UN and NATO officials understood that a threshold had been crossed— for the UN, for NATO, and for Bosnia.The people of Gorazde were elated. They gathered in the streets and gave thumbs-up signs to the members of the small UN team encamped in the central bank building. Serbian president Slobodan Milošević predictably denounced the attack, which he said “heavily harms the reputation of the UN in its role as mediator of the peace process.”4 By calling on NATO to bomb one faction, he said, UNPROFOR had taken sides. The following day, when the Serbs kept up their shelling, NATO struck again, destroying two Serb APCs and damaging one tank.
At his home in Massongy, France, Vieira de Mello was not where he wanted to be. After twenty-four years of service to the United Nations, he had happened to leave his mission area during one of the most important crises in UN history. Indeed, while NATO’s first-ever air operation was under way on April 10, he had the surreal experience of receiving a phone call from Charles Kirudja, Akashi’s chief of staff, who complained about personnel infighting in the office. Vieira de Mello rushed back to Zagreb on April 11, the day of the second strike, and found that the Serb offensive had not abated.
NATO’s sparing use of air power—critics quickly branded the two attacks “pin-pricks”—revealed just how constrained NATO was by UN concerns about retaliation against peacekeepers. It also showed the limits, in mountain areas, of the gleaming laser-guided technology that had seemed invincible in the Persian Gulf War. Western commentators noted that, with its tepid uses of force, NATO resembled the proverbial elephant that had given birth to a mouse.5 On April 12 the Serbs raided three of seven weapons-collection points that had been established outside Sarajevo in February, taking back heavy weapons from a cantonment as a result of NATO’s ultimatum. By April 14, sensing that the UN and NATO were paralyzed, the Serbs had detained, placed under house arrest, or blocked the movement of 150 UN soldiers across Bosnia.6 A New York Times headline summed up the letdown: “THE BLUFF THAT FAILED; SERBS AROUND GORAZDE ARE UNDETERRED BY NATO’S POLICY OF LIMITED AIR STRIKES.”7
Having pushed for air power to be used, President Clinton tried to claim that international forces remained neutral. “I would remind the Serbs that we have taken no action, none, through NATO and with the support of the UN, to try to win a military victory for their adversaries,” he said.8 But Vieira de Mello saw that Clinton was trying to have it both ways: feeling good by standing up for the Bosnians but feeling safe by placating the Serbs. “This is Clinton’s ‘I didn’t inhale’ moment,” he told me at our first dinner meeting. “He wants to please everyone at once.”
At around 3 p.m. on April 15, the Bosnian defenses to the north and southeast of the town collapsed. The Serbs overran a UN observation post, pummeling a UN Land Rover north of Gorazde with machine-gun fire and seriously wounding two members of the elite squad of British officers that Rose had sent into Gorazde the previous week.
At just the time NATO might have struck back in retaliation for the attack on the British soldiers, Akashi was in the midst of a seven-hour meeting with Karadžić in his Pale headquarters.9 John Almstrom, Akashi’s Canadian military adviser, set up the secure satellite phone to NATO in the parking lot and carried the military maps of potential targets in his briefcase. “This was a bad dream,” recalls Almstrom. “You are in Karadžić’s office and you know you are probably going to bomb Karadžić.” But unsurprisingly Akashi chose not to do so, opting instead to work with the Serbs to evacuate the wounded British soldiers.
Vieira de Mello had seen UN resolutions and observation posts trampled in Lebanon, but this time around he was the second-highest-ranking political official in the mission, beneath only Akashi. He could try to use his clout to alter UNPROFOR’s course. But as he confessed to me that evening, he did not see a way out.
The following day, with the Serbs continuing their stampede toward Gorazde, Rose called for NATO air power for a third time, but on this occasion, in order to avoid inflaming Serb tempers, he informed Mladić that he had done so. At the sight of NATO planes, the forewarned Serb tanks shot down a British Sea Harrier with a shoulder-fired missile. Even though the pilot safely ejected and reunited with Rose’s men in Gorazde, this was the first time in NATO history that it had ever lost a plane in a combat operation, and Admiral Leighton Smith, the American who commanded NATO forces, was furious. Smith said he was fed up with the restrictive rules of engagement insisted upon by Akashi and Rose.The tactical constraints and the UN’s advance warnings to the Serbs were endangering his pilots.
Inside the UN safe area Bosnian military resistance had evaporated, and artillery rounds were falling in the town once every twenty seconds.10 In Washington, U.S. national security adviser Anthony Lake said that the possibility of saving Gorazde was “very limited.”11 Back in New York the Bosnian representative to the UN, Muhamed Sacirbey, released a statement that said that the UN, the “most noble of institutions,” had been “usurped into a chamber of false promises and rationalizations for inaction.”12
No matter how aggressive the Serbs became,Vieira de Mello clung to the belief that full-on NATO air strikes were not compatible with UN neutrality, and that UN neutrality was the cornerstone of the UN system. He did what he could to defend UNPROFOR’s dwindling reputation. In Zagreb he met with a delegation of Bosnian government officials who slammed the UN. He explained that UN Security Council Resolution 836, which created the six safe areas, had been “badly drafted” by the Council, “probably on purpose.” But he spoke as though he lacked free will of his own. Since he and the peacekeepers had been told they could use military force only in self-defense, they were not to blame for their passivity. It never seemed to dawn on him that he might help shape the views of governments from within the system. Perhaps knowing that he was shirking responsibility and uncomfortable in doing so, he lashed out, repeating Serb accusations that the Bosnians kept weapons in the safe areas and adding, in an uncharacteristically hectoring tone, “You know it is true!” At the end of the meeting Bosnia’s secretary for foreign affairs, Esad Suljić, issued a prophecy: If the UN did not step up immediately to protect Bosnians in Gorazde, the Serbs would attack the two other nearby safe areas. “Srebrenica and Zepa will be next,” the Bosnian official said.13
While the Bosnians were desperate, the Serbs were flush with confidence. In Belgrade they stripped CNN, AFP, SKY, Le Monde, Die Presse, Radio Free Europe, and the Christian Science Monitor of their media accreditation.14 Outside Sarajevo they overran a UN weapons-collection site under French guard and seized an additional eighteen antiaircraft guns. They fired four shells at the central bank in Gorazde, where UN officials slept and worked. The strike knocked out the UN telex system that the small UN team was using to file their reports.15
With the safe area seemingly written off, an Irish UNHCR doctor named Mary McLaughlin wrote a letter to UNHCR headquarters in Geneva that was leaked to the press. It read in part:
Greetings from a city where only the dead are lucky. The last two days here are a living hell. Both residents and refugees have crowded into crumbling buildings, waiting for the next shell. When it hits, many are killed, as there are such crowds in each building.
The wounded lie for hours in the debris, as it is suicidal to try and bring them to the hospital.... The Serb excuse for targeting [the hospital] is that it is a military institution. I’ve been in all parts of the hospital 100 times in the last month and can assure the outside world that it’s a lie.
. . . Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin want to hold talks about the future of Bosnia next month. There will be little left in Gorazde by then but corpses and rubble.16
Aid workers and peacekeepers throughout Bosnia understood that they were at a turning point.“Clearly it is a very sad week for the world,” Rose admitted to the press.17
“THESE GUYS HAVE BALLS”
But just when all appeared lost, the United States and Russia conspired to preserve what was left of the Gorazde enclave. In the United States public criticism of the Cli
nton administration had been fierce. It was not merely civilians in Gorazde who were at stake. NATO, which had acted for the first time in its history, had suffered a major blow to its prestige. At a White House press conference President Clinton felt he had no choice but to ratchet up the threat of NATO air power.
But U.S. threats alone carried little clout. Luckily for Gorazde, Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s envoy in the region, turned on the Serbs. He had spent a week shuttling between Pale and Belgrade and was fed up: “I have heard more broken promises in the past 48 hours [than] I have heard probably in the rest of my life.” Upon returning to Moscow, he was even more emphatic. “The time for talking is over,” he said. “The Bosnian Serbs must understand that by dealing with Russia, they are dealing with a great power and not a banana republic.”18 On April 19 President Yeltsin called on the Serbs to fulfill the promises they made to Russia. “Stop the attacks,” he said. “Withdraw from Gorazde.”19 “Our professional patriots always talk about ‘special relations with Serbia,’ ” an editorial in the Russian newspaper Izvestia said. “What does that mean? Approval of everything the Serbs do, even if they commit a crime?”20 Vieira de Mello saw Russia’s shift as a diplomatic breakthrough. “At last, perhaps, it will not be divided nations attempting to make peace,” he told me, “but the United Nations.” With Russia now standing behind NATO’s hard-line condemnations, the Serbs would no longer be able to play the major powers off one another.
On April 22 the sixteen Western ambassadors to NATO issued an ultimatum in Brussels meant to rescue Gorazde.The Serbs were told that they had to cease firing around Gorazde immediately. By one minute after midnight GMT (2:01 a.m. Bosnia time) on April 24, Serb troops had to withdraw to two miles outside the town center and allow UN peacekeepers, relief convoys, and medical teams to enter. And by one minute after midnight GMT on April 27, they had to pull their heavy weapons (including tanks, artillery pieces, mortars, rocket launchers, missiles, and antiaircraft weapons) out of a twelve-mile exclusion zone similar to that which had been established around Sarajevo. If the Serbs did not comply with these terms, they would be bombed, and this time the air attacks would leave no doubt about NATO’s seriousness. NATO pilots no longer had to find the offending weapons; they would be unleashed to strike at a range of military targets. NATO generals said they had picked out two dozen ammunition sites, fuel dumps, command bunkers, and gun posts around the area. Washington withdrew nonessential personnel and diplomats’ families from Belgrade. “The plan is to bomb the crap out of them,” one NATO official said.21
Because the UN still had peacekeepers on the ground, however, NATO would still not be able to bomb without getting the request from Rose and Akashi, who continued to worry about crossing the “Mogadishu line” and jeopardizing the safety of peacekeepers.Vieira de Mello and Akashi received permission from the Serbs to travel to Belgrade, where they hoped to negotiate a way out with—and for—Karadžić and Mladić. The UN officials preferred agreements to ultimatums, and irrespective of any NATO threats, they remained convinced that they could talk the Serbs out of taking Gorazde.
At the talks in Belgrade, the same day as the ultimatum, the UN delegation lined up on one side of the table, the Bosnian Serbs took seats opposite them, and Serbian president Slobodan Milošević, who was thought to be responsible for the war, served as the chair. On one occasion when General Mladić spoke up, Milošević snapped at him in English. “Will you shut the fuck up?!” Milošević’s every gesture and statement seemed designed to show the UN who was boss but also to create the illusion that he was estranged from the field commander known to be bombarding Gorazde’s civilians. Instead of repenting, the Bosnian Serbs were more brazen than ever. Since NATO had carried out two air strikes, Karadžić said, “it will take us time to trust the UN again.” When Akashi said he understood, his aide Izumi Nakamitsu passed a note to her colleague David Harland, saying, “This makes me sick.”
Toward the end of the Serb-UN negotiations, which lasted from 1 p.m. to the late evening, Akashi asked how the UN might verify Serb compliance. Suddenly the Bosnian Serb vice president Nikola Koljevic spoke up: “Why doesn’t Sergio go to Gorazde?” Vieira de Mello leaped to agree. “Sure,” he said, “I’ll go.” The rest of the UN team was stunned. “It happened so fast and it was so last minute that we didn’t see it coming,” Almstrom, Akashi’s military adviser, recalls. “I used to call him ‘Sergio the gunfighter,’ but this was ridiculous. I thought either he’s got huge courage or he doesn’t realize the implications of this. What if the Serbs don’t pull their weapons back? Or what if they do and NATO bombs anyway?” The Serbs had a more cunning agenda. If Vieira de Mello led a UN team into Gorazde, NATO countries would be even more reluctant to bomb. Milošević adjourned the meeting with the deal nearly finalized. He urged both sides to shore up the remaining details in the morning. Delays were costly, the Serb leader said insincerely, “while people are dying.”22
As the UN officials staggered out of the negotiations, Almstrom asked, “Sergio, what if the ultimatum fails and you get bombed?” Vieira de Mello shrugged. “The United Nations will just have to make sure the ultimatum doesn’t fail, won’t we?” Rose was thrilled when he learned that his friend would be the one with his finger on the UN trigger. He lent him a sleeping bag and a pair of British army boots for the trip.23 In a classic testament to the lack of synchronization between UNPROFOR and NATO, the UN’s agreement with the Serbs was drafted using local time, creating a two-hour time difference between it and the deadlines in the NATO ultimatum, which were issued in Greenwich mean time.
Remarkably, at the very time the Belgrade negotiations were under way, the Serbs had gone right on shelling Gorazde. A UN observer wrote from Gorazde: “Team leader’s assessment: These guys have balls.” The UN team had recorded fifty-five shell explosions in Gorazde in one ten-minute period. “They have blatantly increased their aggressive activities in the face of the NATO ultimatum,” the UN observer noted.24 Major Pat Stogran, the thirty-six-year-old head of the UN military observer team in Gorazde, sent several consecutive panicked messages to headquarters and heard nothing back. He finally threatened to stop sending reports. “If you had any idea of the situation on the ground here you would understand the futility of the messages that we are sending off into the dark expanse,” he wrote. “It is embarrassing that I, as the senior representative of UNPROFOR, cannot advise the local civilian and military authorities of the activities of UNPROFOR except that which we glean from BBC.”25
More than twenty people in Gorazde would be killed the day of Vieira de Mello’s trip to Belgrade.26
BREAKING THE SIEGE, BLOCKING AIR STRIKES
Critics pounced on the UN deal.Vieira de Mello’s verification team seemed to be walking into a trap with their eyes open, as if they were willfully placing themselves in harm’s way in order to supply the Serbs with potential hostages and foil any potential NATO attack. He ignored the grumblings and focused on the task he had been assigned. From the airport in Belgrade, he telephoned UNPROFOR headquarters in Zagreb and put out the word that he was looking for UN volunteers.When he received phone calls back, he did not try to sugarcoat the mission. “I warn you,” he told interested staff, “you might end up trapped in Gorazde or NATO might bomb.” He flew to Zagreb for a few hours in order to pack, then flew to Sarajevo, where he stopped into the Bosnian Presidency to explain the mission to Prime Minister Silajdžić, who had broken off contact with Akashi and Rose. “You know that by going you are ensuring NATO does not use force again?” Silajdžić said. Vieira de Mello did not respond. “Good luck anyway, my friend,” Silajdžić said. “Be careful.”
Around 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 23,Vieira de Mello met up with a large UN convoy at Sarajevo airport.The convoy included 40 medical personnel, 100 Ukrainians who reported to a French general, and 15 political officers and civilian police who reported to him. Anthony Banbury, who had been with the UN in Cambodia, had arrived in Bosnia earlier in the month. When he heard that Vieira de Mel
lo had issued the call for volunteers, he made his way to the snowy airport in hopes of earning a spot on the team. Banbury Vieira de Mello and UN General André Soubirou planning to enter Gorazde.
Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World Page 21