbegovic knew each other well, from lengthy meetings in the Bosnian Assembly before the war. Krajisnik owned a five-hectare farm on the edge of Sarajevo, in an area that would probably revert to the Muslims in any settlement, and we often made bitter jokes that the war was really over “Krajisnik’s five hectares.”

  Enraged at the idea of a united Sarajevo, Krajisnik rose from the table, and strode to the huge map of Sarajevo on the easel in front of us. “I’ve lived here all my life,” he shouted, hitting the map with his fist, “and I will never give it up. This land is ours. We cannot lose it.” We thought he had hit the map at the point where his own farm was, although we were not sure.

  It was evident we could not make progress in such a forum, and we never again assembled so many people in a single meeting. And from that point on, Krajisnik and his Bosnian Serb colleagues were truly nonpersons at Dayton.

  Milosevic enjoyed reminding us that he had predicted the failure of the map session. “I told you not to bring those idiots to any meeting,” he said. He had frequently told us that the Bosnian Serbs were a breed apart from the more “civilized” Serbs of the big cities in Serbia itself. “They have more in common with the Bosnian Muslims than with us,” he said.

  Meanwhile, Steiner reported gains in his efforts to build a new Federation structure that could run the Croat-Muslim half of Bosnia. His agreement defined which powers would be assigned to the central government and which to the two entities, the Federation and Republika Srpska. It split customs revenues between the Federation and the Serbs, and created a new structure for Mostar, which we hoped would eventually become the capital of the Federation in order to make the distinction between the central government in Sarajevo and the Federation government. To this end, we invited to Dayton the two mayors of Mostar—one Croat, one Muslim—and the courageous European Union chief representative in Mostar, Hans Koschnik, who had survived several attempts on his life. Tudjman would return to Dayton the next day, and his approval of these arrangements was essential. Then, we hoped, Christopher would return to Dayton one day later to announce the Federation agreement.

  David Lipton and the Central Bank. One of our main goals at Dayton was to create the framework for a single currency and a central bank. When the Europeans first heard that we wanted to create a single currency, most thought we were wholly unrealistic. In the fall of 1995, the Croat portions of the Federation used Croatian currency, the Serb parts used their own currency or Yugoslav dinars, and the Bosnians also had their own money. Everywhere the German mark was the real benchmark currency. But a single country needed a single currency and a central bank—otherwise it would be a fraud from the outset.

  No one on our core team—in fact, no one in the State Department—knew enough to negotiate these goals. We turned to David Lipton, then a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. Lipton was one of the most talented young government officials I had ever met. A former Harvard faculty member, he was an expert in the brave new field of converting communist economies to free-market economies. In one of the most satisfying moments of my government career, I had taken him and Dan Fried of the NSC staff to Budapest in the spring of 1995 to present Hungary with a strong, single American voice to urge them to carry out a controversial new austerity plan. Senior Hungarian officials told us later that our meetings had been critical in Prime Minister Gyula Horn’s decision to back the unpopular program, which was ultimately successful. Remembering how persuasive Lipton’s presentations during that trip had been, I asked Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and his deputy, Larry Summers, if Lipton could come to Dayton, and they agreed. In the fi
nal two weeks of Dayton, he would visit us four times, and spend a total of ten days with us.

  Lipton flew directly to Dayton from Mexico City, where he had been working on the problems of another shaky currency far more important to the American economy, the Mexican peso. It was the day before his birthday, but he said he would delay his celebration in order to help us. “It will be good to deal with a currency that does not end in a vowel,” he joked. As soon as he landed, we went to dinner with Milosevic.

  Milosevic, who prided himself on his experience as a banker, enjoyed the discussion with Lipton but said that he did not see how there could be a single central bank. There would be a constant struggle over the ethnicity of its head, and over who got loans. We suggested that the head of the bank be from a Western European country, probably France. Lipton also proposed that the central bank not make loans directly, but restrict its activities to buying and selling foreign currencies. This arrangement, which Lipton called a “currency board,” would prevent the Federation from taking loans and imposing the inflation on the Bosnian Serbs. Milosevic, who was familiar with the concept of a currency board from the dying days of Yugoslavia, was delighted with Lipton’s proposal. Slapping me on the back, he said, “I like this guy. You diplomats talk bullshit, but this guy talks sense. He is a real banker. I can talk to him.” Nonetheless Milosevic expressed doubt that the Bosnians would agree. (He was wrong; Lipton persuaded them over the next few days.)*

  Lipton remained in Dayton for another day. He met with Tudjman and Silajdzic, whose understanding of economic issues was better than that of any other Bosnian. Silajdzic was obsessed with the question of his country’s debt to the international financial institutions. Although it amounted to only $400 million, he feared that after Dayton the financial institutions would, in effect, foreclose on Sarajevo and bring it to its knees economically. Lipton said this would never happen. If there was a viable peace at Dayton and the central banking institutions put into place, he said, then Bosnia would have no trouble recycling the old debt into new lending facilities.