To End a War

by Richard Holbrooke

  Izetbegovic, whom I had not seen in five months, seemed a changed man, cracking small jokes and smiling. He thanked me profusely for what I “had done for Bosnia,” and noted that we had kept our promises to his government. When we were alone I outlined the core issue. “Mr. President,” I said, “we can disqualify the SDS from the election process if we wish, by declaring that the entire party is in violation of the Dayton agreement. On the other hand, if Milosevic helps us remove Karadzic from power, we can allow the SDS to participate in the elections. What we do next with the SDS is essentially in our hands, and we need to know your views.”

  This was a huge decision for Izetbegovic, and he said he would have an answer for us when we returned from Belgrade and Zagreb in somewhat more than twenty-four hours.

  The next day, July 17, our team met with Milosevic over a long lunch in Belgrade. We were blunt: if we were unable to get a satisfactory agreement, we would “recommend” that sanctions be reimposed and that Frowick disqualify the SDS from the elections. Incredulous, Milosevic was asked to see me alone. Members of our team, including Goldberg and Owen, could hear his voice through the doors between the two rooms, as he angrily charged that we were wrecking the Dayton agreement. I replied that it was Karadzic who was trying to destroy Dayton. Our goal was to get him “out of power and out of country.” After a prolonged argument, we agreed to meet again the next day.

  We returned to Sarajevo on the morning of July 18. It was another of those meetings whose consequences would be felt for a long time.

  “The SDS is the Nazi Party of our country,” Izetbegovic began. “But if we throw them out of the elections, they could organize a boycott, like they did the last time. If you can get Karadzic out of power, I think it is much better to let them run. I can work with Krajisnik. I know how to deal with him.”

  Izetbegovic could work with Krajisnik? The comment was surprising. The speaker of the Pale assembly, the man who at Dayton had slammed his fist into the map of Sarajevo, widely known as “Mr. No,” was as much of a rejectionist as Karadzic. But Izetbegovic was worried about the effect of an SDS boycott. While the decision remained ours, Izetbegovic’s desire not to throw the SDS out of the elections, his fear that they could wreck the elections, was a powerful message that the international community could not ignore.

  Milosevic moved our July 18 meeting to a new venue, a government villa in the residential section of Belgrade. At 4:00 P.M., seated in the garden of the villa, we began a ten-hour negotiating session that mirrored some of the early shuttle drama and produced an agreement that defused the crisis—but at a price.

  Milosevic came to the point quickly. “Krajisnik and Buha are upstairs,” he said, pointing to windows on the second-floor of the villa. “They are ready to negotiate right now over the future of Karadzic.” This tactic, so stunning eleven months earlier when Milosevic had produced Karadzic and Mladic, was no longer shocking. Asking to meet first without the two Bosnian Serbs, we presented Milosevic with a tough document, announcing the resignation of Karadzic from the presidencies of both Republika Srpska and the SDS, effective the next day. Our draft also announced that Karadzic would leave Bosnia and comply with the International War Crimes Tribunal.

  Milosevic objected strongly to almost every detail of our draft. Finally, we agreed to bring the two Bosnian Serbs into the discussion. They were in a sullen mood. Krajisnik made not the slightest attempt to be civil; Buha simply sat in silence. But as Krajisnik realized that the removal of his friend and mentor Karadzic would directly benefit him, he became increasingly interested in our proposals. Still, Krajisnik was immovable on the possibility that Karadzic leave Bosnia. “Maybe later, but never tonight, with the world watching,” Krajisnik said emotionally as Buha, thin-faced and gaunt, glared at us. “And there is nothing we can do to force him.”

  “Why don’t you send him to stay with his mother and his smuggler brother in his native village in Montenegro?” I asked, half-seriously, half-facetiously. Krajisnik seemed stunned at this reference to the private activities of Karadzic’s brother; we believed that Krajisnik was part of the same smuggling operations. I thought of an earlier conversation with a senior Serb official who had told us that Karadzic and Krajisnik had become friends when they were both jailed, one for passing bad checks, the other for stealing cement from public projects. We did not know if this story was true, but, as Phil Goldberg said, “it felt right.”

  Shortly after ten in the evening, after a great deal of argument, the Bosnian Serbs signed an agreement that removed Radovan Karadzic “immediately and permanently [from] all public and private activities,” including his two official positions—President of Republika Srpska and president of the SDS. Mrs. Biljana Plavsic, one of the Vice Presidents of the Bosnian Serbs, would be named President the next day, and Buha would become the acting head of the SDS. Stressing the importance of the pledge that Karadzic also cease “public activities,” I cited a number of examples, especially his appearances on television and the use of posters bearing his likeness, that would constitute violations. Although clearly unhappy, Krajisnik and Buha agreed; Karadzic would not appear on television, and his image would not be displayed.

  We were still lacking the most important signature, that of Karadzic himself. Milosevic proposed that we obtain it by fax. I rejected this; we did not want Karadzic to claim later that his signature was a faxed forgery. So at our insistence, Milosevic sent his intelligence chief, Jovica Stanisic, to Pale by helicopter to obtain Karadzic’s signature personally. After dinner—the best he had ever offered us, lamb, yogurt, and spinach—we left to call Washington. I read the draft statement to Tarnoff, who walked it through “the system” with impressive speed, obtaining Washington’s support in less than ninety minutes. We returned to Milosevic’s villa at about 2:00 A.M. to meet Stanisic, who presented us with the original document, now signed by Karadzic. Stanisic told us Karadzic seemed “resigned to the end of his political career.” But he was not ready to leave Pale, Stanisic said. I wondered aloud if Karadzic’s political career had really reached the end of the road.

  Karadzic stepped down from both posts the next day, and faded out of public sight—even television—for the rest of the year. The world’s press hailed the agreement and praised our efforts; in the words of the Financial Times, it was “another success.”

  Our team, drained by two almost sleepless nights and the long flight back from Belgrade, the last hour of it bouncing through violent thunderstorms, drove directly to the White House to join a Principals’ Committee meeting already in progress, where we were greeted with a standing ovation that left us moved but a bit stunned. Our colleagues were more impressed with the July 18 agreement than we were. We were ambivalent about what we had done. We had achieved just enough to allow elections with SDS participation, and just enough to relieve the pressure for the rest of the year for a military operation against Karadzic—an operation I still favored. We might be “whistling past the graveyard,” as Strobe put it, but it was just what Washington wanted.

  I repeated my earlier recommendation that we close down the SDS television network, but this was again rejected on the grounds that it was either too provocative or impossible to carry out.* I also told the Principals’ Committee that we had to move immediately against Pale if there were the slightest violation of the July 18 agreement. But by the beginning of 1997, these admonitions and proposals would be forgotten or ignored, and Karadzic, sensing another opportunity, would emerge once more.

  The September 14 Elections. Two months later, I was back in Bosnia, this time as the head of the Presidential Observer Mission to the elections. The team, which had been assembled by the White House, consisted of a group of private citizens and several Congressmen, including two powerful Democrats, John Murtha of Pennsylvania and Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and Peter King, a Republican from New York. Thousands of other international supervisors, observers, monitors, and journalists were crawling all over the country.

&n
bsp; The elections chose the three-person presidency and the national assembly established by the Dayton agreement. They were relatively trouble-free, and unquestionably constituted progress—Warren Christopher called them a remarkable success. But none of the winners was in favor of a truly multiethnic government. The election strengthened the very separatists who had started the war.

  Many observers later cited this as proof that the people of Bosnia wanted to separate along ethnic lines. I did not share this assessment; the elections took place in an atmosphere poisoned by a media controlled by the same people who had started the war. Advocates of reconciliation in all three communities were intimidated by thugs and overwhelmed by media that carried nothing but racist propaganda. The full costs of failing to close down the SDS television stations now came home. And on the Muslim side, all was not well either; in one particularly ominous incident, zealots from Izetbegovic’s party beat up Haris Silajdzic, almost killing him, as he spoke in favor of a multiethnic Bosnia during an election rally. On the Serb side, Milosevic ran a handpicked candidate, but the victory that he had long promised never materialized; Krajisnik won the Serb seat in the three-person co-presidency of Bosnia by a vote of 508,026 to 240,000. Biljana Plavsic won the presidency of Republika Srpska with ease. She was, at the time, the most popular Bosnian Serb. Nothing could have prepared us for the open confrontation she would have with her Pale mentors in less than eight months.

  Clinton II and the Together Movement. Bosnia faded as an issue in the 1996 presidential campaign. In addition to the relative success of the effort, Senator Dole also deserved credit as well; he ignored every opportunity to exploit the issue because, as he told me later, he did not want to hurt a policy he now “basically agreed with.” Dole even said publicly that he would favor extending IFOR beyond its one-year limit, but the Administration failed to seize this generous opening to get out from under the twelve-month deadline, and, with Dole’s defeat in November, it was gone.

  Even a re-elected president goes through a transition period, although it is almost invisible to the public eye. Outgoing officials tend to lose interest in the details of policy, as they prepare to return to the private sector. The Clinton Administration effected a smooth transition in most areas, especially at State, where the new Secretary, Madeleine Albright, was familiar with most of the major issues from her U.N. tour, and at the NSC, where Sandy Berger simply moved up (without the need for Senate confirmation) to replace Tony Lake.

  Still, the new team—much of it far below the Cabinet level—had to await Senate confirmation. Even the smoothest shifts take time, and in the Balkans events did not pause for our transition. A remarkable challenge to Milosevic unfolded in the streets of Belgrade in December, led by three politicians who banded together into a movement they called Zajedno, or the Together Movement. For weeks, hundreds of thousands of Belgrade citizens braved sub-freezing weather to call for democracy. But Washington missed a chance to affect events; except for one ineffectual trip to Washington, Zajedno had no contact with senior American government officials, and the Administration sent no senior officials to Belgrade for fear that their visits would be used by Milosevic to show support. For the first time in eighteen months, Milosevic felt no significant American pressure, and turned back toward the extreme nationalists, including Karadzic, for support. His tactical skills saved him again, and within weeks, the Together Movement was together no more, as its leaders split among themselves.

  On Sunday, December 8, three days after Madeleine Albright was named Secretary of State, we met at her house in Georgetown. I offered her my full support, and noted that her well-known tough line on Bosnia made her the ideal person to reinvigorate the policy. She said this was her firm intention. Nonetheless, by April there was a general impression that “Clinton II” was downgrading Bosnia. In Europe, the emphasis was almost entirely on a critical summit meeting with Boris Yeltsin, planned for Helsinki, that would determine the fate of the Administration’s plan to enlarge NATO. China also took center stage in internal policy discussions. The comparative silence on Bosnia during the early months of 1997 was broken primarily by the incoming Secretary of Defense, Senator William Cohen, who made a series of statements that the United States would end its troop presence in Bosnia in eighteen months—that is, June 1998.

  Sensing that high-level American interest had declined, Karadzic ventured once more into public view, testing how flagrantly he could violate the agreement I had negotiated the previous July without provoking a NATO response. Finding nothing in his way, he even gave on-the-record interviews to European journalists. His re-emergence went unchallenged by the military, and suggested, as many journalists reported, that personnel in IFOR—now renamed SFOR, or Stabilization Force—were simply counting the days until their departure.

  Finally, in April, after a highly successful Clinton-Yeltsin summit in Helsinki—in which President Clinton obtained Yeltsin’s acceptance of NATO enlargement—the Administration, led by Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, began to focus again on Bosnia. As part of this process, Robert Gelbard was appointed to coordinate all U.S. government efforts to implement Dayton. This made sense; Washington needed a tough, full-time “czar” and Gelbard, who had been working on Bosnia sporadically since I had asked him to strengthen the International Police Task Force in December 1995, was an excellent choice. Gelbard’s background was unusually varied for a Foreign Service officer; in addition to both economic and political experience, he had extensive firsthand knowledge of law enforcement and counterterrorism, and was a skilled bureaucratic infighter.

  An Unusual Birthday Party. Washington is well known as a city where social events can have policy consequences. Such was the case with a memorable party given by Liz Stevens on Friday, April 4, in honor of her husband, the gifted filmmaker George Stevens, and Kati, who shared the same birthday. Without telling us or most of the other guests, Liz had invited the Clintons. We arrived early to find Secret Service agents all over the house. A few minutes later, ahead of other guests, the Clintons walked in.

  To be precise, Hillary walked; the President limped in on crutches. Only a month earlier he had famously, and seriously, injured himself in a fall outside the home of the golfer Greg Norman. Less famously, I had injured myself at about the same time, tearing ligaments in my ankle. When we met, I was also on crutches, to the President’s amusement, and we spent a few minutes comparing our rehabilitation programs. As he left, the President pulled me aside for a moment and said, “Come by tomorrow and we can do some therapy and talk.”

  The next day, Saturday, April 5, I presented myself at the White House and was ushered upstairs to the family quarters, where the President was already working out on a bicycle machine. Gesturing me into an adjoining room, he asked his therapist, a Navy commander, to look at my injury. We worked out in silence for a while as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and then adjourned to another room to cool down.

  Members of his family, including Hillary and her mother, Dorothy Rodham, stopped by to chat. It seemed simultaneously completely ordinary and completely extraordinary, casual conversation with this nice, average American family—except that one of them happened to be the President. As I was beginning to wonder if we would ever discuss Bosnia, he said, “Let’s go downstairs.” With that we hobbled down to his office in the family quarters.

  It is in the nature of the hierarchical relationship of the Executive Branch that such a meeting would have been almost impossible while I was still in the government. There are simply too many layers between an Assistant Secretary and the Chief Executive, and everyone in the chain of command would have insisted on either being there, changing the nature of the meeting, or preventing such a discussion from even occurring.

  “What’s going on out there?” the President began. Before the meeting, I had decided, with Strobe’s enthusiastic urging, to be completely candid if the opportunity arose. I listed the series of reverses and lost opportunities since Decem
ber: the collapse of the Together Movement; increasingly public activity by Karadzic; brutal behavior by Tudjman toward the remaining Serbs in Croatia; heightened tensions between the Croats and the Muslims within the Federation, especially at Mostar; and American passivity or worse.

  “While NATO policy and your achievement with Yeltsin have been historic,” I said, “Bosnia has gone nowhere since Dayton. These issues are interrelated. We said that we’ll leave Bosnia in June 1998, which is not possible. People out there are not even sure we still support Dayton, or if we still care what happens in Bosnia. And we are losing irretrievable time.”

  I urged him to give Albright and Gelbard his full backing. Sensing that he was receptive, I spoke even more bluntly than I had planned, urging him to speak out forcefully on the issue. Finally, the President walked me to the elevator, and then, crutches and all, accompanied me all the way to my car, which was waiting at the South Portico of the White House.

  The “therapy session,” as Strobe called it, was timely. Both Berger and Albright said later that it was important in getting policy focused and revitalized at a critical moment. Meanwhile, Berger’s formal policy review proceeded, and Gelbard “went operational.”

  The Policy Toughens. With the press filled with stories about Albright-Cohen and State-Pentagon conflicts over Bosnia, the President flew to Europe twice: first, to sign the NATO-Russia Founding Act on May 27 in Paris, which formalized Russia’s role in the security architecture of post-Cold War Europe; and second, to attend a historic NATO summit on July 9 in Madrid that invited Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic to join NATO. It was a remarkable achievement, defying the predictions of many critics who said that NATO enlargement would do irreparable damage to relations between Russia and the United States.