by Adam LeBor
So did Milosevic. While NATO hit the Bosnian Serbs, he hit the bottle. He arrived at a meeting with the British diplomat David Austin and Carl Bildt, Lord Owen’s successor as EU envoy to Yugoslavia, almost incoherent. Austin looked on amazed as Milosevic slumped in a chair and Milan Milutinovic, the Yugoslav foreign minister, took over.
Milutinovic was a suave operator, well versed in the niceties of diplomacy, although this was a new experience. As he presented the Yugoslav position, Milosevic would occasionally interrupt to say ‘You’ve got to stop the bombing, it’s intolerable,’ before drifting off again into an alcoholic haze. ‘Milosevic was really shocked that NATO had actually started bombing. Maybe he thought it would never happen. It was a good job for Milosevic that Milutinovic was there, because he carried the meeting,’ said Austin.29
Milosevic, Austin and Bildt had spent the previous weeks in marathon negotiating sessions that often lasted as long as nine or ten hours. Milosevic was a gracious host, and always laid on plentiful supplies of lamb, veal, wine and fruit brandy. During the negotiations he spoke in English and almost always knew exactly what he wanted to say. There was no translator, no advisors and, apart from his chief of Cabinet, Goran Milinovic, the only other people in the building were the villa’s staff. Austin observed: ‘Serbia was run by one man. Milosevic gave the impression that he had nothing else to do but talk to us. He had an intellectual arrogance that nobody else in the country could do it. He knew the subject intimately. He took decisions, made concessions, and he never had to consult anybody. He just did it. This was a very odd way to operate. He liked a good argument and discussion and seemed to be enjoying it. He was good at it, although quite often he would marshal facts which were not facts at all.’
Milosevic’s tried to charm Austin by finding a common link. ‘Several times during the negotiations he compared the Bosnian Serbs to children. He would say “That Karadzic, I can’t control him. They are like children. You know what it is like Mr Austin, trying to control children.” Or he would call them bastards, he would mock Karadzic and Mladic, he was pretty insulting. It was part of the game, showing us how difficult they were to control.’
Underneath the bonhomie, Milosevic was always ready to remind the envoys who was in charge. One lengthy negotiating session took place at a villa that was forty minutes’ drive from Belgrade. Milosevic insisted that it was too late for Austin and Bildt to return to the city, and ensured they were comfortable in their guest rooms. He then appeared and announced: ‘Goodnight, gentlemen. I am going back to Belgrade.’ Austin recalled: ‘He was always a genial host, but he wanted to keep you off balance.’
Milosevic also took more practical steps. He summoned Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb leadership to Belgrade and gave them an ultimatum: either the Bosnian Serbs granted him full powers to negotiate a peace for them, or Serbia would impose a total blockade on Republika Srpska. ‘It’s crucial to stop the war immediately,’ he said. ‘How we do it isn’t the issue. We could discuss details forever.’ Milosevic, the former Communist and atheist even press-ganged the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle into service. The spiritual leader commanded immense authority: he sat down with Karadzic, and talked things over. He pronounced: ‘Differences of opinion are inevitable. But never lose sight of the common interest.’ Milosevic had won.30
At this time, September 1995, Milosevic was reeling. The NATO air strikes had a profound psychological effect on the Serbs. (Even General Mladic sent a long rambling fax to the UN Commander General, Bernard Janvier, declaring the NATO bombardment worse than the Nazis’ levelling of Belgrade.)31 The sanctions were still in place: there was no heating oil, and ragged hawkers sold watered-down petrol in milk bottles. Krajina had collapsed, and Serbia had now taken in almost 200,000 refugees from Croatia. The Croatian and Bosnian armies were pushing hard through northern Bosnia. The northern enclave of Bihac had been liberated. Well armed, highly motivated and properly equipped, the joint Croat-Bosnian force looked unstoppable.
So much so that by mid-September the two armies were within striking distance of Banja Luka, the northern Bosnian city that Milosevic was cultivating as an alternative power base. The Bosnian Serb leadership there was supposedly more ‘moderate’, though Banja Luka had been the epicentre of ethnic cleansing in northern Bosnia in 1992, and for Muslims and Croats it was a place of terror and murder. Now, however, it was the turn of the Bosnian Serbs to panic. The city prepared to evacuate as the advancing Croat and Bosnian forces stormed through the Bosnian Serb lines.
But Washington had decided that Banja Luka would not be allowed to fall. The city, and Milosevic, were saved by the Americans, in the bulldozer form of Richard Holbrooke. A career diplomat who had served in Vietnam, Holbrooke was appointed US special envoy to Yugoslavia in late 1994. He used his power as Clinton’s man in the Balkans, and his gung-ho can-do American approach, to cut through the layers of diplomatic obfuscation. When Milosevic suggested to Holbrooke that he meet with Radovan Karadzic and General Mladic to discuss a ceasefire in Bosnia, Holbrooke agreed, but demanded there be ‘no historical lectures, no bullshit’. When General Mladic had started his usual tirade about brave little Serbia, Holbrooke walked out, telling Milosevic: ‘Mr President, you told us we were here to be serious. If we’re not serious we have to go.’32
Milosevic relished this tough-guy approach. He too wanted to be serious, without ‘historical bullshit’ in which he had anyway never been very interested. Finally, he believed, he had found someone who could, and would, cut deals without having to get every full stop and comma authorised by the UN. Holbrooke and Milosevic enjoyed a personal chemistry that would be a significant factor in eventually bringing peace to Bosnia. Like every autocratic ruler who surrounds himself with yes-men, Milosevic was often bored. Secure in his position as the supreme ruler of Serbia, he enjoyed the chance to lock horns with an equal.
Washington believed, almost certainly correctly, that if Banja Luka fell then the whole Bosnian Serb Republic would collapse, bringing down Milosevic. According to this scenario, hundreds of thousands of Bosnian Serbs would pour across the border into Serbia. Milosevic would either be toppled in a military coup, or be forced to deploy the JNA in Bosnia to defend the Bosnian Serbs. This would trigger a full-fledged war between Yugoslavia and her successor states, which would threaten the whole Balkans. Momir Bulatovic, the Montenegrin leader, recalled Belgrade’s warning: ‘We told the Americans this huge exodus of refugees would radically alter politics here. Decisions would be out of our hands. We’d be forced to intervene directly.’33
The US needed Milosevic to broker a peace deal over Bosnia. Hrvoje Sarinic explained: ‘The US saw that there were no results with the previous kind of negotiations. So they decided to change the rules of the game. There is no document, but they said if we change the ratio of forces involved, negotiations could be more successful. Our army was more than successful. We solved the problem of Bihac, which had been in a catastrophic situation. We – officially the HVO [Bosnian Croat army] – were twenty kilometres from Banja Luka and the evacuation started. We could have captured Banja Luka, their forces were panicking. But then Bosnia would have been split into several parts, and it would have been much harder to organise the Dayton agreement. So the US stopped our offensive.’34 In his book To End a War Holbrooke argued that the fall of Banja Luka would trigger a humanitarian catastrophe of 200,000 Bosnian Serb refugees. He told President Tudjman: ‘Mr President, I urge you to go as far as you can, but not to take Banja Luka.’35 Tudjman agreed. Banja Luka was spared.
In Sarajevo, President Izetbegovic and his generals wanted to push on and liberate more territory. Holbrooke turned up the heat. In characteristically blunt language, he told Izetbegovic he was ‘shooting craps’ (i.e., playing dice) with Bosnia’s destiny.36 Izetbegovic understood that without Croatia’s military support and Washington’s back-up, Bosnia’s offensive would anyway likely soon stop. Izetbegovic’s price was to lift the siege of Sarajevo, and turn on the electricity, gas and
water. It was paid. The siege of the Bosnian capital was over.
The US diplomatic cavalry had saved Milosevic. Less than three years later, the Kosovo Albanians would pay the price.
20
The Only Man Who Matters
Dayton
November 1995
You deserve Sarajevo because you fought for it and those cowards killed you from the hills.
Slobodan Milosevic ceding the Serb-occupied areas of the
Bosnian capital to Haris Silajdzic, Bosnian prime minister, at the
Dayton peace conference in November 1995.1
A month after the lights and heating went on in Sarajevo, Milosevic was at the piano, whisky in hand, regaling western diplomats with his version of ‘Tenderly’. The site of this impromptu serenade was the Wright-Patterson US airbase in Dayton, Ohio. Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman, Alija Izetbegovic and their advisors had arrived on 31 October to thrash out the details of the final peace settlement for Bosnia. Now Milosevic was where he most wanted to be: at the centre of attention, recognised by the world as the only man who matters, whose imprimatur could stop, finally, the Bosnian war. Best of all, Milosevic was in his second favourite country, the United States.
Despite the hundreds of journalists outside the perimeter fence, the airbase was sealed off from the media, and the three leaders were virtually locked in. The message from Washington was clear: this was their last chance. Asked how confident he was that the talks would succeed, Milosevic had said on arrival: ‘Well, I am [an] optimist. I believe the talks will succeed. We attach the greatest importance to [the] peace initiative of the United States.’2 Warren Christopher, the US Secretary of State, had even coaxed the three leaders into a handshake for the cameras.
Nominally, the Dayton conference, as it became known, had three co-chairmen: Carl Bildt, the European envoy, the Russian Igor Ivanov and Richard Holbrooke. But in diplomacy it is the host country that counts, and everyone understood that this was primarily an American show, in the main run by Holbrooke. The Americans took the credit, but the Dayton conference was not conjured up out of nowhere. It was the final stage in the years of diplomatic wrangling that had marked attempts to bring peace to Bosnia, stretching back to Europe’s involvement in the early 1990s when the Bush administration had taken a back seat, believing that the US did not ‘have a dog in this fight’. But ultimately only America, it seemed, had the power and will to lock the Balkan leaders in an airbase – albeit a luxuriously fitted one – until they signed up for peace. The choice of venue was significant – a deliberate reminder of American air power, coming just a few weeks after NATO’s air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs.
Milosevic came to Dayton ready to sign. He was weak on the military, diplomatic and home fronts. His control of Serbia’s state broadcast media could not temper Serb anger about the disasters that had befallen them. Serbia was a comparatively small country, and many of its inhabitants had relatives or friends among the refugees from Croatia and Bosnia. In 1991 football fans had lauded Milosevic as a great Serb leader and defender of its people: The terraces swayed to ‘Serbian Slobo, Serbia is with you’. Now they chanted ‘Slobo, you have betrayed Krajina’.
Milosevic knew he could survive the fallout from operations Flash and Storm, but they still sent aftershocks through his government. When, after the fall of Krajina, the children of Yugoslav prime minister Radoje Kontic told him that they ‘pissed on his premiership’, Kontic had retreated to his office with a bottle of cognac. The massacre at Srebrenica had shown Milosevic that General Mladic was out of control. Who knew what horrors he might carry out next, and what the consequences might be for Serbia?
But first, it was dinner time. Holbrooke took Milosevic to the all-American on-base restaurant, Packy’s All-Sports Bar.3 The walls were covered with pictures of Bob Hope. Four giant television screens showed news and sports channels. This was the America that Milosevic had so admired on his trips to Wall Street and to the IMF meetings, where he had so dazzled the world’s bankers with his command of capitalism. He was entranced by the slick technology, the smooth efficiency, the sheer luxurious availability of everything. Most of all, it seemed, he was impressed by a Tomahawk Cruise Missile, on display at the base museum. Just a few weeks before, a fusillade of the twenty-foot long projectiles had helped destroy much of the Bosnian Serb army’s communications systems in western Bosnia. ‘So much damage from such a little thing,’ he said.4
At Packy’s Milosevic turned on the charm. He soon had his own favourite waitress. He asked her name, and where she was from. Vicky became ‘Waitress Wicky’, as Milosevic pronounced her name, and always served the Serb leader. At more formal dinners at the Officers’ Club restaurant, Milosevic even invited one of the waiters to come and work for him in Belgrade.
The Americans made great efforts to warm up the – unsurprisingly – glacial atmosphere between Milosevic and the Bosnian government delegation, with sometimes bizarre results. With hindsight it is clear that it may have been more tactful to stick to diplomatic rather than social business: the Bosnians were in no mood for socialising, especially with the man they saw as the killer of their country. When a dinner was organised at the Officers’ Club, Holbrooke seated his wife, the Hungarian writer Kati Marton, between Milosevic and Izetbegovic. The Bosnian President could barely stand to look at Milosevic, let alone break bread with him. ‘Three black women sergeants performed as the Andrews Sisters’, recorded Holbrooke, ‘and as they sang “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”, Milosevic sang along, while Izetbegovic sat sullenly.’5
Milosevic’s immediate concern was the lifting of sanctions. Six days into Dayton, Milosevic asked for twenty-three thousand tons of heating oil, and for natural gas supplies to be resumed. By this time winter had set in in Belgrade. Milosevic realised that if he was to sign away much of Bosnia, he needed to deliver something concrete for the home front. He also understood that the Americans would probably be willing to make this kind of concession – which was important for him, but relatively irrelevant to the overall Dayton strategy – as a goodwill gesture. Milosevic drafted unlikely allies for his request: Izetbegovic himself and the Bosnian prime minister, Haris Silajdzic. They agreed, pointing out that the 5 October ceasefire was supposed to turn the heating on in Belgrade as well as Sarajevo. After Milosevic’s request, it did.
It seemed a good omen for the broader principles being thrashed out. The Dayton conference followed a period of intense US-led shuttle diplomacy through September 1995, after which Milosevic and Izetbegovic had agreed on a set of basic political principles to decide Bosnia’s future. These were that Bosnia would remain a single, internationally-recognised state, with its borders intact. Zagreb would not annex Herzegovina, and nor would Belgrade carve off eastern Bosnia. The Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats would stay within Bosnia.
The price, for President Izetbegovic and his government, was high, and one which is still being paid. Within its international borders, Bosnia would be split into two ‘entities’, as they became known: the Bosnian Croat-Muslim Federation, which would get 51 per cent of its territory, and the Bosnian Serb Republic, which would take 49 per cent. Both entities would remain nominally under the authority of a multinational government in Sarajevo, and one currency would be in use, the convertible mark. But the ‘Federation’ – as the Croat-Muslim territory became known – and the Bosnian Serb Republic would retain their own armies, police forces, political structures and judiciaries. This was the ultimate victory of the Bosnian Serbs, that a country where all three nations had lived in mixed towns and villages would now be divided into two, on ethnic lines. The Bosnian Serb Republic would remain in existence, would even keep its name of ‘Republika Srpska’ and its foundations of ethnic cleansing would be legitimised.
The European diplomats worked out the details of Bosnia’s future constitution. The Americans oversaw the wrangling about the map. Bosnia-Herzegovina had been ruled by the Ottoman Sultans, the Habsburg emperors, the King of Yugoslavia, and then Tito. No
w it was about to become – in effect – an international protectorate, its fate decided not in Istanbul or Vienna, but on an American airbase. Over the next week the brief co-operation over heating Belgrade evaporated. By day sixteen no agreement had been reached and time was running out. A major sticking point was the city of Gorazde, in eastern Bosnia. Gorazde was a government-held town surrounded by the Bosnian Serbs. Like Srebrenica, Gorazde was a UN Safe Area. Unlike Srebrenica, despite repeated attacks by Mladic’s forces, Gorazde had not fallen. The city had been kept alive by a thin lifeline of weapons and supplies that were brought in down a perilous mountain track from Sarajevo. For years government soldiers had trekked nightly into the city past Bosnian Serb frontlines that were so near they could hear the enemy talking and see the red tips of their cigarettes glowing.
The Bosnian government had paid for Gorazde in blood, and would not surrender the city. But as Gorazde was an enclave, it needed a land-link, a safe corridor, to the capital Sarajevo. Corridor negotiations were the nightmare of any Bosnian peace plan. The length and width of the corridor were merely the starting point in the long litany of subsidiary questions. How many metres from the edge of the actual road would the territory of the corridor stretch? Would the road itself be dirt or metal? Would the corridor by supervised by UN troops? Would there be crossing points or junctions, and who would administer them, and so on, and so forth.
Holbrooke told Haris Silajdzic that Milosevic wanted to come over to his table to talk to him about Gorazde. Silajdzic refused. By this time Dayton had descended into an acrimonious ‘zero-sum’ game. Any concession, no matter how tiny, was seen as a defeat by those making it, and a victory for those receiving it. Silajdzic recalled: ‘The fact that he comes to my table, gives him, in a way, a psychological advantage, that he is doing something, that he is making a concession and so on. So I said, no, I’ll go to his table. These are our small Balkan ways.’6